I love when an environmental issue, or any issue, helps to melt the artificial construct of political lines between people and communities come together to face off against corporate agressors.
Thankfully, that’s exactly what’s going on in Nebraska, Texas and other communities that would be directly impacted by the proposed Keystone Pipeline.
Property-rights conservatives, water supply activists and landowners are banding together along the pipeline’s proposed route through Texas, challenging plans to claim land for the proposed pipeline that will run from Canada’s oil sands to Texas’ Gulf Coast.
“Crippling someone’s water supply knows no party line,” said Rita Beving, consultant to the bipartisan East Texas Sub-Regional Planning Commission. A Republican mayor and a Democratic city secretary lead the group’s fight against the pipeline.
In other words, cowboys ain’t taking any of TransCanada’s shit. Or Washington’s, for that matter.
“Lifelong Republicans are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with urban tree-huggers,” Malinda Frevert, a spokeswoman for BOLD Nebraska, said of that effort.
Trade magazine Power Engineering is celebrating the news that a new nuclear power plant will be built 26 miles southeast of Augusta, Georgia.
It’s official: Georgia will be the site of the nation’s first new nuclear reactors in more than 30 years.
The Washington Post, on the other hand, brings another, more balanced point of view to the news.
The new reactors, however, are no longer seen as the start of what the industry once predicted would be a nuclear renaissance. Virtually all of the 31 plants that had been proposed by 2009 have been shelved as a result of cheap natural gas, high construction costs, weak electricity demand and safety concerns following the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan.
The Vogtle project “survives only because Georgia regulators have agreed to make the customers pay for it regardless of the fact that its power is likely to be three times as expensive as other realistic combinations of alternatives,” said Peter Bradford, a former NRC commissioner and critic of many nuclear projects.
Jim Riccio, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said taxpayers were helping “to build new nuclear reactors that corporations would never risk building themselves.”
The agency’s vote is a “monumental accomplishment,” Thomas Fanning, Southern’s chairman and chief executive officer, said. “Anything that we learn from Fukushima, I assure you we will bring to bear,” Fanning told reporters.
The Vogtle site is already home to two existing nuclear reactors owned by Southern that began commercial operations in the late 1980s. The area of land adjacent to the Savannah River is also home to a Dept. of Energy managed nuclear site called Savannah River Site, which consolidates and stores nuclear materials.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be eat any fish or drink any water (treated or not) from said river, which of course flows toward the city of Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.
Politically, this would be an outrage if a Republican administration was pushing it through. Does Obama get a hall pass on this? I don’t see why.
Thankfully, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Friends of the Earth, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Center for a Sustainable Coast, Citizens Allied for Safe Energy, Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions, North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, Nuclear Information and Resource Service and Nuclear Watch South are fighting the decision. The environmental groups are asking federal judges to require the NRC to prepare a new environmental impact statement for the proposed reactors.
Portland Mayor Sam Adams is not running for re-election, but he is working hard to do the job Portlanders hired him to do.
For one, Adams wants Portland to be “the scrappiest small global city in the United States.” That means exports, among other things. “Even without a coherent regional strategy or partnership, Greater Portland ranks second in the nation in export value as a percentage of our economy,” says Adams.
Here’s a look at one Portland-based company actively participating in the global economy:
Portland Development Commission has loads of video segments on YouTube that help to paint the city’s business environment in a positive light.
Here’s one that showcases the city’s attractiveness to startups:
For more information on the progress being made on several important fronts, see these Progress Reports from the Mayor’s office.
We moved from NE Portland to West Linn at the end of May and ever since we have been busy learning the area. I like to call it the South Shore, although I may be alone in that. Anyway, one of the things that stands out is the fact that West Linn and Oregon City, just across the river, both benefit from historic roots. In fact, it’s what keeps these towns from being suburbs, in the classic “municipalities made possible by Eisenhower-era freeways” sense.
Oregon City, of course, is the oldest city in Oregon. It’s where the Oregon Trail reached its end, and the place where white settlers filed their land claims in the new American territory. Today, more than 60 buildings in downtown Oregon City are eligible for the National Historic Register. But it’s clear that Oregon City needs help, as in economic development and urban renewal. It’s times like these that it would pay to be a multimillionaire, because the opportunities to usher in a new era of responsible growth and revitalization are immense.
There’s also significant pressure to make Oregon City a town of malls and planned communities, a move which strips some of the grit and character from the place. In my quest to understand the players and the details of the South Shore drama, I’ve been reading up on the Mayor, the City Commissioners, and plans for two massive projects–Clackamas Cove, a mixed use development on 109 acres, and The Rivers, a proposed 650,000-square-foot mall that would be built on a former landfill.
Oregon City Mayor, Doug Neely, is for the developments, but Commissioner James Nicita isn’t so sure. Nicita, a lawyer with an urban planning degree, wants to let taxpayers decide, and the developers aren’t happy about possible citizen roadblocks.
Steve Mayes of The Oregonian has been following the story. In June, Mayes reported that CenterCal, the company developing The Rivers, broke off negotiations with the city, citing a “deep division” among city commissioners, in particular two newly elected commissioners, James Nicita and Rocky Smith Jr., who both campaigned against the project.
According to Mayes, the project has been dogged by political clashes between those who see a mall as a way to turn an eyesore into a destination retail center and those who question the need for a $17.6 million subsidy. Now, negotiations between the land owner, Park Place Development, and CenterCal are at a standstill. City Manager David Frasher said, “You don’t have a project if the developer doesn’t have the land.”
Personally, I don’t think the Portland area needs another mall. You can find one a short drive in any direction from Oregon City.
Plus, a modern cookie-cutter mall is far from the only solution that will grow jobs and the tax base. What would be truly exciting is to see the organic growth of historic revitalization projects in the core of Oregon City’s downtown. That way, Oregon City remains a unique and vital place to work, live and visit. Naturally, this is the more complicated solution, one that depends on the actions of hundreds of individual investors, versus the swift moves of one or two adept developers.
I have my own ideas about what might work in Oregon City, and what I’d love to see happen there. After visiting Walla Walla last April, I can see how the urban tasting rooms model that makes Walla Walla such a desirable and walkable wine destination, might also work in Oregon City.
Why would the state’s wine industry make that kind of commitment to Oregon City, which isn’t known for producing wine? Access to the large wine-drinking population of Portland and its visitors, and cheap rents for historic properties, are two reasons why.
What have we learned, if anything from the near meltdown at Fukushima?
The Germans learned something. They decided last week to close seven of its 17 nuclear plants. According to BBC, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that all reactors operational before 1980 would be taken offline, and safety checks carried out on the remaining plants.
Then there’s Russia. According to The New York Times, the Russian nuclear industry has profited handsomely by selling reactors abroad, mostly to developing countries. That includes China and India — whose insatiable energy appetites are keeping them wedded to nuclear power.
But here’s the kicker. Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom, markets its reactors as safe — not despite Chernobyl, but because of it. Lessons learned and and all that jazz.
The safety pitch seems to be working. Russian prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, himself flew to Belarus last week to sign the contract to build a plant in that country, worth $9 billion.
“I want to stress that we possess a whole arsenal of advanced technical resources to ensure stable, accident-free performance for nuclear plants,†Mr. Putin told journalists in Minsk, the Belarusian capital.
What about us? Have we learned anything here at home? ‘Fraid not. According to Bloomberg, even as the administration reviews all U.S. reactors following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that triggered radiation leaks from a crippled Japanese plant, Obama last week called nuclear power an “important part†of his energy agenda.
Obama’s 2012 budget calls for an additional $36 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants.
“The administration’s energy priorities are based solely on how best to build a 21st century, clean energy economy,†White House spokesman Clark Stevens said. “That policy is not about picking one energy source over another.â€
In other words, Americans who “hoped” Obama was somehow different are now painfully aware of the bill of goods they were sold in 2008. It’s business as usual in America and it will remain that way until we do something about it, and by doing something I don’t mean placing false hopes on a candidate. We, as citizens must do the heavy lifting, which begins with energy conservation. Nuclear supplies 20% of the nation’s power. The best way to minimize this insane threat is to reduce our power usage by 20% right now, today and everyday.
Meyer Wells in Seattle builds modern furniture from reclaimed urban trees. The Seattle Times and The New York Times have both profiled the company in recent months.
Although custom furniture builders are abundant in the region, Meyer Wells staked out a distinct territory: the big slab, furniture that bring the raw power of the environment indoors .
The company harvests local urban trees doomed by development, disease or storm damage, and turn them into custom furniture, each piece a distinct botanical narrative.
Meyer Wells has been profitable from the start and revenue has grown annually. There are now nine employees, and high-visibility clients like Starbucks and the University of Washington.
The company also diversified its holding with Green Tree Mill, which provides builders with sustainable wood products.
“I think our idealism is meeting with the demand to make buildings greener,†John Wells says.
Public transit has to be better than one’s car for it to be an option that I (and most Americans) will consistently choose.
Here in Portland, it’s not better. I can drive from our cottage to my office in the heart of downtown in 20 minutes, door to door. The same trip on on bus and train takes 50 minutes, one way. So, it’s 40 minutes round trip versus one hour and 40 minutes.
TriMet costs $2.05 each way, or $4.10 per day. Parking a car downtown costs from $6.50 to $12 per day, depending on the lot (plus gas, insurance and maintenance). But what’s that extra hour worth in financial terms? Given that I bill clients by the hour for my time, I actually know what that hour is worth.
Despite the loss of time and money resulting from the TriMet experience, we are a one-vehicle family, so I do rely on the bus and train to take me to and fro. Not every day, but often enough. Apart from my cost-based analysis, there’s also the smell to consider. The smell of urine, in particular. Like the urine smell, one is also forced to entertain a certain amount of bullshit , whether it’s a screaming kid, a punk who cuts in line or a crazy person doing crazy person things.
The point of this piece is not to complain about TriMet, or public transit, in general. It’s obvious that lots of people need the system to work, and work well. I’ve lived in cities–Washington, DC and Chicago, in particular–where it does work well. The point is that Portland’s public transit has to be a much better option for people, if lots of people are going to use it. Before it can become that better option, we need to assess what’s wrong with it and how to make it better.
For some reason, Portland gets a lot of credit (especially in the press) for its public transit system, but as I’ve outlined above, public transit in Portland is actually pretty weak. And I haven’t even touched on the short hours of service and length of time between buses, nor the fact that so many Portland communities are nowhere near a TriMet train track.
Of course, to see better public transit options in Portland, Portlanders will need to fund TriMet. The metro area’s transportation organization faced a $27 million budget shortfall during the last fiscal year.
Here’s a graph that indicates where TriMet gets its money:
Portland is pursuing elite green status as a smart growth strategy, and also as an identity for the city. I like the plan, but for the plan to become real, steps need to be taken.
Nobody expects the President or Ben Bernanke to speak honestly, as the truth would shatter an increasingly fragile status quo. But this reliance on artifice, half-truths and propaganda has a cost; people are losing faith in government, in all levels of authority, and in the Mainstream Media—and for good reason.
The marketing obsession with instant gratification and self-glorification has led to a culture of what I call permanent adolescence. Politicians who promise a pain-free continuation of the status quo are rewarded by re-election, and those who speak of sacrifice are punished. An unhealthy dependence on the State to organize and fund everything manifests in a peculiar split-personality disorder: people want their entitlement check and their corporate welfare, yet they rail against the State’s increasing power. You can’t have it both ways, but the adolescent response is to whine and cajole Mom and Dad (or the State) for more allowance and more “freedom.†But freedom without responsibility and accountability is not really freedom; it’s simply an extended childhood.
President Obama must be seeking re-election because here he is earlier today advocating for the continuation of the status quo:
I wish Obama wouldn’t concern himself with re-election and instead do the right thing for the country every day for two more years. But he won’t, because he’s stuck inside the two-party system, which is a prison of our own making. I’d like to think that one day we might break free of this prison, but to do so we will have to stop feeding the guards.
Darby and I attended the Cully Association of Neighbors monthly meeting last night in the social room at Grace Presbyterian Church on NE Prescott. City Commissioner Amanda Fritz opened the meeting by running down the many concerns on her plate. She said she’s working on a proposed Alcohol Impact Area in the downtown corridor that would cut down on public drunkenness, which is a big tax on city services. She also took questions, including one about the additional taxpayer burden to build a new Sellwood bridge. Frtiz said she’s happy that a deal was made because the Sellwood Bridge has a safety rating of 2 on a scale of 100, which makes me concerned to drive over it.
Good as it was to hear from Fritz, who is a whip smart City official, we were in the room to hear from John McKinney of Columbia Biogas. McKinney is leading the charge to open a state-of-the-art green energy facility at 6849 Columbia Boulevard, which is located in an industrial section of the Cully neighborhood. First, let me say that Darby and McKinney know each other from work–Columbia Biogas sublets office space from Cascadia Green Building Council in the EcoTrust Building. So, you might say we were “plants” in the audience, ready to support this important green business initiative. But I didn’t feel like a plant. I felt like an interested student. And we live in Cully.
McKinney explained his project in down-to-earth terms despite the complicated engineering at the center of it all. He said the production of biogas by anaerobic digestion of source-separated food waste is well-proven technology in Europe. His company’s proposed biogas plant in NE Portland will generate 5 megawatts of power–enough to run 4000 to 5000 residential homes. That’s a lot of power, all generated from locally-collected food waste that would otherwise go to landfills, and turn into methane gas, which is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Naturally some citizen activists spoke up with concerns about the need for industrial safety, potential environmental impacts and the cultural and historic value of the site. McKinney patiently addressed everyone’s concerns and will do so again next week in a special meeting of the Concordia and Cully neighborhood associations at Word of Life Community Church on NE 55th Avenue.
After McKinney’s presentation, representatives from Changing the Climate in Cully, a neighborhood organizing project of Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good, spoke about their program that offers Cully homeowners free energy assessments and help with key weatherization efforts like insulation, air sealing and duct sealing and hot water upgrades. They mentioned that the deadline to apply for these free upgrades is fast approaching.
Overall, one couldn’t help but come away with the impression that there are a lot of committed, intelligent people working on civic solutions in this city. With so much media focus with what’s wrong with the economy, it’s nice to learn first-hand what’s right with it.
In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster–now in its 52nd day–British Petroleum is losing value fast, which means the company’s shareholders are taking a huge hit.
In response, British businessmen and politicians are rallying around BP and the company’s beleaguered CEO, according to Reuters.
On Monday, the chief executives of some of Britain’s biggest companies including Vodafone, BG Group and WPP gathered for a party at BP’s headquarters to show their support for embattled BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward.
BP confirmed the meeting but denied it was a party.
London Mayor Boris Johnson, a close ally of Prime Minister David Cameron, said the threat to BP’s dividend, which U.S. politicians want cut, was a “matter of national concern”.
“There’s something slightly worrying about the anti-British rhetoric that seems to be permeating from America,” he told BBC radio.
The gusher is leaking 40,000 barrels of oil a day–much higher than earlier estimates–but shareholders are worried about their investment and anti-British rhetoric. I would say I’m stunned, but I’m not.
I’d also say I’m stunned that a company is allowed to operate a rig like this off our coast with no plan for the inevitable worst case scenario, but I’m not. A lot of rich people have spent a lot of money to buy influence and keep regulators at a cozy distance. And this is what you get when there’s no real oversight.
See more photos of the damage this gusher continues to cause at Boston.com. The image above of a reporter swimming in oil is comes from Time Magazine. And here’s a report from ABC News:
