Daily Score Blog

Eureka! I have discovered a huge new source of clean energy in Alaska that can create green jobs too. Well sort of.

I’m not the first to strike gold, but lately I’ve been describing the potential of energy efficiency like hitting the jackpot. Efficiency is a clean, domestic energy source that would add, in the next decade, $1.2 trillion dollars to the economy. The big numbers (like saving 9.1 Quadrillion BTUs in Two Minutes) get people’s attention. If the kind of economic impact we could gain from energy efficiencies was a natural resource buried in the ground, you can bet that every level of government would be trying to dig them up.

Some new-ish Census figures on commuting habits in 2008 suggest that Washington may be the Northwest's leader in alternatives to driving. Or possibly Alaska, depending on how you count.

Driving alone is still the dominant mode of commuting, but all five Northwest states have less solo driving than the national average.

When it comes to carpooling, the region's leader is Idaho. But again, all five Northwest states have more carpooling than the national average.

If Idaho's leadership in carpooling is surprising, perhaps it shouldn't be. Very often, states with driving-centric transportation systems tend to perform well on carpooling, which can be the most practical way for commuters to avoid solo driving.

But in public transportation, Washington is the only Northwest state that does better than the national average.

Washington's ranking here is probably due in large part to the fact that the state is more populous and urbanized than other US Northwest jurisdictions. Obviously, transit ridership tends to be higher in places where there are robust transit systems, which in turn tend to be located in urban areas.

I've got no big-picture analysis here, I just thought it was interesting. And somebody should explain Alaska to me.

I once said that if I had to marry a search engine, I would be willing to make a commitment to Google. For some reason, people thought I was speaking hyperbolically, but I was not. (Sorry, Jill.)

If that sounds crazy, consider:

Behold, Google's display of state-level trends in unemployment! (Go play with it; it's fun.)

I know, I know, it's no big thing. Google has all kinds of stuff like this and the data are derived from some other source. (From the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in this case.) But that's what kills me: it's so clear and easy-to-use and, well, beautiful. I love it.

And holy cow, is Oregon's employment situation ugly.

H/t to my BlueOregon

Via Andrew Sullivan, here is a fascinating study (pdf) in academic psychology that appears to show the presence of a fairly distinct Northwest personality. The researchers ranked the 50 states plus DC according to the presence of each of five personality traits: extraversion; agreeableness; conscientiousness; neuroticism; and openness.

Northwest states are among the most open and least neurotic places you can find, but we are also among the least extraverted. Not surprisingly, Oregon and Washington perform almost identically on every measure. More interesting, perhaps, is that Alaska, Idaho, and Montana are also very similar in some respects (though quite different in some others).

First, the bad news. If you're looking for extraverts, you've come to the wrong place. Oregon is the most extraverted state in the region, but it ranks only an unfriendly 44th most extraverted. Remember, this is the state who's governor famously said: "Come visit us again and again... But, for heaven's sake, don't come here to live."

Update: A version of this post appeared in Real Change News.

Let's say, just hypothetically, that Washington were facing a ginormous budget shortfall. And let's also say that the state had made an ambitious -- but mostly unfunded -- commitment to cleaning up Puget Sound. That would be a real pickle. But do you know what I'd do?

I'd levy a tax on the cruise industry, that's what.

Washington's cruise ships are only lightly regulated, sometimes to the detriment of the local marine environment. And cruise ships visiting Washington do not pay head taxes as they do in Alaska, which means that Washington is missing out on badly-needed revenue that can be used for environmental protection and oversight. Consider how they do it up north:

• Ketchikan levies a $7 per passenger tax on cruise ships that visit the port.
• Juneau levies a $8 per passenger tax.

By contrast, Seattle -- now the most popular point of departure in the Northwest -- levies nothing. But if the city were to to charge a comparable fee on the roughly 886,000 cruise passengers that left Seattle in 2008 it would have netted around $7 million. Granted, that's not going to fund the complete restoration of Puget Sound, but it might fully fund an important program or two -- the very sorts of programs on the chopping block of budgetary constraints.

But that's not the half of it. The state of Alaska also levies a $50 per passenger tax. What would happen if Washington did that?

Just wanted to let folks know that we have an updated and corrected version of our grizzly bear range-map. The former version of the map incorrectly showed that grizzly bears no longer live on the southeast Alaskan Islands of Chichagof, Baranof, or Admiralty. In fact, grizzlies are still present -- and in extremely high numbers. Still, the major lesson of the map -- that grizzly range is drastically reduced -- is probably the more important point that the map makes.

An animated version can be downloaded here; static versions in several sizes can be found here.

A big hat tip is in order to sharp-eyed reader Bill Walker of Billings, Montana who caught the mistake.

As I've written before, voters in Alaska's Mat-Su Borough are confronted with 2007's only regulatory takings ballot initiative. Or rather, they were.

The initiative, Proposition 1, was a near carbon copy of Oregon's Measure 37 and the raft of 2006 initiatives. It would have led to a development free-for-all. And I'm pleased to report that on Tuesday, voters handed out a stunning victory to sensible planning and public policy: the ballot measure was defeated by 71 to 29 percent.

The Mat-Su election comes on the heels of last year's spate of so-called "property rights" measures. You remember? The ones that Western voters overwhelming shot down? (One did pass in Arizona, mostly because the ballot in that state was crowded and much the natural opposition was preoccupied with other issues.) The most surprising result at the time was conservative Idaho which delivered the most crushing defeat to a takings measure, trouncing it 76 to 24.

In a way, it's not surprising that the public keeps rejecting these initiatives. Consider how the sponsor of the Mat-Su ballot measure described the outcome to the press: he called the vote "a stunning victory for socialism."

Yikes.

This is not the sentiment of a guy who believes in community, or even the basic tenets of local democracy. It's the ranting of an ideology that is wildly out of step with American life.

In light of the Mat-Su vote, it's becoming abundantly clear that no matter what a handful of "property rights" activists like to believe, Americans really and truly like having a say in their communities. It's not that local government is perfect, or that zoning is uncontroversial, or that everyone always gets what that want. It's just this: Americans believe in democracy.

I'm happy to say that I have not yet finished annoying readers of this blog with my climate change maps. Because now they look professional thanks to awesome designer Laurie Kellogg.

Each map shows places with equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. 

Behold, a glimpse of a straightforward state-to-country version:

Here are bigger and better versions.

And behold again, a peek at a more conceptual map showing groups states compared to large countries (and continent) emitters:

Bigger and better versions here.

When in comes to property rights, all eyes are on Oregon as voters there consider trimming back Measure 37. But in some ways, Oregon isn't the most interesting game in town. That honor may belong to Alaska, where voters in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough will weigh 2007's only regulatory takings ballot initiative in the form of Proposition 1.

While the "Mat-Su" isn't known much outside of Alaska, it will be an interesting laboratory for examining the next round of "property rights" arguments. It's likely that activists will try to improve their rhetoric and strategies after their not-terribly-successful outing to the polls in 2006.

I'll have more to say on Proposition 1 in the coming months, but in the meantime you can find good newspaper coverage here and here.

And here the local paper, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersmen, inveighs against the measure in an editorial that appears to have been truncated on the web. Still, I thought there was some apt language, so I'll close with an excerpt:

In this case, one's rights can make a wrong for all. Hogtying the borough, a city or any special district in how it makes public land use policy will result in a chaotic, expensive system no agency could possibly afford.

Oh, I almost forgot: I do have one big criticism of the editorial's language. Prop 1 isn't really a threat to what an "agency" can afford; it's a threat to what the public -- you know, citizens and taxpayers -- can afford.

(*Update: Newer and better versions of  these maps are here and here.)

Because I love maps so much that I just can't stop making them.

This version is a bit a more conceptual than the previous map. But even though it's a bit weirder, but I actually like it more because it really drives home the outsize significance of US climate policy.

Each state, or cluster of states, is labelled with a country or continent that has equivalent greenhouse gas emissions.

See the full US map here.

The 291 million in Americans (in 2004) is the greenhouse gas equivalent of the more than 3 billion residents of other countries listed on the map.

The detailed population comparison is below the jump...

*Update: Newer and better versions of  these maps are here.

Ever wondered if your state's climate policy really makes a difference in the big global scheme of things?  If so, here's a little map I made.

For each state, the map shows a nation with equivalent greenhouse gas emissions from energy.

The full US version is here.

When I've shown drafts to people, almost everyone wants to compare populations. The Western states population comparison is after the jump. The full data are here (xls).

Meet Justin our new research intern. He recently moved to Capitol Hill, in Seattle, from Corvallis, Oregon, where he got a Master’s Degree studying the effects of climate change on forest productivity, and where he tried to spend as much time outdoors as possible. 

There has already been a mess of state climate legislation passed in Cascadia during 2007. But who has the time to make sense of all those targets, standards, and dates? (Who’s promising 10% below 1990 levels by 2020? How does Idaho compare to California? And wasn’t there some kind of renewable energy standard?) Well never fear, because I’ve sorted it all out in this nifty table. You can see how your state (or province) stacks up.

Full version here.

The upshot is that Cascadian lawmakers are trying to follow California’s lead on regulating greenhouse gas emissions. In the 2007 legislative session, both Oregon and Washington passed statewide goals for reducing GHGs. It was a good first step to establish a framework, and the goals themselves are ambitious. But ultimately, they’re only that: goals. Unfortunately, they don’t include binding enforcement mechanisms. Only California did that, with its AB 32 bill.

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.

Sure, it's one of the cornier lesser-known holidays, but I've always liked the idea of Arbor Day. I mean, it's a day to celebrate trees fer gosh sakes. And yesterday -- which I spent very pleasurably in my backyard with a raft of new plants -- I got to thinking about how we should spend more time celebrating growing things.

But it wasn't until I came to work this morning, planning to write a little Arbor Day post, that I learned that every day is Arbor Day. No, seriously: every day is Arbor Day.

If you live in Oregon, it's actually Arbor Week right now. But I (and everyone else in Washington), only get a single Arbor Day, and it's on April 11 this year. Idaho's is April 27, the same day as Montana's. California, I missed yours -- sorry. Your Arbor Week ended two weeks ago. Alaska, on the other hand, has to wait until May 21.

A new report questions whether the 358 US cities that pledged to meet Kyoto's targets will be successful. That's a fine question, but it's perhaps easy to misconstrue as an implicit criticism that the promises were meaningless.

There is every reason to think that the cities can meet the targets. (And, heck, the pledge is only 18 months old!) Portland, in fact, is already well on its way. 

What the report should serve to highlight is that:

1. Reducing emissions requires a real plan with real teeth. (Seattle--the pledge's founding city--has a good start on this.)
2. Cities are working against tough odds. Most cities have very little control over their major sources of emissions--they're laced with state and federal roads, they have limited authority to tax or regulate consumer carbon, and they mostly don't have control over utilities, just to name a very few obstacles. City climate pledges are great, but they really need to be supported at the state and federal level to work properly. 

Story in the Seattle P-I.

Below the jump, all the climate news you ever wanted. And then some...