Our Northwest is measured with some different rules

The Vancouver, B.C., transit strike of last year bankrupted many businesses and proved especially hard on the elderly and young people. It was another very good thing.

And the wildfires that scorched Eastern Washington last summer? Yep. Another very good thing.

That's the world view we produce in our incessant counting of economic progress, says a provocative new report coming out today from a Seattle-based think tank.

According to perhaps the most-watched indicator of our society's well-being, the gross domestic product, spending on quake repairs, gas purchases by busless Vancouverites and pay for hundreds of firefighters all look beneficial.

"Many of the indicators we rely on, particularly economic ones such as the Dow Jones industrial average, are deeply flawed," says the report by Northwest Environment Watch. "They conceal what they purport to reveal and, in the process, systematically misinform us, misdirecting our actions on a grand scale."

The report, "This Place On Earth 2002," argues that society can become more successful and sustainable only by overhauling the way progress is measured.

"The Northwest's chosen indicators ... should spring from the region's values, its aspirations for the future," the report says. "Financial security ranks high among those values, so it is fitting that the Northwest monitor its financial capital. But it is not fitting that financial measurements should overwhelm all others."

"Ideally, indicators of the Northwest's lasting progress -- its sustainability -- would measure to what extent Northwesterners are secure and thriving, to what extent Northwest nature is thriving, and to what extent Northwesterners' way of life is benign in its impacts on nature and cultures outside the region."

Clark Williams-Derry, the lead author, said researchers wanted to get across the idea that "as a society we measure so many things -- GDP, business starts. We monitor our financial resources assiduously, but so much of the time, that stuff doesn't tell the whole story."

Instead, he said, the report tries to tease out other, more telling benchmarks.

The wide-ranging, carefully footnoted report employs a by-the-numbers approach -- one its authors admit is inadequate, but still revealing -- to cover developments in recent years affecting the Pacific Northwest in 10 areas. The statistical glimpse of the region's progress, or lack of it, covers conditions in a broadly defined region stretching from Southern Alaska to just north of the San Francisco Bay Area, and into Western Montana -- the habitat of the salmon and the rivers that feed the rainforest of the Northwest.

Early reaction to the report ranged from approval by an economist to excoriation by a Libertarian think tank.

"This comes across as the typical arrogance of the self-described environmental community," said Lynn Harsh, executive director of the Olympia-based Evergreen Freedom Foundation. "The stuff I'm reading here is more of the same: Let's tell people how they should be behaving and what they should be driving. Human nature doesn't work that way."

She said people need incentives to change their behavior.

"Give people a reason to do it, and a way to do it, and they'll do it," Harsh said.

Ed Whitelaw, an economist with the Eugene, Ore., consulting firm EcoNorthwest, said the report's approach is "not far-out, Looney Tunes stuff," and that economists of many persuasions agree that negative effects of economic development have to some degree been overlooked.

For example, paving over wetlands is counted as positive for the economy, Whitelaw said, even though the marshy areas store and cleanse water for free.

"We measure many of the wrong things," Whitelaw said, "and we measure many of the right things incorrectly."

Yet even the lead author said the report can be faulted for failing to zero in on the best measures of well-being. But that's because no one is counting them.

"We're not saying these are the best indicators," Williams-Derry said. "We say there are some that are good, some that could be improved on, and some that are bad."

The report argues that the calculation of "success" could include measures of toxic chemicals carried in people's bodies, unplanned birth rates, the size of natural areas that once supported wildlife now fragmented by development and a psychological survey of human contentment.

All that and more could be measured, the authors write, for $5 million a year -- or about what the region spends each day on soft drinks.

"The opportunity at hand for the Pacific Northwest is to apply its talented pragmatism -- the stuff that has made the region an entrepreneurial hotspot -- to the challenge of shrinking the regional economy's ecological footprint," the report says.

"...Until the Northwest begins measuring what it values, instead of valuing what it measures, it will not be able to seize the opportunity or avoid the danger.

"When, however, the region does regularly monitor its environmental and social performance, along with its economy, this place on Earth may yet achieve a way of life that can last -- one that nurtures human community while honoring nature's limits."

NORTHWEST IN A NUTSHELL

A whole new way to quantify conditions in the Pacific Northwest, which is broadly defined as southern Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and parts of Oregon, Idaho and Northern California.

Growth: Three-fifths of the Seattle area's growth in the 1990s came in the form of suburban sprawl, compared with about half of Portland's and about one-fifth of Vancouver's, where sprawl is more tightly controlled.

Pavement: About 1 acre of development per hour was added in the '90s.

Salmon: Last year's runs were among the largest in years, though well below historical averages. More than half of Washington and Oregon stocks are extinct or imperiled. In Idaho, the figure rises to four-fifths.

Housing: Prisons lead the way as the fastest-growing form of housing, with prison beds growing at three times the rate of all housing.

Health: Life expectancy is rising, but there are major variations across the region. It has increased fastest in Vancouver, where it climbed two years in the 1990s. By comparison, a Washington newborn's life expectancy increased by one year and five months, while an Idaho baby gained just six months.

Income: Disparities grew in the '90s. The upper fifth of families saw household incomes grow by $38,000, adjusted for inflation. But those in the middle fifth saw earnings grow only about $3,800, after inflation. Accounting for inflation, the poorest families saw a small decline.

Population: Growth slowed from 43 new Northwesterners per hour in 1990 to an estimated 22 per hour in 2001.

Roads: After three decades of steady growth, the road system actually contracted in the '90s with U.S. Forest Service closure of some 4,400 miles of logging roads in light of pressure from environmental groups.

Cars and trucks: Last year there were 12 million -- 1 million more than there are licensed drivers.

Energy: Use has grown -- equal to a supertanker of oil every two days -- but the economy has grown still faster, meaning energy efficiency improved by 53 percent between 1981 and 2000.

Greenhouse gasses: Emissions of gasses that trap heat in the atmosphere remained roughly constant last year, though high electricity costs prompted 10 of the region's 11 aluminum smelters to close. The smelters accounted for 3 to 4 percent of the region's greenhouse gasses, but last year Northwesterners burned more gasoline and natural gas, so greenhouse gas production stayed about the same.

P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com

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