Archive for Environment
Pedestrian Bridge
Posted by: | CommentsGo over to Ashvegas to learn more about the pedestrian bridge issue that is on tomorrow’s agenda at City Council.
Sustainable Asheville
Posted by: | CommentsDavid Forbes takes a look at the movement on an important ordinance that will alter the way we build in Asheville. Go give it a read and join the conversation at Mtn. X.
Fiddling
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I’ve been hearing for months that the Senate wasn’t going to pass any meaningful legislation regarding energy and the environment. Never mind that the House passed it ages ago and that even our own Heath Shuler was on board for addressing the single most important issue facing our nation and our world, Harry Reid’s Senate is planning to pass a gutted bill that doesn’t acknowledge the urgency of the problem and that leaves out any controls on carbon emissions. May our children forgive us.
NOAA released a report yesterday that underscores the massive failure at work:
The 2009 State of the Climate report released today draws on data for 10 key climate indicators that all point to the same finding: the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable. More than 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries contributed to the report, which confirms that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years.
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More and more, Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own backyards, including sea-level rise, longer growing seasons, changes in river flows, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters.
Company Town, Regulatory Capture
Posted by: | CommentsI just made friends with this young guy who has been in Asheville for only a couple of years. His sweetheart (he calls his girlfriend his sweetheart) is from somewhere east of Asheville. His sweetheart comes from a working class family that had worked in the textile mills back in the day.
He says Asheville doesn’t make sense to her. It is mostly rich retirees, yuppies and artists. Few of the kind of people she recognizes. That’s because our economy has a great big hole in it. Not much room for people in the middle, and few ways for people at the bottom to get there.
Another friend observes that if people in Asheville are lucky enough to boost their salary into the $30k range, they have to move somewhere else to make the jump to the middle income level. Career-track jobs aren’t plentiful enough here.
In my AC-T column last Sunday I asked people to try a thought experiment involving the word “industry.” Here’s another experiment:
What phrases come to mind when you hear about Asheville’s “high housing costs” or “inflated real estate”?
Very likely the phrase is a familiar one. (Some people — not Gordon, of course — get very testy with me when I use it, so I’ll try to avoid typing You-Know-What.) More likely, the phrase that didn’t come to mind was “better jobs.” I find that really curious, don’t you?
It’s Called An L3C
Posted by: | CommentsThere’s a new company in town — an L3C. Okay, it’s not here yet, but as soon as Gov. Perdue signs SB 308, North Carolina will join Michigan, Vermont, Illinois, Wyoming, Utah, and (in 2011) Maine in allowing this hybrid business entity that appeared first in Vermont just two years ago. It is the kind of vehicle we could use to help put workers displaced by plant closings back to work in WNC. Wikipedia describes the L3C this way:
The L3C is a low-profit limited liability company (LLC), that functions via a business modality that is a hybrid legal structure combining the financial advantages of the limited liability company, an LLC, with the social advantages of a non-profit entity. An L3C runs like a regular business and is profitable. However, unlike a for-profit business, the primary focus of the L3C is not to make money, but to achieve socially beneficial aims, with profit making as a secondary goal. The L3C thus occupies a niche between the for-profit and charitable sectors.
Henredon Furniture, Morganton, NC (Burke County)
N.C. Senator Jim Jacumin, a Republican who represents Burke and Caldwell Counties, introduced the Senate bill which passed in the House on Thursday without a single No vote. The N.C. Center for Nonprofits described his intentions:
N.C. Senator Jacumin envisioned L3Cs as collaborations between local nonprofits and failing furniture or textile businesses. These L3Cs would use investments (direct investments, grants, or low-interest loans) from private foundations, businesses, and individuals to purchase and upgrade factories to make them more energy efficient and less expensive to operate. The L3Cs could then lease these factories to manufacturers at competitive rates that would help keep manufacturing jobs in local communities.
The purpose of the L3C is to assist small businesses that might not be able to get off the ground if they had to pay investors a commercial rate of return. Like MOOMilk, a local organic milk company in Maine. Like small-business start-ups in struggling towns with high unemployment. Or to renovate existing factory space. Or newspapers big and small, for example. For the socially responsible investor, this is a way to do good — including put people back to work — and make a few bucks along the way. The L3C’s creator, Robert Lang, CEO of The Mary Elizabeth and Gordon B. Mannweiler Foundation, Inc., calls it “the for profit with a non profit soul.”
Rush Limbaugh calls it an idea thought up by liberal “wackos.” Rush believes “this is social engineering … designed to pervert capitalism” and “propagandize the American people in the name of the Obama administration.”
Where do I send the check?
Then again, maybe Ashevillians should just invest in more high-priced condos?
Catastrophe and Social Change*
Posted by: | CommentsSo now that the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is over and we are onto more important things like hot Russian spy on spy action I would like to take a few moments to reflect back on what we learned from this most recent spill. Other than the fact that most sea birds and fish are not, unfortunately, oil resistant not much. Sure it made great television for a few weeks, lots of attractive news correspondents furthered their careers (I am assuming this, I don’t actually have a TV), We all felt that special bond that only comes from ritually and communally tarring, feathering and then executing some BP executives. We had boycotts and vigils, people cutting their hair and mailing it to the Gulf. We had outrage and then more outrage, conspiracy theories and a glimpse into the corrupt world of our fabulous corporate suzerains government. But other than that what did we have? Oh, we also had suspension of 1st amendment rights, but really the 1st amendment is quaint, and was always a bit overrated.
Broad Consensus
Posted by: | CommentsThis commentary appeared in today’s AC-T. It’s co-authored by Mike Butrum and Barber Melton. “Mike Butrum is governmental affairs officer for the Asheville Board of Realtors, and Barber Melton is with the Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods.”
It’s not every day you’ll find the Board of Realtors in harmony with such a strong neighborhood advocate. Here’s an excerpt -
One of the most important things we should do is encourage the creation of affordable housing for the people who work here but can’t afford a home, focusing on population density in the urban center along existing transit and transportation corridors. Right now police officers, firefighters and teachers cannot afford to live in Asheville. Instead, they have to commute from places like Weaverville, Candler or Hendersonville. It seems unfair that those who protect and instruct the citizens of Asheville cannot afford to be citizens of Asheville.
Work force housing and urban density need to be encouraged for two reasons: to improve the quality of life for the entire region; and to increase economic development.
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There are several steps Asheville can take to increase the amount of work force housing. One step is to reconsider current policies and zoning ordinances that hinder development of more work force housing. The city should also look for redevelopment opportunities along major transit corridors, as increasing urban density along these corridors is the best way to increase the amount of work force housing available in the city. The city should consider the possibility of donating land for affordable housing, as well.We support these steps. Concerted action by local leaders, taken after input from voters, is needed to position Asheville for the future. If we want to maintain our quality of life while developing our economy, we need to act now.
Return to Pandora
Posted by: | CommentsJust recently we finally got around to watching “Avatar.” Yes, we’re kinda behind the popular cultural curve, we know. Occasionally, however, lagging the curve brings with it some added perspective.
In advance of the film’s release, a flurry of articles portrayed “Avatar” as a Hollywood slam against the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions. As the Telegraph put it, “the most expensive piece of anti-American propaganda ever made.” Set against a backdrop of off-world resource extraction.
But watching “Avatar” for the first time in the wake of Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion, the ongoing BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and last week’s HBO documentary, “Gasland,” the film looks more like a slam against extraction industries than against American military adventurism. Even with recent confrontations on Grand Isle, LA, the film’s story line about private security contractors run amok now looks like the subplot.
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On Provoking Your Friends
Posted by: | CommentsThe other night Rachel Maddow commented on “how weak the political and rhetorical muscles get when they`re allowed to atrophy.” She was talking about the insular conservative media bubble, but well, a little Socratic method never hurt anyone:
…when Sharron Angle`s political career ended last night on local television in Nevada, it was a perfect case study in what happens if you don`t ever talk to people with whom you disagree. Because here is the thing when your positions are never questioned, you`re never forced to develop strong logic to back them up. When your arguments are never challenged, you don`t ever have to improve them. You don`t ever have to cast out arguments of yours that don`t make sense or learn how to deal with evidence that appears to contradict your conclusions. That`s why I regret that we don`t have more conservatives on this show. Because I do have a point of view, of course, but I like talking with people with whom I disagree, both because it is fun and selfishly because it makes my arguments better.
The other day on this blog I road tested some ideas around a theme I’ve been working on: leadership on the left. A discussion of wind and solar energy provided the opportunity. I have grown frustrated watching liberals decry leaders in Washington for having no spines when so few seem capable themselves of making decisions when the choices aren’t widely popular or downside-free. But damn, if we don’t have the courage to boldly choose between vanilla and chocolate.
If we expect to get the country out of the mess it’s in, we’d better get better at being leaders capable of more than assenting to the obvious. Leaders need to make and execute plans. Not everyone can. Almost anybody can have a good idea. And ideas often improve when tested.
Which Way the Wind Blows?
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Cartoon by Phil Hands
With the Gulf Oil Disaster, Heath Shuler screening On Coal River in Washington DC, and last year’s Coal-Ash Spill in Tennessee, we southeasterners are more than ready for a new conversation on our energy future.
When citizens rose up back in 2006 to defeat the proposed construction of a peaking power plant in Woodfin, we were told by industry officials that there would soon be brownouts and that elderly people would die in their homes unless we decided to burn diesel fuel for energy upwind of west Asheville.
Despite the sea change in Americans’ perception of our fuel sources, there is no emphasis on diversifying the commercial power sources in western North Carolina. Last year when the topic of wind power came up, our Raleigh representation asserted that protecting views was more important than addressing our power needs. They passed a bill limiting the heights of wind turbines to 100 feet, knowing full well that the shortest commercial wind turbines stand 200 feet tall.
Today’s Asheville Citizen-Times reports on a poll taken by Public Policy Polling:
New polling organized by Taylor found that 61 percent of WNC residents thought the 100-foot limit was too restrictive, far too restrictive or inappropriate.
Only 21 percent said it was appropriate.
