Daily Score Blog

We just updated our Cascadia Scorecard -- and the news ain't great, my friends.

• Population:  As we reported earlier in the year, the final full-year figures for 2007 fertility trends came in -- and the Pacific Northwest is in the middle a modest baby boom.  Birthrates were up in every age group, including teens.  And there's some evidence that unintended births are on the rise.  Birthrates are the component of population growth over which Northwesterners themselves have the most control; and population growth, in turn,  is a contributor to sprawl, rising energy consumption, and other trends we'd like to see less of.  Better contraceptive access and comprehensive sex education is critical to the region's success in reducing unintended pregnancies, particularly in the Northwest states.

• Energy:  We've made our final estimate of energy spending in the Northwest states, and the tab for 2008 fossil fuel imports came to $28.5 billion dollars.  That includes $16 billion for Washington, $9 billion for Oregon, and $3.5 billion for Idaho -- quite a drain, for states that produces virtually no fossil fuels of its own.  Also, we got a bit more data on gasoline consumption towards the end of the year; Idaho's gas consumption went up unexpectedly in December.

• Economy:  Employment figures in the Northwest states collapsed at the end of 2008.  And job losses accelerated at the beginning of 2009.  Because of the spike in year-end unemployment numbers, the Scorecard's 2008 economy index saw its steepest year-over-year decline since the early 1980s.  But these are just preliminary figures:  the region does a surprisingly poor job at tracking the finances of ordinary families, so it'll take a while for the statisticians to crunch the numbers on poverty and middle class incomes.

• Sprawl:  I tweaked our numbers a bit, to better identify suburban and urban residents -- rather than rural residents who happen to live in large urban counties.  It's a bit of an arbitrary distinction, but I like the new methods better.  So if you compare the current Scorecard figures with a past edition, you'll see some minor differences.

Between higher fertility rates, a smaller decline in gas consumption than we'd previously estimated, and sharply higher unemployment -- along with a couple of other new numbers we'll mention in a few weeks -- the Pacific Northwest lost ground overall on the Scorecard's metrics.  This suggests that we've moved farther away from sustainability: people are going through genuine hardships, and natural systems are still under stress.

Here's hoping for some rosier figures later in the year!

The response to my post on Oregon Representative Krieger’s bike registration bill was impressive. Lots of people read the post and lots of people commented.  Representative Krieger’s bill got attention at the national level as well. There are a lot of active bikers out there who had a lot to say about this.

To be honest, I’m pretty skeptical about the motives behind bike registration, so I tried to find some studies that had looked at registration.  Who knows, maybe registration actually works.  If registration actually does improve the status of the bike on the road compared to cars, then maybe my doubts are misplaced.

'Nuf said.

A new comprehensive report -- Retention of High-Valued Forest Lands at Risk of Conversion to Non-Forest Uses in Washington State -- makes a good contribution to land use policy. Not only does it provide a detailed analysis of the causal factors behind forest clearing, but it includes some interesting maps of forestlands that are at especially high risk.

Best of all, the report offers a range of real solutions:

This report examines other states' efforts and proposes that a successful state strategy to support the future of working forests must improve the value of both the timber resource and non-timber resources, such as carbon and biodiversity, and prevent forest fragmentation.

The report proposes a "supply curve" under which landowners would accept compensation to combine working forest retention and ecosystem service-enhancing forest management. To respond, public or conservation organizations must specify the terms of a "demand curve" to meet the supply in order to capture the public values that are otherwise lost with forest conversion. Such a commitment by the State of Washington will also afford public forestlands' ability to provide more protection of critical resources.

To the extent that we'd like to preserve local forests -- which strongly affect the health of Puget Sound -- we should pay close attention to what's going on, and what's gone wrong so far. If not, we could be looking at a future Evergreen State that's less green than it ought to be.

A roundup of today's news highlights stories covering the expansion and economic benefits of making homes and businesses more energy efficient.

Home weatherizing will be easier and cheaper thanks to a new program being tested in Portland and Multnomah County. From the Oregonian we learn that the goals of the Clean Energy Fund are "to overcome the biggest barriers to large-scale energy efficiency efforts: steep upfront costs, an uncertain payback and a general lack of information about how best to proceed." To do that, 500 homeowners are going to get basic improvements -- more insulation and sealing of spots where energy leaks out -- and the costs of the retrofits will be tacked onto their utility bills to be paid over the long term.

Besides saving energy, money and greenhouse gas emissions, the effort should create green jobs.

When I examined the managed-price approach to cap and trade I asked: “if managed-price cap and trade is basically just a carbon tax, why go to all the trouble of developing the apparatus of a cap-and-trade system? Why not just have a plain old vanilla carbon tax instead?”

Recent testimony from Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), considers the possible ways that managed-price differs from a carbon tax. (All inset quotes below are from this CBO testimony.) As it turns out, there are not many important differences.

There's a new idea circulating -- proposed by Washington Congressman Jim McDermott, among others -- that's being called a "managed-price" approach to cap and trade. As it turns out, however, managed-price is very similar to an adjustable carbon tax -- and it has many of the same virtues and vices.

Let’s take a closer look.