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GreenInEugene's comments:
on Live from Salem
I'm the son of two UO graduates and was on the faculty for eight years.
In these times we need to work together more as a community and as a state - not let the more affluent segments split off to curry their own separate success.
UO regularly behaves like an 800 pound gorilla. At the same time, it has thrived on the slender leash of OSSHE oversight. Please don't let the spoiled gorilla off the leash.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on Wage Woes
"Is this the same old debate, in a more stressful time?"
Exactly.
So, it's time to raise the level from tired old debate, to real constructive collaboration. For that we need all the voices, a full-spectrum of technical verifiers, etc.
We know how to do that on a local level, even if it's not that widespread yet. I wonder if we could figure out how to do real collaboration using radio?
posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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on Wage Woes
Number-six, that's a great question.
My fear would be that the approach here is to soften us up with a mom-and-apple-pie top line summary - "heck, Joe, don't ya think we should be making more around here?" - which is followed up more quietly at the legislature with the tired old laundry list of business concession requests, around taxes, environmental and social regulations, land use requirements, etc.
The same tired requests to tear down much of what has gotten us to this place we love, in exchange for short-term gains for narrow interests. Bait on raising average wages, switch to tricks for profiteering.
That might be why the "ask" is so vague for now.
A different approach would be a broad spectrum consensus-oriented collaboration that pools thinking and perspectives on shared needs and values, defining our real regional competitive advantages, and how to create sustainable win-win long-term strategies for our communities.
Yes, our economy (and of course, our environment as much or more) presents a lot of challenges. Got to get all the voices in the room and actually work it out together!
posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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on Wage Woes
Well put, csheketoff.
posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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on Wage Woes
Seven7, I think you're raising a lot of very important points. Thank you!
I also think OPB should embrace the understanding that economic development is everyone's issue, not just a business lobby issue. The discussion panel today seems to represent only a very narrow range out of the broad spectrum of important voices on this issue.
posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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on Wage Woes
Having worked on technical issues with ECONorthwest for years now, I no longer take their work at face value. It is generally not hopeless, but they repeatedly fail to make assumptions transparent, and often inject political spin between the facts and the top line conclusions presented.
On this important economic issue, we should be comparing our purchasing power with that of other regions, not our wages, and we should be looking at medians, not averages.
Certainly Oregon has real and really important economic development issues, and I applaud the project of collaboratively planning a really sound and green economic development strategy for both the urban and rural areas of our state.
However, this heavily-spun business-lobby approach does not build trust or even basic technical accuracy in understanding what is really going on, and what is really needed.
posted 2 years, 5 months ago
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on The Crossing at a Crossroads
Take a look at the membership of the "independent review panel". It is completely dominated by engineers and other transportation professionals.
See page 10 at:
http://governor.oregon.gov/Gov/docs/IRP_report_072410_lowres.pdf
The outcome of this particular report appears to have been predetermined by the composition of the panel.
To present the issue as an administrative problem with getting the job done is pure tunnel vision. The real issue is defining what job actually needs to get done here.
Yes, there are issues with the crossing. But in 2010, to spend billions now, and leave it to figure out the climate change impacts sometime later - as the "indepdent panel" recommends - verges far too close to engineering malpractice.
Kevin Matthews, Editor in Chief, ArchitectureWeek
posted 2 years, 9 months ago
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on The Crossing at a Crossroads
The Portland Climate Action Plan of 2009 clearly addresses the future of driving in the region. In the plan, 2030 Object 6 (p42) says:
Reduce per capita daily vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) by 30 percent from 2008 levels.
Reduce.
If the climate plan is going to be taken seriously and successfully implemented, the amount of traffic on roads in the areas will be declining steadily starting promptly, and continuing for decades.
Do the panel and Tom Warne think the planned new bridge will help reduce VMT, or more likely, support increasing VMT business as usual?
Do the panel and Tom Warne think the plans for the new bridge accurately take into account a future of decreasing VMT, both total and per capita?
posted 2 years, 9 months ago
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on Mining for Gold and Chromite
Ridicule is neither an appropriate way to discuss serious environmental concerns, nor a helpful mode of discourse for "thinking out load" together on OPB.
I hope you will not have James Buchal on the show again. Think Out Loud does a fine job of identifying guests, but the system seems to have broken down a bit in this case.
posted 2 years, 11 months ago
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on Tax Referrals
Please take a look at the actual numbers.
posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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on Tax Referrals
Exactly. Well put!
The referral of these pieces of legislation to the voters is partly knee-jerk ideological response, and partly self-justification/political organizing tactics by groups like AOI and other anti-tax political operatives.
posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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on Tax Referrals
As an Oregon business owner for the last 17 years (and green too - well whodda thunk?) with several employees, I think it is high time for Oregon businesses to get back in the direction of paying a reasonable share of state taxes.
I think the structure of the modest business tax increases passed by our legislature is fine - not perfect, but about as good as we're likely to get on this kind of thing.
And I'm really tired of those many groups that pretend to speak broadly for business interests while really just espousing anti-government, anti-social, simplistically-self-interested ideologies.
Good business thrives in good communities, which require a decent balance of spending between public and private interests. Even in this economy, the wealthy are doing much better than the rest. Now, as much or more than ever, wealthy people and businesses (categories which overlap) need to pay closer to their fair share.
Congratulations to our Oregon legislature for getting these pieces just about right!
posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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on A Conversation with Bill McKibben
Excess greenhouse gas emissions, per se, are more a matter of too many rich people, than too many people overall.
posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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on A Conversation with Bill McKibben
Bill, what can we say when even a place as forward-looking as Portland insists on pursuing a climate-busting highway mega-project like the new Columbia Crossing? Why don't people get that we'll be driving less, in ten and twenty years, not more?
In Eugene, largely because of the relatively low carbon content of our electric generating sources, transportation represents fully half of the community carbon footprint - compared to about a third for most of the US.
This gives us an especially clear opportunity to focus effectively on the pivotal American issue of driving - as long as we don't get seduced by the mirage of forest biofuels.
Calculations made by environmental planning consultants working with Friends of Eugene show that the distribution of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita, in our metropolitan area, is dominated by geography - in particular, by the radial distance of residences from the metropolitan center.
Yet national think tanks, from the Urban Land Institute, in its generally-excellent "Growing Cooler," to the Transportation Research Board with its just-released "Driving and the Built Environment" continue to promote meta-analyses of planning data which are based on a badly flawed methodology.
The details are beyond this already way-over-technical posting. But the result is a primary focus on density of development for reducing VMT, when density is actually a secondary factor, while simple geography - distance from the core - is the primary determinant.
Bill, do you have any suggestions on how people in Oregon might engage the national conversation around land use planning strategies for reducing VMT, on a technical level?
The subtle error systematically embodied in the prevailing analyses of land use and VMT appears to cause a dramatic under-estimate in the amount of VMT reduction available through appropriate planning.
Because buildings are such long-term committed investments - and with our carbon levels too high already - it seems urgent to turn around the old patterns of building in higher and higher VMT locations, and to focus instead on (re)developing (in dense high-quality green and nature-integrated mixed use formats, of course) in the right places, just as soon as possible.
posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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on A Conversation with Bill McKibben
Yes, thanks for bring this up, Judy! The biofuels solution mirage is such an important concern here in the Pacific Northwest, where timber companies see a potential boom and are investing toward rapid expansion.
But given a forest industry that still relies overwhelmingly on clearcutting - despite many years of association TV ads telling us it wasn't done anymore - and sues to block even mild environmental regulation - how likely are we to effectively regulate what fuels come out of the woods?
The latest, most complete science on forest carbon sequestration has dispelled several convenient timber industry myths.
In fact, current science shows:
- Old native forests store more carbon than young or managed forests, and old forests continue to store more carbon effectively indefinitely.
- If forests are allowed to recover naturally after wildfire, very little net carbon is lost over the time span of the fire cycle. Salvage logging delays forest recovery and causes greater release of carbon.
- Research shows almost any significant disturbance of a natural ecosystem causes net releases of carbon. This includes industrial forest thinning.
There's no free lunch, and biofuels do not look like any kind of climate solution. We need to focus on retooling American society for low-carbon, high-satisfaction living with reduced resource consumption and especially reduced driving, while shifting aggressively to truly renewable sources of electricity.
posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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on Rebroadcast: Guiding the Willamette
A couple of current planning processes in Eugene will have significant impacts on the Willamette River and its immediate surroundings:
- At the north end of the UGB, city staff recommended approval, without any environmental findings, of a zoning change to convert half a golf course from open space to residential. The golf course borders right onto the river - and there was also no consideration of what might happen to the other half of the course! This still has to go to the county commissioners and city council where we hope sanity will prevail. Help wanted - contact Friends of Eugene.
- At the heart of the city, EWEB is in the early stages of a fairly quick, intense master-planning process for their key riverfront property. Much is at stake, including how much riparian restoration will be done relative to urban development, and whether to daylight the Millrace as part of habitat restoration.
posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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on Oregon's Historic Places
Preservation of key pieces of our architectural heritage is vital to the cultural life of the community in so many ways.
Portland is blessed with many beautiful old buildings, saved by design and by chance by previous generations. The same challenge of saving additional buildings as they reach 40-60 years of age comes down to each generation in turn - and this is our turn.
Almost every building goes through a jalopy stage, where it is widely perceived as tired, junky, and commonplace.
Yet many of those jalopy buildings, if preserved for another generation, do indeed come to be revered as irreplaceable antiques - as are many of the grand older building in downtown Portland now.
Eugene faces a similar challenge right now around preservation of its modern City Hall. Although the structure is indisputably the finest 1960s building in the City's inventory, and very beautiful in architectural terms, it is hard for many people to see past the intentionally-left-peeling paint and the last-generation's-style to make a sound evaluation of its architectural merit.
To make these decisions well and responsibly, the community needs to look more deeply than just "the eye of the beholder" to save the right structures.
It's every bit as important as saving our ballet or our basketball team. Like environmental decisions, preservation calls for the seventh generation view of outcomes.
posted 3 years, 10 months ago
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on The Switch: Biomass
What a sad discussion.
The current science shows that virtually every intact natural ecosystem loses sequestered carbon to the atmosphere when it is disturbed.
Make no mistake, and mark my words:
Burning of forest biomass is ultimately a huge, destructive timber industry scam.
First, converse energy. Second, develop actual clean energy sources. Third, save forests for carbon sequestration, not to cut down for "products" the biosphere can no longer afford.
posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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on Forest Values
Puuuuleeease!
Not that old canard about young forests and carbon!
It was only based on one small study in the first place and it has been fully discredited.
Our Oregon forests are some of the world's best manageable carbon sinks - and the older the better, in terms of total carbon storage.
However you come out on the cash, clearcutting is a disaster for the climate.
posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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on Forest Values
What about the specific cash value of our intact forests for carbon sequestration, which is emerging through carbon offset markets, and will soon be predictably available?
Some estimates on federal forests suggest greater "value" in simple financial terms will be available through carbon credits than through "harvesting" which releases massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
How does consideration and calculation of carbon sequestration value fit in to this state forests picture?
posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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