Rep. Jay Inslee, a staunch backer of the alternative energy industry, is about to publish a book promoting companies that may help counter climate change. The Democratic congressman (WA, 1st) co-authored the book with a fellow from the Center for American Progress:
The book highlights companies and individuals, many of them in Washington state, that are working to make a difference. The authors said they wanted to include citizens in the process, not just policymakers.
The takeover of Longview Fibre by a Toronto property company represents the abrupt end of an era. It’s unclear how Cascadia will benefit.
Family-run Longview was bound to get caught up in the consolidation of the industry. The 80-year-old timber company was barely profitable and as recently as 2004 handled communications by fax and postal service instead of email. Acquisition by Brookfield Asset Management, one of the leading global investors in timberlands, will surely bring the operation up to date.
It’s far from clear how acquirer Brookfield Asset Management can afford to pay a hefty premium for Longview’s mills and forests. Lumber prices are falling and there will be pressure to cover the debt by cutting costs and selling more. This should concern officials in towns where the company dominates and anyone who believes in the sustainability of the region’s forests.
There’s no definitive explanation yet for the rock slide that blocked traffic between Vancouver and Whistler for seven hours on Sunday.
Surely the major widening of the Sea-to-Sky highway to handle traffic for the 2010 Olympics played a role, but construction isn’t officially getting the blame. It’s worth noting that radio Web sites provided information about the road’s conditions all day, while as late as 1:00 a.m. on Sunday night the Vancouver Sun’s Web site told readers to wait for the Monday morning newspaper.
The unexplained closure ought to renew interest in alternative forms of transportation to the Whistler area. Why not an expansion of the passenger ferry service planned between Vancouver and Squamish during the Olympics? Why not start a fast ferry from Seattle to Squamish? If the C$600 million or so cost of the highway’s reconstruction makes economic sense, can’t alternatives pencil out too?
Apparently a movement is afoot to replace the long row of cherry trees along Lake Washington with native plants that would more closely follow the original Olmsted Brothers’ design for the park. Danny Westneat refers to this as “botanical correctness.”
There are similar Olmsted designs in Vancouver and Portland. Any idea how they’ve handled updating these master-designed parklands that help make the cities so liveable?
Two things stand out about the latest The Seattle Times coverage of the political maneuvering on how to replace Seattle’s viaduct freeway:
Most surprising, you can almost sense the voice of the reporters in the story. Maybe it’s the influence of David Postman’s blog at the paper, but the tone allowed the reporters to explain some of the motivations at work without citing a source for each. I’d argue allowing the reporters’ expertise to come through the story is exactly what could keep people reading the state’s largest paper.
The other striking detail is the presumption of City Council President Nick Licata (who insists on a new elevated freeway) that he represents “grumpy Seattle,” which he claims forms a silent majority. If grumpy is defined as opposition to investment in long-term causes, that’s not true (see recent voter approval for higher property taxes). It seems that most of the city’s newcomers and people under the age of 40 are here because of the future. People want a more liveable city — made possible through improvements like an accessible waterfront — not to turn the clock back to the freeway-happy 1960s.
Portland is being transformed by thousands of small development projects resulting from an influx of young people to the still relatively affordable city. An article in The Oregonian argues that the small scale of most projects allows residents to collaborate on neighborhood plans and lessens the controversy of the city’s growth.
British Columbia is giving a troubled timber company a huge swath of forest on Vancouver Island, essentially allowing logging on public property in exchange for the economic benefit of helping keep the company in business.
Western Forest Products gets 69,000 acres — roughly 75 times the size of Stanley Park — that the company ceded to the government decades ago in exchange for access to other land. The move is expected to allow logging that will provide thousands of jobs along the province’s coast, though the jobs aren’t likely to outlast the trees.
Here’s another reason to invest in rail transit along the I-5 corridor from Vancouver to Portland: the environment.
Of course it will cost billions, but we should begin the process with the money we have amassed in recent years. If we don’t, we’ll never be able to afford it. Ticket revenue would defray a portion of the cost, and productivity gains will help offset the cost.
If we add tolls along the corridor based on the amount of car traffic, the economics of a rail alternative would improve even more.
British Columbia should open a business development office in India to support industry-led marketing there, according to a group commissioned by Premier Gordon Campbell.
In order to build ties beyond the export of natural resources, the province needs to boost its profile in India, the report said. B.C. could encouraging Indian movie and TV producers to include stories of the Indian diaspora in Canada, or pay them to showcase the province’s nature. It notes that both Air Canada and Air India are expected to launch service to India from Vancouver.
The great literary journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski died last week, just as coverage of the world by American media seemed to take more steps toward a similar fate.
Kapuscinski is best known for decades of reportage about Latin America and Africa, including the classics The Soccer War and The Shadow of the Sun. I re-read him at the end of a week that saw the Boston Globe shutter its last foreign bureaus and even the Los Angeles Times make noises about putting its focus on local coverage.
One common prescription for troubled newspapers is to save money by relying on newswires for international coverage. But that robs communities of their perspective on the world and means fewer voices covering critical issues. The number of U.S. correspondents abroad fell to 249 last year, down 12 percent over six years. Sending reporters occasionally to cover individual stories, as the Globe’s editor promises, isn’t enough. As someone who reported in Japan for several years, I know you can’t gain perspective — let alone language skills and customs — by parachuting in for a particular story.
What does this trend mean for Cascadia? That we’re in danger of less understanding just when we need it most. Relying on national East Coast media gives us constant detailed coverage of Israel-Palestine instead of Korea, for example. Even regional papers should should be covering our ties to business in Asia, fundamentalism in Southeast Asia and the impact of political changes in Latin America. Troops from the region are fighting in Afghanistan, but there’s relatively little coverage. The answer isn’t dressing up one-off stories as if they were part of continuing coverage.
Kapuscinski found the truth about events, in a way that’s only possible because he had the luxury of time. He gave voice to the powerless and brought otherwise obscure events to a global audience. As times — and business models — change, he remains an inspiration.