Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Oregon’s electric cars shouldn’t pay a miles-driven tax

I'm not exactly unbiased on the subject of Oregon moving away from using the gasoline tax to pay for roads. We owned an all-electric Nissan Leaf for about six months, and now have a semi-electric Chevy Volt. Over on Blue Oregon, Kari Chisholm talks about "GPS tax: the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea that just won't die."  He perusasively describes why outfitting cars with a GPS device that tracks mileage driven within the state is all of those negative adjectives in his blog post title. How will Oregon force all vehicles to get a GPS device installed? There are…
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Posted inSalem Sustainability

Northwest only region of U.S. cooler than normal in 2012

This won't surprise Oregonians and Washingtonians bummed out over our cold, wet spring. Which has extended into summer. Snow was falling at pass levels recently, and it's freaking June! Almost everywhere in the United States but the northwest, temperatures have been warmer than average in 2012. In many places, record-breaking warmer. Our relatives in the mid-west have been bragging for months about going swimming in 80 degree weather. Climate Progress tells the tale. Spring 2012 beat 1910, which had held the title for record warm spring, by a healthy margin of 2°F. No doubt much of this was driven by the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

I’m not worried about Southern Oregon land use pilot program

The headline in today's Salem Statesman Journal story said, "Pilot program loosens grip on land use plans." Subhead: "Door opened for southern Oregon counties." Well, yeah. But the door isn't open very far.  As I noted in a blog post last March, Governor Kitzhaber's executive order and the legislature's appropriation of $550,000 to support regional land use planning looks to me a lot more like political expediency than a significant policy shift. So if HB 4095 was unnecessary and didn't even get a hearing in the joint Ways and Means Committee, why was $550,000 in general fund taxpayer money allocated…
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Posted inSalem Sustainability

1000 Friends of Oregon urges Salem to preserve Sustainable Fairview

Today the Salem City Council has a choice to make: preserve cutting-edge Green zoning requirements for the highly touted Sustainable Fairview mixed use development, or show once again why Oregon's capital deserves it's nickname, "So-lame." I'm not wildly optimistic, given the Salem Planning Commission's disappointing go-ahead to Simpson Hills, LLC that would allow it to build a bunch of average apartments on what should be an exceptional piece of property. But if the City Council listens to those in the know, as opposed to those with the biggest short-term profit motive, it will stick with the Sustainable Fairview Master Plan.…
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Posted inSalem Sustainability

Salem City Council, preserve the vision of “Sustainable Fairview”

Please, Salem (Oregon) City Council. Pretty please. Don't allow the beautiful property in south Salem to become less than the world-class Green development that Sustainable Fairview currently is zoned as. A few days ago I learned that the Salem Planning Commission is OK with turning the undeveloped portion of the property from a vibrant green to a blah gray, architecturally speaking. On May 14 the City Council meets to decide whether to allow Simpson Hills, LLC to build a bunch of typical apartments on 43 of the 104 acres it owns at the site that used to house the Fairview…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Global warming deniers are “merchants of doubt”

Facts are facts. Cigarettes cause lung cancer. Coal-fired power plants cause acid rain. Fossil fuel emissions cause global warming. There's scientific consensus on the causes of lung cancer, acid rain, and global warming. Unfortunately, there also has been, and still is, a systematic effort to spread lies about these serious problems. In her book "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming," historian Naomi Oreskes documented how this happened. A review says: Merchants of Doubt might be one of the most important books of the year. Exhaustively researched and documented, it…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Obama vs. Romney on energy: Obama wins!

There's lots of reasons to vote for President Obama rather than Mitt Romney this November. Lots. Here's one area where Obama triumphs over Romney, big-time: energy policy. The world is running out of fossil fuels (fossils take a long time to form, so we're using up oil and coal hugely faster than more is being created, but the Republican Party doesn't seem to know this basic fact). Other countries, like Germany and China, are avidly pursuing profitable alternative energy sources like wind and solar. Obama recognizes that even though oil and coal will be part of our energy future for…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Glaciers are still shrinking from global warming

Almost always, truth runs deeper than a single shallow newspaper story. Especially when the subject is global warming, a subject that has been studied in depth by climate scientists. This morning Google News led me to a Christian Science Monitor story, "Global warming mystery: some Himalayan glaciers getting bigger." Yes, but only some. And not a lot bigger. Then I came across another more inclusive story in the Guardian by Jonathan Bamber, director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre, "The glaciers are still shrinking -- and rapidly."  With glaciers and ice sheets covering such a diverse range of latitudes (from the tropics…
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Posted inSustainability Web/Tech

How I’m fighting global warming Internet “trolls”

It's a tough decision: how to handle anti-science global warming deniers who repeatedly leave lengthy comments on my blog posts, filled with untruths, deceptions, and flat out lies at odds with facts about how the Earth's climate is changing because of human carbon pollution. I've tolerated this crap for a long time, but have decided to take a stand for truth (as contrasted with "truthiness," which is what global warming trolls specialize in.  In this context a troll isn't a mythical being, but someone set on disrupting courteous, respectful cyberspace discourse. They're a problem almost everywhere on the Internet. I've…
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Posted inScience Sustainability

Arctic warming could be cause of NW cool spell

It's been freakin' cold this spring of 2012 in the Great Pacific Northwest. Also, rainy. March saw the most rainfall ever in Portland. I think here in Salem we had the third rainiest March on record. Today I went for an afternoon dog walk in 45 degree weather. Driving home from my Tai Chi class tonight, my car thermometer "dinged" with a 37 degrees nearing-freezing alert.  Global warming deniers seize upon any unusual cold spell as evidence that Al Gore is wrong; global warming is a fraud perpetrated by the United Nations One World Order and complicit climatologists; weird record-breaking…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Fox News gets positive about Chevy Volt

It must have been my recent blog post that convinced Fox News it should stop lying about the Chevy Volt and get behind an all-American car that has won both the North American and European Car of the Year awards. Because this Steve Doocy interview strikes a whole different tone from the Volt-bashing that's been going on at Fox News. Oil-loving conservative Texan Lee Spieckerman of Spieckerman Media started off by saying that Fox News commentators have had "a fetish for demonizing the Volt," then went on to explain why the Volt is such a great car. I love Fox news,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Crazy March weather points to global warming

This morning my wife and I had to cope with five inches of snow on the ground here in rural south Salem (Oregon). It was weird. I've lived in Oregon for forty-one years. Can't remember a time when the blooming daffodils were crushed by so much snow. Because our newspapers couldn't be delivered, over breakfast I read a story about the spring storm in the Oregonian online. Turning to the comments, I saw predictable comments along the lines of "Ha, ha, Al Gore is wrong. Can't be global warming if the Willamette Valley got record-breaking snow for this time of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Pared down HB 4095 won’t harm Oregon land use system

I'm feeling better about what I called "land use shenanigans" that popped up at the very end of the Oregon legislature's short 2012 session. After learning more about what the $550,000 appropriated by the joint Ways and Means Committee for a pilot regional land use planning project in Josephine, Jackson, and Douglas counties would do, it looks like Oregon's efforts to protect irreplaceable farm and forest land from unnecessary development aren't much at risk. This is because HB 4095, which was a major threat to Oregon's land use system, died without getting a vote in either the House or Senate.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Sneaky land use shenanigans in 2012 Oregon legislature

I don't think I've ever used "shenanigan" in a blog post, but I'm bringing out that word to describe what happened to HB 4095 at the end of the 2012 Oregon legislative session. a devious trick used especially for an underhand purpose tricky or questionable practices or conduct  Yeah, that's what "passing" a bill through hidden backroom budgetary machinations rather than in an open deliberative legislative vote is -- a shenanigan.  HB 4095 was an attempt to begin dismantling Oregon's successful land use system by allowing counties to band together and come up with regional definitions of farm and forest…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Oregon’s environment survives GOP attacks in 2012 session

Whew. That's my one-word environmentalist reaction to the end of Oregon's first ever regular "shorty" legislative session in an even-numbered year. My wife and I were afraid that Republican efforts to undermine our state's land use, endangered species, and forest management laws would succeed in the speeded up craziness of an abbreviated session -- where public hearings often were a sham and last minute deals on important bills were the norm. But overall, I'm happy. My biggest personal concern was HB 4095, a totally unnecessary bill that would have allowed three southern Oregon counties to essentially opt out of the…
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Posted inSustainability

Flying into Portland and Burbank shows why Oregon shines

In this 2012 session of the Oregon legislature, haters of our land use system once again are trying to kill it through a thousand cuts (HB 4095 being a prime example). I urge each of these "pave it over" advocates to do what my wife and I did last Friday and today: take an Alaska Airlines flight into Burbank, California, then return to Portland, Oregon. (Instead of Burbank, Phoenix would be an even better bad example of non-planning.) From the air, it's obvious why Oregon's pioneering approach to protecting irreplaceable farm and forest land needs to be strengthened, not weakened.…
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Posted inSustainability

OSU setting traps to kill wildlife needlessly

Why, Oregon State University? Why would you contract with the federal government's animal killing machine, Wildlife Services, to indiscriminately set traps for fawns, racoons, coyotes, dogs, cats, and any other creatures able to crawl under the OSU sheep farm fence? Predator Defense is asking. My wife and I are also. There are much better ways to protect livestock than by killing wildlife and endangering family pets.  There are numerous alternative non lethal practices available and used world-wide to keep sheep and lambs safe besides killing wildlife, including the use of “New Zealand fencing,” hot wires around a fence line, the presence of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Measure 37 Sustainability

James Huffman wrongly attacks Oregon land use system

I'm surprised how badly James Huffman, a dean emeritus of the Lewis and Clark law school, misinterpreted the highly successful Oregon land use system in a misguided opinion piece in today's Oregonian. "Keep the messy politics: rule by government experts is a recipe for tyranny" reflects the overblown rhetoric of the sky is falling! Tea Party types. They see left-wing dangers, conspiracies, and constitutional threats hiding in the shadows everywhere. Only problem is, when you ask them to specifically point them out, providing factual examples of dictatorial, tyrannical government over-reaching, they get tongue-tied. Why? Because their scary hobgoblins exist only in…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Oregon cougar hunting bill is dead. Long live cougars!

Great news for those who value wildness, ecological diversity, and sound science (rather than hysterical fearmongering). We just got an email from Predator Defense saying that HB 4119, the bill to repeal the twice-passed citizen initiative which bans cougar hunting with dogs, is dead in the 2012 Oregon legislative session. GREAT NEWS! GOVERNOR KITZHABER HAS INFORMED REP. SPRENGER, THE SPONSOR OF THE BILL HB 4119 TO REPEAL MEASURE 18 AND BRING HOUND HUNTING OF COUGARS BACK, THAT HE HAS NO INTENTION OF SIGNING IT! PLEASE CONTACT THE GOVERNOR AND THANK HIM FOR STEPPING UP TO THE PLATE FOR OREGON VOTERS…
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Posted inSustainability

Portland State “Electric Avenue” flash mob

Finally -- my glancing at the usually boring PGE Home Connections email blah-blah-blah paid off. Nissan Leaf owners that we are, I was curious to read "Cost savings drive buyers to EV's." (electric vehicles) That led me on to a You Tube video of the flash mob excitement when charging stations opened up on Portland State University's Electric Avenue: "a street dedicated to showcasing electric transportation technology — thanks to a unique partnership between the university, PGE and the city of Portland." Cool. Nice dancing to an entirely predictable song.   Funny... nothing like that happened when the City of…
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