Cascadia Scorecard Weblog

Toxic (Press) Releases

Good news about pollution?  The US EPA says so.  This Washington Post story makes it seem like the US made great strides in reducing toxic emissions in 2004.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that chemical pollution released into the environment fell more than 4 percent from 2003 to 2004...The agency said releases of dioxin and dioxin compounds fell 58 percent; mercury and mercury compounds were cut 16 percent; and PCBs went down 92 percent. [Emphasis added.]

Now, the fall in dioxins in particular seemed like pretty big news.  But it also struck me as a bit suspicious.  So I looked into the numbers a bit. 

The EPA's Toxics Release Inventory Explorer is pretty simple to use, so it didn't take long to zero in on why, exactly, dioxin emissions fell so much. The basic scoop -- it's not so much that dioxin emissions fell in 2004, as that they spiked in 2003.  The nation's dioxin emissions (at least, those captured by the TRI) in 2004 were comparable to levels from 2000 through 2002.  The 58 percent "decline" was just relative to 2003, which was abnormally high.

Then the question becomes -- what happened in 2003?  Apparently, there was a single wood-preserving facility in Lousiana that was responsible for the 2003 spike.  (I don't know for sure, but I'd guess they landfilled a bunch of contaminated waste.)

So the national "good news" story about dioxins in 2004--a 58 percent decline in releases--turns out to be, if anything, a bad news story about 2003. Or, more properly, it's an artifact of the way the data are reported:  the dioxin "released" in 2003 was likely just transferred from one place to another, in a way that triggered EPA's reporting requirements.

The thing is, it took just a few minutes to figure out that the EPA's press release was, at least in part, full of hot air.  Obviously, reporters are under tremendous pressure to churn out stories.  But I do wish that basic fact-checking was a higher priority for them.  Bum facts passed off as "good news" should be recognized for what they are:  a form of toxic information pollution.

Closer to home, the news seems a little bit better for dioxin trends.  In Washington, Oregon, and Idaho combined, releases to air, water, and land have fallen from 163 grams in 2000 to 46 grams in 2004.  "Off-site disposal" -- transfers for storage or treatment -- has climbed a bit, though.  On net, 2004's total dioxin releases were a bit higher than 2002 and 2003, but have fallen by about a quarter since 2000.  And the three states combined now account for about 2 tenths of one percent of national dioxin emissions, as measured by TRI data.

That said, there are some facilities that escape TRI reporting requirements, and much of the dioxin releases from the region are now from activities such as backyard trash burning.  But the numbers, for the northwest at least, do seem modestly promising.

Sturgeon's General Warning

Sounds as though salmon aren't the only Columbia River fish in trouble:

A team of researchers that examined 174 sturgeon caught by commercial and tribal fishermen found male and immature females tricked by chemicals into thinking they are full of estrogen, a female hormone with feminizing effects. Male fish tainted with a cocktail of compounds including mercury and a byproduct of the banned pesticide DDT showed depressed testosterone levels, which could keep them from maturing enough to spawn.

A few sturgeon even had bizarre combinations of male and female sexual organs. [Emphasis added.]

All I have to say to that is:  eewww.  If that doesn't serve as a wakeup call about gender-bending pollutants, I'm not sure what will.

Say It Ain't So, Joe

I picked up a copy of the March issue of Seattle Magazine the other day, and happened across an article (print only, I'm afraid) by the estimable Joe Follansbee.  The article claims that Seattle suffers from an inferiority complex:  whenever Seattle residents compare their home town with Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, BC, they always decide that Seattle comes up short. Follansbee argues that Seattle should just learn to love itself just as it is, rather than falling victim to sibling rivalry.

Interesting enough idea.  But there's one thing that sticks in my craw:  in trying to puncture the reputation of neighboring cities, Follansbee claims that Portland has an unusally low number of children, compared with its neighboring metropolises:

Portland's downtown Pearl District, hailed as the embodiment of "smart growth"...had only three more children living there in 2000 than in 1990, according to demographers.  What's "smart" about a city without children?

Do we [i.e., Seattle] want to be like Portland, childless and..."proper"?

Enough already! This factoid--that Portland is devoid of tykes--is simply false. It doesn't even pass the 5 minute Google test; that is, it takes less than five minutes of web searching to see that it doesn't hold water.  And yet, it's a theme I hear again and again in discussions of Portland and smart growth generally.

It's high time to roast this chestnut.

As it turns out, what's true for Portland's Pearl District -- that there aren't many children -- doesn't hold true for the rest of Portland.  Take a look at the Census Bureau's Portland "quick facts." As of the last Census count, 21.1 percent of the city's residents were children under the age of 18, compared with 24.7 for Oregon as a whole. 

So the city does have fewer children than the state as a whole, by 3.6 percentage points.  But take a look at the Seattle "quick facts."  Minors account for just 15.6 percent of the city's population.  In comparison, Portland is teeming with kids -- 40 percent more, measured per capita, than in Seattle.  And the gap between Seattle and the whole of Washington is 10 percentage points -- nearly 3 times wider than the gap between Portland and Oregon.

So it makes absolutely no sense -- none -- to ask whether Seattle wants to be "childless" like Portland.

Admittedly, Portland has fewer kids than many US cities.  But it's pretty much on par with Denver and Minneapolis, has a few more kids per capita than Pittsburgh, and far more than San Francisco (where under-18-year-olds are just 14.5 percent of the population).  In Vancouver, BC -- often held up as an exemplar of family-friendly urbanity -- children under 18 made up only 15.5 16.6 percent of the population in 2001. 

Diving into the Vancouver numbers a bit deeper, it seems that there's no major part of Vancouver -- not downtown, not the west side, not even the semi-suburban south end -- that has a kids-to-population ratio that's as high as in Portland.  And the kid-to-population gap between Vancouver and the whole of BC is wider than for Portland and the whole of Oregon.  Vancouver's denser neighborhoods have a reputation for having lots of kids, and in large part they do -- but only because they have lots of people, period.  As a share of the population, though, Portland has far more kids than "kid-friendly" Vancouver.

I'm sure this post won't put an end to the urban legend of Portland's childlessness (although it may perpetuate the impression that there aren't many kids in the Northwest's other major cities).  But I hope it helps.

On a deeper level, I'm puzzled by all the hand-wringing about childless cities.  As of the last census, families with children comprised less than one in three Northwest households.  And the number of childless households is growing for good reasons.  We're having kids later in life, and fewer of them -- largely because of better educational and job opportunities for women.  Plus we're living longer, so seniors are making up a far larger share of the population than they used to.  For the large and growing number of childless households, urban living has a strong appeal -- they're the ones who appear to be flocking to housing in dense urban centers.  So to the extent that the trends towards "childless cities" is real, it's largely driven by demographic changes that we'd be foolish to want to reverse.

What do the angst-ridden commentators lamenting the lack of children downtown want people to do? Have kids even if they'd prefer not to? Die before they get a chance to down-nest?  Move their families to urban condos in order to save some single-family detached houses for hipsters?  Help me out here, folks.

Hybrid Whiplash

What to make of this news from the Eugene, OR Register-Guard?

In a report that's sure to be controversial, CNW Marketing Research of Bandon concludes... that, even though hybrid cars use less fuel, they require more energy - and are therefore worse for the environment - than conventional cars because their design and manufacture are more complex and the costs of disposal or recycling are higher for their batteries, electric motors and other specialized components. [Emphasis added.]

Hybrids use more energy than regular cars? Is this real, or just pro-SUV propaganda?

Now, just to be clear, I haven't reviewed the study myself. But the online materials that's CNW's made publicly available seem serious & fair-minded -- not like a cheap hit-job on hybrids, but rather a sober analysis that reaches some unexpected and counterintuitive conclusions.

That said, I think there's very good reason not to take the study too seriously. Not yet -- and not until the authors can answer some tough questions about what their study implies.

CNW does deserve credit for looking at energy costs over a vehicle's entire life cycle--not just what it consumes on the road, but also what it costs to manufacture, distribute, repair, and dispose of a car. But some of their numbers seem, to put it mildly, a little hard to believe.

According to the study's methods, a Honda Civic (not a hybrid, but a regular model) uses only about 30 percent of its life-cycle energy as gasoline. (See here for the chart.) About 10 percent each go to parts, manufacturing, repair, dissassembly, and replacement; and 20 percent go to other energy costs.

Let's say that's reasonably representative of other models -- that is, gasoline accounts for only about 30 percent or thereabouts of the life-cycle energy costs of owning and operating the average car or light truck. But according to the US Energy Information Administration, gasoline consumption accounts for 17 percent of total energy consumption in the US (see here for total consumption, and here for total gasoline). So that would imply that car manufacture, repair, recycling and other energy costs account about 40 percent of the total US energy supply.

Forty percent? That's just plain wrong. The entire US industrial sector only consumes 33 percent of the nation's energy. So the subset devoted to cars has to consume only a fraction of that.

Just so, it seems downright implausible that cars are responsible for some 57 percent of the nation's total energy use (17 percent for gasoline, 40 percent for manufacture, repair, recycling, etc.). Cars use a lot of energy, to be sure -- but I simply can't believe it's that much.

So that means either: the Honda Civic is a vastly atypical car, and uses substantially more manufacturing energy than most other cars; that I've misread the (limited) available data from CNW; or that the study's authors have some explaining to do if they're going to convince me that I should pay much attention to their results.

A Frank Look at Chinook

For those of you following the lamentable state of the Klamath River fisheries, there's a first-rate op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Billy Frank Jr., chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. He writes:

We expect the PFMC to take the only action it can to protect the salmon: reduce harvest. After all, cutting harvest has been the major response to declining salmon runs for the past 20 years. We accept that burden year after year with the hope that some day habitat -- the Big H -- will be addressed with the same conviction that we have shown in reducing harvests.

We are not in this mess because of harvest. Our harvest management process works.

The upshot, as you can probably guess, is that the only way to ensure the salmon will persist in the Northwest is to address the thorny and issues that degrade salmon habitat. Without suitable habitat the salmon runs dry up and fishermen bear the economic brunt of decisions that were made literally and figuratively upstream from them. A fair approach would take a hard look at irrigation, dams, development, and all the other contentious problems that affect salmon habitat--"the big H." Or as Frank puts it:

Salmon recovery begins and ends with the Big H.

Tidepool Editor's Pick: Comeback for the Klamath?

Three strong and informative pieces on Oregon’s battered Klamath River ran in Sunday’s papers. All of them, especially an article in the Washington Post, are worth reading.

Both the Oregonian and the San Francisco Chronicle frame their stories around the economic impacts of the Klamath situation: How the depleted and polluted river -- which the Chronicle says may be the West Coast’s sickest -- has offered up a record low of chinook this year, which could lead to a ban on fishing.

Last week, hundreds of fishermen from Santa Rosa, California to Astoria, Oregon protested the proposed ban. Oregon congressman David Wu threatened to dump smelly salmon carcasses on the steps of federal agencies in Seattle, and Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski tabled an emergency summit on the situation. He plans to seek disaster aid for the fishermen if the ban goes through (and shore up support as he faces an increasingly difficult reelection fight). The economic cost for Oregon alone could total $40 million.

The Washington Post approaches the story from a hopeful angle. "For the first time in the nearly eight decades since the river was dammed, Indians and commercial fishermen, environmentalists and federal fish scientists agree that there are sound reasons to believe in the comeback of a river that once supported the third largest salmon runs on the West Coast."

Amidst the fishing commotion, as the Post explains, two decisions came down from the federal government last week that bode well for the future of the Klamath and all who depend on it. In crisis lies opportunity, as it’s said.

Finally, an interesting bit of trivia about the Klamath:

In 2002, the Post reports, Karl Rove was instrumental in making sure the river irrigated drought-stricken crops, which led to low flows, which led to massive fish kills, disease and low spawning, which means less chinook for everyone now.

Former Tidepool publisher Seth Zuckerman provides useful insight into the Klamath’s woes here.

P.S. - Tidepool.org is Northwest Environment Watch's daily online news service. Sign up here.

Shocker: Global Warming Bad For Skiing

A new study from researchers at Oregon State University, showing that warming trends are likely to have significant effects on snowpack. (Good articles in the Seattle Times and the Oregonian.) The Northwest's coastal mountains are especially sensitive to climate change because temperatures frequently hover near freezing--so even slight warming can drastically reduce the amount of snow that accumulates. (For localized details, click on the image at right, from the Seattle Times.)

By 2040, if warming trends continue as predicted:

• About 3,600 square miles of low-elevation terrain usually covered by snow during the winter would be dominated by rainfall.
• Nearly 22 percent of the snow-covered areas of the Oregon Cascades and 12.5 percent of the snow areas of the Washington Cascades would shift to a rain-dominated winter climate.
• More than 60 percent of the Olympic Range's snow-covered area would have rain-dominated winters.

The OSU findings aren't exactly revolutionary, but they are more evidence that the Northwest has particular reason to be concerned about the impacts of climate change. And the snowpack affects a lot more important aspects of life in the region than just skiing: salmon run, irrigated farms, residential water supplies, and so on.

(During last year's lousy winter, when my skis stayed closet-bound, I blogged about this subject a bit.)

Searching for Salmon in the Wrong Places

  OK, let’s consider just how absurd this predicament is. People are terrestrial creatures. We like to eat salmon, which spend most of their lives in the ocean. Fortunately, salmon have a habit -- nay, an instinct -- of returning to fresh water to spawn. They do this every year. Used to be, people would wait for them in rivers and estuaries, and catch them there, close to home.

But then -- perhaps to jump the queue and get ahead of the crowd unfurling its nets in rivers and bays -- some fishermen started to troll for salmon in the offshore waters. The salmon still had every intention of swimming into our rivers where they are easier to catch. But instead, trollers began baiting their gear and enticing salmon to take their hooks at sea.

As long as salmon runs are abundant, this impatient practice can be written off as one of those idiosyncrasies of our species, yet another method we have devised to needlessly burn diesel fuel. "Technology is needed not to beat the fish, but to beat other fishermen," wrote Richard Manning in Salmon Nation. "The fish would still come back... if we would wait."

But when certain stocks of salmon start to weaken, this reliance on ocean trolling shows its weakness as well. This week, the Pacific Fishery Management Council is weighing its options in the face of a predicted low run of Klamath River chinook. Biologists estimate that 29,000 salmon would make it to the mouth of the Klamath in the absence of any fishing -- already well below the 35,000 minimum that fisheries managers have set as an annual goal to reach the spawning grounds.

At sea, those scarce Klamath-bound fish mingle with other chinook headed for rivers with more abundant runs -- such as the Sacramento, where runs have rebuilt over the last decade. Regulators fear that trollers would hook Klamath fish among their catch, a chinook that would be indistinguishable on deck from a fish headed for the Sacramento, Eel, or Rogue river.

So the council is entertaining a proposal to nix this year’s salmon fishing season along 700 miles of coastline, from Point Sur, near Monterey, California, north into Oregon. Their dilemma has set off a round of finger-pointing, with trollers blaming water diversions from the Klamath for the salmon’s woes on that river, and hence for the possible closure of the fishery. No doubt, in the long term, the water regime on the Klamath needs to change.

But in the meantime, maybe we should change how we fish. Ocean trolling is inherently indiscriminate. As long as some salmon populations are less robust than others, either some stocks will be overfished or many will go under-caught. Instead, if fishing boats sought salmon at the mouths of the rivers they’re returning to, there’d be a much smaller risk of catching a fish from any other run. In California, commercial fishing inside the Golden Gate, at the mouth of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River, has been illegal since 1957. The present situation might offer a reason to move forward by turning back the clock half a century.

Tax-deductible Wildlife

Here's an interesting solution to a problem I blogged about a few weeks ago: states like Oregon are losing money to fund wildlife biology and habitat management. Traditionally, these activities have been funded by various hunting and fishing fees; and as the rod and gun sports have waned in popularity their revenue has dried up too. That leaves states less able to pursue wildlife and biological research--not to mention basic land and water conservation--which are hugely important for protecting natural resources.

The solution, in Oregon at least, is to allow tax payers to check a box on their state income tax forms and then make a tax-deductible contribution to non-game wildlife conservation. As far as I can tell from the Oregonian article, the contribution is above and beyond whatever taxes an individual owes. Still, it seems like a good way to encourage wildlife aficionados to make a voluntary contribution to Oregon's natural heritage. This sort of revenue-generation must certainly be more popular than access fees like parking at USFS trailheads and state parks--fees that have proved less than popular in the Northwest.

I'm intrigued by this idea, partly because the revenue is important and partly because it shifts the funding away from hunting and fishing and toward wildlife watching. I imagine the funding shift will also be reflected in the research and conservation priorities that the money pays for. Too bad it can't happen in Washington (because there's no state income tax and hence no form with a handy box to check).

Anyone else know of similar stuff happening elsewhere? 

UPDATE: And by the Oregonian, of course, I meant the Salem Statesman-Journal. Of course. Here's the article. (Thanks, Grace.)

Drivers Wanted

There's been a bunch of comment in the blogosphere today about hiking gas taxes -- with the rough consensus that it's ok environmental policy, tough on the poor, and politically risky (though perhaps not quite as unthinkable as it once was). 

So it's interesting to note that Oregon -- often considered a policy innovator among US states -- is in the middle of an experiment that could eventually lead to a repeal of the state gas tax.

Oregon's transportation department is recruiting volunteers to test a system that would charge people based on how far they drive, not on how much gas they use. The trial will test two rate structures -- some participants will pay a flat rate of 1.2 cents per mile, while others will pay a variable rate depending on whether they're driving during rush hour; a control group would continue to pay normal gas taxes. (See here for details, or if you're interested in volunteering.)

The state is interested in this sort of approach for a bunch of reasons, but if I read things correctly, they're mostly worried that gas tax revenues are poised to fall, perhaps significantly, over the upcoming years.

Here's the issue: if gas prices remain relatively high, or keep rising over time, economists project a gradual per-capita decline in gas consumption, as people replace their cars with more efficient ones. And if cars keep getting more and more fuel efficient, then total gas revenues could actually fall, even as the demands on the road network increase. Ultimately, states may be forced to choose between continual gas tax hikes and persistent funding shortfalls for roads -- both of which are bound to make lots of people unhappy. Under a pay-by-the-mile system, however, transportation funding would be keyed to how much people actually drive -- so the state would still keep up its funding no matter how efficient the cars get.

Obviously, shifting from gas taxes to mileage-based taxes has some signficant downsides. First, the gas tax does create a slight incentive for fuel-efficient cars; getting rid of it could put Hummers on a more even footing with hybrids. And second, it's not entirely clear that a falloff in highway funding would be a bad thing. Obviously, most drivers want the roads maintained in good working order; but, in my mind at least, a lot of highway spending seems like it's pretty wasteful.

That said, we've been pretty interested in the pay by the mile idea, despite the potential downsides. Fully developed, the technology could facilitate two innovations that could be far more powerful at promoting fuel conservation than the exisiting gas tax. First, the same technology used to track mileage for taxing purposes could also be used for a more comprehensive congestion pricing system -- which could simultaneously clear up congestion, reduce driving, and promote bus ridership by keeping streets and highways flowing. And second, it could pave the way for Pay-As-You-Drive car insurance, which would have the same effect on driving overall as roughly doubling the cost of gas. 

If you want to get really fancy, you could even fine tune the pay-by-the-mile taxes, to increase fees for cars with the worst pollution or CO2 emissions, the most road space (SUVs require longer stopping distances, and tend to use up a little more space on streets and highways), or the worst safety records.

Of course, pay-by-the-mile taxes suffer from one huge drawback: they're much more complicated than gas taxes, not just because they require special technology but also because a properly "fine tuned" system -- one that accounts for all the different externalities of driving, ranging from pollution to congestion -- could be pretty incomprehensible to the average driver. And mileage-based taxes would be vulnerable to all sorts of political shenanigans, as car manufacturers would jockey for special exemptions or rates for certain kinds of vehicles. All of which means that, even though I'm very excited by the tests, I'm not yet ready to support the idea -- and certainly not until we see how drivers really react to the system.

The Odd Decouple

This is good news: according to NW Current, more and more utilities are becoming interested in "decoupling" -- which could be the single most cost-effective step I've heard of for encouraging conservation.

Here's how decoupling works.  Utility rates are pretty tightly regulated:  rate structures are dictated by utility commissions and the like.  Traditionally, rate structures link a utility's profits to its sales:  the more a utility sells, the greater its profits.  But that creates a huge disincentive for conservation: if utilities get people to cut their consumption, they cut into their own earnings.  In fact, a private utility that tries to get its customers to use gas more efficiently could actually run the risk of a shareholder lawsuit.

Under decoupling, though, utility rates are structured so that a utility's profit margins can rise when consumption falls.  (In other words, a utility's earnings are "decoupled" from its gross sales.)  This simple change can make it profitable for utilities to promote conservation.  And as a result, decoupling aligns the utility's incentives with the incentives of its customers:  everyone has an incentive to use energy more efficiently.  Northwest Natural, an Oregon gas company, has been operating under a decoupled rate structure since 2002.  One result -- it's shifted staff from marketing (trying to get people to buy more gas) to customer service.  Whee!

Decoupling is one of those nifty little ideas with a huge potential payoff for a seemingly insignificant change.  It doesn't take much to make decoupling a reality -- it relies on a simple alteration to the rules, rather than regulatory strictures or costly upgrades to technology.  So it's nice to see it catching on. 

Back From The Dead

Just as we suspected, Oregon's Measure 37 -- a law that requires state and local governments to compensate landowners for rules that reduce property values -- wasn't actually dead.  The state Supreme court just resuscitated it, after a lower court had struck it down last fall.

The Oregonian has more details and context.

Nativity Scene

Perhaps everyone else knew this, but I certainly didn't: most residents of the northwest US were born outside the state where they now live.  Roughly 53 percent of folks who live in Idaho and Washington, and 55 percent in Oregon, are transplants, born either in another state or country.  (For the record, I'm a wanderer too, born and raised on the east coast.)

For the most part, in-migrants came from other parts of the US, rather than overseas.  As of 2000, only 1 in 20 residents of Idaho, 1 in 12 residents of Oregon, and 1 in 10 Washingtonians were foreign-born. The rest of us came from other parts of the US.  (Of course, there's some overlap here; some folks who were born in, say, Washington now live in Oregon. So there may be quite a few people who didn't move far -- but the Census site where we got these numbers couldn't tell us specifics.) 

British Columbia, on the other hand, has a substantial population of international in-migrants: 1 in 4 residents of the province were born in another country, mostly in Europe or Asia.

I have no larger point here -- other than a bit of surprise that, for a place that seems to have inspired genuine loyalty among its inhabitants, our roots may be a bit shallower than I'd thought.

Pipe bombs

Another plot to cripple the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was foiled recently, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer (via Reuters). A Montana judge gets credit for apprehending the plotter, in Idaho, although Oregon and Washington are the main consumers of oil from Alaskan oil.

A year ago, we released the 2005 Cascadia Scorecard, which detailed the profound vulnerability of Cascadia's energy infrastructure (pdf), including the Trans-Alaska pipe.

The latest plot--which involved blowing up propane trucks along the pipeline, among other acts of sabotage elsewhere--doesn't seem to have been as far along as one in 1999 or one in late 2003. (Both described here (pdf), on pages 30-31.)

The larger story, of course, is that Cascadian officials have done little to secure its energy system in the past year. Pending energy security measures in Washington and Oregon may be bright spots on the horizon.

Polling Portland on Growth

A new poll of residents in Portland's metro region suggests that Oregon's contentious growth management policies are, on balance, acceptable to most folks.

Most Portland-area residents want to preserve farms and forests by squeezing into cities, use cars less than they do now and invest in the quality of water and air.

But Oregonians want their planning and their property rights, too. While more than three-quarters said land regulations protect quality of life and home values, nearly half also said rules hurt too many private property owners.

I don't have much to add here, but there's a bit more about the survey results in the full article by the Oregonian.

Food vs. Shelter: The Planning Debate

In the debate over growth management, it's easy for the parties to forget that it’s never us against them, it's us against us. For just one example, planners must strike a balance between our needs for food (in the form of nearby farmland) and shelter (in the form of decent housing for a growing population). And promoting density, while important in many respects, is not the whole answer to problems of growth.

Oregon's land-use task force is beginning to study what the state’s citizens want, and The Oregonian is running a good series on planning that addresses the balance between desirable housing and fertile farmland. The articles offer some goods insights and they got me thinking.

Density done wrong does no one any good. Urban village development (and their traditional counterparts) must attract buyers, not be foisted on them. A subdivision crammed with more houses is not a real solution. It’s still auto-dependent and segregates homes from shops and services. It adheres to the letter of planning for density, but ignores the spirit—density ought to empower residents with choices, not just wedge people together. Intelligent planning is required to build attractive homes that also offer privacy and a sense of space, as well as easy access to amenities. The point of smart planning should not to force people into the city, but to create more good places there for those who want it.

Even with good density alternatives, some people may still want a house with a big yard. I think that it’s important to offer a mix of housing types, but these larger more distant lots come with all sorts of hidden costs to society: higher costs to supply public services like water, sewer, and emergency response farther out—not to mention negative externalities like air pollution, road-building, and possible watershed deterioration from the added impervious surface. And it’s also important, as The Oregonian article notes, that we preserve farmland and other green places.

And space is not the only reason people may want to move into rural areas: they also may want to be closer to nature. I think it's important to ask how best to connect people to the natural world without sacrificing the very nature they crave. I worry about getting caught in a vicious cycle as people move farther and farther out until there's scant rural land left and our cities are so sprawling that most people must rely exclusively on cars for transportation.

I favor setting aside space within cities for neighborhood parks, community gardens, and large semi-wild areas like Forest Park in Portland, Discovery Park in Seattle, and Stanley Park in Vancouver. Unlike fenced-off backyards, these areas let people connect both to nature and to their community.

But really, I see growth planning and development disputes as a symptom of a larger issue: population growth. Our grandparents could reasonably expect to build a house on a half acre lot outside the city because land was plentiful, but people weren’t. Sprawl and population growth have reversed that equation to the point where we need to change our housing expectations if we want our grandchildren to have access to nearby farms and local produce.

Just a few thoughts sparked by the Oregonian series. Take a read and see what you think.

Peak Oil in Rural Oregon

The Ashland Daily Tidings has an interesting (though brief) article exploring what, exactly, might happen in their corner of southern Oregon if oil prices keep going up.  To me, it's good to see people thinking more about this.  Not just because it will help people prepare for the adjustments that will be needed should oil become progressively dearer -- but also because it might help shift people's thinking about what kinds of transitions might be possible, or even desirable, even if oil prices flatten out or decline.

But I do think that a word of caution is in order -- if energy prices do continue to trend upwards, we're going to have to take a cold and steely-eyed look at our proposed solutions to help people cope.  Some of them, however well-intentioned, just might not cut it.

Note, for instance, this comment by a environmentally inclined local leader in Ashland, who thinks that mass transit would be a great solution for high energy costs in rural areas...

"We [already] have a free bus service, but it doesn’t get you to where you want to go,” he said, noting that it is inconvenient to commute between Ashland and other area towns and that the bus only runs along the main transportation lines.

Most mass transit is based on high-density use, he said. But what Ashland really needs is low density use, he added. He said a system of vans that operate like airport shuttle buses could be the answer.

“Imagine a bunch of little vans zipping around town taking you where you want to go door to door,” he said. “It would be great in our town. The whole key would be a computerized dispatch system” that would alert drivers as to where someone needed to be picked up.

Sounds nice, no?  Instead of driving a car, you just call a van that picks you up at your home and takes you straight to your destination -- and call another one when you need to go home.  Convenient?  Yes. Costly?  Almost certainly -- especially if you have to pay drivers, which is one of the major costs even in dense urban areas.  Energy-efficient?  Not so much, I'd wager, for reasons that should be fairly obvious.

The problem is that it's really, really hard to provide cost-effective, energy-efficient transit service to a population that's spread out over the landscape.  I can conceive of energy-efficient transit between densely populated villages dotting a rural landscape.  (Old European farming towns come to mind.)  But as a general rule, the more elbow room people have around their homes, the farther they have to travel to get to everyday destinations; and the farther they have to travel, the more energy they use to do so.

My point:  high energy prices might do more than force a reconception of how we get from place to place; it may force us to redesign our places.  And--especially for those of us accustomed to both to the solitude of the country and the amenities of the city--a steady rise in energy costs could force a reevaluation of whether we really need so much elbow room.

Looks Matter (To Ecosystems)

Oregon State University just won a $3.6 million grant for sagebrush ecosystem restoration. That's good news because sagelands conservation always seems to take a back seat to other landscapes. I wonder if the explanation for sagebrush's short shrift isn't surpisingly superficial (how's that for alliteration?). Looks matter and sagebrush just doesn't sell like the prettier places do.

If so, sagebrush ecology is paying the price for its lack of glam appeal. The American West is home to 100 million acres of sagebrush country, but it is a battered landscape. As the AP story today puts it:

Because of the invasion of non-native plants, increasing wildfires and the expansion of juniper woodlands, sagebrush ecosystems have become one of the most threatened land types in the United States, researchers say.

"We are losing sagebrush-steppe ecosystems at an alarming rate, as wildfires fueled by cheatgrass sweep across the landscape," said project coordinator Jim McIver, an associate professor of rangeland resources.

The ongoing tragedy of conservation biology, with its limited resources, is that large attractive creatures--"charismatic megafauna," in biologist-speak, such as the ivory-billed woodpecker--generate most of the hoopla and therefore receive most of the protection. Less sexy creatures are often ignored, though they may be no less critical to complete and well-functioning ecosystems.

Landscapes tend to go the same way as wildlife. People get animated by old-growth forests, coastlines, canyons, and alpine settings. These are the places that we protect in national parks, photograph endlessly, and write volumes of earnest prose about. Big conservation organizations have little trouble "branding" these ecosystems and drumming up the dollars necessary to protect them from depredations. But sagebrush country is another matter.

At first glance the drab dun-colored world can appear desiccated, windy, even lifeless. And for some reason, the aesthetics of sagebrush country are particularly anemic in the car-centered view of the world. I've never encountered another landscape that looks so dull and hostile from a car at 70 miles per hour but that can be so arrestingly beautiful and complex at pedestrian speeds.

Given their lack of superficial appeal, it's no surprise that sagebrush ecosystems are so badly stressed and under-protected. The list of insults is long: invasive species, biodiversity loss, fire suppression, unsustainable water withdrawals, grazing, cattle ranging, road-building, fencing... In many places, sagebrush country is so degraded that some of the most intact landscapes are where you would least expect them: the lands that were formerly part of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the Yakima Training Center, a large-scale artillery range, to name just two places in Washington.

It's unfortunate that sagebrush lands are not better preserved because the ecology is worth protecting. They're home to an astonishing array of birds, rare plants, and even the big charismatic critters like elk, owls, porcupines, cougars, and my personal favorite, the sage grouse. (Sage grouse, in fact, may be one of the better simple indicators of overall sagebrush ecosystem health; and, no surprise, grouse numbers are drastically depressed from historical levels throughout most of the West.) Sagebrush landscapes are beautiful too--particularly during the springtime blooms--but to most observers they lack the dramatic flair of other places.

Sagebrush ecosystems should be near the top of the list of good conservation buys. Sagelands shelter rare and endangered plants and animals, they are under-represented in protected areas, they are are often not in high demand for important uses, and the land (or the rights to it) is comparatively inexpensive. In fact, one of the Northwest's recent conservation success stories is the Owyhee Initiative, a collaboration working to protect seldom-visited sagebrush country in southwestern Idaho. It's telling,however, that the group's website mostly advertises the conventionally scenic portions: river gorges and basalt outcroppings.

Sagebrush ecology, and it's comparative lack of conservation, strikes me as precisely the reason why we can benefit from a public biodiversity accounting. I'd bet that dollar for dollar, conservationists--and funders of conservation--could do more good for native biodiversity by protecting sagebrush country than by continuing to help the eye-candy ecosystems.

Mind the Gap

The Northwest Federation of Community Organizations just published its annual job gap study, looking at the share of jobs that actually pay a living wage (defined as one that puts healthy food, acceptable housing, and other basic living expenses within financial reach).  Not too surprisingly, it found that only about a quarter of the jobs in the Northwest pay a living wage for a single-parent family with two kids. (See press coverage in Washington and Idaho.)

To me, this news seems about right.  For a family with kids, the cost of living seems pretty darn high, once you factor in housing, health care, child care, rising energy bills, etc. And many, many jobs don't pay particularly well.  So it's little shock that there are lots of families who have to cut corners to get by.

But as plausible as the figures from the job gap report may seem, they're also hard to square with this claim from a recent article in The American Prospect:

[A]ccording to a 2004 Roper Poll for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, 93 percent of individuals earning more than $50,000 described themselves as doing well -- many as doing very well -- as did 77 percent of those who earned just $30,000 to $40,000.

So...few jobs pay a living wage, but most people seem to consider themselves as "doing well."  Hm.  I don't think this is exactly cause for scepticism about the "living wage" figures -- but it's certainly evidence that there's more here than meets the eye.  Perhaps jobs below the "living wage" are more common for people without families to support, or where one partner in a family earns substantially more than the other.  Or perhaps people are just reluctant to admit that they're not "doing well," even in an anonymous survey.

One thing is pretty clear, though--as a society, we haven't done a particularly good job of measuring how people are really faring economically.  Part of that is lack of attention -- economic statisticians are generally more concerned with aggregate figures for GDP, productivity, and the like, rather than with the situation of real families.  But part is just that, well, it's just really hard to decide how to measure true prosperity. Surveys?  Fancy economics?  Guesswork?  Any one approach is bound to have its drawbacks--which means that you probably have to look at the problem a bunch of different ways, though a number of different lenses, to get closer to a useful answer.

Take That? Take Back (e-Waste)!

True to its state motto, dirigo, Maine is leading the nation in electronic waste management. Yesterday a law went into effect that requires TV and computer monitor manufacturers to take responsibility for the proper disposal of their products.

TVs and monitors need to be recycled because they contain toxic lead and mercury. But only a few states have e-waste programs where those who profit from the products also pay the disposal costs. In California, consumers pay a small fee at the time of purchase to help defray the cost of recycling later. In Maryland, manufacturers pay a fixed annual fee into a recycling trust fund.

While these are great starts, I suspect that neither of these programs covers the full costs of disposal. Maine's law is great because it places the full cost where it belongs: on makers and users of the product, instead of on general taxpayers. In this way it also creates powerful incentives  (read: market economics) for manufacturers to build products that use less toxic materials in the first place and that are easier to recycle at the end of their life.

Here in Cascadia e-waste producer responsibility is still in the works. British Columbia (pdf) intends to have a program in place by mid 2007. Washington has two bills in the current legislative session. And Oregon (pdf) had a bill in 2005 to charge consumers a fee up front, although the bill died in session. Stay tuned to find out what happens with e-waste recycling in the Northwest.

Prince(ss) of Tides

Since last Friday, I’m proud to announce, the venerable Cascadian news website Tidepool has been a project of NEW. Yep, we’ve completed a friendly takeover!

Since 1997, Tidepool has been highlighting the most significant news that’s shaping Cascadia. Every morning, Tidepool’s editors scan dozens of news sites and assemble the stories that will actually matter in Cascadia a few years hence—the slow news (pdf). It’s an essential service, and it’s one that thousands of Cascadians use every day.

Tidepool was seeking a new home, and its service is a natural complement for this blog and NEW’s other analyses of key trends in Cascadia. So both organizations are excited about the transfer. We think it’ll lead to big improvements all the way around—in the news digest, in the blog, and in our website.

Tidepool has long been a community asset—something kept healthy through the active support of its thousands of readers. This new phase in Tidepool’s development won’t change that fact; to the contrary, NEW will soon introduce more ways to participate in Tidepool’s evolution. If you’re not already a member of that community, please join by signing up for a free subscription.

For more information on NEW’s ownership—really, stewardship—of Tidepool, read this letter to its subscribers.

And meet the new NEW editor of Tidepool: Princess of Tides Kristin Kolb-Angelbeck.

Go Fish

Over the weekend The Oregonian ran a good short series on the diminishing numbers of hunters and anglers in the state. While the state's population has doubled since 1950, the number of hunters and fishermen has actually declined. [Read the articles here, here, here, and here.] This is not just a Beaver State phenomenon--it's true nationwide--and it may lead to some troubling implications for wildlife protection.

The Oregonian seems mostly concerned that without hunting and fishing, fewer people will want to protect wildlife and natural areas. I think that's not right. Northwesterners are still getting out into nature in vast, teeming, trail-clogging hordes. In fact, wildlife watchers spend generate substantially more economic activity than hunters and anglers combined.

The more important question--and the one that The Oregonian gives comparatively short shrift to--is a basic policy question. As the paper has it:

...who will pay the costs of preserving habitat and managing fish and wildlife? Hunters and fishermen now foot most of the bill, not just through the steep license, tag and access fees they pay, but also through countless hours of volunteer labor, pulling out abandoned fences, cutting down water-sucking juniper trees, planting streamside willows and tending boxes of fish eggs.

In Oregon, as in many other states, hunting and fishing licenses, together with taxes items like ammunition and fishing rods, pay for a huge variety of conservation benefits--everything from fieldwork by professional biologists to refuges like Sauvie's Island on the Columbia River. Without those (declining) sources of revenue, the future of conservation may look even more bleak than it already is. So what to do?

It's hard to know where else that money is going to come from. The putatively eco-friendly outdoor recreationists--hikers, backpackers, skiers, rock climbers, alpinists, mountain bikers, sea kayakers, river rafters, wind surfers, birders, and so on--pay no comparable taxes or fees to those imposed on hunting and fishing. To be sure, recreationists sometimes pay trailhead fees (such as the Northwest Forest Pass), entrance fees to state parks or DNR land, or "sno-park" fees, but these fees only defray the costs of maintaining access. They certainly don't cover the costs of conservation biologists, ecosystem restoration, or wildlife management.

So what's left: An REI tax? Highers fees to park at trailheads?

Obviously, the first idea is a non-starter; and even access fees are extremely unpopular with users. One partial solution may be re-invigorating hunting and angling as pastimes, even though some progressives regard them as retrograde. (In fact, that may be one reason they're in decline: they're not just unfashionable in some circles, they're downright suspect.) But whatever your beliefs about the ethics of hunting and fishing, there are meaningful benefits for ecosystem protection to consider.

Those benefits include not only reliable revenue for conservation, but a legacy of wildlife protection that, in the Northwest, extends back at least as far as the creation of Olympic National Park--a treasure-trove of endemic species that was originally set aside to conserve Roosevelt elk for hunting. Today that ethos lives on in local watershed protection groups as well as in bigger fish like Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited.

But I'll leave it to the latest issue of the Washington Monthly, which has a great article on the politics of hunting--and its potential to preserve open space and wildlife. Definitely worth a read:

This idea of public ownership became the intellectual foundation for America's conservation movement a century ago, when commercial hunters had begun decimating buffalo herds and blasting snowy egrets with cannons in order to sell feathers for ladies' hats. Theodore Roosevelt and a handful of other naturalists--most of them hunters--argued that wildlife belonged to the public and therefore could not be obliterated by business interests. "Public rights comes first and private interests second," Roosevelt wrote in 1905. "The conservation of wildlife and…all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method." He outlawed commercial hunting and promoted measures--such as bag limits and game seasons--to ensure that wildlife could be enjoyed by future generations.

In a reversal of the tragedy of the commons, the American conservation movement has been far more successful, both in garnering popular support and in saving species from extinction, than efforts in countries where a different mentality exists toward ownership of wildlife. Whereas America brought back the elk, antelope, and white-tailed deer, in Britain boars, beavers, and bears no longer roam. Today, however, this heritage faces a new challenge, unfathomable in the days of Penn or Roosevelt. As Todd Bogenschutz of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources told me, "Our forefathers made wildlife public, but they screwed another thing up. They should have made access to wildlife public."

Bumper to Bumper Jumper

A few years ago, Seattle was widely known as one of the most congested cities in the country.  Annual rankings by the Texas Transportation Institute placed the metro area's traffic as one of the nation's 5 worst -- and in some years greater Seattle was ranked among the worst 3, along with places like LA and San Francisco.

Then, a couple years ago the TTI changed its method of estimating congestion, largely to give credit to cities that are using congestion reduction strategies (metered on-ramps, quick clearing of accidents, transit service, etc.).  After the change in methodology Seattle's congestion plummeted in the national rankings.  In last year's report, Seattle ranked twentieth in congestion delay per traveller, about what you'd expect for a city of Seattle's size.  Generally, more populous cities have worse traffic, so Seattle's congestion, rather than being among the nation's worst, now seems to be about on par with expectations.

By comparison, Portland, OR ranks 26th in congestion delay per capita among US cities, while Charlotte, NC -- ranked as a "mid-sized city" rather than a "large city" like Portland and Seattle -- came in at 22nd place.  That's slightly worse than Portland, though in fairness the two are probably in a statistical dead heat.  That said, it's telling that Charlotte, despite a smaller population, was ranked as having worse congestion than Portland.  We happened to cover Charlotte in our sprawl report covering 15 select US cities a few years back.  Of the cities we studied, Charlotte was easily the most sprawling -- its average density is lowest, and it consumed more land to accomodate new residents than any other city in the study.  So if someone claims that low-density development can ease traffic congestion, tell them about Charlotte.

Of course, I think that the congestion rankings should be viewed with some skepticism; as Seattle's plummet shows, congestion rankings may have more to do with theoretical models than with reality.

Still it seems worth noting that Portland (a city with a justified national reputation for controlling low-density sprawl) seems to have about the same level of congestion as Charlotte (which is at the opposite end of the sprawl spectrum).  Which leads me to think that "sprawl" and "congestion" are two largely unrelated phenomena -- and that traffic congestion may be far more strongly affected by idiosyncracies in a city's transportation system than by population density per se.

Do Poverty Numbers Lie?

Poverty rates are higher in Mississippi than in Massachusetts. But it's easier to make ends meet in the deep south, where the staples of existence generally cost less. So which place really has worse poverty?

Among the more annoying problems with US poverty rates--and the problems are legion--is that comparisons between states can be spurious because the rates do not account for differences in the cost of living. So in an attempt to straighten things out, I did a little back-of-the-envelope calculation today to find out where poverty hits the hardest. (Assuming that median household income is a decent proxy for the cost of living, I adjusted state poverty rates by incomes. This has been done before, in lots of more complicated ways, but I wanted to figure out something specific.)

As it turns out, the worst states are still the worst--Mississippi, Washington, DC, and Texas have the highest rates of poverty by either accounting. Same for the best--New Hampshire, Minnesota, and the northeast states are the best in the nation using either method. But in the Pacific Northwest, things get interesting--and Washington is the biggest loser.

By official statistics Washington's and Oregon's poverty rates are fair to middlin' (their average 2002, 2003, and 2004 rate was 11.7) and the two states are tied for the 27th lowest rate in the US. But when you adjust for income levels, Oregon's poverty gets a teensy bit better, climbing to 24th place, while Washington drops like a rock into 37th place--slightly worse than the national average and tied with economic powerhouses like Kentucky.

California takes a page from Washington's playbook and plummets from 36th place to 48th--behind Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Idaho and Montana, meanwhile, both rise substantially in the rankings as their poverty rates are balanced out by their lower costs of living (at least as it's reflected by median income).

Now obviously, there's at least one big flaw with my little made-up methodology. By adjusting poverty by income, I'm essentially favoring states for having low incomes. Still, income is something of a proxy for the cost of living. Moreover, some of the worst effects of poverty--crime, violence, poor health, etc--may actually be the effects of income inequality in disguise. So my poverty adjustment tells us which states are most severely amplifying poverty through income inequality (cough, cough, Washington and California).

It's telling, I think, that most states' rankings don't change terribly much with my adjustment. But a few states with average poverty rates and higher incomes may have some real--and hidden--economic problems to sort out. Because problems of equity often manifest themselves in other ways, the federal numbers may not tell us even half the story about how we're really doing.

Babies Not Having Babies

Some more good, or at least interesting, news for 2004:  teen birth rates in Cascadia hit an all-time low. There were just under 27 live births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 19, according to final data for the year.  That's probably not just the lowest rate in recent history, but the lowest since humans first inhabited this place.

(Just to be clear: we spend a lot of our time comparing trends in BC, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho -- the main political jurisdictions whose rivers flow through the temperate rainforests on the Pacific Northwest coast.  For short, we call the region "Cascadia."  End of public service announcement.)

Teen births throughout the region have fallen by about 57 percent since 1970.  But they've fallen unevenly, as the chart shows.  In the Northwest states, teen pregnancy rates are about half of what they were in 1970.  In British Columbia, however, teen pregnancies fell by an astonishing four-fifths over the same period.  Or, said differently -- teen birthrates in BC and the Northwest states used to be quite comparable.  Now, the teen birthrate is more than three times as high in the Northwest US as in BC.

As with many social and environmental trends, BC more and more looks like, well, it's in a different country than Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.  Gasoline consumption, sprawl, health, teen births -- on these measures and many others, BC substantially outperforms the Northwest states; and on many of them BC's lead just keeps getting bigger.  I'm not sure what this means; perhaps nothing. But it may also be a sign that the politics and cultures of these neighbors are gradually diverging.

Regardless, given the similarities in climate, language, and history between the two halves of Cascadia, the differences between BC and the US Northwest demonstrate--fairly convincingly it seems to me--that minor differences in policy and outlook can gradually add up to huge differences in outcomes.

There's No School Like the Green School

There's a nifty little story in today's Oregonian about the trend towards "green classrooms" that can save school districts money -- not just because of lower energy costs (which is what you might expect) but because they're actually cheaper to build.  According to one physical plant director in charge of a relatively new energy-efficient school:  "[W]e thought the building, with all its energy-efficient features, would cost a lot more to build.  But it didn't. It was about $120 per square foot, which was among the lowest cost for a high school at the time."

In some ways, this shouldn't be much of a surprise.  The Rocky Mountain Institute has talked for years about how super-efficient buildings can often be less expensive than ordinary ones, due to lower costs for  heating and ventilation systems and light installation.  But it's good to see some concrete examples to show that those sorts of savings are possible in practice, not just in theory.

Minimum Rising

As of January 1, minimum wages will rise to keep pace with inflation in both Washington and Oregon. Guaranteeing workers $7.63 and $7.50 per hour, respectively, the two Northwest states are the most generous in the nation. But is a rising minimum wage really a good thing?

Yes.

Make Room!

The good ship Cascadia has another 227,000 passengers.

The US Census Bureau has issued population estimates for the states, which allow us to give an updated Cascadian population tally. As of July 1, 2005, the region – counting British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington – had 15.6 million people. (Adding western Montana, southeast Alaska, and northwestern California pushes that figure up by another million or so, but running the county-by-county figures takes more time than I’ve got at the moment.)

The (four main jurisdictions of the) region added 227,000 inhabitants over the preceding 12 months. That's about the number that live in greater Olympia, Washinton. And it's a 1.5 percent increase, the largest since 1997.

The resurgence stemmed from rising domestic migration into the region. Natural increase (births minus deaths) remained stable at around 70,000 per year, as did international migration at around 50,000 per year. (International migration is hard to tally reliably at present. As the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey comes online, we’ll be able to track it better.)

The extra 227,000 Cascadians, especially the adult migrants, bring new resource consumption, pollution, and traffic as they arrive. But just to be unpredictable today, let me point out that they also bring new talents, productivity, and resources with them.

One dimension of in-migration that’s little noted is the way that growing populations allow more-rapid transformation of metropolitan areas. Cities that don’t have growing populations do not have many opportunities to build complete, compact communities, filling in their urban form. And compact communities can actually reduce resource consumption among their residents. It’s conceivable, in fact, that adding population--if it goes into the right kinds of smart-growth neighborhoods--might lead to such large per-person reductions in resource consumption that the aggregate total remains unchanged or even diminishes.

So migration brings big challenges (about which there’s more here) but it also brings opportunities.

Population Puzzler: Unwanted Pregnancies and Abortion Trends

Last week, the National Center for Health Statistics issued the results of a survey revealing that the share of American births that resulted from unwanted pregnancies increased from 9 percent in 1995 to 14 percent in 2002. (Seattle Times reports here.)

That’s bad news. It’s also puzzling.

It’s bad news because babies conceived by accident, when mothers do not want to have a child (or another child), tend to have what social scientists call “adverse outcomes,” as discussed here. They’re more likely to have bad prenatal care, die in infancy, fare poorly in school, and suffer violence at the hands of their caregivers.

It’s puzzling because so many reproductive trends have improved since 1995. Pregnancy rates overall have fallen, as shown in this chart for Oregon . . .

. . . especially among teens, as shown in these charts for Oregon . . . 

. . . and Washington.

Birth rates overall have fallen. Access to emergency contraceptives has expanded dramatically, as has insurance coverage for prescription contraceptives.

All of these positive trends would make you expect that the share of births that result from unwanted pregnancies has also declined. But the opposite has happened, at least in the United States overall.

The trend is less contradictory within Cascadia. Washington has the best data on unwanted births over time, and they show hardly any change—or hardly any change that’s greater than the margin of error. At best, there's been a tiny decrease in unwanted births.

Still, you’d expect that drops in pregnancies and births would lead to equally dramatic declines in unwanted pregnancies. You’d think, in fact, that improving pregnancy prevention would show itself first and foremost in a declining share of pregnancies that are unwanted. Instead, everything is shrinking dramatically except the “unwanted” percentage!

What’s going on here?

I don’t know.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) in New York is reportedly in the midst of an analysis of this puzzler, and I hope they’ll figure it out. In the meantime, let me underline my ignorance by explaining why the obvious answers are probably wrong or, at least, inadequate.

Pro-choice advocates argue that the survey results are a sure sign of deteriorating access to abortion services, which is plausible. In Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, the number of abortion providers is lower now than it was two decades ago. In 1981, there were more than 160 abortion providers in these states; by 2001, there were fewer than 100, according to AGI.

And the next chart, comparing the share of pregnancies ending in abortion (excluding miscarriages) in British Columbia and Washington, lends further plausibility to the theory. In British Columbia, where abortion providers have not decreased in number to the same degree, abortion has grown as a share of all pregnancies. In Washington, it's shrunk.

Harassment and intimidation from extremists explains some of the drop in abortion providers, but economic consolidation has also contributed. Abortion services have become a specialized medical subdiscipline, concentrated in the hands of fewer providers who are, in general, very good at what they do. First-trimester surgical abortion, therefore, may now be safer and less expensive, in inflation-adjusted terms, than ever before. Convenient, nearby access to safe abortion services does not extend to small-town residents in the inland parts of Cascadia, but most women who want an abortion can get one, by traveling to a city--the same place they have to go for many other surgical procedures.

Anti-abortion advocates have a different exlanation for the rise in unwanted births. They suggest that Americans are demonstrating, in the words of an official at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a “pro-life shift.” American women may be exercising their freedom to choose by electing to have fewer abortions. This explanation also has some plausibility. Abortion rates are lower in more-conservative states such as Idaho than in more-liberal states such as Oregon and Washington. Maybe a cultural change is making the whole country more like Idaho. (And maybe the Washington-BC divergence in the chart above is explained not by changing access to abortion but by changing social values.)

Maybe, but I'm dubious. For one thing, British Columbia has the same anti-abortion movements, the same media influences, and the same medical technology (such as ultrasounds that make fetuses seem like babies sooner) as Washington. But abortion trends have diverged.

For another, if the United States were experiencing such a shift, the recent survey should have found not only that “unwanted” pregnancies but also that “mistimed” pregnancies were being carried to term more often. In fact, if a “pro-life shift” were the cause, one would expect a more dramatic increase in the share of births that resulted from merely mistimed (or “too soon”) pregnancies, rather than from pregnancies that were truly never wanted at all. Women who found themselves pregnant a few years before they intended to be (and were swayed by anti-abortion arguments) would almost certainly be the first to forgo abortions, not th