Monthly News Archive:
June 2007
Table of Contents:
- Summer Break
- Cascadia Scorecard: Easing Off the Gas?
- Energy bill would raise mpg standards about 40% by 2020
- How they drew lines in the Northwest's forests
- Highway tolls are inevitable in metro Puget Sound
- Bird feeding precautions urged in Washington
- Fort Lewis, Ecology reach deal
- Washington State doubles funding to protect public lands
- Farmers-market food costs less, class finds
Summer Break
Our editor here at Earth Share is heading out of town on vacation for the next few weeks. Alas, new environmental news stories, volunteer opportunities, and upcoming events will return on Wednesday, July 11.
Happy July 4 from the Earth Share staff, get out and enjoy the sunshine!
...Read the full story
June 15, 2007
Add Comments...Cascadia Scorecard: Easing Off the Gas?
One of the most striking findings from this year’s Cascadia Scorecard (just released today, by the way) is that northwesterners are using less gasoline. In fact, per person gas consumption on the Northwest’s roads and highways has fallen by nearly a tenth since the late 1990s.
To put the recent declines in context: cutting gas consumption by nearly a tenth is equivalent to each driver taking a one-month holiday from driving each year.
At this point, the average resident of the US Northwest uses less gas than at any time since 1967.
Of course, the region’s population ...Read the full story
Energy bill would raise mpg standards about 40% by 2020
WASHINGTON -- As motorists face near-record gasoline prices, the Senate took up an energy bill Tuesday that would raise vehicle fuel-economy standards for the first time in nearly 20 years and make oil-industry price gouging a federal crime.
Democratic leaders in both the Senate and House said they want broad energy legislation passed before the Fourth of July congressional recess, hoping to dampen growing voter anger over paying well above $3 a gallon at gasoline pumps across the country.
The Senate bill would require automakers to boost their fuel...Read the full story
How they drew lines in the Northwest's forests
An environmental historian traces the century-long evolution of a government-managed patchwork in the Cascades. In the end, designating wilderness areas was as much about cutting down trees as preserving them.
Wilderness boundaries matter because the process of defining them is a distinctly human endeavor that deeply shapes — and is shaped by — our history. This is true for all the borders, walls, fences, frontiers, lines, and boundaries that humans impose on the landscape. Referring to Robert Frost's poem, "Mending Wall," legal scholar Eric Freyfogle suggests an additional...Read the full story
Highway tolls are inevitable in metro Puget Sound
King County Executive Ron Sims has his own inconvenient truth to convey: Tolls are inevitable on all major Seattle-area freeways. And he already has a plan for us to discuss.
A report created at the direction of King County Executive Ron Sims recommends turning all major freeways and limited access highways in metropolitan Puget Sound into toll roads. Only buses and emergency vehicles would not have to pay.
Called "transportation improvement fees," or TIFs, these round-the-clock tolls, collected electronically, would generate $24 billion over 20 yea...Read the full story
Bird feeding precautions urged in Washington
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- Reports of sick or dead birds at backyard feeders in Washington have prompted the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to recommend that people temporarily stop bird feeding or take extra steps to keep their feeders clean.
People should stop backyard bird feeding for at least a few weeks, if not for the remainder of the summer, to encourage birds to disperse and forage naturally, department veterinarian Kristin Mansfield advised.
Laboratory analysis of bird carcasses has confirmed salmonellosis, a common and usually fatal bir...Read the full story
Fort Lewis, Ecology reach deal
Post will take steps to keep hazardous wastes from hitting Puget Sound
Fort Lewis officials promised Wednesday to help protect Puget Sound by intercepting hazardous wastes before they enter the post’s sewage treatment plant.
The agreement between the Army and the state Department of Ecology follows a state investigation that began about a year ago after a contractor reported a problem.
The state’s findings were buttressed by a federal whistle-blower complaint that oil and other contaminants were spilling into the Sound, said K Seiler, an Ecology Depart...Read the full story
Washington State doubles funding to protect public lands
FEDERAL WAY -- West of the freeway, past the fast-food pit stops, the vast shopping mall parking lots and manicured cul-de-sacs, a narrow dirt road peels off the blacktop into a 25-acre swath of unkempt ferns, big leaf maples and evergreens that somehow escaped the suburban expansion that continues to put the squeeze on most of Western Washington.
Step out of the car and into air that feels about 15 degrees cooler in the shade under the dense canopy above the winding path that wraps along the ravine and you'll hear songbirds (and an occasional jet) and smel...Read the full story
Farmers-market food costs less, class finds
Ask shoppers laden with cherries, bok choy and asparagus what compels them to visit farmers markets and most cite live music, flowers, the smell of good things pulled from the earth or out of the oven, and the chance to support local farmers.
Rarely does anyone mention the prices. Which got Stacey Jones to wondering why.
Last month, the economics professor and her business-statistics class at Seattle University compared prices for organic produce at the Broadway Farmers Market with that sold at the local QFC supermarket and Madison Market, one of se...Read the full story