The Department of Bioregion was proud to be featured in a new article The Cascadia Region - Fun and Facts by the Kelowna Capital News on October 13th, 2022 by BW Uzelmann. Read the whole article at: https://canadatoday.news/bc/the-cascadia-region-fun-and-facts-kelowna-capital-news-55464/
Cascadia as a region is not well defined. But Cascadia, the Department of Bioregion, accurately identifies the Cascadia bioregion as comprising “British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and portions of southeast Alaska and northern California as defined by the Columbia, Fraser, and Snake watersheds [Rivers]“. The department is unconventional, and not just because of its name. The website offers a Cascadia Passport, but the page does not exist. It strives to position “bioregionalism… as a viable alternative to capitalism and the nation-state.” Shades of Marx? Reliably odd, the ministry supports cascading independence.
Similarly, in the mid-19th century, disaffected locals proposed separating the southern counties of Oregon and the northern counties of California from their states to form the state of Jefferson. The Oregon and California authorities obviously didn’t take well to the idea; Jefferson remains only a dream.
However, the proposal was revived in the 1930s and 1940s. The New York Times reports, “A group of young men with guns proclaimed a ‘patriotic rebellion,’ in which they ‘resign every Thursday until further notice.'” They apparently once blocked a highway in Northern California. A state trooper was in attendance, and the blockades directed him to “take the road back to California.” Neighborly!
Back to Cascadia. The Cascadia Innovation Corridor (CIC) is a mainstream group formed by the Business Council of British Columbia (BCBC) and Challenge Seattle. Connecting cities from Vancouver, BC to Seattle, Washington to Portland, Oregon, the corridor will “create opportunity and prosperity beyond what they and their surrounding regions could achieve independently,” says the CIC. The corridor already had 9.3 million inhabitants and a gross domestic product of US$740 billion in 2020.
The stated vision of the CIC “is to become an innovative economic zone” with a focus on “research, economic development and transport”. The CIC advances existing economic strengths with regional collaborations in healthcare, quantum computing, transportation, blockchain and more. (Blockchain is known for storing transactions for cryptocurrencies, but has many potential applications.)
The 2022 Cascadia Conference, organized by the CIC, was attended by the BC Premier and the Governors of Washington, Oregon and California, as well as representatives from business, government and academia. The Prime Minister and Governors renewed their commitment to combating climate change, mitigating its effects and building infrastructure in the region. And they updated advances on an intriguing proposal for an Ultra-High-Speed Ground Transportation (UHSGT) rail system.
“Cascadia’s UHSGT system will serve the metro areas of Vancouver, BC; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR, and places in between and beyond, with frequent connections at speeds up to 250 miles per hour,” according to a 2020 Washington State study. Previous reports estimated that the UHSGT in 2017 had 24 to Cost $42 billion and would provide up to $355 billion in economic growth and 200,000 jobs building and operating the system. 3 million annual trips were calculated on the emission-free system.
Jock Finlayson and Ken Peacock demonstrate the importance of our ‘cascading connections’ in an article for BCBC. They argue that trade with Washington, Oregon, and California benefits from their proximity, the size of their economies, and their and our extensive transportation and other infrastructure. The three states buy a staggering 45-46% of BC’s merchandise exports to the US and over half of all BC exports to the “giant US market”. Washington alone receives 30% of BC’s merchandise exports to the US.
Unfortunately, there is no word on the level of exports to Jefferson!
Bruce W Uzelman
The Department of Bioregion was proud to be featured in a new article The Cascadia Region - Fun and Facts by the Kelowna Capital News on October 13th, 2022 by BW Uzelmann. Read the whole article at: https://canadatoday.news/bc/the-cascadia-region-fun-and-facts-kelowna-capital-news-55464/
