The Sightline Institute's Cascadia Scorecard was released last week and while British Columbia continues to show us how it's done on almost every environmental front (live longer, less energy use, less sprawl, more Canadian), the news ain't all bad for Washington. Gasoline consumption in our state declined again to 15.3 gallons a person a week, the lowest usage we've seen since 1967. Hybrids haven't really been in wide enough circulation to account for this, particularly since our downward trend stretches back to the late Eighties, but more fuel efficient vehicles have got to factor in there somewhere. Sightline is also reporting that we are actually driving less. more ›

Last night Sightline, the Seattle-based enviro-wonks, were hosting GreenDrinks, the networking event for the environmentally minded [more ›

NEW is history, say the policy pundits at Cascadia Scorecard. Call us the Sightline Institute instead. (Someone's been busy in the art department turning wonky into wowzers! Ha ha! No, seriously, the site looks hot.) more ›

Seattlest spent a couple years in Seattle without a car and it wasn't really that bad. Buying liquids at the store was the #1 problem. When you go to QFC and buy OJ and a half rack plus a few other odds and ends it doesn't sound like much, but it's a bitch to get home. We were the sole member of our household at that point, though, so not having a car shouldn't have been much of a problem. Alan Durning of Northwest Environment Watch is a family man with three kids so when he says he's going car-free it actually means something. more ›

For the second straight year, the Washington State Senate failed to vote on a billl that would require the phasing out of PBDEs. (We've written previously about PBDEs, which are accumulating steadily in breast milk, and are implicated in the impairment of childhood development. They're also reaching alarming levels in wildlife.) more ›

Dave Neiwert has an awesome article on resident orca populations in this week's Seattle Weekly in which he issues marching orders to the various people involved with trying to save local resident orca pods. Researchers, there needs to be more evidence that the Snake River dams are depriving the pods of the chinnok salmon that are their main food source. Get to it. Environmental action groups, the Endangered Species Act is a powerful weapon that can be leveraged in court against the dams that are killing those salmon. Chop chop. more ›

Recently, West Seattle mom (Volvo driver, PCC shopper) Karina Aldredge learned that there is strong scientific evidence that "levels of PBDEs are rising rapidly in the environment and in human bodies, particularly in North America where the use of PBDEs is the highest": more ›

Seattlest lived in Seattle for a couple of years without a car and it wasn't that bad. It's a city that's really conducive to walking, what with the hills and the rain and everything, and the bus system is fast and on-time. Oh, also the monorail's coming any day now. Ok, Seattlest lived in Seattle for a couple of years without a car and you know it sucked. We bought a stylish junker for ourselves a while back and have been destroying the environment and participating in global society as an aggressor in comfort and on-schedule ever since. more ›

Yesterday the Cascadia Scorecard blog commented on a P-I article from two days ago on the subject of Seattle's troubled urban forests. The article from the Post Intelligencer is quality stuff and you should copy the link for yourself for reading at another time. We know that stuff piles up and you eventually just end up deleting it all because who has time to read that many links, but at least you'll have made an effort. It's about invasive species outcompeting our native floura, a subject also well covered in the David Williams book. more ›

Ideological ostriches aside, the Pacific Northwest has good reason to sponsor its own research into climate change because (as the enviro-wonks over at Cascadia Scorecard note) we're warming up faster than the earth's rate of change as a whole, creating a possible marketing bonanza for casual, summery apparel providers. more ›

Our city's public transportation is well known to be crap. Some people want to fix it and some people think "public transportation" is an oxymoron. If we could just vote public trans into existence we'd all be beaming around the city by now; safely, quickly, cleanly, but we've gotten stuck a few times on the actual building part. You can't just decide that someone should do it. You have to actually build something. more ›

Apparently some residents of Seattle's South Park neighborhood feel that having a Superfund site in their backyard is enough, the rotten shirkers. They say it should disqualify them from helping cutting a few minutes off greater Seattle's freedom to jet about the country. Seattlest admits the discussion of Southwest's proposed move to Boeing Field hasn't exactly centered on environmental impacts so far. (But editorial boards tend to have their seats in lofty crags.) more ›

Yesterday Eric de Place held forth over pollution and urban design on the Cascadia Scorecard site. Examination of a 2000 Larry Frank study of Puget Sound vehicle emissions per household (which he doesn't link to and we can't find - C'mon Eric, it's the web) leads him in this direction: more ›

The much-fretted-over population of the southern resident orcas is on the rise, according to the Kitsap Sun and the fabulous Cascadia Scorecard blog. The gains are due mostly to five newborns in 2005 and seven since October. more ›

To growth critics, Mayor Greg Nickels' developer-friendly stances smack of a deal with the dark side. Yet he's also responsible for what's shaping up to be of the most embarrassing domestic-policy confrontations the Bush administration has seen. As NEW's blog Cascadia Scorecard puts it: more ›