Daily Score Blog

Good news! The Rose City has irked the Federal Highway Administration.

Why?

Because it's, um, centering its new transportation plan around people instead of roads.

Metro is trying something different with the current plan update -- giving the highest priority to projects that support the region's goals for coping with growth, whether that means more roads, more transit or more bicycle lanes.

The response from the FHA:

The highway agency scolded Metro for not focusing more on highways, cars and parking. "The plan should acknowledge that automobiles are the preferred mode of transport by the citizens of Portland," the agency said. "They vote with their cars every day."

We wonder. If you lived close enough to your work to walk--or bicycle safely, or heck, take the tram--your preferred mode of transport might change.

That's the way Portland is planning.

P.S. -- New York City, on the other hand, may be losing its Ecotopian pedestrian edge (tip to Tidepool for both stories).

Bicycle boulevards - coming soon to a city near you. Portland, Vancouver and Seattle are creating a designated system of residential streets with low traffic volume and direct routes that prioritize bicycle utility and safety. These boulevards come outfitted with street markings that dominate the road (as opposed to segregated bicycle lanes), right-of-way that allows the free flow of bikes, and signage that creates a comprehensive system. 

Check out what Berkeley has already done:

Portland is currently making progress on a campaign to expand their 30 miles of bicycle boulevards. Vancouver has built bikeways that traverse the city. And Seattle’s initial draft Master Bicycle Plan recommends a number of such routes. Bicycle boulevards may give a boost to new riders who are too timid to jump on arterials. They increase safety by putting cyclists in plain view on slower streets, where only 20 percent of bicycle accidents occur.

Who stands to benefit most from living in "walkable" neighborhoods? Possibly kids, new research suggests.

As Science News reports this week, researchers including UBC's Lawrence Frank (whose work we covered in Cascadia Scorecard 2006) are finding that children are disproportionately affected by how their neighborhood is designed. In one study of what determines whether kids are active, scientists found that:

Girls who live near parks and recreational facilities are more physically active than those whose neighborhoods contain no such spaces, the researchers found. . . . Each park within a half-mile of home contributed an extra 17.2 minutes of vigorous activity per girl over the course of the study.

This isn't terribly suprising, of course, but it's heartening to know that better, safer neighborhood design will especially benefit the youngest members of the population.

The inverse is true as well, of course: A new study on the effects of traffic pollution on kids----the largest of its kind-- finds that:

Children living near busy highways have significant impairments in the development of their lungs that can lead to respiratory problems for the rest of their lives.

Yoiks! (As Clark would say.)

All the researchers conceded that there is little that can be done to mitigate the effects of the traffic pollution now. . . . But when local governments are planning new schools and new housing developments, Gauderman said, "this should be taken into account."

(This post is part of a series.)

It seems like state and city politicians are still dead set on spending billions of dollars on Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct.  (And just to be clear:  I was wrong to declare the tunnel dead last week; the governor tried to put a stake in its heart, but city officials resurrected it as a 4-lane "hybrid" tunnel.  And so, the saga continues...proving, yet again, that I know nothing about reading the political tea leaves.)

But King County exec. Ron Sims seems to be looking for another way forward.  He's identified 49 fixes to downtown transit -- everything from bus only lanes to curb bulbs for faster loading to extensions of electric bus wires -- that could add capacity for about 35,000 extra transit trips through downtown Seattle each day.  And as he points out, these kinds of transit improvements are going to be necessary, no matter what happens with the viaduct -- whether it's closed for construction, or simply demolished.

In case you're counting, 35,000 extra transit trips could absorb about a third of the car trips taken each day on the Viaduct -- at a fraction of the cost of a new highway, whether elevated or underground.

Which, of course, begs the question: if a few tens of millions in up-front infrastructure investments, plus another $10 million per year in transit operations, can absorb a full third of the trips from the Viaduct, what could you do with some real money?

To date, Washington has been the weakest link in a potentially giant West Coast cap and trade market for greenhouse gases. This is odd. And annoying. But it could be about to change.

So far, the clear frontrunner has been California, under the leadership of a Republican. Recently there's been talk in British Columbia, under its center-right premier, of drafting a California-style system. And earlier this week, we heard word that Oregon's governor was considering a more modest cap-and-trade system. Under the rosiest scenario, all this could point toward a big (as in 48 million people) and highly credible West Coast cap and trade carbon market--one that could conceivably set a new standard for the world.  

The do-nothing oddity, as I mentioned earlier, is Washington, which has a Democratic governor and Democratic super-majorities in both legislative houses. I've been gnashing my teeth about this for some time, but I may soon be able to give my chompers a rest: Josh Feit at The Stranger is reporting that there's now a cap and trade bill (pdf) in the house.

No word yet on the bill's viability. Apparently, there's no companion bill in the senate and many key Democratic legislators have yet to sign on in support. I also haven't heard any buzz. Not yet anyway.

Now is the time for folks in Washington to start turning up the heat on their representatives, including the governor. After all, the state just got an assessment of the huge impacts that global warming is likely to visit on the local economy. And Washington now has about the best political climate imaginable.

It's time to act.

The State of the Union address may be just a lot of talk. But considering that each word in these national speeches is painstakingly choreographed, a small phrase for a president can be a giant step for mankind.

That’s why, when Bush uttered the words “global climate change,” before a TV audience of 45.5 million, I nearly jumped out of my seat. HE SAID IT! He said it for the first time in any of his seven State of the Union addresses.

This is huge. Especially in light of the results from a Pew Research Center poll on global warming that happened to be released Wednesday. Even those few words, when spoken by Bush, may signal a tipping point for Americans who remain on the fence about the reality of climate change and what can be done about it.

Check out these numbers:

Looks like Oregon's making its move:

Gov. Ted Kulongoski is backing a proposal that would force utilities to increase energy efficiency, increase their reliance on renewable energy and limit greenhouse gas emissions.

He said he would work with other Western states to discuss a regional program called cap-and-trade, but an initial program just within Oregon also is viable.

So it looks like Oregon is set to follow California's lead: establishing aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goals, and setting the stage for some hard-edged programs to meet those targets.  Of course, Oregon's first step -- tax incentives for ethanol and biodiesel -- is fairly thin stuff.  But combined with a cap-and-trade program, it's a much stronger brew.

So for now, it looks like Washington is the odd-state-out on the west coast.  California, BC, and Oregon are talking about big changes on the climate front -- changes that will be far more powerful and effective if the entire region acts together.  But Washington, it seems, is getting left in the dust.

OK, this is way outside the bioregion, but interesting nonetheless: British supermarket chain Tesco--apparently, the world's fourth-largest retailer--is going to start labelling the carbon footprint of its foods.  

Yep, if it all works out right, consumers will be able to see at a glance the climate impacts of ordinary grocery store purchases.   (Just to be clear -- I made up the label here.  I have no idea what the carbon footprint of milk really is.)

The idea is not without its problems. To do this right will require a huge data collection exercise.  But in some ways that's the easy part.  The hard part is to figure out the rules of the game -- which is tough, since there's no common agreement about how to do this kind of analysis. 

It's a problem of scope:  what, precisely, should be included in the tally of a food's climate impacts? 

Good news: the Federal Way School Board just lifted its moratorium on "An Inconvenient Truth."

Unfortunately, coverage in the Seattle Times, the largest paper in the region, was disappointing. It mostly treats the decision as a simple controversy without ever explaining that there is, in fact, only one right answer about the reality of human-induced climate change. To paraphrase my earlier rantings: this is not a matter of personal opinion for lay people; it's a matter of scientific consensus. And when an article fails to acknowledge that overwhelming consensus, it misleads readers.

For an example of what I mean, here's the penultimate paragraph:

Board members have said they hope this controversy will start a healthy debate about global warming.

What could this mean?

I'm feeling charitable today, so I'll assume that the board is hoping that students will pursue post-graduate education in atmospheric science and go on to debate global warming in peer reviewed scientific journals. Or maybe the board members are hoping that the controversy will start a debate over how to adapt to global warming and how to reduce climate changing emissions.

Because if the board means pretty much anything else, it's clear that they still don't get it. And it would be nice for media coverage to point that out.

If you care about global warming, you've got to care about coal.  Unlike oil and gas -- for which North America production is in decline -- there's plenty of coal left on American soil.  And while some energy companies and promoters of "energy independence" see this as an unqualified good, those of us who see such things through the lens of climate change see the "wall of coal" as one of the scariest things out there. 

And that's why California's latest foray into climate policy is so heartening.  Go California!

On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission is expected to approve rules that would... effectively ban Southern California Edison Co. and other non-municipal utilities in California from signing long-term contracts to import electricity from existing plants that burn coal in the intermountain West.

Now on the one hand, this is a huge deal. California isn't just acting to curb coal consumption within its own boundaries; it's putting limits on electricity purchases from other states.  And as a result, it's influencing infrastructure decisions all across the intermountain West, where heaps of new coal-fired power plants have been proposed.

But on the other hand, unless other states adopt similar policies, California's action will only go so far.  The danger is that power suppliers can just game the system; the Northwest states, for example, could start exporting more hydropower and wind power to California, and then turn around and import more coal-fired power from, say, Wyoming or Nevada.  As far as I can tell, there's nothing in California's plan that would prevent these sorts of shenanigans.

That's not a critique of what California's doing, obviously.  It's a critique of what the Northwest states are doing.  What's it going to take for our states to start playing follow the leader?

A couple of weeks ago, I pondered what would happen to the unemployment rate if Congress raises the federal minimum wage. My guess: very little. And now for you readers with a stomach for numbers, I've got more data lined up in support of my case.

State experiences show that, if anything, raising a state minimum wage actually correlates to better employment performance than the country as a whole. That actually surprised me a bit.

Here's how it breaks down...

From 1990 to 2004, 10 states raised their minimum wages above the federal wage floor. With a huge assist from super-research intern Deric Gruen, I looked at what happened to state unemployment rates when the states boosted their wages above the federal minimum. In 7 of the 10 states, the unemployment rate performed better than the national average. The other 3 performed worse.

State by state results are below the jump.

Anna Fahey is political communications theorist, language analyst, and self-proclaimed opinion research junkie. She recently joined Sightline’s staff as Communications Strategist and will be a regular contributor to the Daily Score.

Even though I’ve read report after sobering report indicating Americans’ increasing disconnection with government, it was still a little shocking to read Gallup Poll numbers released this month. Apparently, given three choices – big labor, big business, or big government – 3 out of 5 Americans surveyed in December 2006 named big government as the greatest threat facing the country.

Gallup has been asking this question since 1965 to track long-term attitude trends and, as it turns out, this feeling is nothing new: Americans have consistently perceived big government as a big threat for decades.

Perhaps more surprising is the fact that in 2006 so-called big government is considered the biggest threat no matter where political allegiances lie. That is, among majorities of Republicans (63%), independents (58%), and Democrats (56%) alike. Even among self-identified liberals, 49% say big government is the number one threat.

But I’m not sure that we should take these findings at face value…

Will wonders never cease?

Oil companies warm to law on emissions
SACRAMENTO — Oil companies on Thursday embraced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new executive order to fight global warming by boosting the consumption of alternative fuels and cutting carbon emissions from car and truck exhausts by 10% over the next 13 years.

So now oil companies are applauding a plan to reduce carbon emissions -- and cynic that I am, that makes me wonder whether there's something wrong with Schwarzenegger's plan. 

But perhaps, it's just that oil companies think that this is the best deal they're going to get in California -- and if they oppose this, something far more draconian and inflexible (or, perhaps, more effective) is coming down the pike. 

Cynicism aside, it's a bit bewildering to realize how different the political climate is in California than in Oregon and Washington.  In California, a Republican governor is proposing major reductions in gas and diesel emissions -- and the oil companies line up behind it.  But to the north, Democratic governors are still treating the climate like a political hot potato:  too hot to touch, except with a few token gestures.

C'mon, guys.  We're getting left in the dust -- and by the Governator, no less.

Apparently Seattle city officials are fuming about this, but Gov. Gregoire has declared that the idea of replacing Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel is, officially, dead.

Now, I'm obviously an outsider to these sorts of debates; maybe "dead" doesn't really mean dead.  But it seems to me that the tunnel has been dead for a while -- or, if not completely dead, at least in critical condition, and hanging on by the sheer force of will of a handful of politicians.

But perhaps the tunnel's apparent death sentence opens up as many questions than it resolves.  You see, the state still has a little over $2 billion in transportation package money slated for replacing the Viaduct. 

So now that the city's preferred Viaduct alternative has cratered, what happens to the cash?

Just when US federal climate policy looks like a possibility, Seattle's prospects take a turn for the worse. The Washington supreme court just ruled that Seattle City Light -- the first (and only?) major utility in the nation to achieve climate neutrality -- can no longer use ratepayer money to buy emissions offsets.

Luckily, I think this problem can be fixed fairly easily. But before I get to fixing things, I have a small rant to get off my chest.

According to the court's reasoning, offsets are not sufficiently related to the utility's core business of generating electricity. I'll leave the legal parsing to be debated by the lawyers, but I will make two remarks.

First, almost all of City Light's power comes from hydroelectricity, which in turn comes from dams that rely on rivers that are fed by snowmelt. And -- I think you know where I'm going here -- climate change is very bad for snowpack. It's like this: no snow, no electricity.

So here's a simplified version. Global warming reduces the city's access to electricity. So the utility zeros out its contribution to global warming. But then the courts say that the activity is not sufficiently related to supplying electricity.

That noise you just heard was my head exploding.

Of course there are heaps of other sources of climate changing emissions too. But City Light can't very well do anything at all about those. All it can do is bring its own contributions to zero and thereby create a national (and even international) model of sustainable power generation. In fact, its leadership was probably much more important than its emissions cuts. But no more.

The rant continues after the jump.