was hoping we'd make it through the whole year without any wildfire smoke in seattle.

definitely not the case after tonight. https://twitter.com/KSeattleWeather/status/1303169390733484032?s=20

but a reminder: if public buildings for the last decade had been built to passivhaus standards we would have numerous private and public facilities w/ fresh, filtered air

as of today, we have almost none. https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/07/22/seattle-must-require-passivhaus/

passivhaus present a cost-effective path to preventing those particulates from entering buildings, thus ensuring a high level of comfort and indoor air quality. think of it as a building sized respirator https://twitter.com/MontePaulsen/status/1029786459786493952?s=20

our building code won't require anything close to passivhaus until 2027 at the earliest, unless the council acts fast to mandate public buildings meet it. it's completely within their purview.

if they don't, it means nearly another decade of inaction while fires keep burning

there are also a whole slew of other things the city should have started doing decades ago.

even at the onset of covid, the mayor claimed we can't go back to the way things were before.

yet the mayor has done absolutely nothing to position the city to drastically kill VMTs...

car volumes are getting back up to where they were. transit is being cut back. there are no pop up bike lanes, no pedestrian zones. no cooling centers. no fresh air zones.

and it gets worse. the mayor's climate action plan? does nothing to address this: https://twitter.com/holz_bau/status/1091849055527784448?s=20

oh and if holding out hope that electric vehicles will provided some sort of workaround for what we're presently experiencing - don't get hopes up. even w/ widespread adoption does nothing for king county carbon emissions til 2030. and then there's this: https://twitter.com/holz_bau/status/1303063238888681472?s=20

in short, things on the 'wet' side of the cascades will get really bad if we hit 2C - and at this rate, it seems highly likely we will blow right through 2C.

but sure - let's build a car bridge in magnolia and west seattle. who needs to act on climate?

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s42408-019-0062-8