Find Posts By Topic

Once Around the Web: It’s not that easy being green – but it’s important!

Seattle is leading the change toward a green future. Our goal is to be carbon neutral by 2050This animated video celebrates green Seattle with a song written and performed by Seattle’s own Chris Ballew (Caspar Babypants; also the lead singer of The Presidents of the United States of America).

 

And why is it so important that Seattle has these green goals? Atlantic Cities explains it pretty succinctly in this blog post: Here’s Exactly How Bad Beijing’s Smog Crisis Is, In One Photo

That air pollution is caused primarily by automobile exhaust and coal burning — two things that Beijing, and the rest of the world, can certainly use less of! If you need a refresher on Seattle’s stake in the coal game, you should start over at Sightline.org – their coverage on  Northwest Coal Exports is excellent.

Luckily, federal data released last week shows that for the eighth straight year, per capita vehicle-miles traveled (a.k.a DRIVING) has declined in the United States.

“A variety of factors have been cited for the decline, including retiring Baby Boomers; less enthusiasm for cars among Millennials; a move in many places toward more compact and mixed-use development; and demand-side policy efforts, including TDM, tolling and market-pricing of parking…” read more

 

Sidenote! What’s your ‘hoodClick for larger tweeting about? Using two months of Twitter data Andrés Monroy-Hernández and team generated this image that shows the most common words in each neighborhood of Seattle. Click on the image to view the whole city map on flickr.

(Monday – Friday SDOT sends out a compilation of local and national transportation news links. If you’d like to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to the list, just send an email to allie.gerlach@seattle.gov and I’ll take care of it for you. )