Daily Score Blog

Update: Today's Seattle P-I has my op-ed on this issue, and with a good headline too: "Transportation forever linked to climate change."

In the Seattle metro region, voters just sank an $18 billion transportation mega-proposal that would have built more than 180 lanes miles of highway and 50 miles of light rail. But so far, the mainstream press has missed one of the most important stories of the year. The real story isn’t tax fatigue, it’s this: perhaps for the first time ever, a critical bloc of voters linked transportation choices to climate protection.

In the run-up to the vote a surprising amount of the debate centered on the package’s climate implications. (The state has committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and many cities, including Seattle, have been national leaders on climate.)

The opposition argued global warming. So did the measure’s supporters. If you don’t believe me, see, among others, the Seattle P-I (yes), The Stranger (no), the Yes Campaign, the Sierra Club's No Campaign, the right-leaning Washington Policy Center (no), and even the anti-tax/rail No Campaign, which kept trumpeting the Sierra Club's opposition as a primary reason to vote no.

The turning point may have been when King County Executive Ron Sims suddenly withdrew his support. He cited the climate-warming emissions from added traffic as one of his chief objections—he was thinking about his granddaughters, he said, not just the next five years.

The funny thing was, there was a heap of confusion and disagreement over the proposal's true climate impacts, mainly because no one had conducted a full climate assessment of the measure. But climate clearly weighed as a factor for a critical bloc of voters on both sides of the issue. In fact, Prop 1 may be the last of its kind, at least in the Pacific Northwest: a transportation proposal that lacked a climate accounting.

Obviously, there were more factors in play than just the climate. Taxes and traffic congestion mattered too. But what ultimately may have tipped that scales is that Puget Sound voters are reluctant to expand roads because they lock us into decades of increased climate pollution.

It’s pretty well accepted that Seattle-area voters are receptive to environmental messages – and in this case there were smart and well-informed greens on both sides of the debate. But green or not, the biggest problem for a certain segment of voters may have been that there was no comprehensive accounting of the climate impacts of the project -- one that included the roads, the rail, and the probable effects on land-use.

So what’s the lesson?

Numbers are current as of 5:50 a.m. on 11/7/07.

Some early election results this morning. These numbers will change  a bit, of course, as mailed ballots continue to trickle in...

• In property rights: Oregon's Measure 49, the partial antidote to Measure 37, was passing easily by 61 to 39.
• In transportation: Puget Sound's Proposition 1 -- the roads and transit propsal -- looked headed for defeat by a margin of  44 to 56. (Full results here.)

There are a couple of lessons, I think, that we can glean from the results:

1. People hate regulatory takings laws. They really hate them. They're fundamentally undemocratic; they breed unfairness and resentment; and they damage valuable community traditions.

2. For the first time, it appears that worry about climate may have tipped the scales in a transportation vote. In fairness, there was plenty of confusion and disagreement over the proposal's climate impacts -- mainly because no one conducted a full climate assessment of the measure -- but it clearly weighed as a factor for a critical bloc of voters on both sides of the issue. (See, among others, the Seattle P-I (yes), The Stranger (no), the Yes Campaign, the Sierra Club's No Campaign, Ron Sims (no), the right-leaning Washington Policy Center (no), and even the anti-tax/rail No Campaign, which kept trumpeting the Sierra Club's opposition as a primary reason to vote no). In fact, Prop 1 may be the last of its kind: a Cascadian transportation proposal that lacked a climate accounting.

We'll have more to say on each of these later.

Update: I don't always write well at 5:30 in the morning. Some of the language above is changed, for the better I hope.