Editor's Take: March 13, 2008
Credit: Dkhlucy/Flickr.com
Oregon's Health Care Powerball
Oregon was once the nation’s leader in innovative health care policy. Gov. John Kitzhaber, a charismatic cowboy and real-life ER doctor, expanded the Oregon Health Plan to ensure struggling folks could access care they need. Now Oregonians are competing against each other in a health-care lottery. The New York Times reports from Bend, a boomtown with a growing economic divide.
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Few Benefit from Oregon Health Insurance Lottery
New York Times
03/12/2008
Last month, right after he had the heart attack and then the heart surgery and then started receiving the medical bills that so far have topped $200,000, Melvin Tsosies joined the 91,000 other residents of Oregon who had signed up for a lottery that provides health insurance to people who lack it.
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Where Have All the Salmon Gone?
San Francisco Chronicle
03/13/2008
The grim prospect of a total shutdown of ocean salmon fishing in California and Oregon is forcing anglers, merchants and food servers who rely on the once-thriving fishery to reassess their lives and futures.
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Policymakers Agree: New EPA Smog Rules Wimpy
Oregonian
03/13/2008
The U.S. government set a stricter smog standard Wednesday, but Oregon regulators said it disregards scientific advice and doesn't do enough to protect public health.
The new standard by the Environmental Protection Agency reduces allowable amounts of ground-level ozone, the main ingredient of smog, by 11 percent.
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EPA Knew of Climate Risks
Wall Street Journal
03/13/2008
Senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency concluded late last year that carbon-dioxide emissions endanger public welfare and drafted a proposal to regulate emissions from automobiles, according to EPA officials interviewed by a congressional committee.
The EPA officials said the proposed regulations would have achieved CO2 reductions faster than recently passed legislation requiring improvements in automobile fuel economy.
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What We Talk about When We Talk about the Tongass
Alaska Public Radio Network
03/13/2008
Can a conservation group and a foundation help chart a new economic agenda for Southeast Alaska? That’s what some members would like to see out of a 2-year-old effort called the Tongass Futures Roundtable.
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Idaho Likes Tax Breaks for Nuke Plant
AP
03/12/2008
A state Senate committee has given another nod to incentives meant to persuade officials at French nuclear services company Areva Inc. to build in the remote desert of eastern Idaho.
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Coming Soon: Mine on Puget Sound
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
03/13/2008
Why allow an industrial operation beside one of the few significant stretches of natural shoreline left in central Puget Sound -- especially when the government and others are sketching out a multibillion-dollar rescue plan for the Sound, with healthy beaches a huge focus?
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Iconic Eulachon is Endangered Species Candidate
Seattle Times
03/13/2008
A silver 6-inch-long oily fish that once teemed through coastal rivers in Washington, Oregon and California is the latest candidate for the Endangered Species Act.
Federal scientists will give the Pacific smelt, or eulachon, a close look for possible federal protection, the agency in charge of endangered fish announced Wednesday.
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Bellingham Man Behind the Salish Sea Name
Toronto Globe and Mail
03/13/2008
The man who first envisaged the name change says B.C. can have it both ways rather than choosing between the Strait of Georgia and the Salish Sea.
Bert Webber, a Bellingham marine biologist, first proposed calling the marine waters of southern B.C. and northern Washington the Salish Sea in an interview with the Bellingham Herald in 1988.
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Blueprint for Tomorrowland
Seattle Conscious Choice Magazine
03/13/2008
The folks at Urban Re:Vision think that asking people to completely re-imagine the way urban environments are designed is the key to finding real-world solutions that can make city life healthier - for humans as well as the environment. The San Francisco organization is using a series of design competitions to solicit new ideas - both viable and futuristic - for urban energy, transportation, commercial and community systems.
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