Sightline Institute

A proposal to increase the tax on petroleum, pesticides and other chemicals is being floated in Olympia as a way to raise as much as $250 million to clean up polluted stormwater. But so far, support the for the idea among leading lawmakers appears lukewarm at best.

Environmentalists are pushing the idea, which would mostly tax oil refineries to clean up stormwater runoff, the largest source of pollution to Puget Sound and other waterways in the state. The measure would sink money into the general fund initially to help meet the state's $2.6 billion budget shortfall, with stormwater pollution getting a bigger share in future years. As key as stormwater cleanup is to the health of Puget Sound, the measure faces an uncertain future.

It was good to see former Dateline Earth denizen Lisa Stiffler out today with a new report  (PDF) on the country's No. 1 water pollution problem:  Stormwater.

As longtime Dateline Earth readers will know, Lisa and I worked together on a bunch of stories over the past decade highlighting the need to protect Puget Sound.

Well, this week has been a historic one on the climate change front. The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was going to place more stringent regulations on the nation's largest carbon emitters -- which represent only 2 percent of U.S. businesses, but 70 percent of greenhouses gases -- and Senate Democrats released a draft bill that included even more zealous carbon cuts than one passed by the House earlier this year. (More in Emily Gertz's roundup.)

While most agree that curtailing greenhouse gas emissions and working to slow global warming is a hunky dory idea, especially when you've got walrus pups being trampled alive in Alaska as a result of disappearing sea ice, many still disagree over the means to that end.

[caption id="attachment_4696" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Alan Durning. Photo courtesy of Sightline.org"][/caption]

One of the ways politicians have proposed combating emissions is through a carbon cap and trade system. While the idea has been kicked around in Congress for a few years now, the concept is still widely debated and -- not surprisingly --  still perplexing to many.

Today InvestigateWest Executive Director Rita Hibbard and I had the great pleasure of talking with Alan Durning, executive director of the Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based think tank aimed at creating a sustainable society in Cascadia.

As a newbie in the surprisingly complicated world of non-profits, and one who had done very little fundraising before we started InvestigateWest a few months ago, I was relieved to hear that Durning had no experience raising funds when he launched Sightline in the early 1990s. He just had a good idea. And so do we.

With Communications Director Nate Kommers, Durning gave us an overview of how he built Sightline, which originally was called Northwest Environment Watch. It's a group I've appreciated as a reporter because, while they are advocates for doing the right thing by Mother Earth, they are also driven by facts and data. It's how they look at the world. And unlike some enviros, they understand that for a policy to succeed, it has to work for people, too.

Sightline's done some groundbreaking work, particularly their Cascadia Scorecard ("measuring what matters") and in revamping the old Tidepool.org daily enviro news summary into Sightline Daily ("news that matters.") Their "Daily Score" blog is also worth checking out. (Today's offering: "Mapping 7 deadly sins, and 2 virtues.")

We talked about how Durning built the group from two people with no dough into a 15-person organization with a $1.3 million annual budget.