Daily Score Blog

More and more cities in our region—and in the world—are developing plans to reduce carbon emissions. Both Vancouver and Seattle have plans, and Portland just passed the latest version of their plan last week.

To me the importance of these moves lies more in the substance of the plans than in their passage. Portland’s plan is big (literally), with 93 specific actions on 70 printed pages. It’s worth highlighting its focus on the importance of pedestrian infrastructure to curb climate change. Portland’s plan weaves them together into a strategy that will pay off in more ways than one.

Take walking. The Portland Daily Journal of Commerce recently highlighted one neighborhood, Powellhurst-Gilbert, as a place where a higher incidence of obesity correlates with lack of sidewalks. The Northwest Health Foundation has given a grant to the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to further study the link and to work on improving pedestrian infrastructure, making it easier to walk rather than drive. This pushes the climate reduction agenda while at the same time promoting health.

Walk Score, which has become the most widely-used measure of pedestrian friendly neighborhoods in North America, has added a new trick: they're now incorporating transit data into their walkability ratings. So in addition to stores, restaurants, parks, and the like, Walk Score now treats nearby bus stops and rail stations as key ingredients of a walkable neighborhood.

What makes this extra nifty is that Walk Score has already partnered with a bunch of national real estate websites to incorporate walkability rankings into real estate listings.  So now, all those real estate sites will have data on transit access, too.

Sadly, Walk Score's new transit ranking only works in places where transit agencies have made their "transit feeds" -- the data on transit locations and schedules -- freely available to the public. So if you live and walk in Portland, OR, you're in luck. Same goes for a handful of smaller transit agencies around the Northwest -- Island and Jefferson counties in Washington, Tillamook County in OR, and Humboldt County California. But even though King County Metro and Vancouver, BC's Translink publish their transit data for Google's use, their transit feeds are kept private--so third parties like Walk Score can't get access to them.

So the good folks behind Walk Score have set up an online petition to ask local transit agencies to release their transit service data to the public.  (I've signed the petition -- and if you care about walkability and transit, you should too!)

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user kworth30: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kworth30/ / CC BY 2.0]

I love reading Matt Taibbi. I mean, who else puts together a sentence like this?:

The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Funny and righteous at the same time. Good stuff. But in a piece he wrote for Rolling Stone this past July, he made some awfully curious -- and curiously unsupported -- allegations about carbon markets:

...if the Democratic Party that [Goldman-Sachs] gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Yikes. It's pretty scary stuff, but Taibbi doesn't elaborate. At all. 

Which is frustrating.

It's frustrating because this is precisely the kind of thing you hear all the time from cap and trade critics. Taibbi's telling a big hairy ghost story here, but because he doesn't explain it we can't know whether to be spooked or just laugh it off. At minimum, somebody needs to explain how it is that a carbon-credit market will replicate the commodities market in ways that make it eligible for gaming by Goldman or others. And then someone needs to explain why that risk -- if it's even true -- is worse than the risk of failing to cap carbon.

That's where Paul Krugman comes in.

An interesting piece in the Christian Science Monitor yesterday by Robert Dujarric (who heads the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University) makes the case that Americans can be motivated to act on climate measures by rousing their sense of patriotism.

I've written before about the powerful terminology of war in this context. But this is a new take. Dujarric recommends taking aim at particular targets. Namely, the sinister foreign oil barons who are getting rich and powerful thanks to  our oil addiction.

Is it an effective call to arms to remind Americans that the money we spend at gas pump and on our heating bills funds "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear and missile programs, enrich[es] Muammar Qaddafi (while he rants at the UN against the United States, and give[s] assistance to Vladimir Putin as he threatens American interests in the Caucasus and Central Europe?"

Should we start talking about climate policy as a move to "wage war to bankrupt oil tyrants?"

Stormwater -- the rainwater that streams off roofs, parking lots, roads, and yards, carrying with it toxic pollutants -- poses a costly, intractable problem for governments and businesses. In Washington, efforts to control stormwater have cost its cities hundreds of millions of dollars.

The problem with stormwater comes from its massive volume, which floods homes and blasts through streams, flushing salmon eggs, gravel, and everything else out to sea. And it comes from the pollutants that are picked up by the torrents of rain along the way, including copper, oil and grease, and pesticides.

Stormwater presents a daunting challenge considering the Northwest's rapid pace of development, and the fact that residential areas have three-times the rate of runoff compared to forests and fields (see page 12). Polluted stormwater kills salmon returning to urban streams to spawn before they can lay their eggs. It forces the closure of acres of shellfish beds made unsafe for human consumption. The rush of water causes erosion and fills basements with muddy water.

The good news is we already know some of the best, cheapest solutions for controlling runoff. The bad news is the solutions aren't being widely used. 

Worries about “gaming” or market manipulation sometimes crop up as an objection to cap and trade, often with reference to recent shenanigans in the financial markets. Some fear that a cap-and-trade system could be manipulated to artificially raise—or lower—permit prices to generate profits for a few at the expense of consumers. While distrust and concerns about scamming a carbon market are understandable, they’re not warranted.

To put some of these fears to rest, it’s informative to look at existing cap-and-trade programs. Neither of the two programs regulating greenhouse gases nor a third controlling acid rain pollutants has been corrupted by gaming or market manipulation.

The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) was the world’s first cap-and-trade program restricting carbon dioxide releases when it started in 2005. The system has succeeded in creating a Europe-wide carbon market and trading program. There have been hiccups in the ETS, including an initial overallocation of allowances to polluters and some price volatility. Yet the problems are fixable and are already being addressed as the program evolves. The challenges are not attributable to a fundamental flaw in the policy or to lack of regulatory oversight. And the market has grown more robust as the number of traders has increased, making price manipulation difficult. Partly thanks to the ETS, the EU is on track to meet its emissions reduction obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), with a membership of 10 Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states, held its first auctions in September 2008. Additional auctions are scheduled. While still in its early days, RGGI appears to be off to a good start, with low permit prices and no evidence of gaming.

The US Acid Rain Program has a track record dating to 1995. The program regulating power plants has exceeded expectations, beating the SO2 emissions cap years ahead of schedule and costing only one-fourth of what was expected. After more than a decade, analysts have concluded that the SO2 cap-and-trade program has also been free of gaming.

In short, cap-and-trade programs are already up and running with no evidence of sinister manipulation. That’s no surprise to specialists who study markets.

I've got an emerging obsession: the risk of market manipulation in cap and trade programs. It's something you hear about all the time, at least in carbon policy circles, but the details about "gaming" always seem to be in very short supply. Still, it's something we should take a close look at because the alleged consequences are so severe.

So at the moment, I'm gearing up to read everything important that's been written on the subject. (If you know of good stuff, please send it my way.) In the meantime, I want to share this recent short brief written by economist Laurence DeWitt at Pace University.

He takes a look at how the RGGI carbon cap and trade system has fared:

So far there have been no discovered instances of even attempts to exercise market power--and there has been great vigilance in searching for such actions. In addition to the careful scrutiny of Potomac Economics, which serves as RGGI’s official market monitor, the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has already become active in monitoring and analyzing the exchange traded RGGI derivatives. 

And a look at how the national SO2 and NOx cap and trade programs have gone:

It should also be noted that we have several decades of national experience with SO2 and NOx cap and trade programs with no indications of any significant effort, successful or otherwise, to manipulate the market. SO2 and NOx programs are relatively small markets—and thereby offer more potential for manipulation--so this experience to date is very relevant.

In fairness, DeWitt's piece is much too short to do justice to the subject matter. I plan to dig into the details further in the coming weeks, but I thought it provided a nice high-level expression of the basic facts of the case.

Over the last week there has been quite a bit of discussion in the media about the number of jobs created by stimulus dollars. Some argue the money is being wasted and others that the amount of money allocated were never enough in the first place. Paul Krugman suggested that “the really bad news is that “centrists” in Congress aren’t able or willing to draw the obvious conclusion, which is that we need a lot more federal spending on job creation.”

Either way, as I wrote in a post called Color of Money, a lot of money has been allocated and has yet to be spent. The facts seem to agree that moving funds (and allocations for bond and tax credit programs) out to local governments and into broader circulation is taking a long time.

But, when it comes to energy efficiency in general and stimulus funding in specific, the Northwest is getting high ratings. In their 2009 state ranking of local implementation of energy efficiency programs, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) ranks Oregon 3rd and Washington 7th among the top ten states for implementing energy efficiency policies.

In a step forward for bioregional thinking, Washington has agreed to add a new name to the Northwest's official geographic lexicon: the Salish Sea. Following on the heels of British Columbia's endorsement, the term will now be used to refer to the collective inland waters of Puget Sound, Georgia Straight, and the Straight of Juan de Fuca.

It doesn't replace any of those names, but "Salish Sea" does provide an important addition to our understanding of Cascadia. Because the new term is firmly rooted in both history and ecology, it may help direct more attention to protecting the natural heritage of the region.

At Crosscut, Knute Berger has done a bang-up job covering the Salish Sea name-change. See here, here, here, and here.

Editor's note: Clark will be on NW Cable News tomorrow morning (Nov 3) around 8:30 to talk more about this issue.

You may have seen the meme circulating around the internet:  some researchers from Australia New Zealand are claiming that owning a dog has as much impact on the planet as owning an SUV.  I'll let New Scientist summarize their case:

[A] medium-sized dog...consume[s] 90 grams of meat and 156 grams of cereals daily in its recommended 300-gram portion of dried dog food...So that gives him a footprint of 0.84 hectares...

Meanwhile, an SUV...driven a modest 10,000 kilometres a year, uses 55.1 gigajoules, which includes the energy required both to fuel and to build it. One hectare of land can produce approximately 135 gigajoules of energy per year, so the Land Cruiser's eco-footprint is about 0.41 hectares - less than half that of a medium-sized dog.

It's just the sort of counter-intuitive claim that gets lots of attention on the brave new internet era.  So interesting!  So science-y!  So Twitter-able!

And yet, so false!  Once you sniff around the numbers, it quickly becomes apparent that those researchers are barking up the wrong tree.

Surely one of the most encouraging conservation stories in recent years has been the phenomenal revival of wild wolves in the Rockies. Less well-known is that wolves are also returning to Oregon and Washington. Their future on the West Coast, however, remains highly uncertain. 

While Oregon and Washington are more politically progressive than the wolf strongholds in the Rockies -- Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming -- the truth is that there is not much reason to be optimistic for their prospects without good conservation policy. Toward that end, Oregon already has a wolf management plan in place, but Washington is just now drafting its own state plan.

Washington is considering four policy options for managing wolves. Somewhat bizarrely, the future of this endangered species -- which you might think would depend largely on science -- in fact depends greatly on public opinion. So if you're part of the public and you have an opinion, it might be a good to share your thoughts with your public officials.

Here are the remaining hearings:

Mon, Nov. 2, Seattle: REI flagship store, 222 Yale Ave N

Wed, Nov. 4, Mt. Vernon: 2300 Market St., Cottontree Inn Convention Center

Thu, Nov. 5, Sequim: 212 Blake Ave., Guy Cole Conv. Ctr., Carrie Blake Park

Mon, Nov. 9, Omak: 175 Rodeo Trail Road, Okanogan Co. Fairgrounds Agri-plex

Tue, Nov. 10, Wenatchee: 327 N. Wenatchee Ave., Chelan Co. PUD Auditorium

All hearings 6:30-9:00 p.m.

For background reading, here's Washington's draft wolf management plan; some excellent context from Conservation Northwest; and a first-rate website called Western Wolves. And if that's not enough, you can go read everything I've written about wolves in Washington. Have fun.

Photo by Gary Kramer, USFWS.

Last night, TVW aired a one hour televised no-holds-barred fight to the death friendly discussion with five think tanks in Washington State. If you haven't guessed already, Sightline was one of them. Here's the half hour featuring Roger, along with representatives from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and the Economic Opportunity Institute:

The show grappled with questions like the role of government at the city, county, and state level; top issues for the 2010 legislative session; and how the state can deal with next year's budget shortfall.

As if you needed an excuse to watch TV on a Friday afternoon...

Wouldn't it be nice if there were painless and unobtrusive ways to promote a shift to sustainable behavior? 

Well, there are. In fact, they're all around us, if you look for them.

You may have heard of the book Nudge, by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, which describes tricks learned from behavioral economics -- the study of how real human beings, rather than the idealized, hyper-rational automata of traditional economic theory, make decisions.  Nudge shows how subtle shifts in how choices are offered can make a big difference to the decisions people wind up making.  For example, signing people up automatically for 401ks, and letting them opt out if they choose, can lead to massive increases in retirement savings -- even though a purely "rational" actor.sees no difference between that approach, and letting people voluntarily opt in. 

Once you're aware of them, you can see examples of effective nudges all over the place.  Take this look at laundry in the New York Times website.  The article compiles suggestions for reducing laundry's environmental impact--and this nugget stuck out at me, about an experiment with the cards that hotels use to encourage guests to reuse towels.

[W]e conspired with the management of an upscale hotel to place one of four cards in its guestrooms. Three cards employed some version of the typical environmental appeal. A fourth card added (true) information that the majority of guests do reuse their towels when asked.

The outcome? Compared with the first three messages, the final message increased towel reuse by 34 percent. How easily we can be influenced to act by honest information about how those around us are acting.

There:  actual data, showing that when we're reminded about the way our peers are behaving, we're more likely to do the same thing ourselves. Obviously, that sort of thing can be used to bad ends ("C'mon, Danny, everyone's doing it!!").  But wanting to fit in is a very human instinct, and a powerful motivator.  And the numbers show that it's not hard to harness that instinct for good ends.

Early this week, President Obama gave a speech touting the $3.4 billion in grants the federal government has awarded to local companies, utilities and cities working to improve the country’s aging and outmoded electric energy grid. The awards will support “smart grid” technology that enables easier and more effective transmission of electricity from one region to another. One of the recipients is Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative (PNGC), a Portland-based electric generation and transmission cooperative owned by 16 Northwest electric utilities. The grant will fund installation of “95,000 smart meters, substation equipment, and load management devices that will integrate electric cooperatives across four states using a central data collection software system hosted by PNGC.”

But will all the smart grid money create green collar jobs?

Unfortunately—and surprisingly considering unemployment rates—according to a recent report by the National Commission on Energy Policy, smart-grid investment will require trained workers who aren’t yet available in large numbers.

Last weekend, Over 700 Seattleites joined together and formed the numbers three, five and zero atop the Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center. Folks listened to speakers including Congressman Jim McDermott and City Council President Richard Conlin while forming the numbers and taking the pledge to do 3 out of 10 things to reduce their carbon footprint.

The gathering was one of over 5200 in 181 countries, an event to spark international awareness about climate change--encouraging December's Copenhagen Climate Summit to adopt a 350 parts per million limit on carbon.

October's photo of the month, taken by Allen Yoo, shows the moment when the attendees spelled out 350:

Have other photos of sustainable solutions in the Northwest or beyond? Submit them to Sightline's community photopool.