Monday Mailing 111119

Monday Mailing

Year 26 • Issue 10 11 November 2019 1.

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The Paris Climate Agreement Is At Risk Of Falling Apart in the 2020’s (Michael Hoch) To End Surprise Medical Bills, New York Tried Arbitration. Health Care Costs Went Up (Katie McFall) Forests Increasingly Contending With Homeless Encampments' Waste And Trash Faced With Chronic Wasting Disease, What’s A Hunting Family To Do? Should Businesses Stop Flying To Fight Climate Change?

In Mid-Density Zones, Portland Has a Choice: Garages or Low Prices?

We Used to Just Call These "Houses" What Western States Can Learn From Native American Wildfire Management Strategies After The Water WEBINAR – Building Trust With Your Community

1. The Paris Climate Agreement Is At Risk Of Falling Apart in the 2020’s

Quote of the Week:

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

- John F. Kennedy

Oregon Fast Fact #47

The Tillamook Naval Air Museum is housed in the world's largest wooden clear-span building.

On Monday, the US filed paperwork that will begin the process of leaving the Paris climate agreement. Withdrawal will take final effect on November 4, 2020, one day after the next US presidential election.

To a great extent, the future of the agreement depends on the outcome of that election. Even now, negotiators are scrambling to make a plan for the possibility of a second Trump term.

But some amount of damage has already been done. It was done the minute Trump announced his intent to leave the agreement and began rolling back Obama’s climate regulations. This makes twice a Democratic president signed an international climate agreement and a Republican subsequently reneged (the first was the Kyoto Protocol, signed by Clinton in 1997 but never ratified by Bush). Even if a Democrat wins in 2020 and rejoins the agreement, who could trust that the commitment will last beyond 2024?

With so much riding on the next election, no one has quite tallied up the damage done by the abdication of US climate leadership. But there’s reason to believe it is substantial. In fact, there a reasons to believe that the Paris agreement is in bad shape, that in the 2020s it could break down or even fall apart entirely.

To access the full story, click here.

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2. To End Surprise Medical Bills, New York Tried Arbitration. Health Care Costs Went Up

Lobbying campaigns and legislative battles have been underway for months as Congress tries to solve the problem of surprise billing, when patients face often exorbitant costs after they unknowingly receive care from an out-of-network doctor or hospital.

As Congress considers various plans and negotiates behind the scenes, data is trickling in from states that have been test-driving proposed solutions.

New York was among the first to tackle the issue. In 2015, it passed a surprise billing law that uses "baseball-style" arbitration as a way to settle payment disputes between insurance companies and doctors. Under this approach, which is used in Major League Baseball to negotiate salaries (hence the name), each party submits a proposed dollar amount to the arbiter, who then chooses one as the final monetary award.

According to an analysis of newly released data from New York's Department of Financial Services, the New York model is making health care substantially more expensive in the state. In fact, arbiters are typically deciding on dollar amounts above the 80th percentile of typical costs.

"This is an extremely high and extremely inflationary rule of thumb," says Loren Adler, author of the analysis and associate director of the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Forests Increasingly Contending With Homeless Encampments' Waste And Trash

The waste and refuse left at homeless encampments has been an issue for many local governments, including the City of Eugene. Earlier this summer we reported on ongoing efforts to clean up several islands in the Willamette River. But it’s also a problem beyond city limits.

Recently, KLCC’s Brian Bull ventured out into the Willamette National Forest to check on cleanup efforts there as well.

“Good morning, anybody home?” calls Paul Wagner. About 40 yards in from the Willamette River near Oakridge, the clean-up volunteer nears a campsite. A faded orange tent sits next to a pile of mud-caked griddles and pans, along with what might have once been a beanbag or easy chair. A rotting smell looms over the site.

“Anybody home?” he repeats. There's no answer.

The odor intensifies when Wagner opens the tent. Moldy clothes, spoiled food, and a soggy floor mottled with mildew greet him. He pokes through a cardboard box with a long pincer.

“I found an open carton of milk. And eggs. Bet they’re good. Whew.…"

To access the full story, click here.

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4. Faced With Chronic Wasting Disease, What’s A Hunting Family To Do?

The fall sun warmed my face and a breeze rustled the leaves of a nearby aspen as my husband returned from a morning elk hunt.

“Any luck?” I asked.

He nodded, describing elk bugles and a clean kill as he headed to the truck for his pack, saw and knives.

I scooped up our 1-year-old from a nap in our tent.

“Daddy got an elk,” I said softly. “He needs our help.”

The three of us stepped up a southeast Wyoming hillside covered in pines and fall grasses. The elk died not far from where Josh, my husband, shot it with his bow. It would fill our freezer for a year.

Josh and a friend got to work: removing organs, peeling hide, placing tenderloins and backstraps in white cheesecloth bags. Both men learned to hunt from their fathers, who learned from their fathers. They continue because of tradition, relishing the lean organic meat and weekends spent sitting, backs against lodgepole pines, listening for the squeal of a cow elk or the bugle of a bull.

We were passing this tradition on to our daughter, who toddled up in her fox-and-rabbitcovered snowsuit and felt the elk’s smooth antler and coarse fur. I spoke of gratitude for sustainable meat, then I loaded her in a pack on my back, wrapped my arms around one of the elk’s shoulders and walked down the hill to our truck.

Leaving camp, the thought hit me: Would we test this elk for chronic wasting disease?

To access the full story, click here.

5. Should Businesses Stop Flying To Fight Climate Change?

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swede leading the global youth climate crusade, came to New York to speak at the September gathering of the U.N. General Assembly. She arrived from Europe by boat. Thunberg has pledged to never fly on an airplane because of carbon emissions, helping to create a flight shaming movement in Sweden and elsewhere. From Prince Harry to soccer star David Beckham to CEOs planning to attend Davos, people are being asked a tough question: Should we all stop flying?

It’s a reasonable inquiry. If climate change is an existential crisis — and I believe it is — shouldn’t we do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprints? And should businesses that have already committed to climate action lead the way, in part by slashing airplane travel?

The answer here is a definitive “maybe” that depends on a lot of factors. There are good reasons to keep flying — to connect humankind and enlist global cooperation, for instance, even in service of fighting climate change. No matter which way we intuitively lean, we as individuals and in business must make decisions like this consciously and with good data.

Air Travel Matters, But...

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Let’s start with a couple of points of context. First, the anti-flying movement is not wrong: Flying takes up a big footprint, both per mile traveled and in total. A single round-trip flight across the U.S. produces about 2 tons of carbon dioxide per person, or roughly 10% of a typical U.S. citizen’s already large annual footprint. Air travel accounts for about 2% to 3% of global emissions, which is not small, and it’s growing fast: The International Air Transport Association projects the number of airline passengers to double over the next 20 years, to over 8 billion annually.

To access the full story, click here.

6. California Could Have Helped Low-Income Residents Weather PG&E Blackouts

Exactly a year ago, as the devastating Camp Fire swept through the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Frank A. Jr. Funes, a disabled 69-year-old Vietnam veteran, woke in the early morning hours to a phone call. It was his pastor, checking to see if he had evacuated. Immediately, Funes looked outside his window: His neighbor’s house was already burning, and the flames were licking at his own fence. He, his wife and their 4-year-old grandson rushed out the door. “I didn’t have time to grab anything,” he said. “The wind was blowing like crazy, and the fire was just right around the house.”

That day, Funes lost the house he had lived in for the last seven years. He has since found a new home 15 miles away. But the winds are a constant reminder of how vulnerable he and his neighbors are to wildfires. Already this year in Northern California, the Kincade Fire has burned nearly 78,000 acres and destroyed 174 homes. Now, whenever the gusts kick up, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), the region’s largest utility provider, preemptively cuts power to decrease the likelihood of a sparked transmission line starting a fire, as happened with last year’s Camp Fire.

These shutoffs could last through the rest of November and for the foreseeable future, and Funes, like many others, feels helpless without electricity.

To access the full story, click here.

7. We Used to Just Call These "Houses"

We have a way in the modern world of rediscovering things that humans have always done but branding them as something trendy and a little alien. So it goes with the explosion of interest in "tiny houses" as an answer to what ails cities struggling to house and attract people.

The ironic thing about tiny houses is that they're nothing new; it's just that, in surprisingly recent memory, our culture had a different name for them. We called them "houses."

The Bottom Is Missing From the American Housing Market Our houses are very big in North America. In fact, the US, Canada, and Australia are the three biggest outliers worldwide in both the average size of new homes (a whopping 2,164 square feet in the U.S.) and the average per capita living space.

Home size has crept up over the years, too. The American Enterprise Institute published a chart that shows that the average U.S. home size has increased by about 1,000 square feet since 1973, a near-doubling of living space per person. Interestingly, the same article also includes a chart Page 4 of 6

that shows a relatively stable price per square foot, when adjusted for inflation, suggesting that the super-sizing of our homes in size is an underappreciated driver of today's affordability crises.

In a prior era, all sorts of housing arrangements were commonplace that you almost never see built new anymore. Shotgun houses were the predominant form for a period in cities including Louisville and New Orleans; they're called that because they're very narrow and linear, and you could supposedly shoot a shotgun round in the front door and out the back. The skinny row houses of cities like Philadelphia are another space-economizing, traditionally American home style. In Southern cities where the row house never predominated, you can see old neighborhoods with very modest stand-alone bungalows on very tight lots.

To access the full story, click here.

8. What Western States Can Learn From Native American Wildfire Management Strategies

For several months in 2019, it seemed wildfires wouldn’t rage across the West as they had in recent years. But then came the dry autumn and California’s Santa Ana and Diablo winds, which can drive the spread of wildfires. Utilities are shutting off power across the state to reduce the risk of damaged equipment or downed trees on wires causing fires.

There’s no lack of proposals for managing wildfires more effectively: California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed 22 wildfire-related bills in one day. But what’s missing are perspectives from indigenous communities across North America, who have lived with fire for thousands of years.

In our research on climate change and people’s reactions to it, we have worked with the Karuk Tribe in northwestern California and southern Oregon on their plan to manage their land under these evolving conditions. American Indian tribes across the West are working with an increased sense of urgency to manage fire-adapted landscapes in the face of climate change. The Karuk Tribe’s climate adaptation plan directs their efforts to do just that.

This work has convinced us that this is an exciting political moment to restore western forests and protect the public from dangerous wildfires – and that tribes are uniquely positioned to lead the way.

To access the full story, click here.

9. After The Water

When a flash flood ripped through Old Ellicott City in Maryland, residents thought it was a freak occurrence. Instead, it was a hint about the future. And adapting to that future has been painful.

July 30, 2016 It was already dark when the rain started to fall on the ridges and hills above Old Ellicott City.

Inside the bars and restaurants on Main Street, neighbors and friends were enjoying a Saturday night out.

It was hard to hear the rain over the music. It was hard to worry because it was just rain.

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Then there was the unmistakable sound of breaking glass and screaming.

A torrent of water came down the narrow Main Street, channeled between sloping bedrock and three-story facades of shops and galleries. Drivers had no way to get out.

Frantic teenagers at Bean Hollow coffee shop called 911 crying.

The buildings on the south side of Main Street are built over a streambed, and as the water rose, the floor of the shop began to buckle.

Many people on Main Street had no clear escape routes.

In the coffee shop, a terrified customer finally found a second-floor staircase hidden in a closet.

To access the full story, click here.

10. WEBINAR – Building Trust With Your Community

(Thursday, November 14, 2019 10:00am PST)

Trust isn’t just a buzz-word. Trust, good or bad, can change the way organizations and stakeholders interact. Trust can affect the progress of your community or project. Trust can open the door to clear and effective communication across demographics. But how do we create that bond of trust?

Join Stéphanie Beauregard, Practice Lead and Engagement Manager at Bang the Table, as she explores the differences between requesting citizen participation and building trusting relationships with continuous communication and always closing the loop. She helps us answer the important question of “How do we ensure we are not just using participants as machines to provide feedback, but rather become partners in our decisions?”

What we’ll cover: • Importance of keeping your project information up-to-date.

• The Information Tools available and how to best utilize them.

• The four pillars of trust.

• Developing trust and building relationships through communication.

• The importance of closing the loop (even closing many loops!)

To register for the webinar, click here.

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