Via Sightline, check out NASA's new ClimateTimeMachine.

This screen grab shows parts of the southeastern US that would be underwater if worldwide sea levels rose by 6 meters--the amount of rise predicted if the Greenland ice sheet were to melt completely.

From a press release for the upcoming production of Shrek: the Musical:

"Mayor Nickels Welcomes Everyone’s Favorite Large Green Ogre to the Emerald City."

So the mayor is welcoming himself to the city? But he's not green...

He just thinks he is.

Express your outrage/approval/indifference toward Seattle's proposed ban on Styrofoam food containers and 20-cent fee on disposable grocery bags at City Hall (600 4th Ave.) tomorrow, Tuesday, July 8, in council chambers at 7:00 p.m.

To recap, the legislation would:

Ban Styrofoam food packaging in grocery stores and restaurants;

Impose a 20-cent fee on disposable shopping bags at grocery, drug, and convenience stores;

Give retailers a portion of the fee to defray administrative costs; and

Provide free shopping bags for seniors and low-income people.

As far as I can tell, there's no downside. The proposal isn't compulsory--if you don't want to pay 20 cents for a disposable bag, all you have to do is bring your own. And if you can't afford a 75-cent reusable bag, that's no problem either-- the city will give you a bag (or bags) for free.

As for the upside: Seattle residents use around 360 million disposable bags a year. Most of those are plastic. Nationally, we shovel about 100 billion plastic bags into landfills every year , the equivalent of 12 million barrels of oil. Most of the remaining bags end up as debris in places like the North Pacific Gyre, a whirling mass of garbage the size of Texas; just one percent are recycled. According to Planet Ark, an international environmental group, plastic bags kill around 100,000 whales, seals, turtles and other marine animals every year.

Yes, there are other, arguably more pressing, environmental problems--sprawl, SUVs, our oil-dependent economy, to name a few. But I have exactly zero sympathy for people who claim that a fee for disposable bags is onerous, or that it constitutes social engineering, or that it somehow hurts the poor. Our society has been engineered to allow us to ignore the consequences of our actions, and we're just now starting to undo some of that damage. Put another way: Wasting stuff is not a human right.

I took my son to see Wall•E this weekend.

The latest from Pixar, a hit with critics and audiences, is set a eight or nine centuries in the future. Wall•E paints a picture of a planet destroyed by a thoughtless humanity in the thrall of a consumer culture that eventually overwhelms the earth with... junk. Garbage, refuse, crap—everywhere. Humans are forced to abandon the planet and blast off into space, where humanity survives on spaceships that look and function like cruise ships or, um, Disney resorts. There's not much to do out there in space but sit on lounge chairs (floating space lounge chairs), and eat, eat, eat. Meanwhile on earth huge garbage ziggurats tower over abandoned skyscrapers, container ships full of crap sit on dried up ocean beds, and dust-and-garbage storms blow scour the surface of the earth.

Depressing—all that garbage, all that thoughtless over-consumption, all that environmental devastation. But look what we got on the way into the theater...

That's a watch. A cheap plastic watch. According to the instruction card that comes with it, my son's Wall•E watch was made in China, it's not water resistant, and it's batteries are not replaceable. So basically it's a disposable watch brought to us by a movie about the dire consequences of thoughtless over-consumption, a watch that is just one of many—tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands—that will be coming soon to landfills near you.

UPDATE: In Wall•E the world appears to be governed by a huge corporation called Buy 'N Large, which at first encourages over-consumption and then, when the environmental consequences become clear, tries to find ways for humanity to consume its way out of the environmental crisis that over-consumption caused in the first place. Eventually the planet has to be abandoned—via Buy 'N Large space ships. Slog tipper Pop Tart draws our attention to a Buy 'N Large website, where you can... buy movie merchandise...

The exurbs aren't the only inanity in trouble thanks to the jump in energy prices...

As the cost of shipping continues to soar along with fuel prices, homegrown manufacturing jobs are making a comeback after decades of decline. While it once cost $3,000 to ship a container from a city like Shanghai to New York, it now costs $8,000, prompting some businesses to look closer to home for manufacturing needs...

The rise in transportation costs are fueling what some economists are calling "reverse globalization." For instance, DESA, a company that makes heaters to keep football players warm, is moving all its production back to Kentucky after years of having them made in China.

"Cheap labor in China doesn't help you when you gotta pay so much to bring the goods over," says economist Jeff Rubin.

Some local manufacturers have suddenly found themselves in the thick of boom times.

I also think Seattle Bubble might be wrong about the economics of moving from Marysville.

That was such a beautiful sunset I almost posted that poem again.

Something to think about:

Assuming you drive the same miles per year, which change will save more gas in a given year:

* Switching from a Dodge Ram at 13 MPG to a Toyota Tundra at 15 MPG

* Switching from a Honda Fit at 32 MPG to a Toyota Prius at 44 MPG.

(Mileage figures are from Consumer Reports.)

Have your answer? Ok, next question.

Assuming you drive the same miles per year, which change will save more gas in a given year:

* Switching from a Dodge Ram that needs 770 gallons per 10,000 miles, to a Toyota Tundra that needs 667 gallons per 10,000 miles

* Switching from a Honda Fit that needs 313 gallons per 10,000 miles, to a Toyota Prius that needs 238 gallons per 10,000 miles.

Did your answer change?

As a measure of fuel economy, miles-per-gallon is incredibly unintuitive. One must consider both the change and the starting point when deciding the significance of an increase in MPG. Nasty.

How nasty? Richard P. Larrick and Jack B. Soll collected data to discover just how confused people become when considering changes in miles-per-gallon. Their work was just published in the Journal Science.

The most telling passage from the study:

The study was presented in an online survey to 171 participants who were drawn from a national subject pool. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 75, with a median age of 35. All participants were given the following scenario (5): "A town maintains a fleet of vehicles for town employee use. It has two types of vehicles. Type A gets 15 miles per gallon. Type B gets 34 miles per gallon. The town has 100 Type A vehicles and 100 Type B vehicles. Each car in the fleet is driven 10,000 miles per year." They were then asked to choose a plan for replacing the original vehicles with corresponding hybrid models if the "overriding goal is to reduce gas consumption of the fleet and thereby reduce harmful environmental consequences."

One group of 78 participants was randomly assigned to a policy choice framed in terms of MPG. They were asked to choose between two options: (option 1) replace the 100 vehicles that get 15 MPG with vehicles that get 19 MPG and (option 2) replace the 100 vehicles that get 34 MPG with vehicles that get 44 MPG. Note that town fuel efficiency is improved more in option 1 (by 14,035 gallons) than in option 2 (by 6,684 gallons). As expected, the majority (75%) of participants in the MPG condition chose option 2, which offers a large gain in MPG but less fuel savings [95% confidence interval (CI) = 65 to 85%].

Participants in the GPM condition (n = 93) were given the same instructions as those in the MPG condition. In addition, they were told that the town "translates miles per gallon into how many gallons are used per 100 miles. Type A vehicles use 6.67 gallons per 100 miles. Type B vehicles use 2.94 gallons per 100 miles." They read the same choice options as used in the MPG condition, including the MPG information, but with an additional stem that translated outcomes into GPM for the hybrid vehicles [(option 1) replace the 100 vehicles that get 6.67 gallons per 100 miles with vehicles that get 5.26 GPM and (option 2) replace the 100 vehicles that get 2.94 gallons per 100 miles with vehicles that get 2.27 GPM]. As expected, the majority of participants (64%) in the GPM frame chose option 1, which offers a small gain in MPG but more fuel savings (CI = 54 to 74%). Overall, the percentage choosing the more fuel-efficient option increased from 25% in the MPG frame to 64% in the GPM frame (P < 0.01).

When talking about fuel efficiency in terms of gallons per mile, people were nearly three-times as likely to make the rational choice as compared to the same numbers in miles-per-gallon. Remember this when making your next car purchase.

Updated for the graphically minded, like me:

From the ominously titled European Space Agency press release, Even the Antarctic winter cannot protect Wilkins Ice Shelf:

Wilkins Ice Shelf, a broad plate of floating ice south of South America on the Antarctic Peninsula, is connected to two islands, Charcot and Latady. In February 2008, an area of about 400 km² broke off from the ice shelf, narrowing the connection down to a 6 km strip; this latest event in May has further reduced the strip to just 2.7 km.

This animation, comprised of images acquired by Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) between 30 May and 9 June, highlights the rapidly dwindling strip of ice that is protecting thousands of kilometres of the ice shelf from further break-up...

Wilkins Ice Shelf has experienced further break-up with an area of about 160 km² breaking off from 30 May to 31 May 2008. ESA’s Envisat satellite captured the event – the first ever-documented episode to occur in winter.

Excellent! The jury might be coming back on climate change. Perhaps this would be a good time to remind you of my posts and introduce you to a new podcast on nuclear power .

Scary animated GIF of the ice shelf breaking off is after the jump...

Continue reading "Antarctic Winters Not So Wintery Anymore" »

They're on.

Four years behind schedule and nearly $80 million over the original budget, the nation's largest sea water desalination facility finally supplies much-needed drinking water to 2.4 million people in the Tampa Bay region.

Despite the plant's troubled history, a handful of Florida communities want to follow Tampa Bay's footsteps in a high-stakes bid to keep water flowing to meet the state's growth. [...]

This spring, the Legislature debated a bill that would have helped utilities develop their own desalination systems. The idea was approved, but the bill stalled because of the state's budget woes.

Nevertheless, utilities and water supply planners believe it is only a matter of time before more facilities like Tampa Bay's dot Florida's landscape.

The new focus on desalination comes as the federal government has released a 300-page report on the technology's status as a viable drinking water source.

The report concluded that sea water desalination could forestall looming water crises in many regions of the country, but cited significant environmental issues needing more study.

The increased focus on harnessing oceans for drinking water is easy to explain: Many places are running out of fresh water and have few alternatives.[...]

While many environmentalists would like to see Florida slow growth, state leaders say that is not realistic.

"You can't stop people from coming to Florida," said state Sen. Burt Saunders, R-Naples, who sponsored the proposed desalination law.

Two things:

1) The environmental issues surrounding desalination "need more study"? Hardly. According to a report issued last year by the World Wildlife Fund, the process of filtering the salt out of seawater creates massive greenhouse-gas emissions that worsen climate change, leading to drought and glacial melting and (ironically) threatening existing freshwater supplies. Desalination has also been linked to saltwater leaching, pollution, and damage to marine ecosystems. Moreover, desalination promotes sprawl and unsustainable population growth.

2) Statements like "You can't stop people from moving to Florida" remind me of arguments like this one against investing in mass transit (or like this one against requiring density around transit stops): People drive now, after all, and by God, we can't force them not to! These kind of arguments—don't socially engineer me out of my car/ uninhabitable desert / suburb—ignore the fact that those high-speed freeways/ massive, unsustainable irrigation systems/ miles upon miles of uncontrolled sprawl are just as artificial or "engineered" as transit/ living sustainably/ density. There's nothing "natural" about moving to Florida and drinking desalinated water, any more than there is about taking transit to work from your dense urban community with a sustainable water supply. Both are choices about the way we live--and what kind of future we want to leave to our children—something even some suburban communities are finally starting to recognize. Once we can acknowledge that choices like where to live and how to deal with our limited resources are "engineering," it becomes possible to engineer things differently.

UPDATE: Just came across another nice example of engineering that could be called unengineering (ungineering?): Parking meters in San Francisco that are cheaper when demand is low, and higher when demand is high. Unlike the traditional ("natural") approach to parking (increasing supply as demand increases), pricing meters reduces demand to equal the existing parking supply.

So you thought the Building Industry Alliance of Washington--whose representatives have compared environmentalists to Hitler, attributed global-warming and growth-management laws to "radical environmentalists"; and referred to Gov. Chrstine Gregoire as a "heartless, power-hungry she-wolf who would eat her own young to get ahead"--was the wackiest right-wing game in town? Well, get ready: The Seattle Police Officers Guild is giving the BIAW a run for its money. Introducing the editor of SPOG's newsletter, Detective Ron Smith:

Each time I hear the Mayor come up with a new "green idea to save the planet I laugh it off as part of the talking points of the environmental extremist movement. A movement that is hysterical to me, as just about 40-years ago we had so-called experts saying: "Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor "...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born," Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970"... Anyway, the reason I bring this up is the Mayor doesn't want you to buy bottled water, and wants to ban its sale in city buildings. While I am sure it makes him feel greener than Kermit to hate bottled water and love Cedar River tap water, I wonder what the Mayor wants people to drink when "the big one" levels parts of Seattle and the people are left to provide for themselves. ... Plus, if bottled water were banned in the city, what would his buddy Obama have to give those fainting women in the crowd when he comes back to town? A pre-positioned glass of Cedar River tap water of course!"

Global-warming denial, mockery of "radical" ideas like drinking tap water, dated, off-point jokes ("greener than Kermit," HAR!) and irrelevant arguments—all in one badly typo-ridden package! But at least he doesn't call anyone a Nazi.

Demand for gasoline falls 5.5 percent--in a single week.

Hummer sales down by 60 percent.

Light-truck sales, meanwhile, drop 24 percent.

And GM closes four North American truck and SUV factories.

Used SUV sales fall, too.

Hybrid SUVs aren't doing so great, either.

And Jaguar and Land Rover are bought by Tata Motors--the same company that's marketing $2,000 cars at droves of upwardly mobile Indian consumers.

Got your goat:

PORTLAND — Authorities in Portland are trying to figure out how a goat came to be on the bus.

The vehicle was on a layover Monday night in southeast Portland when the pygmy goat wandered aboard.

The operator was outside the bus, and the doors were open.

The operator shut the doors, penning the animal, and called for help.

The 35-pound goat, which was wearing a nylon collar, was sent to an animal shelter, and workers there say they couldn't find information about the goat's owner.

Yes, yes, Dan has already posted about this great piece of news.

General Motors is closing four truck and sports utility vehicle (SUV) plants in the US, Canada and Mexico as it looks to environmentally-friendly cars.

Recent strikes at some GM factories have dented production of SUVs.

And surging fuel prices have heralded a shift to smaller vehicles, with GM also considering scrapping its Hummer brand.

We saw the birth of the little monster:

Now we hope to see its death for good!

According to a new survey by IBM, only 25 percent of drivers nationwide would seriously consider commuting options besides driving alone if gas got above $4.00 a gallon. (Currently, the nationwide average is $3.96 a gallon; at the time of the study, it was $3.67). Another 46 percent said they'd start looking for alternatives at $4.50 a gallon. It wasn't until hypothetical gas prices topped out at $5.00 a gallon that a majority of drivers said they'd consider changing their habits--at that level, 66 percent said they'd start looking for alternatives.

Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds said traffic had gotten worse in the last three years, 45 percent said their own commutes had caused them stress, and 28 percent reported "increased anger" because of traffic congestion.

From the Bar Exam mailbag:

Why not soak up the sun and action at Ivar’s Salmon House’s waterside deck on Lake Union?... The Salmon House boasts a local cocktail favorite, dubbed “The Lake Union Water,” to “commemorate” the murky, yet beloved waters of Lake Union.... this signature cocktail has become a happy hour must and is treasured by Seattleites and tourists alike. The Lake Union Water is composed of vodka, Midori, Blue Curacao, pineapple, and Lake Union Water.

It's the combined sewer overflows that make it taste so good.

I admit I was immediately skeptical when I read the headline, "Jobs, homes proposal for Snohomish County touted as eco-friendly," in Wednesday's Seattle Times. Would that be the same Snohomish County that was sanctioned by the governor for violating the state Growth Management Act? The same Snohomish County whose council opposed infill development, arguing that density did not belong in existing urban areas? The same Snohomish County where officials have not hesitated to fight for developers' right to turn rural farmland into sprawling exurban developments? The same Snohomish County where even modest pushes toward a sensible growth strategy were met with cries of overregulation and excessive government intrusion on private property rights?

Yeah, that would be the one. So like I said, I was skeptical.

Here, as far as I can tell, is what's "eco-friendly" about this exurban development, to be located on 600 acres in Cathcart, past Mill Creek near Highway 9:

• It'll have a transit hub and a job center--the same type of job center that has failed spectacularly at containing sprawl and auto dependency at Snoqualmie Ridge.

• It will include four-story condo buildings, plus "green" businesses "such as hydroponic greenhouses and solar-energy production on land once slated for a county landfill."

• And it will include 170 acres of open space, including some restored wetlands.

Here's the problem, though. Unless all those new condo dwellers work where they live--unlikely, as the example provided by Snoqualmie Ridge has shown--they'll all need to commute somewhere, and most of them will do so by car. Non-commute trips—which make up 75 percent of all car trips—will likely increase as well. (Sound Transit provides bus service in Snohomish County, but their tax base there is already stretched thin, making a major service expansion unlikely even if voters do back a Sound Transit expansion in 2008. And much of which could end up going toward a fund for future light rail, anyway.) Making a community "self-contained" (with jobs, retail, and housing in one places) rarely accomplishes much if that community's also isolated from surrounding cities.

Meanwhile, the people who work in all that ground-level retail that's being planned as part of this mixed-use development would most likely commute in from elsewhere. (I'm guessing workers at, say, Bed, Bath & Beyond can't afford a brand-new condo in a highly publicized "eco-development.") So while, you know, yay for a transit hub (after all, it's easier to provide transit when you only have to stop at one central location), I'm skeptical that the improvements in transit are going to translate into less congestion on the roads and emissions in the air.

Finally, on the subject of wetlands: "Restoring" wetlands--AKA creating new wetlands to replace wetlands that have been destroyed--is not the same thing as preserving existing wetlands. Wetlands are complex ecosystems that are extremely difficult to establish and maintain; restoring wetlands is far inferior to simply preserving them in the first place. And, de Place notes, "[developers] preserve the wetlands on these sites because it’s illegal not to." And "clustering a bunch of impervious surface [driveways, roads, and rooftops] around wetlands can pretty seriously degrade their quality."

Paul Krugman touches briefly on the subject of exurban development today on his blog, noting that the suburbs were designed with the assumption that oil prices would stay low forever. Now that gas prices are high and climbing, exurban dwellers—people who live in places like eastern Snohomish County— with few or no alternatives to driving are the hardest hit.

Remember less than a month ago when it snowed? In mid-spring? Well, it’s still mid-spring and here's the current forecast for tomorrow.

Not that you can put much stock in weather forecasts. Whenever the weatherologists (TM) predict snow, I get excited and buy ingredients for soup, but it usually ends up balmy. So this prediction of record-breaking heat… who knows, maybe it will snow. You should still plan on going to the beach.

As Dan notes below, the Seattle Times' Bruce Ramsey took the bold step today of coming out against the proposed 20-cent tax on disposable grocery bags... joining fellow faux populists Ron Judd, Knute Berger, Joni Balter , and the entire Seattle Times editorial board in protesting this grave violation of their human right to be given plastic bags free of charge and dispose of them however they wish. His column is a rehash of hoary old Seattle cliches--"social engineering" makes an appearance, as does the familiar shibboleth of—the injustice!—forced recycling. (A ghostly Nanny State™ also appears on the sidelines, in the form of the "city-wagging-its-finger-at-me" tax.)

Anyway, I won't add to what Dan so adroitly said below (and what I've said over and over and over again), except this: I sincerely hope that when Mayor Nickels decides to propose a tax on bottled water, "populists" like Ramsay, Balter, and Berger will wholeheartedly support it--since, presumably, all those poor, downtrodden low-income Seattleites who can't afford so much as a 73-cent reusable bag are already drinking tap water anyway.

Bruce Ramsey pitches a fit in today's Seattle Times about, yes, his inalienable right to plastic shopping bags.

I don't want to use a cloth bag. I don't want to carry the bag to the store, and I don't want to limit my shopping to the capacity of my bag.

What if I want to buy more? I can pay the 20 cents, but it is a punishment tax, a city-wagging-its-finger-at-me tax: bad, bad, bad.

I don't want the disapproval and I don't want the people in Shoreline, Edmonds, Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue, Renton, Kent and Burien laughing at me for being a sap for the greener-than-thou progressives in Seattle. And I don't want the people who did this to have my 20 cents.

Jesus Fucking Christ, when does the whining end? So the extremely well-compensated Bruce Ramsey doesn't want to pay $.20 for a plastic bag. Boo fucking hoo. And Bruce doesn't want people in Seattle's suburbs—cities that are likely to follow Seattle's lead, if the city has the courage to buck the almighty Seattle Times on this issue, and ban wasteful, polluting plastic bags in the very near future—snickering at him. It might shrink his dick.

The Seattle Times' faux-populism on this issue is as revolting as it is hypocritical.

Right now the Seattle Times is running a front-page series on protecting Puget Sound. The series is so very high-minded, so very liberal, so very—what's the phrase again? Ah yes: it's so very greener-than-thou. Well, guess what, Bruce? Reducing or eliminating the number of plastic bags we use will not only keep them out of our waste stream, but it will keep them out of Puget Sound. Here's a little factoid from a wire service story that ran in the PI some time ago:

One of the most dramatic impacts is on marine life. About 100,000 whales, seals, turtles and other marine animals are killed by plastic bags each year worldwide, according to Planet Ark, an international environmental group.

Last September, more than 354,000 bags—most of them plastic—were collected during an international cleanup of costal areas in the United States and 100 other countries, according to the Ocean Conservancy.

The bags were the fifth most common item of debris found on beaches.

Plastic bags are wasteful, stupid, and do real harm to our beloved Puget Sound and our local marine life—just like bulkheads, the destruction of wetlands, and industrial and residential runoff.

The issues being raised by the Seattle Times in its "Failing the Sound" series are tough ones, hard to solve, hard to reach consensus about. And, man, is the Seattle Times ever wagging its fat fingers! At rich people building bulkheads on Bainbridge Island, at developers, at local politicians. But Bruce Ramsey bravely draws the line at inconveniencing himself. So what if the damage done to our environment by plastic bags is, as Ireland has demonstrated, an exceedingly easy problem to solve—and one most easily solved with, yes, a tax. From the New York Times:

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.

Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars... “I used to get half a dozen with every shop. Now I’d never ever buy one,” said Cathal McKeown, 40, a civil servant carrying two large black cloth bags bearing the bright green Superquinn motto. “If I forgot these, I’d just take the cart of groceries and put them loose in the boot of the car, rather than buy a bag.”

Gerry McCartney, 50, a data processor, has also switched to cloth. “The tax is not so much, but it completely changed a very bad habit,” he said. “Now you never see plastic.”

Part Two:

Randy Henry, a thick-accented coal miner from Kentucky: "Barack originates from Chicago, but he came to southern Illinois and seen (sic) the devastation and the loss of jobs in this coal industry. Washington, D.C. is not listening to us. Barack understands this."

Narrator: In Illinois and in the US Senate, Barack Obama helped lead the fight for clean coal. To save our environment, and protect good-paying American jobs.

Coal miner: "He's figured it out. It takes trust in each other to get the job done."

(Via).

The only problem: Even if you assume that Obama is referring to coal gasification--rather than coal-to-liquid technology, which is even dirtier than burning plain old gasoline--Kentucky does not have a single facility producing gasified "clean coal." Moreover, the sequestration technology that would make Kentucky's nonexistent gasified coal "clean" does not exist--and won't, experts predict, for at least another decade. So while those Kentucky coal jobs may be both "good paying" and "American," they're anything but clean. As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Obama should distinguish himself from McCain on environmental issues now, instead of pandering to red states that aren't likely to support him in the general election anyway.

I know, you can't wait to start reading, right?

There's been a ton of stuff happening in the transportation policy world lately--and not just proposals (ranging from merely pointless and idiotic to outright insane) to temporarily reduce the gas tax.

First up: Bikes! The Worldwatch Institute reports that public bike-sharing programs are taking off all over the world, including here in the United States, where one bike-sharing program is already underway in Washington, D.C. Most bike-sharing programs offer bikes free for the first half-hour or so, then charge a nominal fee for longer use.

To those who say bike-sharing is impossible in Seattle--too many hills, too much water, "unique topography", blah, blah, blah.--consider this: The next city in line to start a bike-sharing program is San Francisco--hilly, foggy, water-surrounded San Francisco. If San Francisco can make it happen, surely we have no excuse.

But what about the hills? Well, the bikes will probably end up at the bottom of them--and the bike-sharing company will do what bike-sharing companies do all over the world: Send a truck down a few times a day to haul them back up. Compared to the impact of all the cars bike-sharing takes off the road, a small fleet of trucks is a small price to pay.

And speaking of hills: Slog tipper Stinkbug sent us this link to photos of a bicycle lift in Trondheim, Norway, essentially a guided train track that pulls cyclists uphill. Since I don't think there are many hills in Seattle that are actually too steep to ride, I can't wholeheartedly endorse this idea; but if it gets more people out of their SUVs and onto bikes, I guess it's worth considering.

Photo by Pug Freak, licensed under Creative Commons

Meanwhile, the New York Times has some encouraging news about car sales: US car buyers are buying smaller, greener cars, thanks in large part to rising gas prices. During April, one in five vehicles sold in the US was a compact or subcompact car--up from just one in eight a decade ago. Sales of traditional SUVs, meanwhile, have plummeted. In the words of AutoNation CEO Michael Jackson, quoted in the Times article, "the era of the truck-based large SUVs is over." Intriguingly, the Times article notes that when gas prices are high, "many drivers simply drive less to save money." Human behavior, in other words, is adaptable, and people have a choice about how much they drive. That punches a big hole in the the belief that the amount we have to drive is fixed--the kind of arguments I hear all the time from people who live in the suburbs or insist that anything that adds to the cost of driving disproportionately hurts the poor. The idea that we don't have to drive as much as we do is becoming conventional wisdom--as the Sightline Institute's Clark Williams-Derry recently pointed out.

Still, not everybody gets it. Unfortunately (as the examples of McCain and Clinton suggest), the people who actually make energy policy still have a lot of catching up to do. Just last week, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), along with 18 Republican cosponsors, introduced legislation that would increase US production of oil and natural gas and fund the development of oil shale and coal-to-liquid technology. The bill would authorize drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf, and mandate the production of 6 billion gallons of coal-based fuel in the next 15 years.

Finally, in only indirectly transportation-related news, go read Eric de Place's compelling defense of townhouses, also at Sightline. De Place argues that "socialistic" permitting requirements and off-street parking mandates are driving up the cost of housing and helping to create townhouse developments that sit at a remove from the street, isolating their residents from the surrounding neighborhood.

Nearly every townhouse in the city is required by law to provide offstreet parking. Since cars don't fly, the practical effect of the minimum parking regulations is that each and every townhouse has a garage on the bottom floor. And these garages are often the prime culprit in walling off the townhouses from the street, and of sending the residents upstairs. They also severely crimp design possibilities, making the units tend toward uniform. Somewhat ironically, because the garages are small and the driveways are tight, the residents who have cars often end up parking on the street anyway. All this puts city planners in a lose-lose situation.

One obvious solution would be to strip out the parking requirements, which would revolutionize the design possibilities. But so far, the city's modest attempts to remove minimum parking mandates in a few urban areas have been greeted with howls of protest from angry mobs wielding pitchforks and torches. (Socialist-style parking requirements are apparently something akin to a constitutional guarantee in Seattle.)

Oh, and if you're pissed about high gas prices, keep this in mind: Even with gas at $3.45 a gallon, the US has the 45th cheapest gas in the world, according to a recent survey of 155 countries. In Europe, by comparison, prices top out at well over $8 a gallon.

I've tried to stay out of this little fight, but I have to jump in here.

(As a prelude, I think both Erica and Annie are smart and all three candidates energy policies are an embarrassment. As an example, corn-based biofuels are a fucking farce.)

This:

And she addresses some of the actual reasons gas prices are at record highs: America’s refusal to dip into oil reserves, and OPEC’s stranglehold on oil production.

1. The strategic petroleum reserve is intended for, and should remain for, genuine supply shocks--sudden losses of major sources of oil. A nuclear war in the Mideast, a revolution in Russia, a massive earthquake destroying the Alaskan pipeline, a hurricane decimating the gulf oil platforms, New Orleans and Texas--these are good uses for the strategic petroleum reserve, not as a response demand-driven rises in energy costs. If we use up the reserve in a vain attempt to reverse long-term trends, we will be left without petroleum when we really need it. And we need it. Without petroleum, our society stops. No food at the grocery store. No clean water coming out of the taps. No lights. No heat. The reserve is absolutely necessary to keep our civilization afloat after an unexpected sudden hit in production, to give us enough time to scramble and find an alternative source or drastically ration.

Any politician than wants to use the reserve for short-term political gain--to drive down energy costs temporarily before a key election--is profoundly selfish and irresponsible.

2. With the rise of major new suppliers and alterative oil sources, OPEC plays an increasingly minor role in global energy production. Further, the oil reserves and production rates in most OPEC countries have already started their decline.

Let's talk numbers. In 2007, the United States imported 13,439 thousand barrels of oil per day from foreign countries, down slightly from 13,707 in 2006. Domestic field production was about 5,103 thousand barrels per day in 2007. Therefore about three quarters of oil consumed in the United States is from foreign sources.

Personally I think this is a good thing. I'd much rather the United States consume other nations oil resources for as long as we can get away with it, saving our deposits for the future in which they will inevitably be more valuable than they are now. From a strategic point of view, it's a decent trade-off. We keep an intrinsically valuable resource in our nation while sending off a fiat currency abroad. Far better than the trade deficit from China, in which we mostly receive shitty consumer goods.

But wait, you say, why should we send all this money to the Mideast! Only about 2,170 thousand barrels per day came from the Persian Gulf, or 16% of all imports, ten percent of the total. Imports from all OPEC nations were just shy of 6000 thousand barrels per day, or just under half of all imports, a third of all oil consumed.

The nation from which we imported the most petroleum? Canada at 2,426 thousand barrels per day. For those of you keeping track, that's more than we imported from the entire Persian Gulf in 2007. Much of this was alternative petroleum sources, like oil sands. As I've written before, these alternative sources often come at a horrific environmental cost.

Which brings me to my final point. Probably the single most important technology to develop right now, if you care about protecting the environment and expanding energy reserves, is carbon sequestration. Coal, oil shale, tar sands and other dirtier fossil fuels are going to play in increasingly large part in global energy production. China and India are, right now, embarking on a massive expansion of coal-fired power plants. Italy and Germany, having banned nuclear power, are also on a coal-plant building spree. With carbon sequestration, at least, the emissions of these plants can be contained and the impact reduced.

Carbon sequestration, often absurdly wrapped under the term "clean coal," remains a lab process. No one has invested in the R&D needed to make it commercially viable. We should. It's the most obvious, the easiest and clearly most potentially effective way of reducing the impact of coming environmental and energy crises.

So, I give Obama credit for having a policy position that recognizes coal as an increasingly dominant source of energy worldwide, a policy that seeks to reduce the environmental impact of this reality--even if I think the majority of his energy policy is about as crappy as the others...

Updated:

Commenter arduous takes me to task:

First of all, I disagree that carbon sequestration should be our first priority. Carbon sequestration is far from proven, and like hydrogen vehicles, appears to be pie in the sky and somewhat of a red herring. The science isn't there yet, and may not be there for a long while. Our first priority should be on alternative energy like solar and wind. According to Scientific American's article entitled "A Solar Grand Plan" investment in solar could supply "69 percent of the U.S.’s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050." Here the science is much more clear, and the technology is closer to being developed. Renewables HAVE to be our first priority....

Read what Tim Flannery has to say about carbon sequestration.

Even if you are right and he is wrong about carbon sequestration's viability (and honestly I hope carbon sequestration is eventually viable because I think it would be another useful tool to have in our arsenal, shouldn't we be focusing the bulk on our money on REDUCING emissions rather than something that MIGHT in a few decades be able to sap emissions out of the air?

Solar energy might be cheaper than oil in about FIVE years. We're so close. It's ridiculous to say that carbon sequestration should be our first line of offense.

To which I reply:

If I was elected president in 2000, I would have invested massively in solar and wind technology. Solar and wind power are among the very few energy sources with even the possibility of having a lower lifetime environmental impact--when considering producing the plant, running the plant and dismantling the plant--than fossil fuels.

I wasn't president; arduous wasn't. Bush was.

The policy decision worldwide--in India, in China, in Germany, in Italy and dozens of other nations--was to stick with coal for at least another thirty years. We didn't make this decision. The lack of a viable non-fossil fuel technology right now, not five years from now, did.

The plants are going to be built, regardless if we get carbon sequestration working. So, although I don't prefer carbon sequestration and I share the doubts that it'll ever work on a commercial scale, it's our best and last hope for dealing with the decisions already made.

Since we're in fantasy land, if I were president today, I'd focus policy on the demand side of the equation. I'd progressively increase the gas tax over time, add in a fossil fuel windfall tax and use the revenues to invest massively in deploying existing energy efficient technology. Increase federal subsidies for mass transit. Invest in a West coast high speed rail corridor. Pay for homeowners to put in new insulation and windows, new boilers and air conditioners, new refrigerators and ovens and so on.

Joining the many things Vice President Dick Cheney has no patience for? The endangered Right Whale, which has the unfortunate distinction of having become a nautical speed bump for high-speed shipping approaching American ports.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued new rules calling for slower ship speeds off the coasts, hoping to save the lives of the whales. The Vice President's office was less than enthused, according to a House oversight report (PDF):

Another internal document shows that the officials working for the Vice President also raised spurious objections to the science. According to this document, the Vice President's staff "contends that we have no evidence (i.e., hard data) that lowering the speeds of 'large ships' will actually make a difference. NOAA rejected these objections, writing that both a statistical analysis of ship strike records and the peer-reviewed literature justified the final rule. In its response to the objections from the Vice President's staff, NOAA reported that there is "no basis to overturn our previous conclusion that imposing a speed limit on large vessels would be beneficial to whales.

In the immortal words of Marge Simpson:

"Out of my way, nature."

(Via TPMMuckraker).

Today's column from the Seattle Times' Chicken Little editorialist Joni Balter has it all. The phrase "nanny state"? Check. Overwrought references to "social engineering"? Check. Mockery of organic food and gardening as "enviro-dogma"? You betcha.

Take it away, Joni:

[Seattle City Council president Richard ] Conlin's latest proposal is a wide-ranging resolution that aims to strengthen "Seattle's food system sustainability and security." The measure promotes healthy eating, militant vegetable growing, greenhouse-gas-reduction opportunities related to food. It aims to address obesity and food waste and improve everyday access to farmers markets.

If that sounds like a nanny state in a bib overall, it's much more. It's 12 pages of enviro-dogma that might, finally, take the green-city bit overboard ... into the compost bin.

Shorter Balter: If we stop eating fast food and buying all our groceries exclusively at Wal-Mart, the terrorists have won!!! (I'll leave it to readers to figure out what the hell "militant vegetable growing" means.)

Since becoming council president a few months ago, he has become Conlin Unplugged, pushing Seattle to the forefront of sustainable living. Sometimes it seems he is trying to out-Berkeley Berkeley.

The proud architect of the city's pygmy-goat policy — he pushed to permit miniature goats as licensed pets — seems more focused on Green Acres than Green Lake.

Conlin is a social engineer who clearly sees himself as the overseer, left unchecked, of Seattle as one giant kibbutz. Pesticide-free, of course.

Well, for God's sake, Joni, spray some pesticide on me STAT!

Keep in mind that the proposal that's got Balter all hot and bothered is, in her own words, a "measure [that] promotes healthy eating... vegetable growing, [and] greenhouse-gas-reduction opportunities related to food. It aims to address obesity and food waste and improve everyday access to farmers markets." A kibbutz, in contrast, is this. See the difference?

But boy, is Balter good at framing:

Conlin has pushed a plan to recycle kitchen waste, whether customers want to or not. Starting next year, many Seattleites will be issued another container for garbage, to pull food waste out of the waste stream.

But Balter isn't done yet. She hasn't mentioned the poor! Oh, here they are:

About a year ago, San Francisco outlawed plastic bags at large grocery stores. Conlin and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels go further. Conlin is a proponent of the plan to charge 20 cents per paper and plastic bag in grocery, drug and convenience stores to reduce landfill space and cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

One gets the impression no price tag is too high if Conlin and his pals can feel they are saving the Earth with every breath they take and every move they make.

Middle- and lower-income residents have limits. Most will follow along, grab a canvas bag and do the right thing. But where does it end? Bit by bit, baby step by baby step, we are pricing the middle class out of the city — sometimes in an effort to turn our city into one giant commune.

Um, Joni? A tax on plastic bags does not "go much further" than banning them outright. The reason: Unlike a ban, charging a nominal fee gives consumers a choice. If you want to bring your own bag, it's free. Or, if you prefer to use a disposable bag, you pay 20 cents. Nobody's putting a gun to your head, nor is anyone taking any options away.

Also: "No price tag is too high"? How disingenuous can you be? It's a 20-CENT FUCKING FEE that is COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. Conlin isn't forcing anything on anyone (and for the record, the fee has strong support from the rest of the city council)--and even if he somehow could force the plastic-bag fee down an unwilling city's collective throat, it's still 20 FUCKING CENTS. If a middle-class person uses so many optional plastic bags that they can no longer afford to live in Seattle, that's their own stupid fault.

But not to fear--Joni's a reasonable anti-environmentalist. Hey, she even shops at the PCC from time to time!

I am all for farmers markets and food grown close to home. I sometimes shop at the Puget Consumers Co-op in my neighborhood, which procures some vegetables a few miles from where my mother-in-law lives in Sequim. I favor reasonable behavior changes — steps like conserving water and energy to be green and help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

But, damn it, she's tired of these enviro-commies marching us all off to their eco-rehabilitation camps!

But give me — no, give our residents — a break. This is not a commune. This is a big urban city.

Hey, you know what's great about "big urban cities"? They're the kind of places where environmental policies--recycling, bans on environmentally harmful (and unnecessary) things like plastic bags, city-run composting programs, policies that promote local food--first take hold. If it weren't for environmental efforts that initially took hold in big, urban cities, we'd all still be driving massive gas guzzlers, throwing our newspapers in the trash, and eating pesticide-drenched produce and antibiotic-injected meat. So I'm all for big urban cities setting an example for everybody else. In a sense, it's our job.

I understand that right-wing editorialists like Balter trade in "they're trying to take away our FREEEEEEDOMS !" outrage. But using a bully pulpit like the editorial page of the Seattle Times to argue against even the mildest environmental improvements (read the resolution if you don't believe me, but it calls for things like "strengthen city support for the local food economy" and "identify additional locations and infrastructure for community gardens) isn't just disingenuous. It's irresponsible.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman—a man whose surreal use of the English language can hold some of the same psychedelic properties as overdosing on codeine cough syrup—narrowly avoided having an Earth Day pie thrown in his face during a talk on renewable energy and green technology at Brown University.

From the Providence Journal's harrowing account:

Friedman ducked, and was left with only minor streams of the sugary green goo on his black pants and turtleneck.

He stood in bewilderment and mild disgust as the young man and woman bolted from the stage and out the side door, throwing a handful of fliers into the air to relay the message they apparently were not going to deliver personally.

“Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face…,” the flier said, “because of his sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism’s conquest of the planet, for telling the world that the free market and techno fixes can save us from climate change. From carbon trading to biofuels, these distractions are dangerous in and of themselves, while encouraging inaction with respect to the true problems at hand…”

After five minutes, Friedman returned to the stage undeterred, with only faint traces of the green cream on his clothing.

While the pie-thrower's manifesto may having lacked any discernible sense of humor, it still led to the the publication of the sentence, "Friedman returned to the stage undeterred, with only faint traces of the green cream on his clothing," which is totally fantastic.

My personal favorite analysis of Friedman is still pie-throwing connoisseur Matt Taibbi's piece about Friedman's book The World is Flat, written for the New York Press. The piece is calle 'Flathead,' and it ends thusly:

Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God?

Hey, it's Earth Day! As usual, that means it's a day for you, individual American, to take a few small steps to "save the planet" while political and corporate America do absolutely nothing to fix the society-wide structural problems that are actually destroying the environment in the first place.* (See also: Al Gore's "We" campaign, the P-I's list of "52 tips for living green"--clean your coffee maker with vinegar! don't dump your toxic electronics in the trash!--and any number of green-lifestyle web sites).

For example, check out Michael Pollan's piece in the New York Times' "Green Issue" last Sunday (which, by the way, is chock full of exactly the sort of "little things you can do" that make people feel better but don't really have much impact, such as making a slow-cooker out of hay, buying organic bamboo clothing, and stopping junk mail.) In it, he attempts to answer the inevitable (and reasonable) question about such individual efforts: "Why bother?"

Let’s say I do bother, big time. I turn my life upside-down, start biking to work, plant a big garden, turn down the thermostat so low I need the Jimmy Carter signature cardigan, forsake the clothes dryer for a laundry line across the yard, trade in the station wagon for a hybrid, get off the beef, go completely local. I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit.

While Pollan acknowledges, several pages in, that "some ... grand scheme may be necessary" to prevent environmental catastrophe, he adds that until someone else comes up with that scheme we can all occupy ourselves by setting an example for other individuals. We can do that, Pollan argues... by planting a garden.

Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind. [...]

This is the most-local food you can possibly eat (not to mention the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious), with a carbon footprint so faint that even the New Zealand lamb council dares not challenge it. And while we’re counting carbon, consider too your compost pile, which shrinks the heap of garbage your household needs trucked away even as it feeds your vegetables and sequesters carbon in your soil. What else? Well, you will probably notice that you’re getting a pretty good workout there in your garden, burning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym ... Also, by engaging both body and mind, time spent in the garden is time (and energy) subtracted from electronic forms of entertainment.

All of which, I can assure you, is true--I myself have spent much of the last several weekends destroying the lawn and planting a garden, and not only is it gratifying, tough, enjoyable work, it does indeed keep me from, say, dinking around on the Internet or sitting inside watching a movie. But a frugal, healthy, rewarding hobby does not an environmental revolution make. If it's true that, as NASA climate expert Jim Hanson has said, we only have about eight more years to start cutting (not slowing the growth of--cutting) the amount of carbon we're emitting, planting a garden--"bothering," in Pollan's term--may give us better food and something to do on the weekend, but it won't do a damn thing to ensure that we don't destroy our climate and our planet.

To be clear: I don't think Pollan is wrong when he suggests that people plant gardens. Gardens are good, especially at a time when food prices are soaring. But they aren't the answer to the question "How can we save the planet?" (Or even, for that matter, to Pollan's own question, "Why bother?") As an environmental leader at this moment in American history, it would be nice to hear Pollan suggest more radical changes--new regulatory policies; incentives and disincentives to push land use in a more sustainable direction; a massive education campaign aimed at schoolchildren who will inherit the climate we create--instead of blithely suggesting that planting a garden will raise other people's consciousness enough to make a quantifiable difference.

*Footnote 1: I am not saying that a "thousand little things" can't make some difference; just that individual efforts won't, on their own, stop us from burning up the planet. If you don't believe me, check out the debate going on over at Seattlest over the Global Footprint Network's new carbon footprint calculator, which makes it basically impossible to have a "carbon footprint" of less than two "planets." Put another way, even if we make all the individual changes we can, we're still using resources at a level it would take two planets to support. Seattlest concludes that this is a "downer," but I think it's a message: Real change will have to come from the top down as well as the ground up. As a (very small piece of) evidence of that, the Times didn't even print its "green" issue on recycled paper. Bet you that, until some percentage of post-consumer material is required by law, they won't.

*Footnote 2: Elsewhere in the magazine, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (the Freakanomics pair) argue that fixed rates, cheap gas, and free roads hide the "negative externalities" of driving--all the costs of driving that the driver doesn't actually pay. These include congestion, emissions, and traffic accidents, among others. Added up, Levitt and Dubner estimate, those externalities total more than $300 billion every year--about ten cents a mile. Instead of lobbying for individual drivers to drive less, Levitt and Dubner make the case for top-down change: higher gas taxes, tolls and other forms of congestion pricing, and pay-as-you-drive insurance. Those are the kind of solutions that change behavior. Planting a garden, in comparison, is just a pleasant, harmless hobby.

It's Earth Day. Who wants processed chicken soup?

From the label:

By letting you add the water at home, we can make the cans smaller, which saves a lot of metal, and lighter, which saves fuel when bringing it to your local store shelf.

Please, for one day, try to forget Campbell’s plastic packaging of its non-condensed soup.

The green-label can is available exclusively at the earth liberation bunker known as WalMart. If you want to know why I was there, it was because I was purchasing a pair of sexist, anorexic, drunken, corporate, made-in-China pajamas.

…on Capitol Hill right now. In April. The Seattle Times quotes a National Weather Service meteorologist saying, "It's schizophrenic weather. There was sun, it was dark and now there's snow. It's bipolar." Um, yes. Aren't crazy weather extremes a sign of climate change?

UPDATE: I note that the "Snow Sports" category is no longer available on Slog. I guess Slog has realized that instead of driving SUVs up to go snowboarding, we might want to be occupying ourselves with kissing our own asses goodbye.

Second in an ongoing series? (Again, via Grist):

Under pressure from Sierra Club activists who refused to sign off on the agency's latest transit plan unless it met certain conditions, Sound Transit just agreed to replace the parking garages in the plan with more flexible "station access funds"; agreed to fund a first-of-its-kind greenhouse-gas analysis of the project; and agreed in principle to leave a future rail line across 520 on the table.

Fresh from that major victory, the Sierra Club is trying to bring the same pressure to bear on the city, state, and federal governments.

In a letter earlier this month, the Sierra Club's Mike O'Brien and Tim Gould urged Gov. Christine Gregoire, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, and WSDOT and Federal Highway Administration officials to "correct [the] deficiencies" in the current, six-lane plan for replacing 520 during the upcoming environmental review. Among other things, the Sierra Club wants the plan to include a greenhouse-gas analysis; update 520's traffic models to account for changes in traffic patterns due to tolls; reserve two of the six lanes as "transit only," and build the bridge to accommodate light rail in the future, instead of retrofitting it later; and continue evaluating a "reasonable" four-lane alternative. "Past assumptions and practices concerning our transportation system will no longer serve us in a changing world," Gould and O'Brien's letter says. "We know that our future will bring us climate change impacts and rising energy costs, the only question is how rapidly. ... The objectives that all these alternatives seek to achieve must emphasize moving people and goods rather than vehicles."

It's unclear how receptive city and state leaders will be to the Sierra Club's request this time around. Because the Club's (extremely vocal) opposition helped sink last year's roads and transit ballot measure, Sound Transit came into this year's discussions about a possible 2008 ballot measure with a strong incentive to get them on board. This time around, though, there's no vote to give the Sierra Club political leverage over the state. Without that leverage, it's hard to see a cautious governor and a so-far-disinterested mayor pushing for measures (like the greenhouse gas analysis) that are sure to be controversial with voters outside the Puget Sound region—including those who might support Gregoire's road-happy opponent Dino Rossi.

According to a new report by the Sightline Institute, drivers in the Northwest are using less gasoline than at any point since 1966. In fact, per-capita gas consumption has dropped 11 percent in the last eight years, an average of nearly a gallon a week. Put another way, that's the equivalent of every driver in the Northwest taking five weeks off from driving last year. According to the report, people are driving less, using transit more, buying more fuel-efficient cars, and moving to compact, pedestrian-friendly communities.

But never mind. Obviously, driving is inevitable, people never change their behavior, adaptation is impossible, blah, blah, blah. I mean, why look at the evidence when you've already formed an opinion?

There’s a lot of talk about green design: why we need it, which developers are doing it, when elected officials set goals for it. This is all good. But under-recognized are the architects who actually figure out how to reduce a building’s environmental impact, while still creating structures that meet the traditional challenges of good design.

So three cheers to the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects. For the past ten years it has encouraged architecture firms to submit designs for a “What Makes It Green” gallery. This year AIA Seattle received 57 entries from around the Pacific Northwest. And last week, before about 250 industry bigwigs at a forum called Regeneration, the top ten submissions won awards for the first time.

“We wanted to inspire designers and policy makers to think about the future of the built environment in creating sustainable design,” say Lisa Richmond, Executive Director of AIA Seattle. The awards give architecture firms the recognition they deserve.

Here are two of the ten. The Bertschi School on north Capitol Hill, completed in April of last year, won the jury’s unanimous approval.

In addition groovy stuff like re-using rainwater and recycling building materials, the smart architects at The Miller|Hull Partnership were recognized for conserving energy.

The new project incorporates photovoltaic panels which will supply 6.1% of the school’s energy. … The gym has an integral natural ventilation scheme which uses fresh air coming in low at the roll up doors and the natural stack effect of hot air and vents high with operable louvers in the skylights tied to a thermostat. No CFCs or HCFCs are used in the mechanical units. The scale and proportion of the building enhance it’s ability to use daylight to illuminate the spaces. A daylighting study was used to optimize window and skylight size and placement for this use. Occupancy and daylight sensors are used to minimize the use of electric lighting.

Another winner--yet unbuilt--Portland City Storage will store 350 boats to reduce river contamination. It’s designed by MulvannyG2 Architecture and slated to be finished by 2010.

The project’s goal is to meet the USGBC LEED gold certification requirements and produce more power than it uses through alternative electrical power in the hopes of giving back to the Portland grid. The hybrid design will integrate a wind farm located at the top of the storage buildings and an innovative regenerative elevator system that feeds into the building system grid. … Using median average figures based on average wind speed for the Portland metropolitan area, the wind farm should produce approximately 800,000 KWH of usable system power output per year.

The full line-up of winners, including Seattle's Mosler Lofts by Mithun Architects, is over here.

...can we please ban the freaky-ass hairy plastic balls—made in China, from God only knows what—sitting on the floor at Walgreens?

Two weeks ago, in honor of its new "eco-awareness" campaign, a certain mega-department store mailed me—and presumably 100,000 other people—a tote bag for us to throw away.

(I'm sending mine to Joel Connelly, compliments of ECB.)

And yesterday, in honor of its new "eco-awareness" campaing, this certain mega-department store mailed me—and presumably 100,000 other people—a tiny tree.

By Grist guest writer Ryan Avent, who points out that the real failure of leadership isn't the failure to keep gas prices low, but the failure to give people alternatives to buying gas:

The few lucky metropolitan areas with transit systems have enjoyed record ridership as drivers gladly substitute away from gasoline. Elsewhere, there are no such options. Families trim spending to buy gas. They become less mobile to conserve fuel. If they can afford it, they purchase a hybrid (even though that also requires trips to the local gas station). And every product that has gasoline somewhere in its production process grows more expensive.

We are, as a nation, incredibly vulnerable to increases in gasoline prices, because, as a nation, we have done so little to diversify our transportation network. We placed all our bets on roads, cars, and gas. Sadly, those were losing bets, and we did practically nothing to hedge.

Oil prices will fluctuate in the future, but the long-term trend is likely to be up, and up, and up. If we hope to minimize the pain of future fuel price hikes, now is the time to invest in automobile alternatives. We can do this by shifting funds from new highway construction to new transit construction. We can do this through congestion pricing. And we can do this by keeping and increasing our pitifully low gasoline tax. Better to suck it up and pay those few extra cents now in order to enjoy a range of options tomorrow.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi released his "transportation choices" plan today.

Some of the highlights:

• Replacing the 520 bridge with an eight-lane floating bridge.

• Widening I-405 from Renton to Bellevue.

• Widening SR-509 to I-5.

• Build the Cross Base Highway in Pierce County.

• Building the North Spokane Freeway from I-90 to US-2.

• Opening car-pool lanes to all traffic during off-peak hours.

• Replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel.

He'd pay for all this and much more--a total of $15 billion over 30 years--in part by earmarking 40 percent of the sales tax on new and used vehicles for roads projects; that money (a total of $7.7 billion) is currently being spent on other state needs. He'd also dedicate money from Sound Transit's account for Eastside projects ($690 million) and anticipated toll revenue from the 520 bridge ($1.6 billion) to his massive road-building agenda. That money would have otherwise paid for transit.

Leaving aside the fact that Rossi would pay for most of his plan by cutting spending or raising taxes, the particulars of his proposal are just... delusional. Sure, discussing environmentally ruinous projects like the Cross Base Highway may have made sense a couple of years ago. But those discussions are over, and Rossi's side lost. Virtually every big Rossi proposal has been rejected--by voters (the unpopular Alaskan Way tunnel, which nearly 70 percent of Seattle voters opposed); the "roads and transit" Proposition 1, which included funding for 405 expansion and widening 509; 2002's Referendum 51, which would have funded the North Spokane Freeway); by legislative bodies (the Cross Base Highway, dropped from the roads and transit proposal and thrown into mediation in 2007); by state officials (the eight-lane 520 bridge, which the state department of transportation scuttled years ago) The carpool proposal, meanwhile, is something Tim Eyman has been pushing for years.

So to recap: Virtually every single project in Rossi's transportation plan has been rejected, in many cases because they were too expensive and would have had devastating environmental consequences. Whether it's because of spiking gas prices or increased environmental awareness, people want alternatives to driving alone. A "transportation choices plan" in which the only "choices" are roads is not going to win over Washington vote