Daily Score Blog

Carbon offsets, which let you pay some money to help fund climate-friendly projects, get the love-hate treatment in today's New York Times. 

At issue: are they for real, or just some sort of gimmick?  By contributing money to an offset program, are you really expiating your climate sins, or are you just buying meaningless indulgences?

The article finds lots of quotes from people who are skeptical about offsets.  But to me, this is mostly a manufactured controversy -- an attempt to find a green schism where none really exists.

As far as I can tell, there's a middle ground on the issue that most people already agree on:  namely, that carbon offsets are simultaneously worthwhile and a gimmick.  A worthwhile gimmick, if you will.

There's every indication that Measure 37 is going back to the voters of Oregon this November. Here's the Oregonian:

Democratic legislators decided Thursday that they'll ask Oregon voters to dramatically scale back rural development under Measure 37, rather than rewriting the property rights law themselves.

The full Legislature still has to approve the decision from the Land Use Fairness Committee. But the deck is stacked, with Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate. And sending a ballot measure back to voters this fall would give lawmakers political cover.

"We're giving the voters the opportunity to say, 'Yes, this is what we meant,' or 'No, it wasn't,' " said Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, co-chairman of the committee.

Of course, as Prozanski well knows, in two recent polls, and in numerous wrenching stories, Oregon's voters have made clear their feelings about the measure: it's not what they meant. Now it looks like the majority will have a chance to undo some of the harm of Measure 37 by voting on a more reasonable version of the law. I'll provide details here as they become clear.

In related news, Arizona's new pay-or-waive law (which was modeled on Oregon's Measure 37), is beginning to cause problems...

I have an untidy habit of eating while I'm working on my computer. Heck, right now I'm eating a doughnut while I write this post. 

Unfortunately, my habit inevitably results in little crumbs of sandwich or potato chips or whatever making their way onto my computer keyboard. Every once in a while I look down at my crumb-ridden keyboard, get disgusted, and then embark on a cleaning frenzy. And, as many office workers may know, one of the easiest ways to clean a keyboard is with those compressed chemical canister thingies (pictured above). So the other day, while I was merrily blasting away at my keyboard I decided to read the contents. Big mistake.

My little 10-ounce canister contains 100 percent tetrafluoroethane, a greenhouse gas that's sometimes known as HFC-134a (meaning it's a form of hydrofluorocarbon). Before your eyes glaze over, just keep in mind that over a 20 year period, HFC-134a is roughly 3,300 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Nice.

So unless I missed something in the number crunching, using up my 10-ounce can of cleaner will have the same climate-changing effect over the next 20 years as burning at least 100 gallons of gasoline. With that much gas I could drive my trusty Honda Civic from Seattle to New York City. And then back to Chicago. And I would likely still have plenty of fuel leftover for side-trips.

All that, packed into a canister retailing for $10.99 at the Office Depot around the corner.

This is not a good idea.

And it strikes me as an instance where the best remedy is pretty simple: just ban it.

Bicycles may be the most energy efficient, healthful, and affordable form of personal transportation. But they are only practical to the extent that our communities are bikable—that is, that they provide safe routes that connect the places we need to go.

And the most important thing to remember about bike routes is that they are only as useful as their least-passable portion. A big hill can nullify an otherwise excellent route. For my kids, for example, soccer practice, drama, and scouts all lie on the other side of a big hill, so their biking is limited. They’re jealous of the residents of Trondheim, Norway, who climb a similar incline on an innovative bike lift shown in this video.

(Update: We've created a better version of this here.)

Look how much we're spending on oil and gas in the Northwest states:

If you have javascript enabled on your computer, you should be seeing the year-to-date totals rack up, at a pretty astonishing rate -- about $19.2 billion per year.

Of course, the counter above assumes that energy spending patterns will be the same in 2007 as in 2006. So far, that doesn't look too far off the mark.

This isn't the freshest bit of news, but it's still interesting: The Washington Post reports that killer commutes aren't a misnomer.

[A] long commute can be harmful to your health. Researchers have found that hours spent behind the wheel raise blood pressure and cause workers to get sick and stay home more often. Commuters have lower thresholds for frustration at work, suffer more headaches and chest pains, and more often display negative moods at home in the evenings.

Sadly, that seems about right to me.

1. “In 1971, I participated in the second Earth Day and became the coordinator of an interdisciplinary Environmental Studies program at West Georgia College.”

Find out here.

2. On the occasion of the first Earth Day: "[there is an] absolute necessity of waging all-out war against the debauching of the environment.”

Find out here.

3. “Our nation has both an obligation and self-interest in facing, head-on, the serious environmental, economic and national security threat posed by global warming.”

Find out here.

4. “We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late. The science is clear. The global warming debate is over.”

Find out here.

Lesson: Stewardship is a value that should always transcend party politics.

The occasion of Earth Day always produces a rich mix of environmental news stories. The Sunday Oregonian offered a good package on how Portlanders' habits are changing. Reporter Michael Milstein drew up a green report card for the city with some surprising findings. A companion piece by Gail Kinsey Hill reviews how different people define "sustainability" -- "a six-syllable brain-teaser with meanings that stretch from the mundane to the audacious to the profound," she quips.

In Seattle, it's the same old angle: the dance of political leadership between Ron Sims and Greg Nickels. The P-I publishes a "who's greener" piece. The paper also provides a good summary of the 2007 Legislature, which ended yesterday.

Happy Earth Day, Cascadia!

But be warned: when it comes to eco-friendly policies, New York City may be lapping us. Says the NYTimes:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will call on Sunday for a raft of ambitious and sometimes contentious proposals that are intended to ease traffic congestion, reduce air pollution, build housing, improve mass transit and develop abandoned industrial land....

Toward that end, Mr. Bloomberg is expected to advocate more than 100 proposals, including charging drivers to enter the busiest sections of Manhattan, and using zoning and tax incentives to encourage the construction of 250,000 homes.

I imagine that New Yorkers -- never a retiring lot -- will have something to say about a London-style congestion pricing scheme. Most likely, quite a few New Yorkers will give the idea a Bronx cheer.

Still, it's encouraging to see this idea catch on. It's the sort of Earth Day idea that might wind up having an effect every day of the year.

UPDATE:  Er, uh, maybe not.  Looks like I may have blogged too soon -- and that congestion pricing in the Big Apple is going nowhere, fast.

A recently-released indicators report compiles some of the best scientific evidence on the health of the watersheds of Washington's Puget Sound and British Columbia's Georgia Basin. It's remarkably insightful, detailed, and well-organized. And in a departure from projects of this sort, it's not written solely for data-bots:

"We are defined by water in this place we call home. We can see it, sense it, smell it almost everywhere we turn... Before re-named by western European explorers, these inland fjords, straits and estuaries together were known by Tribal and First Nations peoples as the Salish Sea – the traditional name for the great inland waterway stretching from Puget Sound to the Johnstone Strait. Humans have inhabited the Salish Sea for over 10,000 years, living richly from an almost indescribable bounty of salmon, berries, elk, bear, marine mammals and forest resources. Today, this diverse and productive ecosystem still provides for both the basic needs and quality of our lives, and for the long-term viability of our communities."

Find it here.

Elisa and I advised during the project's development.

Property rights activists are floating a new regulatory takings measure -- this time in Alaska.

A new ballot initiative is being proposed in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, an area north of Anchorage that is expected to experience rapid growth in the coming decades.

Why a "property rights" bill in "Mat-Su"? Tough to say. Property is so lightly regulated there that the borough's website prominently includes this explanation:

Zoning, Land Use and Building Regulations DO Exist in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. Be advised that permits may be required.

That's right: may. Is there any legitimate need for regulatory takings measure here? Or is there something else going on?

Here's a theory.

(This is the first post in a new series.)

In the fall of 2000, in broad daylight, I pedaled straight into the tail of a stationary Jeep Cherokee. The SUV, parked in a cycling lane, complained noisily: its alarm wailed. I dusted off my bike shorts (and ego) and checked the damage. The truck was unscathed, of course. My knee was lightly bruised where it had hit the ground. My two-wheeler—my baby blue Trek roadster, beloved companion for a decade, magic carpet over thousands of urban miles—was totaled, its frame buckled at the headset joint.

Bone-headed move, I told myself. How embarrassing!

Let's leave the vitriol aside for the moment. In his most recent Mossback column, condo-critic Knute Berger makes the following claim about Seattle's gradual move towards denser housing:

"We know that these green-backed policies [i.e., the ones promoting dense development in Seattle] are making the city more unaffordable."

No, in fact, we do not know that.

Of course, it's a common complaint. Apparently, lots of people view condo development as the root cause underlying the runup in Seattle housing prices.

But as we've argued before, this gets the relationship between condos and housing affordability completely backwards. Condos do not make housing expensive. Expensive housing makes condos.

The Seattle Times is reporting on a Bothell Family -- the Fraleys -- who are attempting to cut their family's greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent in May.  Bully for them, and best of luck!

Still, there's something about the Times account of their experiment that rankles, just a bit:  it leaves a casual reader with the impression that reducing carbon emissions is a total pain in the behind.  To wit:

[The Fraleys] will try to reduce the household's greenhouse-gas emissions by using some common-sense ideas that nonetheless may be inconvenient.  [Emphasis added.]

and...

"I realized this wasn't going to be a cakewalk. The easy changes were already made, and the next one will be more — painful is not the word — but will take more effort."

Jeez, that makes sustainability sound like hair shirts and broccoli.  Good luck getting people on board with that.

Can you believe we’re already several galloping laps into horse race reporting on the 2008 presidential campaign? Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi describes this phenomenon more eloquently than I can (and with more profanity than I would probably dare) here. For anyone already snorting in disgust and tuning out the constant stream of chatter about who’s raised more money, who is realigning their image this way or that (with what hunting photo-op or change of hairdo), and who’s notched up a point and a half in Iowa polls, Taibbi is spot on:

The election, after all, is nearly a full Martian year away, with a Super Bowl and two World Series still to play out in between – which means that the "urgency" of breaking campaign news is now and will remain for at least a year an almost 100% media concoction.