Serving Franklin County, WA
Serving Franklin County, WA
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Scientific experts are prone to bias, overestimate their certainty and government systems are not good at adjusting to new science. Those admonitions come from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a statement addressing the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case of Charles C. McCrory v. Alabama. In the piece, Sotomayor asks what courts should do when faced with convictions “resting on science that has now been wholly discredited?” The question offer lessons for how g...
The legislative session is over, and it had the potential to be very positive for salmon recovery. There was bipartisan support for habitat restoration. Legislators also had a huge amount of money to allocate because the tax on CO2 emissions generated far more money than anticipated. Despite that, the Legislature failed to make significant progress on salmon. It is one more wasted opportunity to protect an iconic state species. The most glaring example of the failure is in...
Washington’s State Building Code Council has once again adopted rules designed to eliminate natural gas energy for new residential and commercial construction. The original proposal was modified when a similar regulation adopted by the city of Berkeley, Calif., was overturned by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Like the previous version, the new rules were pushed through the process without providing adequate information about the costs of the new regulations. For exam...
By virtually all key metrics, Washington’s environmental policies are failing. And yet, when was the last time politicians, environmental activists or the media expressed concern about policy failures? Speeches and news stories are filled with demands that we save the planet, describing threats to salmon, orca, forests and the climate. And yet, there is a remarkable lack of curiosity when real-world efforts fail to address those problems. One common thread is that e...
Relying on increased wind and solar is likely to increase electricity costs for residents in Washington and Idaho, and make electricity less reliable. Advocates of wind and solar frequently point to is the claim that the fuel is “free.” That claim ignores the extremely high up-front cost of those energy sources. To account for that, energy analysts create a “levelized cost of energy” to compare between energy that has low costs up-front but has ongoing costs for the fuel ...
On Earth Day this year, I will be planting two trees in a local park. This is not a political act. And yet, there are many who will see it that way because it occurs on a day politicians and environmental activists – especially on the left – have appropriated for political purposes. By filtering environmental stewardship though the distorting lens of politics, we are losing the ability to enjoy the beautiful creation around us, making it more difficult to take actions tha...
Next year, one of the state’s newly adopted climate policies, the low-carbon fuel standard, will take effect in our state. The legislation requires companies to blend biofuels or fund charging stations for electric vehicles. Although it has increased gas prices in California and Oregon, the governor and environmental activists claim it would cost Washington drivers nothing, while the prime sponsor testified it would cost no more than 2 cents per gallon. “Don’t let anyon...
For the people living in the Lewis-Clark Valley on the Snake River, Gov. Jay Inslee's report on destroying four dams tries to offer some solace. After a "thorough review of relevant economic reports and conversations with experts," the report's authors have some ideas about how to offset the serious harm that would be done to the community. Reading the vague assurances from the report reminded me of another community hit by the harmful economic impacts of environmental...
The state wolf population saw a significant increase, growing by 16% in 2021 according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. The number of packs grew to 23 from 29 in 2020, and the number of breeding pairs increased from 16 to 19. The consistent growth of the wolf population is good news and is the result of hard work of staff, the Wolf Advisory Group and Northeast Washington ranchers, who have taken steps to reduce wolf attacks. These good numbers contradict the...
With so much rhetoric about moving the state away from gas-powered vehicles to reduce CO2 emissions, one of the strangest claims made during the legislative session was that there was no increase in "gas taxes." Various versions of this claim appeared.At best, it is misleading, but in many cases it is false. The transportation package specifically relies on an increase in taxes on gasoline as legislative documents and the Department of Ecology admit. The $17 billion...