Bulk Discounts to Polluters
Washington and Oregon fund their state environmental protection agencies more heavily from fees and taxes on polluters than many other American states. The two states’ environmental regulators get about three dollars in five from green taxes, such as the fees motorists pay at vehicle emissions inspections, permit fees from factories that generate a lot of air or water pollution, and taxes on solid waste and hazardous substances.
You’d think that generating so much revenue from green taxes would turbocharge pollution prevention by making prices tell the truth.
You’d be wrong: the peculiar design of the states’ green taxes and fees squanders almost all of the positive incentive they’d otherwise have.
Framing: The Debate
Talk about "framing" these days, and many people will think about author and linguist George Lakoff, and the post-2004-election brouhaha about how to communicate, or "frame," political ideas.
But apparently, there's much more obscure debate going on about another kind of framing -- the kind of framing that goes into building a house.
It's a bit arcane, really. But the crux of the debate is this: should traditional wood-framing count as a "green" building technique? Or is something else, such as steel or concrete, a more environmentally-friendly choice?
On the one hand, some folks are saying that steel and concrete have the edge: they have more recycled content, can last longer without rot or termite damage, and are easier to reuse or recycle when a house is taken down. Plus they leave forests standing, where they can absorb and store more carbon. Houses with steel or concrete framing can sometimes earn credits towards LEED "green building" certification -- a fact that the concrete and steel industries are more than happy to tout.
On the other side of the debate, there's CORRIM--the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials--a research group loosely affiliated with the University of Washington's College of Forest Resources.
CORRIM has completed a series of exhaustive
life-cycle analyses comparing wood-framed construction with competing
steel and concrete technologies. Their findings: manufacturing steel
and concrete uses lots of energy -- lots -- and
most of it comes from fossil fuels.
As a result, CORRIM finds, it's
actually more climate-friendly to cut down a forest and use it for
timber, than to use concrete and steel substitutes whose manufacture
relies on coal, oil or gas.
Now, I'm no expert here -- I'm in no position to judge who's right on the merits.
Still, I think there's a fair amount of hair-splitting going on. As far as I can tell, focusing on construction materials in isolation -- and to the exclusion of other impacts of owning and operating a home -- is a mistake.
