"sharing your opinion about driving and tailpipe emissions"

The problem is that most Portlanders' opinions on driving and their actual behavior around driving are two different things.

You can get 75% of Portlanders to tell you that "people" (in the abstract) should be living in tiny boxes and taking transit everywhere, but they don't actually do that themselves and have no plans to.

In the Lake Oswego review, you have a paper that is not only a part of the Pamplin empire. It's a paper whose editor is a dark sheep (very liberal) member of the Forbes family. People familiar with that paper's operation tell of instances where the atmosphere of political correctness has been the norm for years. And Forbes has reliably endorsed every democrat and liberal cause as far back as the 1990's. Now the paper pulled down the section allowing comments to this shoddy journalism. And now are slowly promoting the old agenda and candidates, some by creating false controversy with the new Council and Mayor.

Pamplin has no ethics, so why should you expect his papers or radio stations to. Now, I'm talking about management here. There are individuals I know personally in the Pamplin organization that are very ethical, but when it comes to Pamplin and the management of his media enterprises, that's another story completely.

Bjorn Borg, a scientist and believer in man-made global warming, wrote in op-ed in the wall street journal most recently which presented the facts that all-electric cars actually cause more carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline powered vehicles. It's because their manufacture takes something like 30k pounds of carbon dioxide emissions whereas conventional cars take only 18k pounds. If you actually are able to get more than 80,000 miles on the electric vehicle battery before replacement, you then just breakeven with the conventional car. Borg advises diverting public funds, now going to subsidize charging stations and electric battery manufacturing, instead into basic research of battery technology.

For the folks who can actually count and complete the economic/financial picture, Portland is so frustrating because so much of its governance is based on incomplete information (linear like thinking) and the popular perceptions such incompleteness fulfills.
With such a prevailing mindset, it's easy for the current government regime to ask such leading questions as: how do you feel about tail-pipe emissions?

Bob, I believe you mean Bjørn Lomborg. Here's the recent article from the WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324128504578346913994914472.html

Lomborg's books are also highly recommended. The Skeptical Environmentalist is a few years old now, but still quite relevant. The newer ones are fine, too.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?field-author=Bj%26%23248%3Brn%20Lomborg&search-alias=books

Portland is still reacting to the "peak oil" crisis. It's a game of control and greed, not the environment.

And the "One Million Climate Refugees" expected to show up any day now.

I received the same email. It's part of Metro's "smart communities" program, which they say was handed to them by the 2009 legislature. Their goal is to reduce tailpipe emissions 70% by 2035. Really.

Never mind that emissions are down to their lowest level since the early 1990's, nor that DEQ stations just plug into your car's computer and then hand you your tags after you fork over $100.

We need light rail into Vancouver! And more streetcars!