Editor's Take: August 07, 2008
nick sherman, flickr
Cleaning the Puget Sound
Today, communities throughout the region discuss decisions to make Cascadia a better place to live. Crosscut features a story on the Puget Sound Partnership, and what it will take to clean up Washington’s Puget Sound. In BC, the Climate Action Team is encouraging the province to step up the carbon tax. In California, groups are also talking about climate change and the importance of land use measures.
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Your editor today is Eric Hess | View All Today's News
Puget Sound Triage
Crosscut
08/07/2008
Cleaning up the Sound for real requires political will, not feel-good projects that play well in the media but have little ecological impact. It means focusing on rural, not urban, areas. But that's not where most taxpayers live. It will also take a monumental infusion of cash, which could come from a variety of sources, including a mitigation 'bank' for private polluters.
Go to article.
Oregon College Goes Geothermal
Oregon Public Broadcasting
08/06/2008
Oregon Institute of Technology, in Klamath Falls, outlined plans to build a $7.6 million geothermal power plant on campus. In a few years' time, the school says it will become the first university in the world to be powered completely by hot water.
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Zap Electric Cars Get $10 Million Spark
San Francisco Chronicle
08/07/2008
Zap, a Santa Rosa firm that makes electric cars, said an entrepreneur from Dubai has invested $10 million in the Bay Area company at the same time officials in Kentucky are plying it with incentives to move its factory from China to the Bluegrass State - which could repatriate 500 to 1,000 manufacturing jobs.
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Students Learn Nuts and Volts of Solar Trade
San Jose Mercury News
08/07/2008
Hoping to capitalize on an industry desperate for trained workers, students are flocking to places like San Jose City College to learn a new trade in the up-and-coming solar-energy field. Their timing couldn't be better. According to a recent report by researchers at West Valley College in Saratoga and City College of San Francisco, the Bay Area's solar industry could add 1,900 jobs this year, many of them as solar-panel installers.
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Man-made Log Jams Help Nooksack River Salmon
Bellingham Herald
08/07/2008
Wild chinook salmon runs in the south fork of the Nooksack River have lingered on the brink of extinction for decades, but Whatcom County Indian tribes are persisting in their efforts to restore a thriving population.
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Climate Team Urges BC to Step up Carbon Tax
Victoria Times Colonist
08/07/2008
The British Columbia government should consider increasing and expanding its carbon tax if necessary to stay on track with an aggressive target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, a provincial cabinet advisory group recommended yesterday.
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Green Project Proposals Flood Oregon Department
Oregonian
08/07/2008
Requests for tax subsidies for solar and other clean energy projects are flooding into Oregon's certifying agency, clogging the system and frustrating businesses that have tight construction deadlines.
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Views: Laws of Economics Still Abide in the Oil Market
Vancouver Sun
08/07/2008
It turns out that the laws of economics still apply, even in the age of peak oil and carbon taxes. Demand falls as prices rise; it has always been so. Market forces have brought about the behavioural changes that government policy was meant to induce.
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Views: Land Use is Key in Fighting Climate Change
San Francisco Chronicle
08/07/2008
It seems almost inconceivable that the California Air Resources Board would fail to make land-use decisions a central part of the state's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But as the board prepares for Friday's public workshop in Santa Clara on its "scoping plan" to carry out Assembly Bill 32 - the landmark global-warming legislation - it proposes a reduction of a scant 2 million metric tons of emissions through better land-use decisions.
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No Car, No Problem
Willamette Week
08/07/2008
When you're joyful that gas has dropped to about $4 per gallon, it's not hard to figure out why people are giving up on driving. But how easy is it to get rid of owning your car for good?
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