Posted inSustainability

Treasury secretary nominee favors Kyoto Treaty

George Bush seems to be warming up to the reality of global warming. Henry Paulson, his nominee for Treasury Secretary, is a supporter of the Kyoto Treaty and an avid environmentalist. My head is reeling. Could it really be true that Bush has converted to fact-based, rather than faith-based, policy making? If so, the foundations of my Bush-bashing world will be shaken. I’ll be finding good things to say about a President who, up until now, has blundered along from faulty gut instinct to faulty gut instinct. I worry that this is an aberration though. Physics tells us that the…
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Posted inSustainability

Paving over paradise

We just got back from ten days on Maui. Paradise. And it’s being paved over. Sound familiar, Oregonians? Be careful about who you vote for in November. That “we’ve got to respect property rights” verbiage may sound fine, but what it really means is: paradise needs paving. Which it doesn’t. Not now, not ever. We’ve been to Maui almost every year since 1991. The traffic keeps getting crazier. The ocean views keep getting filled with condos. The construction cranes sprout faster than palm trees. Don’t get me wrong. Maui still is a wonderful place to visit. So is Oregon. However,…
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Posted inSustainability

We check out of Sustainable Fairview

Today we cashed out of Sustainable Fairview, the 245 acre site in south Salem that, according to the local newspaper, is “envisioned to become a model of mixed-use and environmentally friendly development.” Hope so. But at 1:30 this afternoon I traded two shares in Sustainable Fairview Associates (SFA) for a check, shook hands with Sam Hall, the managing member of SFA, and brought to an end our sometimes satisfying but mostly frustrating experience as investors in this development. The property has been sold to a group led by Phil Morford, a Portland-area developer, and Gordon Root. Good luck to them.…
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Posted inScience Sustainability

Global warming is real. Debate over.

If you have any doubts that global warming is real, read the April 3 TIME magazine cover story and “Be Worried, Be Very Worried.” The evidence is in. The debate is over. Global warming is happening. Humans are the major cause of it. And we’re heading for disaster. Yes, there are still global warming deniers like Oregon climatologist George Taylor. But he’s been outed by Willamette Week and I haven’t heard any “global warming is a myth” craziness from George lately. Maybe he’s turned to arguing that creationism and intelligent design are fact, while evolution is fiction. Or that the…
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Posted inSalem Sustainability

City Council shooting Salem in the foot

Here’s an open secret: Salem, Oregon is an unappealing city. Here’s another: the Salem City Council is determined to keep it that way. Crazy. Salem already is crippled by poor planning, lack of creativity, and a boring downtown. Yet the City Council is busily engaged in shooting the city in its foot to hobble it even more. As I said in “Salem City Council knows zilch about sustainability,” state planners have rejected Salem’s land use policies as being inconsistent with good mixed-use development. Rather than doing the right thing and fixing the plan, the City Council is appealing to the…
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Posted inSustainability

Salem City Council knows zilch about sustainability

It wasn’t a surprise. In today’s Salem Statesman-Journal this headline hit my eyes: “State rejects city’s review of land-use policies.” A shock it was not: the Salem City Council is notoriously tone deaf when it comes to singing tunes of sustainability and environmentalism. But even though my expectations of council members are low when it comes to all things Green, the lack of understanding of Council President Jim Randall still was shocking. I read: The Salem City Council thinks that a voluntary, market-based approach with minimal planning is the only way to promote dense mixed-use development of the sort proposed…
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Posted inMeasure 37 Sustainability

Property rights and wrongs

Oregon is in the midst of a fierce battle between property rights fanatics and reasonable people, like moi, who recognize that a unfettered right to do whatever you want with your property is actually a wrong. I hope the “Big Look” task force that will be holding hearings around the state and recommending changes in Oregon’s land use laws will pay as much attention to broad philosophical issues as narrow legalistic points. For disagreements over values are at the root of property rights debates. What value does land have in itself, absent development? How do we value the needs and…
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Posted inHome life Sustainability

Auto-wise, we can’t get much Greener

Saturday a 2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV came into our lives, joining its 2004 Prius sibling. We are so green, the Kyoto protocol oozes through our pores. I’ve been feeling superior to just about every car on the road during the Highlander Hybrid (HiHy) driving experiences I’ve had so far. HiHy is bigger, tougher, and faster—7.3 seconds 0 to 60—than every other hybrid on the road today (it ties with the Lexus hybrid that, basically, is an identical twin). As a HybridCars.com review of HiHy said: A Prius looks and feels like a hybrid. When you drive one, you scream,…
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Posted inSustainability

Oregon cougar plan based on fictions, not facts

If anybody should be afraid of cougars, you’d think it would be me. It’s pretty certain that a cougar killed two fawns near our house recently, and my dog-walking routine takes me right through this area near dusk (or even after dark). But I don’t worry about being attacked by a cougar because the risk is infinitesimal. I’m at about thirty times greater risk of being struck by lightning. So what is the problem that the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s much-debated plan to proactively kill cougars is trying to solve? Short answer: there isn’t one. The Oregon Cougar…
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Posted inSustainability

Wolves and fear of the wild

“I like my Canadian wolf fried.” What kind of person would put that bumper sticker on his or her car? I think, a fearful person. Someone who is afraid of the wild that wolves represent. Thoreau famously said, “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.” I’m familiar with that quote. But until today I hadn’t bothered to read what came before and after those words in his essay on “Walking.” The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

The right is right on immigration reform

This being the holiday season, a time of brotherhood and good will, I’ve been searching my progressive soul for any political common ground that I have with the right-wing in America. I’ve been listening more than I usually do to Tony Snow, Sean Hannity, Lars Larson, and Victoria Taft (a local Portland rightie) as I cruise around in my progressively pure Toyota Prius, wishing that I could harness the hot air emanating over the radio waves for even greater mileage. There’s one issue—only one—that makes me nod in agreement when I hear it discussed on the conservative talk shows: immigration…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Ranchers overly afraid of the big bad wolf

Oregon ranchers, who I’d think would be pretty tough guys, are scared to death of the mere possibility that a few wolves might one day find their way into this state. No wolves yet have crossed the border from Idaho, but the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission has been laboring on a plan to deal with them if they do. The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association is freaking out about the plan, which is slated to be voted on tomorrow (December 1). They want ranchers to be able to kill wolves that even look cross-eyed at livestock, notwithstanding the fact that so…
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Posted inSustainability

A hybrid that has it all

Are you yearning for balance in your automotive life? Do you, like me, want it all? Abundant power and good mileage, driving fun and environmental righteousness. If so, take a look at the Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV, which is rated #1 in a “muscle per gallon” index prepared by U.S. News & World Report. Since my wife and I are on a waiting list to buy the 4-wheel-drive version of this car, I was pleased to see that the Highlander beat out the $65,000 Chevrolet Corvette (#2) and the $453,000 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (#3), each of which boasts ferocious horsepower…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Oregon cougar sighting really a kitty cat

Fearsome! Here’s a KATU news photo of the “cougar” that was reported to be stalking around Fanno Creek Park near Beaverton on Thursday. It turned out to be Mittens, a large cat to be sure, but of the domesticated house pet variety. None the less, the man who spotted the animal, Drew Essig, "said he saw in the park wetlands a large cat similar to a cougar." It was described as larger than a pet and having a tail about 3 feet long. On Friday a KATU news team captured photos of both Mittens, the non-cougar,. and Essig, the non-cougar…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Hybrid car buyers beware

When it comes to the environment, George Bush is a scatological King Midas: everything he touches turns to crap. Well, in the case of the revised federal tax incentive program for hybrid cars, let’s give him some credit and call it half-crap. On the positive side, the new energy bill changes the current tax deduction for buying a hybrid car into a more valuable tax credit. As described on Hybridcars.com, after January 1, 2006 the present $2,000 deduction is going to become a tax credit whose value depends on a complex formula involving fuel economy and lifetime expected fuel savings.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Toyota on wrong side of Oregon auto emissions fight

Toyota, how could you? My wife and I own a 2004 Prius, and we’re on the waiting list for a 2006 Highlander Hybrid. Now we feel betrayed. For Toyota is a member of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which is supporting a lawsuit to stop Governor Kulongoski from adopting tougher California-style vehicle emission standards. We’d believed that Toyota was an auto manufacturer with Green credentials. Yet here Toyota is, a member of the Auto Alliance along with GM, Ford, and six other manufacturers. Honda and Nissan aren’t part of the alliance, nor is Volvo. So part of me wants to…
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Posted inSustainability

Pringle Creek Community, a Salem sustainable development

Saturday Laurel and I went to an open house for the Pringle Creek Community, a 32 acre sustainable development that is taking shape on the old Fairview Training Center grounds in Salem. There was a lot of evident enthusiasm from the crowd, estimated at 750 in a follow-up Salem Statesman-Journal article. We’re investors in Sustainable Fairview Associates (SFA), which sold off the Pringle Creek Community land and still owns the remaining 240 acres of the site, as this map shows. If you do a search for “Sustainable Fairview” on this weblog (use Google box in left column) you’ll come up…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Willamette Week outs Oregon’s climatologist

Ah, appropriately enough it warmed my heart to read today’s Willamette Week cover story about Oregon’s global-warming-denying climatologist, George Taylor. Last March I emailed Willamette Week and suggested that they do a story on Taylor, saying “It bothers me that while it is official Oregon policy that global warming is a threat to the northwest, Oregon’s official climatologist is going around spouting an exactly opposite view.” This is one of the themes in the Willamette Week article, “Hot or Not: Oregon’s official weatherman has good news about global warming—it doesn’t exist.” I’ve been blogging on about the absurdity of an…
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Posted inSustainability

Toyota Highlander Hybrid not so green

Well, let me qualify that statement: the just-out 2006 Highlander Hybrid SUV is plenty green, for you need an awful lot of the green stuff to buy it. I asked for a price quote from the Internet sales force at our local Toyota dealer and got this reply: “A 2006 Toyota Gas/Electric Hybrid Highlander V6 4WD Limited with FE (federal emissions), NV (navigation), CF (floor mats/cargo mat set) and all of the great standard features...Your Capitol Auto Group Internet Price $ 44,049! The Limited Hybrid Highlander can also be ordered without Navigation for $2,000 less.” Stylistically critiquing this message, I…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Oregon’s climatologist still a Pollyanna on global warming

While we were in Camp Sherman last week I picked up the Bend “Bulletin” and saw a front page story about a talk by Oregon’s climatologist, George Taylor. I’ve written before about how Taylor denies that manmade greenhouse gases are causing global warming, thus putting him at odds with the vast majority of scientists studying the earth’s climate. The story, “Expert says state drought just a blip,” shows that Taylor is still going around spreading disinformation about the reality of global warming. He was quoted as saying, “We don't really understand climate. (The data) doesn't say humans don't have an…
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