Daily Score Blog

This is a guest post by Kevin Wilhelm, the president of Innovative Strategies, a consulting firm that makes the business case for sustainability.

Many of us are familiar with utilities’ conservation programs – you know, the ones that offer a rebate to customers who buy a super-efficient washing machine or refrigerator. Right now, there’s a big political debate in Washington state, and even a ballot measure coming this fall, about whether the state should require utilities to make even greater investments in energy efficiency.

This has, somewhat understandably, caused some waves within the business community. The fear among many businesses is that a state mandate for utilities to increase energy efficiency programs could increase energy costs in the short-term. And that, in turn, could put the state’s businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

I believe that this fear – while understandable – is actually misguided.

First of all, energy efficiency is the absolute cheapest source of new power. The best available analysis finds that conservation costs about 2.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is a full cent cheaper than the next closest source – natural gas.

In other words, paying for efficiency saves about 30 percent, compared with paying for new power plants. So if you are pro-business, and care about power prices, then you should be for energy efficiency.

Second, WA State’s competitive advantage over the last 40 years afforded to it by low-cost energy is eroding.  And conservation offers our best shot at keeping that advantage from eroding even further.

This is huge. From the Wall Street Journal:

California, the nation's most populous state and a longtime bellwether on environmental policy, will impose the first broad cap in the U.S. on greenhouse-gas emissions, in a clear break with the federal government over global warming.

In essence, California is going to create the nation's first-ever carbon market, based on the same sort of cap-and-trade system that was so effective at reducing air pollution in the United States. 

In the short-to-medium term, this policy will leave California sitting pretty.  The smartest first steps for combatting global warming -- ramping up conservation and efficiency, eliminating various market failures in the utility industry, and perhaps shifting taxes off of workers and onto carbon emissions -- will all be good for just about everyone involved:  they'll allow consumers and businesses to lower their energy expenses or earn more money.  Plus, establishing a market for carbon reductions is likely to unleash all sorts of creative solutions, from practically every sector of the state's economy -- and for a high-tech state, the spin-off benefits could be huge.

Still, the state is taking a risk here.  Have no doubt, someday, some energy-intensive business will announce -- with hoopla and fanfare, though perhaps a bit disingenuously -- that it's leaving California for a place where carbon emissions have no consequences. There could be -- will be -- political backlash, and a move to weaken the carbon cap.

Which makes it all the more important for other states (paging Cascadia) to join in with California.  If everyone's playing by roughly the same rules, there's no "race to the bottom" -- no attempt by businesses to flee to the places with the lowest standards.  Expanding the carbon market beyond California's borders is the only sure way to lock in the state's gains.

Plus broader carbon market would also create more options for businesses trying to comply with the law. For example, an energy intensive California business that needed to offset its carbon emissions could find low-cost opportunities in, say, Oregon, or Washington, or Idaho.  And that could make carbon reductions into a profit center for an enterprising state.

Imagine that:  turning climate protection into a money-making venture. And as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with making money doing a good thing.

More (and smarter) on the subject here.

[Note: This is part of a series.]

I've suggested before that the so-called "property rights" initiatives in the Northwest are not exactly a grassroots movement. They're ordered and funded by reclusive networks of donors and directors, many from back east, who prize their anonymity. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're bad policy. But it deserves, I think, the skeptical arch of an eyebrow.

Enter a fascinating bit of investigative journalism from... Nebraska (free registration req'd). The Omaha World-Herald attempts to unravel the tangle of front groups and psuedonymous funders behind a proposed amendment to Nebraska's constitution. That task leads the reporters to at least 9 states and a welter of organizations, many of whom are also behind the property initiatives in California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington.

You've got to read the article (and accompanying flow chart) to really get the gist of the tangled web. It's a bit like reading Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. You'll be scratching your head and re-reading it if you want to make any sense of why a New York developer is heading up three different organizations that dump money another organization that is in turn funding initiatives in places like Nebraska and California.

Why all the secrecy? And shouldn't voters have a right to know who, exactly, is funding ballot initiatives in their states?  

Anyway, the World-Herald article is helpful, but it's much too short to do justice to its subject matter. Over at the Boregasm blog you can find more than enough well-research investigation to make your head spin. Personally, I'm about ready to put on a tinfoil hat and start muttering about who really shot JFK.

I can't help thinking that I just made a mistake.  A 15 ton mistake, to be precise.

Let me explain.

My older daughter is about to start kindergarten next week.  And for a variety of reasons that I won't get into here, we've chosen a school for her that's about 5 miles away from our home.  The other alternative was our neighborhood school, which is a little under a mile and a half away.

When I look at my family's anticipated commute, our choice of schools will add at least 15 extra miles of driving each and every school day.  (By the way, that's more than twice as much as Alan's family drives, total, in a typical day.)

Now, if we wind up sending both our kids to that school until they're out of 8th grade -- which is a distinct possibility, if we like the school -- we could be stuck with those 15 extra miles per day, 180 days per year, for the next 12 years.   We'll carpool with other families if possible; but we'll have to drive if it's not.

So in the big picture, one single decision -- sending our daughter to a school we really like -- could increase our family's overall oil consumption by about 40 barrels over 12 years, and our climate-warming emissions by at least 15 tons. 

But it gets worse.

New report on obesity from Trust for America's Health. The US obesity rate has risen to 32 percent--an increase from just 15 percent in 1980. And 66 percent of adults are "overweight," a classification that also includes obesity.

But one curiosity gets overlooked: national rates of adult obesity and overweight have risen almost not at all since 2000. (That's not true for children.) See the charts on page 3 of this pdf for details.

What's going on? Why have the rates of adults who are overweight and obese hit a plateau at roughly two-thirds and one-third, respectively? Could we be doing something right that's helping to arrest adult weight gain--something that's not working equally well for children?

It's a mystery to me.

Meanwhile, US Cascadians are neither the fittest nor the fattest in the nation....

Cascadia has a wealth of astonishing and pristine natural places. It's part of why residents here are so committed to this place.

One measure of the Northwest's bounty is the number of world heritage sites--natural and cultural places so unique that they are designated by the United Nations as the most important repositories of the planet's ecological richness and humankind's legacy. The boundaries of Cascadia include all or part of a number of these world heritage sites, including Yellowstone; the redwoods of California; the international peace parks of Waterton and Glacier; the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks; SGang Gwaay, an ancient Haida village; and the Glacier Bay-Yukon region, which boasts, among other features, perhaps the most complicated name imagineable. (You can use this cool interactive map to find others.) But no world heritage gem is closer to Cascadia's human inhabitants than Olympic National Park, an ecological treasure trove just a few miles from Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, and Victoria.

Why this paean to the Olympics? Because right now, Olympic National Park is charting its course for its next 20 years. And the public is allowed--nay, encouraged--to provide comment and guidance on the park's future management.

The US Food and Drug Administration today, finally, approved the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B for over-the-counter sales in pharmacies and clinics to adults, as the New York Times reports.

This news is excellent. We've been calling for it for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time.

The change will help tens of thousands of couples in the Northwest make sure that all their children are born wanted. It will help prevent both unintended pregnancies and unwelcome abortions.

So let us rejoice!

Now, the unfinished business . . .

Our car-less family vacation in Vancouver, BC, was a big success. Here’s a full report, for those of you who shared your own car-less vacation stories and are interested in such things. For the rest of you, you might want to skim the travelogue to find the five lessons I draw.

The only nail-biter (if you can call it that) was the very first leg of the trip, which resembled the old brain teaser about the fox, the goose, and the bag of beans. 

We had two parents, two kids (our eldest is currently in Alaska), and four bikes to get to the train station by 6:45 a.m. A bus connects our neighborhood to the train station, and King County Metro buses all have bike racks. Unfortunately, they carry only two bikes each. Furthermoe, there’s no way of knowing in advance whether any given bus will have one space, two spaces, or no spaces free on its rack. Because the kids needed help getting their bikes (loaded with panniers) both on and off the racks and because they didn’t know where to get off the bus, they needed either to be accompanied by a parent or to have one parent at each end of the route to assist.

We left the house before 6:00. The first bus that arrived already had one bike loaded. We let it pass. Fortunately, the next two buses that arrived had no bikes aboard yet, so we all arrived at the train station without having to send kids on buses unaccompanied.

OK, this story wasn’t very interesting. Why bother to tell it?

[Note: This post is part of a series.]

In Washington, proponents of Initiative 933 often claim that the measure is a sort of righteous response to certain land protections—protections that they see as burdensome regulations. They allege that such protections reduce the value of land. But do they?

This summer, an extension student at the University of Washington, John Abbotts, conducted a study of changes to land values in rural King County from 1993 to 2004. What he found may be a surprise: Land with environmental protections did not lose value. In fact, regulated land may have gained more value than land without the regulations.

Here’s the technical part. (But it won’t hurt.) Abbotts analyzed land zoned “RA-5,” a designation for property that is considered rural and where only one dwelling is permitted per 5 acres. It’s very common in eastern King County. And he chose three watersheds—Bear Creek, Evans Creek, and Patterson Creek—to compare. Why those three? Because since 1995 the Bear and Evans watersheds have been under regulations similar to the hotly-debated “critical areas ordinances” that went into effect countywide in 2005. So Bear and Evans are two examples of what happens to property values under regulations; Patterson is an example of what happens without them.

So, how did the property values fare?

The world's oceans have taken a beating in the past couple of weeks. Off the coast of Lebanon, an estimated 15,000 tons of oil spilled from an Israeli-struck storage facility is being described as “the biggest environmental catastrophe in Lebanon’s history” and a “threat to biodiversity” in the Mediterranean Sea. Clean-up was impossible until Tuesday, for obvious security reasons.

In the Indian Ocean, a Japanese tanker collided with another vessel Monday leaking 4500 tons, or 1.5 million gallons, of crude oil. It might be the biggest spill ever for a Japanese tanker (but it’s only a fraction of what the Exxon Valdez spilled—11 million gallons—in 1998).

On a smaller scale, a tanker spilled 50 tons of fuel into the Howe Sound of British Columbia after striking two pilings as it was towed to sea on August 4. That weekend, emergency response crews and the Vancouver-based company Barrad Clean reportedly clean up two-thirds of the spill at an expense of $100,000. The remaining third will undoubtedly take weeks—or months—to contain, and much more money.

As far as ecological costs, In the Mediterranean, the oil will affect tuna, whose eggs float on the water’s surface, and compromise newly-hatched green turtle as they burrow out of Lebanon’s beaches and race for sea. On the other side of the world, migrating birds will be jeopardized when they stop at the Howe Sound to visit tidal flats and the Squamish Estuary. Some, especially those already covered with oil, will have to be captured, treated, and cleaned, when they become sick.

The region has seen other devastating spills in recent years, including a 2004 oil spill in Puget Sound. One of the perverse effects of the way we measure the economy is that such disasters show up as a plus in the GDP figures, because of the huge sums spent on clean-up, but the ecological losses suffered are off the books.

What makes a great urban space? In the August issue of Price Tags, Gordon Price features the best outdoor urban rooms of Montreal. Areas for public use blend smoothly into urban structures, while events throughout the year, such as McGill’s sidewalk art gallery, draw residents and visitors into beautiful and accommodating city spaces.

In comparison, Vancouver’s design has created fewer options for urban recreation. Vancouver looks out, while Montreal looks in, says Price, and he ponders whether future growth will take after the style of Montreal.

Scattered through the issue are photos sent in by readers, for a “what’s outside my window” look at city living. You can see more of them on Gordon’s blog, or submit your own.

[Note: This is part of a series on property fairness and a rash of ballot initiatives in the Northwest.]

Last week, we pointed out some maps of residential development claims under Oregon's Measure 37.  And we noted that the rural land surrounding greater Portland, OR was bracing for new crop of houses.

Now, Portland State University has some even better maps with much more detail on how Measure 37 is affecting farmland around metro Portland.  Here's my favorite, in miniature (the original is a big image):

Obviously, the dots aren't to scale; they're much larger on the map than in real life.  Still, if you like farmland -- and Portland's well-deserved reputation for controlling the worst excesses of exurban sprawl -- you can't help but be a little sad about what's happening in the Portland area right now. 

I suppose that some people call this sort of thing progress.  Perhaps that's the saddest thing of all.

Looking for something else, I came across a web page that makes this rather startling claim:

[W]alking actually uses more fossil energy than driving, if the calories burned from walking come from a typical American diet.

The crux of the claim is that  the North American food system is so dependent on fossil fuels -- for manufacturing fertilizer and pesticides, running farm machinery, transporting food from farm fields to stores and homes, and powering refrigerators and stoves -- that based on the typical American diet, walking a mile actually uses more fossil fuel than driving a mile!

This struck me as counterintuitive, but not completely ridiculous.  So I spent some time looking at the issues.

And as far as I can tell, the web page is mostly wrong:  walking is more energy-efficient than driving. 

However, they're closer than I might have thought.

The other weekend, I went to Vancouver's Grouse Mountain for the first time ("The  Peak of Vancouver" TM). It was lovely but touristy, including 5 or 6 restaurants, a pricey gondola ride, a logrolling demo, and two captive grizzly bears. The bear exhibit wasn't as sad as it sounds; the bears had been orphaned at a young age, and at Grouse they have 5 acres of habitat to prowl around in and hundreds of tourists to entertain every day. And it was pretty amazing to get so close to one of the Northwest's most magnificent animals.

Upon return, I checked out the grizzly  range map we developed for  Cascadia Scorecard 2006 as part of our wildlife indicator, which highlights the  astonishing breadth of where grizzlies  once roamed and the present-day diminishment of their range. See for yourself:  (Static map here; animated map here.)

I wrote recently that global warming threatens human health in a rather prosaic way: with the warming. Heat kills. I've also written on the protective effects of social ties. People who have close friends, family members, and neighbors tend be healthier than those who don't. 

So I was fascinated to hear of new research  arguing that a portion of the 800 heat-related deaths during Chicago's 1995 heatwave can be attributed to inferior social (and economic) infrastructure:

“The neighborhoods with the highest mortality rates were less likely to have stores or other businesses where older people felt comfortable going to, even in the worst heat,” Browning said. “They stayed bunkered in their apartments where they were most at risk for heat-related illnesses that led to death.”

The layered effects of rundown neighborhoods, insufficient social networks, and other factors may be hard to tease apart. But some of the most beneficial effects of social ties are utterly un-profound: a call to a medic or an invitation to someplace cool may have saved a life that summer in Chicago. Simply being with walking distance of a functional social and economic infrastructure may have been enough for some of the elderly.

When we design neighborhoods, it's worth remembering that our physical structures and context affect our ability to form social ties. And social networks, in turn, have very real consequences for our health.