Daily Score Blog

This week, the Washington Toxics Coalition released a study that should raise the ire of pregnant women like me. Their findings in a nutshell: developing fetuses spend their first nine months in an environment that exposes them to a range known toxic chemicals. That environment? Their mothers’ bodies. That means my body.

The first-of-its kind study analyzed blood and urine samples from nine women in Washington, Oregon, and California during their second trimester of pregnancy, to test for 23 chemicals from five chemical groups. Their bodies were found to be contaminated with 13 of the 23 chemicals. “These chemicals can cause reproductive problems and cancer, disrupt hormonal systems such as the thyroid, and can impair brain development,” the study states.

So, why is my response ire and not panic? I guess I’m over the panic. During my pregnancy, I’ve been reading a lot about the toxics in my body and their potential effects on the fetus (and I'll be writing a lot more about this stuff in this blog series). I realize it’s too late for panic. Contrary to popular belief, my womb is not entirely my own.

Early in my pregnancy I developed a bloodhound’s sense of smell: even the faintest of odors overwhelmed me. It’s a common phenomenon during the first trimester of pregnancy, yet my new nasal superpower took me by surprise—and forced me into an unwelcome awareness of the pollution that surrounds all of us. Car and truck exhaust, to my unusually acute nose, was pure poison. It made me recoil, hold my breath, gag, choke. My new super-nose could detect the smell all over the place—waiting at the bus stop in my quiet Seattle neighborhood, wafting through 5th floor downtown office windows, even at the park and in my own backyard. I realized, perhaps for the first time, that the air I breathe really stinks. 

And just as my pregnancy had heightened my sense of smell, it also intensified my concern about what was entering my body with every breath. The well being of a clump of tissue no bigger than a lima bean became my top priority—making me more concerned than ever about the purity of the food, water, and air that was nourishing both of us (or not).

Of course, the professional side of my brain had been thinking about the links between pollution and health for years. (Working at a sustainability think-tank will do that to you.) But pregnancy personalized the issues. It turned a hypothetical threat to the imagined families I held in my mind’s eye, into a very real one that affected my own life and my potential child’s future. My work at Sightline on climate and energy policy started to be more about my body and my family than simply about curbing climate change and stabilizing energy prices over the next decade. It's about the air I'm breathing—and breathing for two—right now!

A few weeks back, I wrote about an article that appeared in The Tyee, arguing that artsy, creative young people are abandoning Vancouver in droves. As evidence, the author mentioned data showing a decline in the number of young people in Metro Vancouver since 1996.

The idea that Vancouver was pushing out young people struck me as sketchy. So I looked at the numbers a bit, and decided that the article had things exactly backward:  Vancouver has actually been a magnet for BC's young people. 

And in response, the author cited this report (pdf link), based on Canadian Census figures showing that the population of 25-34 year olds in Metro Vancouver dropped by 10 percent between 1996 and 2006.

Let me be clear about two things.  First, the Canadian Census really does show a decline in Vancouver's 25-34 year old population from 1996 to 2006.  And second, that decline is absolutely irrelevant: the apparent decline is entirely due to the continent-wide "baby bust" of the early 1970s, which followed close on the heels of the "baby boom" of the 1950s and 1960s.

In fact, if you take the time to parse the numbers more closely, you can see a very clear trend:  young people really do prefer metro Vancouver.

Let's look at those numbers, shall we?

This fall Washington voters will have yet another Tim Eyman initiative to consider. Eyman is a local initiative machine, having worked on at least 15 other initiatives to the people-- and one referendum-- on topics ranging from taxes and the size of government, to eliminating affirmative action. A new report from the Washington State Budget and Policy Center  takes a closer look at Eyman’s latest effort, I-1033.

I-1033 is reminiscent of another Washington State initiative supported way back when by another campaigner for reducing government, Linda Smith. Her initiative to the people Initiative 601 held increases in government spending to the same rate of increase as the state’s population growth and inflation. That initiative became law more than 16 years ago, in 1992, but was gradually pared back by subsequent legislatures to address problems in essential services like education and safety created by the limits. One main difference between I-601 and I-1033 is the creation of an account that would reduce state property taxes when revenues exceed the limits set by the initiative.

 There is only one other state that has passed this kind of initiative, Colorado, and all indications are that it was a disaster.

The Oregon Employment Department found 51,402 green jobs in the state in 2008, based on a survey of both public and private employers. The construction industry accounted for 17 percent of the state’s green jobs, and the most common occupations were carpenters, farm workers, truck drivers, hazardous materials workers and landscapers. Overall, green jobs made up 3 percent of Oregon’s total employment, or about the same number of people working in the state’s private hospitals. (A study in Washington found 47,194 green jobs, with farm workers, electricians, construction laborers and carpenters topping the list.)

As in Washington, the greatest number of “green” jobs were actually what we’d traditionally think of as blue-collar, but with a sustainable edge. And many pay well, with at least 64 percent earning more than the state’s median wage.

So what sorts of jobs did industries self-report as "green"? Carpenters working on home weatherization, an herbsman at an organic dairy, truck drivers for compost and biomass companies, asbestos removal workers, a crew leader doing riparian restoration, an auto parts dismantler at a salvage yard, sorter at a recycling plant, people who sell solar panels, retail clerk at an organic nursery, technicians monitoring salmon and firefighters removing hazardous fuels.

This helps explain a question we had: How could Oregon, with its smaller population, have produced even more green jobs than Washington? Is the state really that much better at it?

Who ought to be better at raising endangered Oregon spotted frogs in captivity? Zookeepers or felons?

Since the project started, only eight of their frogs have died — a figure significantly lower than at Woodland Park Zoo, the Oregon Zoo and Northwest Trek, which are also part of the project to rear the Oregon spotted frog in captivity.

Marc P. Hayes, the Department of Fish and Wildlife senior research scientist leading the effort, said that he had doubted the success of the project behind bars. But his concerns vanished after he saw how much time Greer and Delp could devote to the project.

"They have the time to address care on a level that is not possible with those other institutions," Hayes said. "They baby those things literally night and day.

It turns out that people with little else to do all day than lavish attention on their tadpoles -- changing water every two hours and slipping their charges an extra cricket or two -- raise very happy frogs. And it beats handing out basketballs at the prison gym.

As one might expect from a prison near the Evergreen State College, the Cedar Creek Corrections Center also keeps inmates busy with organic gardening and beekeeping. And as a recent KUOW story points out, other institutions in WA's Sustainable Prisons Project are teaching meth manufacturers to grow native plants and drug dealers to raise composting worms.

It's that much more proof that no stone should go unturned to find easy, low-cost sustainability measures -- and that the benefits far outstretch our conventional understanding of "going green." It means jobs, rehabilitation, stronger communities, economic development. And, if they're as successful as the frog project, maybe we should all worry about keeping our day jobs.

For our latest research report, we looked at gasoline consumption data in the Northwest for 2008 and found some significant drops. In fact, total gasoline consumption saw the biggest drop since 1980. It would be easy to attribute this to high gas prices and the economic downturn we experienced last year, but the fact is that this drop actually marks an acceleration of a trend that's been going on in the Northwest for nearly a decade.

That's right. Per capita gasoline consumption has dropped in 8 of the last 9 years. Northwesterners are leading the way as the nation takes steps to get off the volatile fossil fuel roller coaster. So, while price and economic factors play a role, we can also track a decade of smart trends that reduce consumption: several decades of smart growth policies, increased transit use, and improved fuel efficiency are just a few.

And even now that gas prices are a bit lower, early 2009 data indicates that our healthier new habits are sticking. In early 2009, Vehicle Miles Traveled have dropped as well adding some depth to our picture of how folks in the Northwest are taking steps to get off the volatile fossil fuel roller coaster.

What does it mean for local decision-makers? For one, investments in freeway capacity no longer make as much sense as investments in transit, walkable communities, and efficiency.

The full report is available here. Here are some of the key findings:

The hot-button topic of population growth is feared and avoided by politicians and enviro-minded folks alike. Contraception, abortion, family planning, religious beliefs -- yikes! Even if you believe that curbing procreation is key to solving our environmental and climate woes, who'd want to touch that powder keg of issues? But Robert Engelman in the current issue of Scientific American says it doesn't need to be that way, and in fact, if we really want to shrink human reproduction rates, those are the wrong things to focus on. 

Before we even get to discussing population growth, we seem to get tangled up and sidetracked in talk about consumption rates. The idea is that while families in poor, developing nations usually have more children, they consume so much less energy, food, water, and other resources per person than developed countries that what we really need to deal with is cutting consumption rates in rich countries. That's true, but it's not the whole story. 

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 Tyee ran an interesting piece today on Canadian sex-ed.  The author argues that abstinence education in the US has been a failure, and that Canada's approach -- comprehensive sex education coupled with good access to contraception -- is at the heart of Canada's relative success at preventing teen pregnancy.

There's something importantly right about this argument.  And it's bolstered by its reference to one of the most hilarious illustrations of futility I've seen in a while:  this chart, from a 2007 US Department of Health and Human Services study of abstinence education.  In a nutshell, enrollment in a US abstinence education program had no effect whatsoever on teen sexual behavior:

I get the sense that a there's a lot of hand-wringing around the Northwest about how  "newcomers" are changing our cities too fast.  It's a reasonable concern -- rapid change really is unsettling.  And given the relatively low birthrates in urban areas, compared with exurbs and rural areas, you'd expect that "newcomers" are the biggest reason that population is growing in the Northwest's urban areas.

But surprisingly enough, the numbers tell a different story:  in the most urban counties of greater Seattle and greater Portland -- King County and Multnomah County in particular -- the bulk of the population growth since 2000 came from births.  (Or, more properly, it came from "natural increase" -- the excess of births over deaths.) 

It seems like a paradox:  urban counties have comparatively low birthrates, but births are the biggest contributor to population growth.  How is that possible?  Once again, the answer is a bit surprising:  urban counties simply aren't growing that fast.

One of the big surprises in this year's Cascadia Scorecard was the uptick in childbearing from 2005 through 2007.  From all indications, the Northwest is in the midst of a baby boomlet.

The most disappointing news here:  teen birthrates inched upwards in every single jurisdiction in Cascadia.  It's a surprising reversal following more than a decade of declines. 

To some, the uptick may seem like small potatoes.  (I'm talking here about the relatively small upward trend in the lines at the very right side of the chart.) Obviously, teen births are still well below their early 1990s peaks. Still, the trends are now pointing quite clearly in the wrong direction. The increase has been sharpest in Idaho, where teen birthrates shot up almost 10 percent in just 2 years.  Yikes!!

Just to be clear:  most of these "teen" births are among women aged 18 and 19.  Births among minors are still a tiny share of overall teen births.  But that doesn't mitigate the underlying problem:  the large majority of these teen births were not intended at the time of conception.  In Idaho, 68 percent of births to mothers in their late teens were the result of unintended pregnancies, as were 45 percent of births to moms in their early 20s, and between 28 and 30 percent of all other births.

Roe v. Wade, he said, “stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters.”

And: “no matter what our views, we are united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and families in the choices they make.”

In honor of those 36 years, it’s also worth remembering, even for a moment, what the Roe v. Wade stakes are. In 2006, Alan wrote a personal piece describing how the Roe decision had shaped the world he grew up in, and—if overturned—how it might shape the world his daughter and her peers grew up in. Hint: It has a lot to do with injustice and inequity. An excerpt:

Reversing Roe would create in many red states a two-tier system of reproductive rights. The day after Roe, the red-blue map of US presidential elections would begin turning into a hazard map for low-income women. (USA Today recently drew such a map.) Daughters of fortunate families would travel to blue states to get abortions. Daughters of unfortunate families would risk abortions from clandestine providers close to home, endangering their lives….

Or—and this outcome might be just as tragic—they’d bear children they resented and never wanted in the first place. Unwanted births bring a chain of disheartening consequences: more infant deaths, more child abuse and neglect, more school failure, more children in foster care and juvenile courts. And more women who blame themselves for all of these ills.

The long-term implications of this reproductive schism would be grave for unfortunate and fortunate alike. My sister and I have lived in a country that guaranteed women--as a fundamental, American right--that they alone would choose whether to carry early pregnancies to term. This inalienable guarantee has been part of the broad foundation of legal and political equality that all Americans knew they stood upon: the equal entitlement to freedom that has always defined Americans’ understanding of themselves as a people.

Overturning Roe would degrade women’s sovereignty over their own bodies. It would demote reproductive choice from a right to a privilege—a privilege distributed, like others, on the basis of money. Downgrading reproductive choices in this way—lumping them in with other class-based commodities of American life such as higher education, medical care, and housing—would substantially erode Americans’ sense of equality.

And thus, even if my daughter and her friends suffer little loss of choice themselves, overturning Roe would nonetheless cost them something of surpassing value. It would deny them the sense that they live in a country that stands up for all women. It would rob them of another reason to believe that as Americans, we’re not just a collection of workers and consumers who happen to share a currency, we’re a nation--we’re all in this life together.

You can read the whole essay (the director's cut) here.

Also, see Sightline's population indicator (soon to be updated in the Cascadia Scorecard).

From The New Yorker, a clear case where behavior and attitudes don't match up:

The vast majority of white evangelical adolescents—seventy-four per cent—say that they believe in abstaining from sex before marriage....Moreover, among the major religious groups, evangelical virgins are the least likely to anticipate that sex will be pleasurable, and the most likely to believe that having sex will cause their partners to lose respect for them...But...among major religious groups, only black Protestants begin having sex earlier.

So here's a group that has strong, clear beliefs:  sex before marriage is morally wrong, unpleasant, and shameful.  And yet, on average, kids with "save it until marriage" beliefs become sexually active sooner than most of their peers.

There may not be any broad lesson here.  These are adolescents, after all; and when I was a teenager, I wasn't particularly rational either. Still, if there's a broader point, it's this: often enough, beliefs simply don't translate into action.

Taken collectively, we humans and our animals are more than twice as heavy as all other vertebrates on the planet combined. In fact, humans alone are 8 times as heavy as all the wild vertebrates on land.

According to Vaclav Smil:

The total biomass of the world's population increased to roughly 40 megatons of carbon. To put this number into perspective, consider: The biomass of all life is roughly 500 Gigatons of carbon, the biomass of all wild vertebrates on land is roughly 5 megatons, and the biomass of all vertebrates in the ocean is about 50 megatons of carbon. We have eight time the mass of all wild land vertebrates, and about the same biomass as all the fish and whales in the ocean. Domesticated animals have a biomass of roughly 100 megatons of carbon. The biomass of our animals is about 20 times the mass of all wild vertebrates on land, and 50% larger than the mass of all vertebrates in the ocean.

Let's crunch the numbers:

• Humans = 40 megatons...
• Wild land vertebrates = 5 megatons...
• Ocean vertebrates = 50 megatons...
• Domestic vertebrates = 100 tons...

Okay, that sums to 195 megatons of vertebrates on planet earth. Alone, we humans are 21 percent of the total; but together with our animals we're up 72 percent of the total. This also means that domestic animals outweigh all other vertebrates on the planet -- all of them combined, that is.

No particular comment except to note that this isn't just an idle exercise. It's historically unprecedented and it's alarming. Humans are quite literally on the verge of stamping out everything else -- an unbelievably diverse array of creatures who share our home but who's continued existence is increasingly fragile.

Big fat tip o' the hat to Sightline's hero Denis Hayes who mentioned this factoid at our 15th Anniversary celebration last weekend -- and who then provided us the research for this post. Of course, rising obesity rates have basically nothing to do with this phenomenon. So, yes, title of this post is just a joke.