A reminder that while the day to day news cycle is often negative, positive changes are happening all around us.

For example: In 2021, the Blue Mountains Trail quietly opened in Northeast Oregon. It meanders through the Strawberry, Blue, and Wallowa Mountains from John Day to Wallowa Lake.

It's 530 miles, and only 7 people have completed it end-to-end.

There's been very little news coverage of such an incredible new amenity.

https://www.wallowa.com/news/local/the-long-way-riley-gill-joins-a-handful-of-hikers-who-have-completed-northeast-oregon/article_bd80cc5e-129a-5dab-aca9-5c27684b4ad4.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share

While NW Portland's industrial area is underutilized, I'm increasingly skeptical of proposals to replace scarce industrial land with non-industrial use, even if it's dense residential development.

Cities cannot merely be places of consumption & services. Non-college educated middle income employment must exist in an equitable city.

Industrial areas are just easy targets for redevelopment because there aren't existing homeowners to complain about neighborhood changes.

https://www.portland.gov/bps/mp2h/mp2h-discussion-draft-documents

It took under 11 years from the creation of NASA to the moon landing.

The timetable for Federal approval of a the Boardman to Hemmingway transmission line in NE Oregon is 16 years, with final CWA and BOR approval expected in 2024.

Concurrent state approval processes have taken almost as long. Oregon's review finished in 2022, and required the state Supreme Court to throw out challenges to the approval.

We can't meet our clean energy targets if it takes 16 years to approve transmission lines.

It's less carbon intensive to charge an e-bike on coal than it is to power an F-150 Lightning EV on wind/solar.

Let's do the math using the 2014 IPCC numbers of carbon intensity of various energy sources over their life cycle:

820g CO/kWh for coal

48g CO/kWh for utility solar

11g CO/kWh for wind

An F-150 Lightning uses 49 kWh/100 mi. An e-bike uses about 1 kWh/100 mi.

An F-150 Lightning on a 50/50 wind/solar mix causes 1.42kg CO2 per 100 mi.

An ebike on coal causes .820kg CO2 per 100mi.

While there's a scientific consensus that forest thinning reduces wildfire intensity, it's a political landmine to implement for three big reasons:

- It's conflated with the less-effective "salvage logging" that has right wing and timber industry support.

- Thinning must be combined with prescriptive fire to be effective, which is a hard sell to locals worried about fire smoke or fires jumping lines.

- Thinning isn't commercially viable, and requires money to do.

https://www.hcn.org/articles/wildfire-does-thinning-work-for-wildfire-prevention

These slides from the Oregon Global Warming Commission's Roadmap to 2035 presentations are fascinating.

The marginal abatement costs for many environmentally friendly actions like electrifying vehicle fleets or updating building codes are negative.

As in, doing them saves money and grows the economy, regardless of their climate impact.

There's free medium-to-long term economic growth sitting there for policymakers to unlock.

https://www.keeporegoncool.org/tighger

Even if renters aren't outright thrust into poverty due to housing costs, a lack of housing affordability due to scarce supply has massive economic implications.

Every dollar spent on housing is a dollar not spent at a restaurant, a dollar not spent sending kids to swim lessons, or buying a nice jacket.

The practical effect of a housing shortage is everyone becomes poorer.

Imagine the economic impacts of everyone having $500 more to spend every month, if rents were lower.