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Show M A-20 The Park Record Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, August 25-28, 2018 C OUNTAIN TOWN NEWS M A Roundup of News from Other Western Ski Resort Communities ALLEN BEST Mountain Town News Post your best shots on Instagram with the hashtag: #ParkCityPics and we’ll put the best ones in The Park Record! Whistler emissions rise despite BC’s carbon tax WHISTLER, B.C. – If Whistler can’t figure out how to ratchet down its greenhouse gas emissions, what ski town can? It’s in a province considered one of the most advanced in thinking about climate change, with one of North America’s first carbon taxes. Whistler, a community of 12,000, has a goal of slashing emissions a third by 2020. Barring a miracle, it won’t happen. “I don’t see any way that we’re going to make that 2020 target,” said Ted Battiston, a Whistler municipal staffer in summarizing a 2017 trends report. For several years, Whistler reduced emissions 3.8 percent annually as compared to the baseline year of 2007. Battiston attributed these reductions primarily to one-off projects, including a cap on the landfill that captures the methane. In another project, propane was replaced by natural gas. When burned, natural gas produces marginally fewer emissions than propane. Gasoline, diesel produce more. Burning coal produces far more carbon dioxide. Whistler’s skid is the result of a 20 percent population growth during a time of robust economic growth. Since 2012, when the resort hosted the Winter Olympics, Whistler’s emissions have grown an average 4.7 percent. However, per capita in six of the last seven years had actually declined. Transportation causes 56 percent of Whistler’s emissions. Burning of natural gas, primarily for home heating, causes 33 percent. Pique Newsmagazine says the community’s climate action plan, which was adopted in 2016, has been given less attention than housing and transportation in municipal affairs. Battiston argues for more funding for staffing, to engage the public in changed behavior. Economists, however, have almost universally favored a carbon tax as the way to steer decisions about activities and infrastructure responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. In this, British Columbia was an early adopter. In 2008 the province adopted a revenue-neutral carbon tax, meaning that taxes collected were to be used to reduce other taxes. There’s some evidence, however, that the tax has not entirely been revenue neutral. More troubling is the evidence that the tax hasn’t been effective in suppressing emissions. The tax was launched at $10 a metric ton and elevated incrementally to $30 a ton by 2012. Since then, political blowback has caused provincial authorities to delay further increases. Maybe the tax isn’t high enough to steer decisions. Writing in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, Stanford University’s Jeffrey Ball points to the conclusion of a group of economists in 2017. They said carbon prices would have to be between $40 and $80 per metric ton by 2020, and between $50 and $100 by 2030, to achieve the emission cuts called for in the Paris climate accord. Another problem, he says, is that carbon taxes may be effective in altering electric production. British Columbia gets most of its electricity from hydropower. However, carbon taxes do little to change how buildings are constructed. Builders don’t pay the energy bills of what they construct. Transportation is also relatively unresponsive to carbon taxes. Drivers, says Ball, usually don’t change behavior when gasoline and diesel prices rise in modest amounts. And sharp increases in taxes get political pushback. If an elegant solution, he concludes, carbon taxes in Whistler and elsewhere haven’t helped much yet “in the toughest environmental fight the world has ever faced.” says most “fire whirls,” as they Y are commonly called, are only 6 y to 8 feet tall and last just a few v seconds. But the one that killed R a firefighter this summer in the B megafire at Redding, Calif., was “totally different,” he says. o The San Francisco Chronicle l says the tornado had a base the C size of three football fields, winds m up to 165 miles an hour, and tema peratures of at least 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s nearly double w the heat generated by a typical B wildfire. t Craig Clements, director of the Fire Weather Research Laboratot ry at San Jose State University, t also thought this one was dift ferent. “Fire whirls occur all the “ time. What was unusual about e this one was the strength of the a surface winds and the size,” he s told the Chronicle. “This was a t meteorological phenomenon.” Even experts were spooked by “ the fire at Redding. They say “ext treme fire behavior” has become more frequent, more violent, and D more destructive. The tornadoes b they produce are nearly impossible to predict. w Even so, deadly fire whirls i have occurred before. The worst e occurred in Japan in 1923 followB ing an earthquake that devastated Tokyo and Yokohama. The earthquake and an associated tsunami were deadly, killing 142,800 people. But the single largest cause of death was a “fire dragon” produced as a result of the fires caused by the earthquake. The tornado incinerated 38,000 people in Tokyo within 15 minutes. Also notable was a 2003 fire in Australia that killed 4 people and injured 492. A fire whirl in Please see Mountain Town, A-21 540 Main Street, Park City RiverhorseParkCity.com 435-649-3536 Riverhorse on Main @riverhorseonmain DINNER NIGHTLY AT 5PM WEEKEND LIVE MUSIC ALSO JOIN US IN OUR LOUNGE 25 $ OFF DINNER with the purchase of TWO ENTRÉES PLEASE PRESENT THIS COUPON TO YOUR SERVER WHEN ORDERING AT RIVERHORSE ON MAIN Limit TWO dining certificates per group | Not valid in conjunction with any other promotional offer | Food must be consumed on premises | A 20% service charge will be added to the bill before the discount | Contracted parties not valid Valid Through October 31st, 2018 T The terrifying spectacle of wildfire tornadoes REDDING, Calif. – Small tor-C nadoes occur commonly enough i in wildfires. One was observed in t early July near the Weston Pass k wildfire in the Mosquito Range of central Colorado. S Scott Stephens, a professor b of fire science at UC Berkeley |