Environmentalists close to the sauna

Sometimes I wish I knew Spanish.  Then again, many Spanish-speaking people are quite literate in English.  Like my sauna compatriot at the gym today.

Both of us pondering how cold its gotten today - 20 degrees colder than yesterday.  Now I love the sauna, but for me its winding down from a workout.  For him, well he seemed dressed in kneepads and a wool cat.  So maybe he did want to warm up.

He was commenting on the lack of rain in Cali - along the freeway the pear trees had been uprooted and were lying for dead.  For lack of water.  It was a sadness to him, since when he came from Mexico he worked the orchards.  Described how in lean water years the tree rings were barely perceptible.  And how rain came in 50 year cycles.

Whoa, new information to me.  But he seemed quite close to the land.  Making me wonder who is the better environmentalist - someone who had worked the land, day in and day out.  Who could see directly the impact of climate change.  Or the local lobbyists - my recent experience at an Environmental Quality Commission hearing - all the forces in opposite lined up to testify - "yes we need alternative fuels" and they create jobs, "yes we need fossil fuels" and they create jobs.

Maybe the metric shouldn't be job creation - but something more objective.  Preservation of the earth - surely that creates jobs.  For without the earth, well, jobs in space are even harder to come by.

Day 1

President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping - a historic first step.  An agreement on the world stage to combat climate change.  Maybe China and the lungs of its citizens have forced his hand.  Health costs are real (so stop saying its environment or economy).

The agreement they made, and China's promise to reduce emissions from coal plants by 2030 - a strategic direction, and probably the first foray in that direction from China.  Why does this matter?  China is a world power, the U.S. is a world power, and when they set a combined direction for reducing greenhouse gasses, it can only set the stage for other countries to follow suit.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is too late to "stop" climate change.  Like you can't stop that river of lava heading for that village in Hawaii.  When I was in Hawaii in September the road was closed, so you couldn't get close to it.  Even then, the local papers talked about previous attempts to "stop" a flow of lava - douse it, divert it, none of it worked.  Village residents were looking for hard to find dwellings in other Big Island towns.

Ah if it were that simple.  Just find a new dwelling planet.  There would be a market for PlanetBnB, so we could really continue the frontier mentality (even more than we already practice it in Oregon) and just keep moving to new planets.

For now, I am encouraged by President Xi Jinping's commitment to reducing greenhouse gasses.  Kind of a long schedule to get there.  But if our pres and China's pres can strike a chord on this common ground, even build a relationship, then there is hope for solving other problems, come what May.  Like how to accept climate refugees and find a new world order when the tropics are fried, you can swim in the Arctic in just a swimsuit, and we still want to eek out a living.

To Be Neutral, or Not To Be Neutral

I know it is seen as 'equitable' and 'fair' to be in favor of net neutrality, which would regulate internet companies to prevent any kind of two-tiered pricing.

Well tell me a market that does not have tiered pricing.  Does your cable company charge the same for 'basic cable' as for 'premium multi-lingual sports intense cable'?   Does your satellite company?  Despite the fact that the same bits are probably flowing over the same pipes, and clever software throttles what channels you can actually watch.

Even my water bill reflects tiered pricing.  A basic rate for a certain threshold of 'basic' service, then a higher rate for usage beyond that - to keep those zinnias looking colorful, and my chard from wilting and parching.  Oh and the blueberries growing over the season.

Gasoline - tiered pricing.  Food - tiered pricing (I like cheap cuts of meat, still trying to follow my historical $4 per meal per package), so when my husband asks me, as he did tonight - what kind of meat is this?  Um, meat - you know, maybe chuck steak or something?  With a clever recipe like Beef Provencale, you can get by with cheap cuts.  Would he notice if I fed him a strip steak?

So I have to think twice before I go along with every other blue Oregon bubble voter on this thing.  We have all been lucky, I am lucky at this very moment, with internet service available to me.  Not free.  Should people who consume bandwidth for streaming games and movies pay more?  Maybe I am old fashioned, but I pay for streaming internet service from XM.

If companies can't charge more for premium service, but all firms are mandated to abide by the same regulatory pricing scheme - how will this incentivize any firm to offer new services?  Their pricing strategy is already going to be fixed.  So lets take a rational policy view about this.

82nd Ave Town Hall

Hey, what if you got a group of people together ..
That all had a vested interest in seeing 82nd Ave be the Avenue of Roses it was Meant to Be ..

And what if you had money, and elected representatives, and planners and decision makers, and ponies and rainbows and ..

Ok well we did have most of these things (xc the ponies and rainbows), as well as new people who were drawn to the event on November 6.  Some actual ideas I heard from actual citizens, points of light, points of
pavement:
* 82nd Ave is an 'orphan highway' - owned by the state, but most of it within the city.  As a result, lack of investment from any government -- which is why it looks the way it does - take a comparison trip down 122nd Ave sometime (city owned) - nicely paved, bike lanes, wheelchair accessible, bus shelters.
* How about a bike tax (a few people expressed this idea) - let them help pay for the roadways they use (um, they probably don't use 82nd Ave, but what if you instituted a bike tax with the promise of bike lanes?)  Maybe an 82nd Ave tax - on each each vehicle sold, each McRib sold, each serving of Walla Walla onion rings at Burgerville?
* Public private partnerships, median plantings like over on Glisan (ok that was me, I thought I was signing in, as did other people, but then they rattled off our names as if we signed up to testify; so I did).  Others also were interested in incentivizing businesses to invest.
* Social dynamics - a professor talking about all the voices that were not in the room, the true melting pot of ethnicities that is Southeast Portland.  The public square - where can we build this?  One of the bike riders asked about 'pocket parks' and even has some potential ones mapped out (thank you Terry Dublinski!)
* One pothole.  The investors of 'Cartlandia' (a real place) decried the mismatch between city planning rules (the food cart area) and the state highway that is 82nd Ave (follows street rules).  As a result of this lack of coherence in the jurisdictional universe, there is a 'gap' (as she called it, a pothole big enough to eat a bit of your car should you attempt to traverse it).  help please!
* An actual government lobbyist spoke about the transportation bill that is likely to be presented to the legislator.  Showing us that these things really are decided before they are decided.

What is exciting is not the official positions, official money - what is truly exciting about this was hearing from citizens who care about the shape of their community.  I hope we have more of these town halls, and I invite you to invite 10 of your neighbors next time.  I promise nothing bad will happen to you if you don't, but isn't this how change happens!