Oregonian: Pressure mounting to close Boardman

The new gates prepared for when CO2 hits 425 --- which will be soon if we don't stop mining and burning coal. Image via Wikipedia

Finally. What say you, M. Lee Pelton, PGE Board Member?


A reader sent me a copy of this note that was sent to President Pelton:










Dear Dr. Pelton,

A recent posting to citizenforum, a Salem listserve, revealed your membership on the PGE Board of Directors. The person posted the comments below and I decided to share them with you and ask for your comment.

Assuming you are on the PGE Board, does that mean you endorse the operation of the Boardman coal plant outlined in the comments? If you disagree with how Boardman is managed, how do you communicate your concerns to the PGE Board?

Sincerely,

The letter writer was referring to this:

"While it would be unfair to impute questions about minor corporate operational details to board members, I don't think it's at all unfair to assume that a board member of a major utility --- someone appointed to look out for shareholders' interests --- is on board with fundamental policy questions, absent some evidence to the contrary.

PGE operates the worst polluting plant in Oregon, one pumping millions of tons of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, mercury, and radioactive materials into the atmosphere annually. PGE collects and spends millions of ratepayer dollars patting itself on the back for its greenwashing efforts while quietly but insistently arguing to the PUC that it must not be made to shut down the plant (the Boardman coal plant). The public is entitled to assume that all PGE board members supports the utility's policies on questions of major public policy direction unless a board member disassociates himself from those policies and campaigns to change them."

What allowing cars to dominate your city gets you

Image by LHOON via Flickr

This. Don't miss the photo spread.

King Midas discovered that you can't eat gold. We need to remember that it's true for pavement too.

I shutter to think about what happened to spelling

Image by sushiesque via Flickr

If you want to feel confident about the educational attainments of your fellow men and women, avoid Craigslist at all costs. Every time I visit, I find one or two new spellings that give me concern for our future. Today's happy coinage: "Shudders" for the objects that some people like to slap on their T-111 to make it look like there are cheap objects slapped on the T-111.

And I've long since lost count of the number of times that Craigslisters have "loose" and "loosing"where lose and losing would be correct. It makes me worry about what a looser I am for caring about such things.

(Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not saying that people who misspell things a lot are all stupid. But I do observe that all stupid people misspell things quite a lot . . . or alot, as it usually appears these days. And why does it matter? Because words are tools. It's not required that you use big, complicated, unusual words . . . but if you can't spell the words you already use, it's like a carpenter who leaves the saw out in the rain to get dull and rusted. Respect for your tools means paying attention to the small differences that distinguish them and using the right tool for the right job. With words, those differences are especially important because they usually say something about the origin of the words, which is a real help to choosing the right one at the right time.)

Now that the rich have captured the initiative & referendum process, what's left?

Oregonians were early adopters of the initiative and referendum processes, the highlight of the Progressive Era reforms, which were needed to break the stranglehold wealth had on state legislatures in the Gilded Age of the 19th and early 20th Century.

Now that we're suffering the aftershocks from the cataclysmic collapse of the Second Gilded Age, one with excesses that make the famous Robber Barons look like small-time grifters, we find that the same forces have captured the I&R game and turned it into their private preserve. If the bought-and-sold politicians show even the slightest signs of incipient vertebrate status, passing even the mildest of reforms and reducing the gains of the wealthy by something on the order of a rounding error in the third decimal place, they unleash their reserve army of desperately poor people with orders for them to go collect signatures against the interests of themselves and every other Oregonian (including the rich themselves, whose greed blinds them to penalty they pay for living in a two-class country with a hollowed-out place where the middle class used to be).

I'm not ready to do away with the I&R system. Yet. But if this repeal of the recent tiny tax hikes passes then we need to figure out whether there's anything "progressive" left of the progressive's signature reform or whether it's just another way for the corporations to shaft the people of Oregon.

More like this please -- and fast.

Isn't straw bale scary? Mattawa, Wash. public library. Image via Wikipedia

Straw-bale homes. The building code should be revised to make the performance of straw bale homes the standard (not the method, but the attainable performance). Then, if builders don't want to use straw, fine, but they have to build a house as well-insulated and tight as they could have with straw.

Nice straw-bale primer here.

Candorville: How insurance companies work (deadly . . . accurate)

A documentary on homeopathy

Ouch, so true: How to be cruel to old guys

This sexist filth isn't funny at all. Also.

Salem's own climate criminal!

The head of the "First University in the West" is on the board of Oregon's most destructive polluter, the one foreclosing any hope for survival for millions of the world's poorest people. Still, it is profitable, so there's that. Image via Wikipedia

Wow -- just checked out the list of PGE boardmembers for the first time and was shocked to find that the boss at Willamette, M. Lee Pelton, sits on it. How serving on the board of a coal-burning utility squares with educating young people for the future is hard to imagine. If we don't stop burning coal pronto the future for Willamette grads is going to be mighty grim indeed.

Do you think Willamette U. lets students loading up with huge debt for their education know that the head of their school is a leader in the fight to destroy their future prospects and to further impoverish and immiserate the world's poorest peoples? Or is this really just another example of how elites are trained today, carefully taught to keep moral concerns out of the way of serving the best-paying corporate masters?

UPDATE: There is ever less room for people to hide from responsibility by claiming "We didn't know." PGE knows what burning coal is doing to the world: radically destabilizing the climate and setting billions up for starvation, disease, pestilence, and war.

Your Chance to Comment on Oregon's Filthiest, Most Dangerous Power

This is the logo of the company that wants to keep burning coal, thereby condemning your children to live in a world of climate chaos, floods, droughts, starvation and disease.

Go here to send this letter (which you can edit as you wish) to be submitted to PGE as part of its mandatory public comment on its integrated resource plan (the jargon for its long-range planning):

I am writing to comment on PGE’s Integrated Resource Plan and its failure to put an end to pollution from its coal-fired power plant in Boardman, Oregon. PGE's Boardman plant is the dirtiest power plant in the Northwest. Its emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury emissions are polluting 12 national parks and wilderness areas in the Pacific Northwest – as well as the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Air quality studies have shown that up to 50% of the Gorge haze on smoggiest days comes from the Boardman power plant.

The Columbia Gorge is a national scenic treasure that deserves the strong air quality protections. In your vision for the future, please put an end to dirty coal and outdated technologies that are altering the global climate and polluting the Columbia Gorge.

Smarter solutions exist. Rather spending over $500 million to retrofit a dirty coal plant, I am asking that PGE prioritize energy efficiency and renewable energy investments that will reduce our reliance on dirty coal and will clean up air quality in the Columbia River Gorge.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on PGE's Integrated Resource Plan.