Seattle/King County Climate News
Robin Briggs
Seattle
The Council appointed Debra Juarez to replace Cathy Moore as Councilmember for District 5 in north Seattle. The vote was 8-1, with Councilmember Rinck voting for Nilu Jenks. Juarez brings a wealth of experience having previously represented D5 before Moore. Juarez pledged to largely defer to Moore’s policy direction on the upcoming Seattle Comprehensive Plan votes; Moore wanted less growth and no new neighborhood centers for D5.
Home prices in Seattle are up since last June by 2.2%. The median home price in Seattle is over $1 million, and greater Seattle has the third highest median home price of any city in the country at $766,725. Real estate experts see continuing high demand, and prices are limited only by people's ability to pay. Prices have been increasing even though more homes are coming onto the market because there is a lot of pent up demand from previous years, and the job market here continues to be strong.
Sound Transit
Sound Transit approved an updated timeline for the Federal Way Link Extension from Angle Lake, with a start date "as soon as winter 2025", and they reaffirmed the Crosslake Connection start time of "early 2026" to connect the east Link with Seattle across I-90. The Federal Way Extension will add three new stations serving Kent, Des Moines, Star Lake, and downtown Federal Way, with stops near Highline College, Star Lake, and South 320th Street.
State
For the first time, the Dept of Commerce has banned a company from participation in the Climate Commitment Act carbon market (Seattle Times, paywall). The company, Climate Care Innovations, was going to sell carbon offsets. It has refused to pay the fine and says it will sue the state.
Skagit County is working on electrifying the ferry to Guemes Island, and is running into community opposition. They received 58 comments, of which 1 was in favor of the change, and 57 were concerned about the battery catching fire, and reduced area for parking and other vehicle needs. Clearly there's a need for increased advocacy for local projects!
Elsewhere
A 'clean, healthy and sustainable environment' is a human right according to the International Court of Justice, the United Nation's highest court. Countries that fail to protect the planet from climate change could be in violation of international law, and nations that are harmed by climate change could be entitled to reparations. Activists could bring lawsuits against their own countries for failing to comply with the decision.
The US Interior Department released a new order saying it may no longer issue any permits to wind and solar projects on federal land unless the agency believes it will generate as much energy per acre as a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant. "Hypothetically, this could kill off any solar or wind project going through permitting that is sited on federal lands, because these facilities would technically be less energy dense than coal, gas, and nuclear plants." And it could apply to new transmission as well "Projects that begin on private land but must cross public land — such as transmission lines that connect solar and wind to other power lines carrying electricity to populated areas — require authorization from Interior’s Bureau of Land Management." [Politico, Heatmap (paywall)]
Letting People Move, a study from the Climate & Community Institute details the costs, monetarily, in health outcomes, in land use, in increased emissions, and in time, to our current transportation spending formulas, and advocates for moving spending from solutions based on roads and individual vehicles to rail and public transit generally.
Boston may be a good model for how cities can protect themselves from sea-level rise. It has set up an Office of Climate Resilience and has a dedicated reserve of $75m for climate resilience projects. Much of this is being used to protect the city from coastal flooding.
Climate extremes, food price spikes, and their wider societal risks, is a new report that analyses the extent to which extreme weather events have been responsible for rising food prices, and the impact that can have in destabilizing social systems. Here in the US, it highlights the drought in California which reduced farm revenue by $2B just in 2022. The graphic below shows major events since 2022 that caused food prices to rise:
