What Are We Voting for Anyway?
It’s been hard for us to admit this, greenie that we are, but a vote for Prop. 1 is in order, at least from this Seattlest's perspective.
This has been hard because we're as environmentally friendly as they come. We ride our bike; compost; and we reduce, we reuse and leave the recycling as only as the last step of a long process. So the news we saw when we opened our e-mail this morning, that Sightline, our favorite green think tank, released a report saying that "every extra one-mile stretch of lane added to a congested highway will increase climate-warming CO2 emissions more than 100,000 tons over 50 years" was not good news for our previously decided selves.
After a cup of (fair trade, organic) coffee, this Seattlest came to the conclusion that he is still going to vote for Prop. 1. Why?
First of all, as we've said before, roads are going to be built anyway. This measure might fail, but roads are such a basic part of our lifestyle that voters saying no to a package of them isn't going to end their dominance. Or even begin the end of their dominance. There's too much money in the region that will be lost if roads aren’t built. The folks with money will see that these roads, and more, will get built.
Second, even the Sierra Club says that not all the roads in this package are bad. In fact, according to The Seattle Transit Blog, the vast majority of the spending in this measure will go to transit and "good roads" (as defined by The Sierra Club). Only 15 percent of the funding, they say, will go to "bad roads."
Third, being a one-issue voter is dumb. It means that you're often sacrificing your self-interest or the opportunity to make a better world in other ways in the name of one overarching issue. When it comes to RTID, the increased transit (50 miles of new light rail is only a part of what we'll get) will make not only our life better, it will also create high-paying jobs for people without college degrees and make it easier for folks forced out of Seattle's over-priced housing market to still earn a good living in the city and afford to live outside of it. Voting down RTID won't stop roads, but it is likely to kill any expansion of light rail in the near future and that is bad.
Finally, and Sightline points this out too, the GHG emissions numbers they came up with don't take into account the impact that increased transit options will have, the economic benefits of those new high-paying jobs and the ability to get to them, and the probability that GHG emissions in this country will be capped soon and the what that will do to GHG emissions.
In short, there's a lot of factors at play here, not just global warming. When you put it all together, voting against RTID next month just seems like shooting ourselves in the foot.
Picture taken by Slightynorth and placed, kindly, in the Seattlest flickr pool.
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