Daily Score Blog

The US Forest Service is finally going to look into the merits of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for a small number of forests, including the Fremont National Forest in southern Oregon. Continued cutting on federal land, even under FSC standards, is not exactly popular with many conservationists. But the reality nowadays is that federal-land logging is likely to increase because of the Healthy Forests Initiative and, especially, slick new administrative procedures that may reduce environmental and endangered species' reviews. So FSC labelling could be a golden opportunity for conservationists to endorse something positive.

Getting the Forest Service to comply with FSC standards wouldn't be the big conservation victory that many greens have long sought--it won't stop cutting in national forests--but it would be an honorable compromise. FSC would guarantee careful reviews and monitoring that are fundamental to any good conservation planning. That is, the label could perhaps offset the increasingly weak review standards performed by federal agencies.

Headline story: the US economy posted tremendous third-quarter growth, 3.8 percent. To quote the New York Times article:

"This is actually fairly amazing..." Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist for MFR Inc. said...

That 3.8 percent growth in GDP is, of course, due to higher spending. Personal consumption, in fact, was up by 3.9 percent. I wonder, could the higher spending possibly have anything to do with the rising fuel prices that--just by pure coincidence--helped oil companies post the highest quarterly profits ever?

And is that spending really a good thing? Consider two other little items from the very same article--the one that characterizes the "strong" growth in an economy that "picked up speed." Disposable income is down and the personal savings rate is now solidly below zero:

• "Adjusted for inflation, disposable income fell 0.9 percent... Some of the drop was attributable to lost rental and business income on the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita lashed the region."
• "The personal saving rate fell into negative territory, minus 1.1 percent, from 0.1 percent. That indicates that people were paying for their increased spending by borrowing more money."

I hate to harp on the bad news, but those recent nuggets of trouble (suitable, of course, only to color the headline story that GDP is rising) are just the tip of the iceberg...

There's this cheery bit from the Christian Science Monitor: as climate change continues, the Northwest is expected to warm faster than the rest of the planet. In fact, according to climate scientists, the Puget Sound region has already been warming at a "substantially greater" rate than the earth as a whole.

Apart from the usual dire ecological problems--shrinking snowpack, screwed up streamflows, rising sea levels--the news is precipitating considerable worry from some economists. As the article has it:

Economists in the region warn that this could come with a big price tag. Global warming "is likely to impose significant economic costs," 52 leading economists from around the country warned in a recent letter to government and business officials in Oregon.

"The adjustments that businesses, households, and communities will have to make are without precedent," the economists wrote. "Many changes seem largely unavoidable, and some are clearly imminent."

For just one example of the costs of climate change, remember the Northwest's ski industry, which took a beating last winter because of the lousy snowfall. Today's Seattle Times covers the ski industry's woes and, in a positive development for media coverage of this issue, the Times mentions the connection to climate change (though in an oddly elliptical way).

Readers of this blog may remember that I covered this ski-less season ad nauseum last winter (here, here, and here, for example). Despite tons of Northwest media coverage of the skimpy snowfall--and a pretty direct link to climate change--the media almost never attributed the shuttered businesses to climate change. But less than a year later, the media appears to have (finally) connected the dots--yet another promising sign that the public consciousness of global warming is evolving rapidly, if none too soon.

UPDATE: Seattle's conference, ""The Future Ain't What It Used to Be -- Planning for Climate Disruption" was attended by a number of heavy-hitters, including Christine Todd Whitman. Read the coverage in the Seattle Times, here, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, here.

In a troubling new development for mountain caribou, the BC government is considering abandoning efforts to sustain the most threatened and isolated populations of mountain caribou in the province. That decision would almost certainly be a death knell for the few remaining caribou, the Selkirk herd, that continue to visit the continental United States. (Read the full reporting in the Globe and Mail.)

The Selkirk caribou roam in remote areas of British Columbia, Idaho, and Washington, but they are clinging to precarious existence with fewer than 3 dozen animals, despite repeated "augmentation" efforts. Cross-border cooperation and restoration efforts have been critical to the survival of the Selkirk herd and without BC support those caribou are not likely to be long for this world. Protecting these last visitors to the lower 48 is a good example of the big hurdles faced by those who would protect and restore ecosystems. Not only are the ecological problems thorny, but the problems are complicated by the fact that wildlife, habitats--and environmental problems generally--don't observe the political boundaries that are usually the foundation of our policies for restoration, such as they are.

UPDATE: A good article in the Seattle Times on the reactions from both Canadian and American conservationists. For example:

"The international transborder herd would be written off for extinction," said Joe Scott with Conservation Northwest of Bellingham. "That's totally and completely unacceptable."

We're a little late on this bit of depressing news. A report issued last week by Canada's National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy recommended against implementing feebates, one of the most promising market tools around for encouraging the purchase of energy-efficient products and for tugging the entire car and truck market toward better fuel efficiency. (The NRTEE was charged with studying feebate options after the idea was proposed last spring.)

Here's their reasoning:

"Instead of using one economic instrument, such as a feebate, the government should develop an integrated and coherent sustainable transportation strategy for Canada focused on all aspects of the transportation sector," the agency said. . . A further study of feebates could be part of that strategy, it added.

Well, sure, nothing wrong with an integrated approach, but feebates could be an important piece of that. They're a much broader solution than NRTEE gives them credit for (and far more far-reaching than tax credits for hybrids, which, strangely, NRTEE does promote).

The Eugene Register-Guard notes a problem:  higher land prices are making it harder for nonprofits to build affordable housing in the city.

The New York Times reports on what America's biggest city has done about the same problem:  an inclusionary zoning program, that lets developers build at higher densities, provided that they set aside some housing units for low-income housing.

Now, if anything, the Big Apple's problems with providing affordable housing positively dwarf Eugene's, since both land and construction costs are so much more expensive in New York.  But if the Grey Lady is to be believed, inclusionary zoning can harness the high demand for housing to create more housing options for folks who don't have the money for a luxury condo:

"The traditional equation," said Shaun Donovan, the commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, "has been that the stronger the real estate market, the harder it is to provide affordable housing. These programs turn that old equation on its head because the stronger the market, the greater the incentive for developers to use these programs and, therefore, provide affordable housing."

As we've mentioned before, hundreds of jurisdictions around the country have used inclusionary zoning to try to boost affordable housing, with mixed results.  Here's hoping that New York's recent experience can offer some lessons that other places can learn from.

This is less of a big deal than I had thought at first, but it's still worth noting: new research (full pdf here) suggests that sprawl may be linked to higher home prices.

The authors looked at housing prices in 452 urban areas across the US, along with measures of a couple dozen factors that can influence housing prices -- including urban form, but also education levels, weather, demographics, recent population influx, the size of homes, and employment factors, among others.  Controlling for other variables, cities that have a higher share of total housing in their "central areas" (as defined by the US census) tend to have slightly lower median home prices, and fewer very-expensive homes, than cities that are more sprawling and decentralized.

This, of course, runs counter to the intuition--and the much-touted arguments from the anti-smart growth set--that housing is cheaper in spread-out, poorly bounded metro areas. 

That said, as careful as this research seems to be, there's good reason not to read too much into it.

Just in case you were wondering:  the federal minimum wage in the US--currently $5.15 per hour--is at its lowest level in 5 decades, adjusted for inflation:

The nominal US minimum wage has remained unchanged for the last 9 years; over that time, inflation has whittled away more than a fifth of the buying power of an hour of minimum-wage work.

The (relatively) good news for low-income workers is that, in the Northwest, these minimum wage standards only apply to Idaho and Montana; Washington, Oregon, California and Alaska have adopted a higher minimum wage.  Washington's is currently $7.35 per hour, and is adjusted upward each year for inflation.  In January it will rise to $7.63.  (That's still lower than the inflation-adjusted federal minimum wage during most of the 1960's and 1970's, by the way.)  Oregon's is currently $7.25 per hour, and is also indexed for inflation. 

BC's minimum wage is Can$8.00. Adjusting for purchasing power of the Canadian and US dollars, that's about $6.67 in US dollars.  And this isn't inflation-indexed -- meaning that inflation erodes its value every year.  So, overall, minimum wage standards seem to be one area in which Washington and Oregon may be doing a better job than BC in protecting low-income workers.

Many of us in the Northwest have explored "green" options for consumer goods and services. Whether this means purchasing organic fruits from the farmers market or buying hybrid vehicles, we'd like to be healthier and reduce our ecological footprint.

But sorting out fact from fiction when buying green can be daunting. To help you clear up some of the confusion, Sightline has put together a short list of some good online sources to answer questions you may have about, say, whether or not that eyeliner truly wasn't tested on animals.

We'd also like to hear about guides and resources that you've found helpful in making the right choices--we can't cover them all! Please comment below to share those sites with other readers.

Today in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a sweetly-sad story about the closing of a bowling alley in north Seattle. There's nothing terribly profound, of course, about one business closing down, but columnist Susan Paynter does a terrific job of characterizing the place as a nexus of social capital, though she doesn't use the term herself. In light of the recent dialogue on this blog about the role of density, gentrification, and community, I thought I'd toss out this article as food for thought.

"You should start the day off with a little bit of laughter," Wayne Luders told me. He and wife Ruth come from home a few blocks away for the friendship, the circle of acquaintances they count on around the tabletop, and down-to-earth servers like Louise Adams who, Wayne admits, sometimes calls him worse names than "Sweetpea."

Like the other regulars -- the serious night-league bowlers with monogrammed bags, the daytime senior senoritas sporting matching shirts, and the every Tuesday and Thursday railroad retiree -- they dread March when they'll loose their moorings.

That the business closing is actually a bowling alley, gives a certain literal heft to the worry that social capital is declining, a worry that is most commonly connected to Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone. But more to the point, Leilani Lanes is not closing because business is slow (though it's worth noting that league bowling there has declined sharply, as it has almost everywhere). No, the alley is closing in part because real estate values have gotten so high that it's hard for the owners to justify the building's current use.

Just noted:  this abstract from an article (pdf) in the journal Crime, Media, and Culture:

Driven to extremes: Fear of crime and the rise of the sport utility vehicle in the United States

During the mid-1980s, the sport utility vehicle (SUV) emerged as one of the most popular automobiles in the United States, a trend that continued throughout the   1990s...Situating the SUV in the context of fear of crime and risk management during the 1980s and 1990s, it is suggested that the SUV's popularity reflects American attitudes toward crime, random violence, and the importance of defended personal space. While consumer attraction to the SUV is typically attributed to two key features--safety and interior space--these pragmatic justifications may be viewed as euphemistic. Safety is not road safety but personal safety. Space is not interior cargo space but social space, including the privileged ability to traverse inhospitable terrain to remove oneself from society.

Emphasis added.

This seems somewhat right to me.  SUVs aren't particularly safe vehicles to drive.  But they feel safe, at least to some drivers.  And that mostly has to do with being large and imposing -- and being perceived as a menace.  Those things might be important if the threat is other people who mean to do you harm.  But they're irrelevant--or, more accurately, dangerous--if the threat is flipping upside down at 60 mph.

Which makes me wonder if there's any way to convince people that being safe is actually more important than feeling safe.  Sometimes I doubt it.

An article in the Seattle Times today highlights another link between land use and obesity: access to healthy food. By overlaying maps (pdfs) of house prices, grocery stores, and fast food restaurant locations, UW researchers demonstrate that lower income areas, such as Kent and Auburn, have fewer grocery stores and more fast food restaurants per square mile than higher income areas, such as Ballard and Redmond. Obesity rates show a similar pattern: 27.8 percent of Auburn residents are obese compared to 7 percent of Capitol Hill/East Lake residents.

Access to safe places for exercise may be another factor. Lower income people who don't feel safe walking in their neighborhoods may not be able to afford a gym membership or even bus fare to a community center.

This is just one more link coupling poverty and obesity. Previous research has demonstrated that energy dense foods (like burgers) are generally cheaper than nutrient dense foods (like fruits and vegetables).

Healthy choices have long term benefits, but fast food is easiest in the short term especially if the grocery store is harder to get to. I'd be tempted by the grease too if the kids were hungry now, three fast food joints were closer than the grocery store, plus they're cheaper and I wouldn't have to cook or clean up.

Seems to me that a healthy lifestyle is really a choice only when your life is not overly constrained by time, money, and geography.

New research indicates that we eat more candy when it's close by and visible--and then we underestimate how much we've eaten. But on the other hand, according to the researchers, "If we move food away from us, even 6 feet, we eat less and we overestimate how much we have eaten."

I wonder if this lesson can be broadened to include the larger urban environment. Do we eat more fast food if it's accessible and visible? In light of the growing obesity epidemic, can we realize health benefits simply by making it harder to get to unhealthy food?

Personally, I think our behavior--or at least mine--is often powerfully affected by subtle forms of suggestion. In fact, even as I type this I'm munching on my third or fourth handful of candy corns that someone put in a bowl in the office kitchen. I don't even like candy corns.

Lewis & Clark's contact with the natural world just entered the digital age. Courtesy of Oregon State University, their natural history findings are mapped, archived, clickable, and zoom-able. Thomas Jefferson would be so envious.

A complete day-by-day map of Lewis and Clark's route across the western United States allows users to chart their progress from St. Louis to the Pacific and back. More importantly, each day's record includes a count of the wildlife they saw, animals they killed, human settlements they encountered, and even the vegetation that they passed through.

200 years ago yesteday, for example, on the Columbia, just below the mouth of the Walla Walla River, they recorded 40 dog kills (I presume this means they killed 40 dogs?), saw grouse, and also saw occupied lodges, but found no wood except for small willows.

Even today, the Corps of Discovery's journals are an important resource for biologists establishing the historical abundance and distribution of wildlife. They can also be an important reference point for understanding the current conditions of our natural heritage. Today, for instance, sage grouse no longer inhabit the regions of Washington where Lewis recorded them "in great abundance."

Puget Sound's health is jeopardized by climate change, according to a new report from researchers at the University of Washington. Find the (surprisingly good) media coverage here, here, and here.