Seattle's Environmental Heroes
Seattle Magazine, March 2007
By Roddy Scheer
It’s no surprise that Seattle is leading the country on many environmental issues—from the Mayor Nickel’s leadership on the Kyoto Protocol to the number of sustainable buildings around town. Our eco-success is due to local citizens, policy makers and businesses who are investing heavily in our environment. Meet a few of people who are blazing trails all around town
Recycling
Material Man: Sego Jackson, Snohomish County Solid Waste Management
Sego Jackson first became enamored of nature and its systems while growing up near a series of Audubon-affiliated protected areas in rural Ohio. Soon after relocating to the Seattle area in the late ‘80s, he was hired by Snohomish County’s Solid Waste Management Division and established one of the first curbside recycling programs around Puget Sound.
These days, Jackson continues to oversee solid waste management policy for Snohomish County, but is also a nationally-recognized advocate for Extended Producer Responsibility (ERP), whereby manufacturers are held accountable for the fate of their products and packaging after consumers have had their way with them. While the federal government has been loathe to adopt federal EPR rules, Jackson has been urging manufacturers (and the local and statewide agencies that regulate them) to take on the burden of recycling the products they bring to market, to save money—and the environment. He has advised everyone from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to Wal-Mart—which is considering screening products according to EPR standards as part of its omnibus sustainability overhaul--on creating forward-thinking policies encouraging the recycling of electronics by those who make them.
Closer to home, Jackson was instrumental in the creation of the Northwest Product Stewardship Council, which works to integrate so-called “cradle-to-cradle” product stewardship principles—whereby all products are recycled into their constituent parts which are in turn reused as the building blocks for other goods--into the region’s policy and economic structures. He also helped shepherd Washington’s landmark E-Waste Recycling Bill, SB 6428, through the state’s legislative process. The law, which goes into effect in January 2009, calls on electronics manufacturers to pay the tab for recycling their computers, monitors, laptops and televisions, and has influenced policymakers around the world.
“The most exciting activity in the long run is the shift from the throw-away society to one where resources are continuously cycled back into commerce for reuse and remanufacture,” says Jackson. “This is in the early stages but I think we will see the complete transformation in our life times.”
Global Warming
Climate Leader: KC Golden, Climate Solutions
Often called Seattle’s golden boy of global warming, KC Golden is committed to helping the region maintain its leadership position on turning the tide against human-induced climate change. “My days are all about calling up our collective determination to embrace a brighter future, and then translating that determination into practical policy and economic solutions,” he says.
Golden is Policy Director for the non-profit Climate Solutions, where he directs the Northwest Climate Connections program, a network of 60+ organizations, businesses and government agencies around the region working together to demonstrate how climate protection and a healthy economy can go hand-in-hand. Local greens applaud the network for the important role it has played in convincing local, state and provincial government across the region take a strong stand against the emission of excessive amounts of greenhouse gases despite lack of federal action on curbing global warming.
“After Gore’s movie [An Inconvenient Truth], Katrina, and all the scientific evidence pouring in, most folks get that we’ve got a big problem,” he says. “My job is to get people mobilized for big solutions—big policy changes, big economic bets on cleaner energy strategies.”
Before his current gig, Golden served as special assistant to the Mayor of Seattle for clean energy and climate protection initiatives, spearheading the city’s groundbreaking initiative to exceed the goals of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. And before that he directed the state’s energy policy office as Assistant Director of Washington’s Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development.
He is optimistic that his work will help Seattleites and others step up to the responsibility and opportunity of building a new, sustainable kind of prosperity. “Every generation has a defining challenge, an opportunity to fundamentally shape the prospects for future generations,” says Golden. “Our response to global warming and fossil fuel dependence is probably what our kids and grandkids will remember us for.”
Ecosystems
Restoration Story: Cheryl Klinker, Thornton Creek Alliance
When Cheryl Klinker and a handful of other Northeast Seattle residents got out their lopers and handsaws back in 1992 to help remove invasive Himalayan Blackberry plants from a couple of overgrown city-owned lots near Northgate Mall, they had little idea that their efforts would evolve into one of the nation’s best examples of community-based ecological restoration. Amazed to find flowing water below the plants they were clearing, Klinker and her cohorts realized they had the opportunity to restore what must have once been a wildlife-rich stream system to its former glory—right in the middle of one of the Seattle’s most densely populated urban areas.
They formed the non-profit Thornton Creek Alliance, and over the course of the next decade and a half, engaged hundreds of friends and neighbors, environmental groups and city agencies, to join them at work parties to remove invasive species, plant natives, dredge sediment and create wildlife habitat. These days, thanks to these efforts, four species of wild Pacific salmon, along with other fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and insects, are once again thriving in Thornton Creek and the 12-square-mile urban watershed it encompasses.
“For me, the most exciting result of [our work] is the quick response by wildlife to move back into the city,” says Klinker. “We feel that as members of this stream-related ecosystem, we need a diversity of life to sustain us and to retain a connection to the earth for a healthier and happier life,” she says. “Otherwise our neighborhoods would become depressing, dense, concrete environments that feel devoid of life.”
Wilderness
The Protector: Rick Larsen, U.S. House of Representatives
This may be the year Washington gets its first new wilderness area in more than two decades. Rep. Rick Larsen (D-2nd District) has high hopes for passage of the Wild Skykomish Wilderness bill, legislation that will protect more than 100,000 acres of still pristine lowland forestland near Highway 2 from development in perpetuity. (The wilderness designation is the highest form of protection possible for federal lands.) Two previous versions of Larsen’s proposal for protecting the so-called “Wild Sky” were stymied by House Resources Committee chair Richard Pombo. But with Pombo gone thanks to efforts by national conservation groups who raised upwards of $1 million to oust him last November, and Democrats in control of the House, Wild Sky faces little Congressional opposition, and will likely become law later this spring. (A companion version of the bill sponsored by Patty Murray enjoys widespread support in the Senate.)
Larsen first fell in love with the pristine character of Wild Sky in 2001 when environmentalists led him and other lawmakers on a tour of the area. Smitten by its beauty and lowland accessibility, he first introduced legislation to protect it in May 2002. “It seemed like the time for a new generation to step up and create new wilderness,” says Larsen.
Beyond Wild Sky, Larsen is optimistic about other environmental initiatives in the 110th Congress, including legislation to “take a bite out of” global warming and turning energy policy on its head. “Instead of subsidizing oil and gas to the extent that we do, we’re going to try to put dollars into alternative sources of energy,” he says.
Sustainability
The Watchdogs: Alan Durning and Clark Williams-Derry, Sightline Institute
When Seattle-area residents want to know how well the region is evolving toward a cleaner, greener future, they can turn to the Cascadia Scorecard—a unique sustainability index first developed in 2004 by Clark Williams-Derry, research director of Seattle-based Sightline Institute, an organization that specializes in helping regional policymakers rethink their priorities on everything from zoning to transportation to waste. The continuously updated sustainability index tracks how the region is doing by measuring key indicators including health, economy, population, energy, sprawl, forests and pollution. Williams-Derry has also spearheaded some of Sightline’s other most influential work, including a recent study that convinced state lawmakers to call on manufacturers of a wide range of products to phase out toxic yet commonplace flame retardants.
And his entertaining and wonky Sightline blog posts (http://www.sightline.org/daily_score) that dissect the numbers and reporting on environmental trends have also gained him a following.
Sightline was founded as Northwest Environment Watch in 1993 by Alan Durning—who recently made headlines when he and his family of five pledged to go car-free for a year, a decision that led to a $50,000 offer to appear on Fox Network’s Trading Spouses show, though Durning turned it down. The acclaimed environmental policy analyst cut his teeth writing eco-policy reports for Washington, DC-based think tank WorldWatch Institute before moving back home to launch Northwest Environment Watch. He has authored more than a dozen books focusing on positive solutions to some of our most vexing regional problems. Among his innovative ideas: “pay-as-you-drive” car insurance and shifting taxation from paychecks and enterprise to pollution and resource depletion.
While Sightline’s mission covers the entire Pacific Northwest, perhaps its biggest impact has been right here in Seattle. Among other local successes, the group’s ongoing analysis of sprawl across the region has inspired Mayor Greg Nickels to revamp the city’s development plans for its downtown core to encourage walking and community vibrancy. “Sightline has been an interesting, important, and useful source of information to me as I have thought about how Seattle can become a leader in building a sustainable community,” sums up Nickels.
