Nau is a Portland-based active wear company that makes gear for “artists, athletes and activists out to unfuck the world.” I would have chosen a different way of expressing that sentiment, but I do hear what Nau is saying and I count myself among the people they’re trying to reach.
When you visit Nau’s Web site and click on “Collective Stories,” you’ll find an archive of videos that showcase the concerns of Nau employees and their customers. For example, here’s a piece on Salmon Nation and Salmon Nation Artists Project CD:
I like how Alexa Wiley Pengelly, one of the CD’s producers says, “Culture is alive. It is found within experiences and moments passed down and shared by our elders, civic leaders and creative communities, connecting people to the land.”
I also love the paintings of the mighty fish by Mimi Matsuda.
Federal workers at Bureau of Land Management sites throughout the West are being asked to weigh the nation’s need for clean and plentiful energy with concerns for wildlife habitat.
Rows of tall turbines have already remade the landscape on wheat farms and ridgelines on private land around the region. But so far there have been no wind farms built on public land in the Northwest.
That’s about to change.
Although Oregon’s dry side was bypassed by the oil and gas boom that roiled the West in recent years, it’s clear that won’t be the case with wind. That could change the view from atop Steens Mountain or on Interstate 84 while driving toward Boise. But it also portends some bitter fights over who gets to use publicly owned land and for what purpose.
And a lot of that fighting could center on a showy, chickenlike bird called the greater sage grouse.
I’m not a wildlife scientist, an engineer, nor a politician, but I am confident there’s room for both the sage grouse and a conscientious wind industry on the publicly held lands in this state.
I read the book Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach many years ago. In the book, the Pacific Northwest secedes from the nation. I’ve been a bioregionalist ever since.
Now I see in “Sunday Styles” that the book—which sold over 400,000 copies in the 1970s—has caught on with new audiences in churches and classrooms around the nation. A fact which has led Bantam to reissue the title this month.
Scott Slovic, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said, “You hear people talking about the idea of Ecotopia, or about the Northwest as Ecotopia. But a lot of them don’t know where the term came from.â€
The green movement’s focus on local foods and products, and its emphasis on energy reduction also have roots in “Ecotopia,†he said. In fact, much of Portland, Ore., with its public transport, slow-growth planning and eat-local restaurants, can seem like Ecotopia made reality.
Which must be why the copy editor of this section titled the article, “The Novel That Predicted Portland.”
Local rivers and the magnificent fish in them have been top of mind recently. On Monday night we attended a World Affairs Council-sponsored series of talks by professional river savers at the EcoTrust Building in the Pearl District.
We enjoyed hearing from Jeremy Five Crows of the Nez Pierce tribe and the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission. He educated us on the Columbia Basin Fish Accords, an historic collaboration between the four tribes in the Columbia River basin and the federal government. At the heart of the Accords is a 10-year, $900 million agreement to restore salmon habitat. Five Crows mentioned that the tribes can’t advocate for dam removal during this 10-year term, which I found interesting. He didn’t say anything about the rest of us pursuing that particular goal.
Today, while doing my internet rounds, I happened upon Rivers in Demand a project from media advocacy group, Epicocity. Here’s a sample of their mission-driven work:
As you can see in the video above, the Rogue’s 40 anniversary of protection under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was greeted by a proposal to log in its basin. Thankfully, a coalition of concerned groups, called Save The Wild Rogue, is working to extend Wild and Scenic protection to the Rogues tributaries, which would stymie the logging plan.
Kavita Heyn of American Rivers (where I once worked!) and Stephanie Tidwell of Klamath-Siskiyou Wild are helping to lead the charge for the Rogue.
“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.” – R. Buckminster Fuller
I feel fortunate that we were able to see Portland Center Stage’s production, R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE last night. Going in, I didn’t know much about this man. The fact that I did not seems incredible to me now. Be that as it may, I certainly care to know more.
There was so much density in last night’s finely honed delivery of Fuller’s vision, that I hardly know where to begin. But I can point to a few things that jumped out at me. Fuller’s sense of “design responsibility” grabbed me. So did his admonition to do more with less. I was also impressed with his playful, but serious, use of the English language. For instance, Fuller coined lots of terms in his day. One that stands out for me is “livingry.” Livingry is the opposite of weaponry and killingry, and means that which is in support of all human, plant, and Earth life. It’s an idea that brings to mind Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s call for a Department of Peace. I wonder where Obama is on that idea.
While I ponder that, take a look at this video on Fuller, clearly one of the more enigmatic American thinkers (and doers) in the 20th century:
At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Friday, Al Gore said Web 2.0 can be utilized to serve a common, but higher, purpose.
“The purpose, I would urge all of you — as many of you as are willing to take it up — is to bring about a higher level of consciousness about our planet and the imminent danger and opportunity we face because of the radical transformation in the relationship between human beings and the Earth,†Mr. Gore said.
According to the Times’ Bits blog, Gore also said, the nation needs to build “an electronet,” a unified national smart grid, with high-voltage, low-loss underground wires that deliver renewable energy from the places that produce it — like the sunny Arizona deserts or the windy Dakota plains — to the cities where the majority of it is used. Such a grid would require a $400 billion investment upfront, but would pay off in just over three years, he said.
The task, to summarize, is to use cloud computing, open source technology and viral networks to share mission critical information that directly leads to environmental upgrades in the nation’s infrastructure.
The Lorax speaks for all trees
I speak for two, Reuben and Cherise.
These towering firs caught the scent of Lewis and Clark
On an updraft from the mighty Columbia.
It was the first whiff of progress,
And it took some getting used to.
The neighborhood was thick then.
Eagles fished from Reuben’s limbs
Bears clawed Cherise’s bark
And many long-needled creatures
With deep Cascadian roots
Stood tall in every direction.
Bye and bye, legions of white men
With sharpened axes came
To thin the forest boreal.
By luck of the draw,
Reuben and Cherise survived.
Today the grind of industry
Contiues to churn
Making the squirels run faster
And the ‘coons climb higher.
Ch-chug, ch-chug
Train whistles blow in the night.
Rueben and Cherise prefer the
Hoot of the owl.
The Oregonian has an interesting piece on the solar business and how important tax credits are to the burgeoning industry.
According to the story, Portland’s Tanner Creek Energy faces a module shortage and record-high prices as they rush to erect solar systems before the 30 percent federal tax credit for solar-system owners expires at year’s end. Solar advocates say such subsidies are crucial until new technology and mass manufacturing reduce costs.
Faced with the loss of these tax credits, many in the solar industry fear a crippling slowdown right as momentum is rising.
I heard Bobby Kennedy Jr. speak in Savannah a year or so ago. One of the things that stuck with me from his talk is the fact that we can power the entire country with wind and solar, if we had a means of transmitting the electricity generated. In other words, we can invest deeply in wind and solar, but that’s not enough. We also need to build out the infrastructure.
Regulators in Texas are doing something about it. According to The New York Times, Texas regulators have approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project.
The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The lines can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.
Transmission companies will pay the upfront costs of the project. They will recoup the money from power users, at a rate of about $4 a month for residential customers.
The transmission problem is so acute in Texas that turbines are sometimes shut off even when the wind is blowing.
“When the amount of generation exceeds the export capacity, you have to start turning off wind generators†to keep things in balance, said Hunter Armistead, head of the renewable energy division in North America at Babcock & Brown, a large wind developer and transmission provider.
Other states may find the Texas model difficult to emulate. The state is unique in having its own electricity grid. All other states fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, adding an extra layer of bureaucracy to any transmission proposals.
Today in Philadelphia, at the centennial meeting of the National Governor’s Association, President Clinton gave a rousing speech. He quoted liberally from an earlier speech, given 100 years ago by then President Theodore Roosevelt to the same gathering of governors.
Here’s the essence of what Roosevelt said and Clinton repeated:
Disregarding for the moment the question of moral purpose, it is safe to say that the prosperity of our people depends directly on the energy and intelligence with which our natural resources are used. It is equally clear that these resources are the final basis of national power and perpetuity. Finally, it is ominously evident that these resources are in the course of rapid exhaustion.
We have become great in a material sense because of the lavish use of our resources; and we have just reason to be proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation. These questions do not relate only to the next century or to the next generation. One distinguishing characteristic of really civilized men is foresight; we have to, as a nation, exercise foresight for this nation in the future; and if we do not exercise that foresight, dark will be the future!
We are coming to recognize as never before the right of the Nation to guard it’s own future in the essential matter of natural resources. In the past we have admitted the right of the individual to injure the future of the Republic for his own present profit. In fact there has been a good deal of a demand for unrestricted individualism, for the right of the individual to injure the future of all of us for his own temporary and immediate profit. The time has come for a change.
Can you imagine if this type of conservative existed today? We’d be in much better shape if such persons did exist (in either political party). Since, for the most part, they do not exist, we the people must carry the weight. We the people must refuse to allow unrestricted individualism. Regulation of industry in not bad, it’s necessary for the common good (an American ideal if there ever was one). Reagan and his ilk convinced a lot of people regulation of industry was wrong, but it’s time to move past that false ideal. Unrestricted individualism, perpetrated by a greedy man or a mob of greedy men, is in fact the ruin of this nation. Are you ready to put a stop it? I am.
