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Veterans to be trained for green jobs
Los Angeles Times
07/01/2009
Seventeen groups nationwide, including the Long Beach office of United States Veterans Initiative -- which will receive $500,000 -- have been awarded grants to train and find green jobs for veterans. The jobs include work associated with residential and commercial solar energy systems and wastewater treatment.
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Shifting carbon taxes to fund BC transit?
Vancouver Sun
07/01/2009
An unlikely group of environmentalists, business and labour leaders joined Metro Vancouver's mayors to lobby for directing an annual $450 million into funding public transit. While some mayors favor shifting carbon taxes to pay for better transit, others say that money's off the table.
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With goodies for everyone, climate bill passed
New York Times
06/30/2009
As the most ambitious energy and climate-change legislation ever introduced in Congress made its way to a floor vote last Friday, it grew fat with compromises, carve-outs, concessions and out-and-out gifts intended to win the votes of wavering lawmakers and the support of powerful industries.
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OR conservation lobby counts successes, setbacks
Salem Statesman Journal
06/30/2009
It didn't exactly turn the session around, but the final days of the Oregon legislative session brought some good news for groups who have been disappointed by the lack of movement on green legislation.
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Cracks in Seattle's green-growth coalition
Crosscut
07/01/2009
Seattle politicians like to jockey over who is more green than the other. But candidates need business support too, and the battle for endorsements reveals some ideological divides between local environmentalists, developers, and independent thinkers who wonder if all urban growth is good.
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Portland jobless jump outpaces the nation
Oregonian
07/01/2009
Portland unemployment has jumped more in a year than in any other U.S. urban hub, outdoing even greater Detroit. Oregon and Michigan have a common trait that hurts during the current recession: both rely heavily on manufacturing durable goods. These are things like cars, in the Midwest, and recreational vehicles, machinery, lumber and computer chips in Oregon.
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Abandoned fishing nets no more
Seattle Times
07/01/2009
Nearly all of the abandoned fishing nets in Puget Sound that kill marine animals and damage habitat will be removed with the help of $4.6 million in federal stimulus money.
The net-removal efforts are among six projects in the state that will receive $16.5 million for marine and coastal habitat restoration.
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OR governor blasts Dems for job program failure
Oregonian
06/30/2009
OR Gov. Ted Kulongoski praised Legislative accomplishments but had harsh words for fellow Democrats who let his favorite job-creation bill languish. He wanted to spend $60 million from the state's unemployment insurance trust fund to pay thousands of unemployed Oregonians to work temp jobs in food pantries, parks and other community-based programs.
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Coastal restoration projects for habitat and jobs
Oregon Public Broadcasting
06/30/2009
In the Pacific Northwest, the federal agency that oversees ocean life will spend stimulus funding to reconnect tidal wetlands, remove obsolete dams and clean up marine debris by hiring dozens of out of work crab fishermen.
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BC training unemployed to fight forest fires
Toronto Globe and Mail
06/30/2009
The BC government is looking to train 750 unemployed people to help fight wildfires this summer. Officials said the province could use reinforcements on the fire lines, and laid-off forest workers and others who are unemployed would be perfect for the job.
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Canada to match US climate change rules
Toronto Globe and Mail
06/30/2009
Canada will adopt climate-change regulations comparable to those of the United States - including new rules for oil sands producers and refiners - to avoid punitive "green" tariffs, Environment Minister Jim Prentice says.
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When garbage becomes fuel
BC Local News
06/30/2009
A tiny square window glows fiery red in a South Burnaby, BC's waste-to-energy plant, and a peek through it is like a look inside a dragon's gullet. Metro Vancouver hopes to win public and provincial approval to build new waste-fired plants to treat garbage less like waste and more like a resource.
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Cantwell hints she might back public health plan
Seattle Times
07/01/2009
Sen. Maria Cantwell on Tuesday made her strongest statement to date supporting President Obama's idea to create a national public-health plan, but said she hasn't decided exactly which option she'll vote for. Cantwell was the most prominent member of Washington's congressional delegation who until now had not voiced wholehearted support for the public-plan option.
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Views: The spill, 20 years later
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
07/01/2009
It has been just more than 20 years since oil spilled from the Exxon Valdez and soiled the biology and economy of Prince William Sound, ruined lives, and forever tainted the image of what is now the world’s largest company. Now, the end of the legal chapter of this story is near.
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Setback for BC's guest farm worker union
The Tyee
06/29/2009
Labourers at Greenway Farms have filed to withdraw from the union certification won by the United Food and Commercial Workers.
If the de-certification attempt is successful in hearings slated for June 30 at the LRB, it will mark a set-back for the UFCW's multi-year drive to unionize agricultural workers in Canada.
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BC Homeless shelters get more cash
Vancouver Sun
06/30/2009
The provincial government has agreed to provide another $8 million to fund four Homeless Emergency Action Team (HEAT) shelters that will operate in Vancouver until April 2010.
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Views: The high cost of affordable housing at BC's Olympic Village
Vancouver Sun
06/30/2009
Vancouver could have, should have, built double the number of affordable housing units that the Olympic Village project will deliver on less expensive city-owned land.
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Green jobs perk up Oregon's work force
Oregonian
06/29/2009
Green jobs account for 3 percent of Oregon's private, state government and local government employment, the Oregon Employment Department said in a report released today.
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Guest workers in Washington to get higher wages
KUOW
06/29/2009
Agricultural guest workers in Washington State will be paid higher wages, starting Monday. But that's only for new hires. Workers who already have contracts will likely be stuck with a smaller paycheck.
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Climate bill shaped by compromise
Los Angeles Times
06/28/2009
President Obama's willingness to sit down with each group affected by a historic climate bill and compromise yielded a narrow victory in the House on Friday. The question is: did supporters give away so much in the process that the benefits to the environment ended up being slim to none?
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Even those with health insurance going broke
Seattle Times
06/28/2009
When Mark Moody and Glenda Krull could no longer afford both health insurance and mortgage payments, the Edmonds couple knew which had to go. They sold their house.
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Hohmmmm: The zen of saving energy
KPLU
06/28/2009
Tracking energy use is the first step toward reducing your carbon footprint and saving money on your utility bill. Now, Microsoft is coming out with free software that let's you analyze how your home uses energy. It's called Hohm: a combination of "home" and "ohm," the unit for measuring electrical resistance.
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Going whole hog on energy upgrades
Sacramento Bee
06/28/2009
Jon Pyle is trying to do right by the environment and his pocketbook by having double-pane windows installed in his home, but some energy experts say the California resident doing it all wrong. Like most people, he's doing piecemeal energy efficiency upgrades rather than embarking on wholesale change.
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Unemployment checks running out in OR
Oregonian
06/28/2009
Soon the road that unfurls for miles across the vast desert of Harney County, OR, could be the only way out for people with no job prospects or safety net. An uncharted phase of the recession is setting in not only here but also across the state: Workers, jobless for longer than a year, are beginning to exhaust their unemployment benefits.
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Views: Replace WA property tax with BC carbon tax
Seattle Times
06/29/2009
It has been a roller-coaster year for anyone concerned about climate change. The Western Climate Initiative is stalled and federal legislation has an uncertain future. But Washington state could make strides to reduce carbon emissions by repealing the state property tax and imposing a carbon tax shift modeled on British Columbia's.
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