Articles by Alan Durning

Grandfathering is Robin Hood’s evil twin

Climate change is regressive. Its effects punish the least fortunate the most -- those who've contributed little to and gained little from polluting economies. But the solutions to climate change can be progressive. Done right, they can share fairly the burdens and opportunities of preventing climate disruption.

I said "can."

If poorly designed, climate policy can also be viciously regressive -- a vacuum cleaner sucking up working families' earning. That's why it's so important to get climate policy right. It's the single most important economic fairness issue facing us right now: more important than reforming payday lending, more important even than reforming health insurance. It's what every advocate for economic opportunity should be losing sleep over -- and jumping to action to help shape the solution.

The most needed measure for minimizing climate disruption is a firm cap on emissions of greenhouse gases and a mechanism for putting a price on those emissions. In short, climate pricing. We need to make prices tell the truth about the climate.

Climate change is as much a social priority as an environmental concern

Climate change is a universal menace, threatening hardships for everyone. But it's not an egalitarian menace: everyone will not suffer equally. Perversely, those people and nations least to blame for causing it are most vulnerable to its impacts.

Climate disruption heaps misfortune on the less fortunate, whether in low-lying Bangladesh, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, or the flood plains around Chehalis, Wash. In the aftermath of climate change, the less you have, the more you're likely to lose.

Cyclists should be more involved as biking advocates

This essay is part of a series on bicycle neglect.

-----

Blame me. It's my fault the Northwest does not treat bicycling with respect. How? Bear with me, and I'll explain.

Cascadia is, as Washington state legislator Dick Nelson used to say, a "motorhead democracy" -- a place where licensed drivers substantially outnumber registered voters and where car-head dominates transportation thought and debate.

No matter how much good Bicycle Respect would do for our health, communities, economy, and natural heritage, it won't fly in on fairy wings. Bicycle Respect is a political agenda: new traffic laws and enforcement, new budget allocations, and new street designs.

So winning Bicycle Respect requires political power. When many elected leaders begin to see championing the bicycle as a path to higher office, as Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams does, we will be well on our way. When elected officials fear for their seats if they ignore the needs of the bicycle, we will have arrived.

Giving up car-lessness for Rob Lowe’s plug-in hybrid

This essay is part of a series on not owning a car.

-----

The weekend before Halloween, my car-less family got a loaner plug-in hybrid-electric car to try. You see, the City of Seattle and some other local public agencies are testing the conversion of some existing hybrids to plug-ins to accelerate the spread of these near-zero-emissions vehicles. As a favor and, perhaps, for some publicity (this post), the city's program manager offered me four days' use of the prototype -- previously driven by actor Rob Lowe.

Enthusiasm about plug-in hybrids -- like their now-almost-mainstream siblings the gas-electric hybrids -- has been running high of late. For example, the California Air Resources Board is among the toughest air quality regulators in the world. When members of the board's expert panel reviewed the evidence on plug-in hybrids, they issued a boosterish report predicting widespread adoption and fast market penetration. The Western Governors' Association is similarly smitten (MS Word doc). The tone of some popular press reports makes it seem that the vehicular second coming may be at hand.

For this auto (pictured in our back yard, with our Flexcar visible out front), I wondered, would my family give up its car-less ways? Would the joy of these 100+ mpg wheels cause us to end our 21 months of car-free-ness, emulate Rob, and buy our own plug-in?

The short answer? No. Plug-in hybrid-electric cars hold great promise, as long as we can fix the laws. And the technology. Oh, and the price.

None of those fixes are "gimmes." Without fixing the laws -- and specifically, without a legal cap on greenhouse gases -- plug-ins could actually do more harm than good. And without the second two fixes -- working technology and competitive prices -- plug-ins won't spread beyond the Hollywood set. (Echoes of this point are in Elizabeth Kolbert's latest article in The New Yorker.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.