7 reasons America will fail on climate change

7 reasons America will fail on climate change - Vox

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/5/5779040/7-reasons-America-fail-global-warming
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The Chamber of the 1% can rejoice -- at least those without kids or grand kids, or hopes to have any in the future:  the threat of sensible action to avoid the worst of climate disruption and mass extinctions seems to have been averted, and many astute observers have concluded that we (humanity) are like the astronauts in the Challenger Space Shuttle at the moment of launch on the too-cold morning in 1986: our doom is sealed, but we don't know it yet.

And as for those in the Chamber -- well we can just hope that they are so darn proud of their righteousness that they take the time to record prominently for history exactly how hard they fought against the hoax of global warming, and how they helped defend freedom by ensuring that nothing interfered with the absolute right of the ruling class to treat the planet as their personal toilet without any restraint at all.  

Because their progeny and descendants-- all mankind, really -- should know exactly who is responsible for all that freedom that we will leave them.

Elevate People, Not Boondoggles!

ELEVATE PEOPLE, NOT BOONDOGGLES!

As consultants and construction contractors in the Chamber of the 1% salivate over the prospect of spending further millions of your money to lay the groundwork to grab hundreds of millions more, it’s time for the people of Salem to send a clear message to every elected official within 100 miles:

It’s an obscenity to pour money down the planning rathole for a project that backers are trying to sell with an ever-changing rationale but will never be built, in a city that is so apathetic to the actual residents’ needs that it doesn’t even provide weekend bus service.

We’re against blowing four to eight hundred million dollars on an enormous elevated boondoggle. 

What are we for instead? It’s simple: we are for ELEVATING what’s right, not what’s wrong.

·      We support elevating people, not pork-barrel bridges.

·      We support elevating transit in Salem above the level of a third-world country.

·      We support elevating transparency over the backroom, backscratching maneuvers by politicians conspiring with their campaign funders, the maneuvers that produced this camel pretending to be a racehorse.

·      We support elevating honest government instead of the profits of the CH2M-Hills and the others sucking at the teat of a giant pork project.

·      We support elevating health for people by spending on projects that support biking and pedestrians, not just drivers.

·      We support elevating downtown Salem businesses, not the ones in Keizer and beyond West Salem.

·      We support elevating the needs of the “bridgehead” neighborhoods over the profits of the contractors who want to destroy those neighborhoods.

For all those reasons and more, that is why we support elevating the “Salem River Crossing” just enough to drop it in the trash can and move on to more important things.

Salem and ODOT in a few graceful sentences

The most insidious result of the car-first development pattern is the constituency of car owners it creates. Once you own a car - and so mentally discount the cost of insuring, maintaining, fuelling the car - then every trip looks free. Political discussions and public investment decisions begin to assume that everybody comes with a machine; they conflate 'driver' with citizen, and relegate non-cyborg humans to a category of 'other', the 'pedestrian' who isn't naturally considered first in site layout or public space design, but who must be 'accommodated' by so-called 'complete' streets and 'extra' features like crosswalks.

(Hat tip to Strong Towns blog)

Marginal cost of transportation: robotaxis and sprawl repair

Jun 09, 2014 05:00 am | Neil Salmond

The most insidious result of the car-first development pattern is the constituency of car owners it creates. Once you own a car - and so mentally discount the cost of insuring, maintaining, fuelling the car - then every trip looks free. Political discussions and public investment decisions begin to assume that everybody comes with a machine; they conflate 'driver' with citizen, and relegate non-cyborg humans to a category of 'other', the 'pedestrian' who isn't naturally considered first in site layout or public space design, but who must be 'accommodated' by so-called 'complete' streets and 'extra' features like crosswalks. Sidewalks are the original war on the car.

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Autosprawl is killing our future

Organizing Salem around cars and pouring money into autosprawl amenities like the Bridgasaurus Boondogglus is killing us.

The millions squandered on that should be spent on making Salem safe, convenient and accessible for all, rich and poor, young and old, with or without disabilities. That means first a robust transit system and then sustained, amply funded attention to bike and pedestrian access, not yet more money to serve single occupant vehicles and promote sprawl to the west of town.

We need to make it a priority to ensure that every child in Salem gets abundant, daily physical exercise, and has a working bicycle and lots of safe routes to ride on. That would be an outstanding use for the money we are currently giving CH2M-Hill to plot how to worsen our city.

> Without taking measures such as weight loss and increased exercise, 15 percent to 30 percent of people with prediabetes typically go on to develop type 2 diabetes within five years, the CDC report said. . . .

> Left untreated, diabetes boosts the risk of serious health problems such as heart disease, stroke, vision loss, kidney failure, limb amputation and premature death. Diabetes can be managed through physical activity, diet and the use of insulin and medications to lower blood sugar levels.


> Unless diabetes can be prevented or well treated and blood sugar controlled, we face an escalating and devastating future of human and financial cost," she said.