SEATTLE — For most cities in Washington state, cars are the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions. Could a change to the state's zoning policies get more Washingtonians out of them?

Margaret Morales is a senior researcher with Sightline Institute. She said most houses in the Evergreen State are single-family homes, and that's because cities put a lot of barriers in the way of residents who would open up their homes to more people.

She said cities could cut some of the red tape for accessory dwelling units - that is basement apartments, backyard cottages, or other small dwellings in homes - to make neighborhoods more dense, and thus more walkable; and argued the current single-family housing model leads to sprawl.

"Single-family zoning is like this mandate against walking. It's this mandate that kind of requires you to get in your car,” Morales said. “It's this outdated way of thinking about how cities and communities function."

Morales said more dense neighborhoods would attract more local businesses and necessities such as grocery stores. She said people would add more small residences to their homes if they could.

In Vancouver, British Columbia, about 1-in-3 single family homes has accessory dwelling units. In Seattle, it's about 1-in-100. Morales said these cities have similar housing markets, but restrictions for these units are much higher in Seattle.

Research shows there is more driving in urban areas with fewer homes per block, Morales said. Along with making cities more walkable, denser communities could also help build better transit systems.

Morales said there are many reasons why transit is a complicated issue, but ridership is key.

"One of the biggest reasons is that to make public transit viable, you need people to ride it, and that means people have to be able to get to it easily,” she said. “And the way we have our zoning code set up, we make it so that there are very few homes in walking distance of where you could put a bus line or a light rail line."

Morales noted that sprawling zoning policies in Washington cities were put in place at a time when cars were thought of as the future of transit. But with the specter of a warming climate, a change is needed to get more people out from behind the steering wheel.

More information, including Morales' report, is available at Sightline.org.


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Montana's environmental advocates are criticizing Gov. Greg Gianforte for signing a bill they said will allow the state to ignore the impacts of climate change when developers construct large-scale energy projects such as coal mines and power plants. The measure received a lot of attention during the legislative session, most of it in opposition.

House Bill 971 builds on a decade-old law prohibiting the state from including actual or potential impacts which are "regional, national or global in nature" in environmental reviews of big energy projects.

Anne Hedges, spokesperson for the Montana Environmental Information Center, said the measure is a direct attack on the state's most precious natural resources and leaves them unprotected.

"You're telling the public and you're telling the state their rights don't matter," Hedges asserted. "That they don't really have a right to a clean and healthful environment and the state has no obligation to protect people from the very real dangers of the climate crisis."

The bill prohibits regulators such as the state's environmental quality department from measuring greenhouse-gas emissions and the effects of climate change when they review the overall impacts of large projects such as coal mines and power plants. The bill's supporters argued they are trying to avoid excessive state regulation and contend measuring and regulating greenhouse-gas emissions and other impacts on the climate should be left up to federal laws like the Clean Air Act.

Hedges countered the state understands local issues better than the federal government does, and added the whole purpose of Montana's environmental agencies doing these sorts of studies is to be able to educate residents who live here about the impacts of a major energy project.

"On the land, on the air, water, wildlife, economy, cultural resources, et cetera," Hedges outlined.

Hedges pointed out ultimately, the bill will create longer and more dangerous wildfire seasons, a shrinking snowpack, and reduced stream flows as emissions from power plants add to a warming climate and unstable atmosphere.

A law known as the "Halliburton Loophole" is under growing scrutiny. It exempts oil and gas companies from revealing the chemicals they use in the hydraulic fracking process.

The latest study finds between 2014 and 2021, companies used hundreds of millions of pounds of toxic chemicals - without any governmental oversight.

Another report published last year by scientists and medical organizations says living near fracking sites increases risks for cancer, respiratory diseases, heart problems, birth defects and more.

Leatra Harper, managing director of the Freshwater Accountability Project, explained that the loophole prevents communities from understanding potential harms.

"People need to know what the exposures could be," said Harper. "We need to know what the chemicals are to look for when we find water contamination. And we don't even know how to test for it, because we don't know what to test for."

The Independent Petroleum Association of America and other industry groups argue that fracking poses little to no risk of harmful health effects.

The group FracTracker estimates hydraulically fractured wells produce about 2.3% of the oil and gas output in Ohio.

Harper added that previously proposed federal legislation would have addressed the issue by requiring companies to reveal which chemicals they use in the fracking process.

"There's something called the FRAC Act that has just basically been mothballed," said Harper. "And we need to revive that and fix this problem that started at the federal level, that allowed this industry to take off."

As of 2022, hydraulic fracturing techniques have been used on an estimated 1.7 million wells across the U.S.

Memorial Day is considered the unofficial beginning of summer in the United States, with many Texans keeping an eye on what the weather has in store.

Federal forecasters said there is a 40% chance of a "near-normal" hurricane season for Texas and the rest of the Gulf and East coasts, and are more concerned about what the development of an El Niño could bring.

Brad Pugh, meteorologist at the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, said before El Niño's arrival, drought is still a factor for the Southwest.

"The seasonal drought outlook, which is valid through the end of August, calls for persistence of ongoing drought through much of New Mexico and Texas," Pugh reported. "Although we are forecasting improving drought conditions over the northeast Texas panhandle."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting between 12 and 17 named tropical storms will form this season. One to four of those storms could become hurricanes rated Category 3 or higher, with wind speeds of at least 111 miles per hour. Much of Texas is considered vulnerable to the impacts of storms, made worse by rising sea levels.

El Niño is a natural climate pattern, but could send global average temperatures soaring to a record high.

Johnna Infanti, also a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, said the chance for it to develop is about 55%, likely producing the chance for excessive rain and snow starting in the fall.

"So with the El Niño, we expect a transition between the May through July season," Infanti noted. "We're expecting that to form during the May through July season and we're expecting that to persist into winter."

As might be expected because of climate change, NOAA predicts this summer will bring hotter-than-average temperatures across most U.S. states, including Texas.


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