• yeeha!

The Oregon House just approved a bill this afternoon that will permanently ban drilling for oil and natural gas off Oregon's coast update, 1:49 for ten years. Original post: The state passed a three-year drilling ban back in 2007, but it expired on January 2nd of this year. The just-approved bill, House Bill 3613 sponsored by Portland rep Ben Cannon, was originally going to sunset the ban in 2020, but late-game revisions will make the ban permanent if the Senate approves, Update, 1:49 was originally going to be permanent, but late-game revisions will give it a ten-year sunset.

"The revisions happened because we could get a unanimous vote out of our committee," says Christy Splitt, aide to Cannon. "And in a short February session, consensus is a top priority. We could have probably gotten this out of committee without the sunset, but we wanted to show a willingness to compromise."

The bill will now to go the senate, and is expected to be debated in committee early next week. Chances of this bill actually becoming a reality after a successful senate vote and the Governor's signature are "excellent," says Splitt.

The offshore drilling ban was one of the top three special legislative session priorities of environmental coalition the Oregon Conservation Network, who say the ban will protect Oregon's fishing industry and coastal tourist economy.

"I am pleased and encouraged by PGE’s announcement today that it is seeking to submit an alternative operating plan for the Boardman Plant and phase out Boardman, or switch to non-coal fuel, by 2020."

Adams pushed PGE to shut down Eastern Oregon's Boardman coal plant back in October, writing a strongly-worded letter to the Oregon Public Utilities Commission saying Oregon needed to ditch coal power to meet Portland's coal of cutting greenhouse gas reductions by 80 percent over the next 40 years.

Numerous green groups, including the Sierra Club, have campaigned hard over the past year for PGE or the state to shut down Boardman.

Until now, coal power has been green Portland's dirty secret. Forty percent of Portland's energy comes from coal and Boardman, which burns 300 pounds tons of coal an hour, is responsible for 65 percent of the sulfur dioxide emissions in the state according to the Oregon Dept of Energy.

Both leading Democratic gubernatorial candidates went on the record with the Mercury in favor of Oregon ditching coal and phasing out Boardman, though Bill Bradbury was willing to set a 2060 2014 deadline for coal-free Oregon while John Kizhaber did not want to set a specific deadline.

Contacted for comment minutes ago, PGE's media relations worker responded, "I'm not sure if we're issuing a news release."

Um, too late.

Update 5:17 pm: Lead coal fighter at the Oregon Sierra Club Cesia Kerns is conflicted about the announcement. "It shows that PGE is taking a step in the right direction, but shutting it down in 2014 would be even better for Oregon's health," says Kerns. Thanks to a rule handed down by the Department of Environmental Quality, says Kerns, the Boardman plant will have to install expensive pollution controls in 2014. The Sierra Club says they should seize the 2014 date to shut down altogether. "They have been polluting unchecked for the past three decades, they should not keep polluting for another decade," says Kerns.

PGE returned my request for comment just a minute ago, confirming that they will be shutting down Boardman or phasing out coal by 2020 and that they will, at some point, send out a press release.

So says Northwest environmental watchdog group Sightline in a analysis posted on a Vancouver, B.C. website.

Sightline set out to evaluate whether Portland or Seattle is more environmentally-friendly based on stats about a number of criteria. The results are surprising, I think. Not only will a baby born in Seattle live three years longer on average than one born in Portland, but their average greenhouse gas emissions will be lower. AND, most galling, though Portland is more compact than the greater Seattle area thanks in part to the Urban Growth Boundary, within the city limits, Sightline says Seattle is actually denser than Portland:

In Portland, somewhere around 45 per cent of residents live in transit neighborhoods. In Seattle, the comparable figure is 57 per cent... Even more impressive, at the time of the last census, before the surge of residential development in Portland's Pearl District and around downtown Seattle, some 11 per cent of Seattleites lived in urban neighborhoods with density in the "walking zone" sweet spot above 40 people per acre. Just four per cent of Portlanders lived in such walking neighbourhoods.

Full report here.

Via tipster Joel comes a link to Reed students effectively hijacking a parents' weekend Q&A session with Reed President Colin Diver and singing a little song about how the school is failing to do enough about global warming.

So the song goes on for about four minutes too long, but aspiring protesters should take note that the students' monk-like chanting actually turns out to be a pretty good tactic for breaking up Diver's mild-mannered speech-making. Apparently the student senate wants the college to draw up a carbon reduction plan and hire a sustainability coordinator.

I know, I know, Reedies love protests even more than Kindles, but it seems to me that the students have a good point here. The Association of the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education lists Sustainability Coordinators at Oregon State University and Portland State, along with a number of little liberal arts colleges like Middlebury and Bowdoin so, uh, WTF is up, Reed?

This morning CA Senator Barbara Boxer headed up a "Boxer Rebellion" (ha) on global warming issues, voting to move a landmark climate change bill to the Senate floor despite a complete Republican boycott.

Why is it so hard to get Republicans to even discuss climate change legislation? Maybe we need to work on our sales pitch. One idea environmentalists are tossing around right now is that instead of fighting global warming with the rhetoric of science, fear or appeals to human decency, politicians should start selling climate change legislation with patriotism.

Robert Dujarric pitches the idea in the Christian Science Monitor.

• Victory Gardens of tomorrow

So far, only a global recession has been shown to work when it comes to cutting emissions...

The way to get Americans to take action? Appeal to their patriotism. Historically in times of war, the US government has successfully gotten citizens to join the armed forces, to buy war bonds, and to accept rationing by appealing to their patriotism...

Even if the oil sold in the US comes from Alaska, Texas, or allies like Norway, American demand drives up the price of the commodity, thereby pumping huge flows of dollars into the treasuries of its enemies.

On the other hand, when the US invests in alternative energy sources and energy conservation, it helps spur technological innovation in America and other advanced liberal democracies.

I long for the day when local tea baggers proudly roll up to Michael's Italian Beef on anti-Obama bicycles.

h/t to Sightline. Check out Portland artist Joe Wirtheim's site for more progressive propaganda posters like the one above.

I've been complaining about the wastefulness of phone books for a few months now, but this weekend's arrival of the Yellowbook was a slap in the face:

Neighbors in the Creston-Kenilworth Yahoo group echoed my irate opinions about the greenwashed Yellowbook. But miracle of miracles, one of them managed to track down the phone number of someone who will actually come to your house, pick up your unwanted phone book and offer to take you off their delivery list altogether. Hallelujah!¹

Dialing 1-800-373-3280 will get you to the national Yellowbook distribution HQ. The line seems to be primarily used for people applying for a job dropping off phone books, but after a robot informs you that job information will be available at "a meeting with casual dress code," you're connected to a person who will arrange to have the Yellowbook delivery drivers come by and un-deliver your phone book. This exclusive limited time offer only lasts while they're still distributing phone books in Portland, so act now!

1. I just realized that maybe having someone drive a van back to my house to pick up and reuse one phone book is worse for the environment than if I just recycled it on my own. Uh... so maybe you should band together as neighbors if you're going have your phone books undelivered.

The city's Bureau of Environmental Services is offering a grant of $5 per square foot to property and homeowners who choose to build ecoroofs. Check out the their website for more.

I know this, because I too was at the Mercury's branch office outside City Hall Friday morning, enjoying the sunshine. I also learned more about the city's Grey to Green initiative, thanks to the staff's wise choice to offer free coffee and cookies on the sidewalk. Ecoroofs are part of the program, but Grey to Green is also doing a bunch of other stuff. In the year and a half that it has been underway, the city has seen some significant improvements:

• GREEN STREET: MEANS LESS POOP ENDS UP IN THE RIVER

That's just the beginning. The five-year goals for Grey to Green include adding 43 acres of ecoroofs, constructing 920 green streets, and purchasing 419 acres of high priority natural areas. And with a city grant of $50 million over the next five years, those goals seem reachable.

The city has never taken on street tree planting on this scale—the budget for that has been only about $20-40,000 over the last twenty years, and now they're looking at over $1 million in just a year or two. Despite the rosy outlook for Portland watersheds, the work isn't done.

A new treebate program (get it? like rebate!) will compensate property owners for planting trees. The initiative is a collaborative effort with Friends of Trees and will launch in a few weeks. It hopes to encourage land owners to plant trees, especially local varieties, by covering 50% of tree-planting expenses up to $40, and up to $50 for native species. Money for you, trees for the world!

I just got my new IKEA catalogue! The one I didn't want or request, the one that was removed from the front porch and directly dumped into the bottom of my recycle bin. It's annual arrival got me thinking about all the junk mail I receive in a year and I contemplated saving it all in a big pile and weighing it and... oh! Hey! Seattleite Alan Durning over a Sightline just did that!

His write-up of a year's worth of junk mail is pretty funny—15 pounds of phone books? 17 credit card offers from United Airlines? Seven pounds of annoying sales pitches from Qwest, Verizon and Comcast? This shit is ridiculous, but Durning includes action ideas after each item to help channel that frustration into activism.

It would be cool to chronicle Portland's biggest junk mail offenders. I think it must be phone books by far but I can also commiserate with the Comcast deluge.

• Alan Durning
• Two feet tall, 50 pounds deep: one year's worth of junk mail.

I just flew back and forth across the country and every time I asked for water, the flight attendants handed me one of these bright two-gulp bottles:

The peppy branding made me cringe a little, so I turned over the bottle and read this little statement on the back:

Uh, what? This bottled water company wants me to stand dripping and cold in the shower so that there's still enough water in the world to be drained into millions of totally unsustainable 8.5 ounce plastic bottles? Who would be so cheeky?

Oh geez. What a bizarro green-hungry market we live in these days. Coca Cola is preaching to me about how my showers are wasteful while it's meanwhile trying to get itself out of hot water with environmentalists who criticize their overuse of the world's finite water supply. While Coke is ambitiously aiming to be "water neutral" by 2012, they still extract 1.73 liters of fresh water for every liter of soda they produce. Thanks for putting your eco-friendly tips on the side of a bottle of water distributed on jet planes, Coke!

Former Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradley Twitters:

The challenge he's referring to is a get rich quick scheme from a blogger who's willing to bet global warming skeptics $25 dollars a day that the world is getting hotter.

Victoria Taft is the charming local radio host who coins phrases like "crap and trade". But is she chicken? Victoria and all other global warming deniers can take Nate up on his offer right here.

Pat yourself of the back, Portlanders—according to Northwest enviro think tank Sightline you're each using an average of 40 gallons less gasoline per year than the average American. And, importantly, our gasoline consumption has declined over 15 percent over the last ten years. Check out this graph from their new report (pdf):

What do the researchers credit for the change? An environmental ethos is never mentioned. Instead, Sightline points to practical changes like smarter urban growth policies, investments in transit and high gas prices. And don't get too excited because even though we're below the national gas consumption average, America consumes a miserably high amount. Twenty million barrels of oil per day! Woo! We're #1!