A nice article in the Forest Grove News-Times today, about Pacific University's upcoming Focus the Nation global warming event, also mentioned the potential for the City of Forest Grove to go sustainable.  Apparently, Forest Grove's "vision statement" now includes a commitment toward sustainability, and the city government wants to go greener.

I've been hearing rumors about the mayor and city council of Forest Grove going to the green side.  I don't know enough yet to say how true they are - but I hope to find out soon.  After all, in addition to pressuring the county government, the Cool Washington County campaign needs to begin looking at getting the individual cities working on reducing greenhouse emissions.  It will be great if Forest Grove turns out to be really serious about sustainability - though I'm not getting my hopes too high, yet.  Saying you're a "leader in sustainable development" is awfully popular these days, as is revising "vision statements" to include sustainability.  In fact, the S-word seems to be all over the place right now, and if everyone was really as committed to it as they say, we'd be in pretty good shape.

TELL WASHINGTON COUNTY TO LIVE UP TO THEIR OWN "SUSTAINABILITY PLAN" IN-THE-WORKS RIGHT HERE!

Some more research on Forest Grove is in order.  Though much smaller than Hillsboro or Beaverton, it's one of Washington County's most rapidly-expanding cities; and the form that new development takes over the next several years has a lot of potential to keep greenhouse emissions out of the air - or add them.  Watch for more news on the Grove.

Some people think they need a giant SUV complete with four-wheel drive to manage a little inclement weather in our Northwest.  Well, after riding my bike through an inch of snow to get to work one morning, I can safely report that it's do-able with two wheels (of course, maybe those folks driving SUVs half the size of a bus are hoping to cause so much global warming that we won't have any snow in Oregon - but that's another story).  So if you can't afford a hybrid, try a much cheaper transportation option that's much better for the environment, anyway: the bicycle.  And if the journey's too long to make it on pedal-power, then there's always public transportation.  Here in the Portland area - even out in rural Washington County - you can get almost anywhere using the bus and other public transportation options.  I very rarely even ride in a car anymore, these days.

Heck, a Prius still runs on oil; and you're still giving your money to Toyota - money the company can then funnel into suing states like Oregon that want to place tougher regulations on vehicle pollutants.  Simply finding ways to drive whatever car you own less often can be a more effective way to combat global warming than buying a hybrid.  Stick it to the oil companies, the car dealers, and the energy-intensive cement-making industry too, while you're at it.  Ride a bike.

-Nick

Though things are finally beginning to move in the county government, the Cool Washington County campaign is gathering steam - not slowing down.  The petition asking the Board of Commissioners to set strong goals for reducing greenhouse emissions is collecting signature like mad; many of them from students and staff at Pacific University.  During the past week, I myself and other members of Pacific's student environmental group have been collecting signatures on-campus, while at the same time advertising the university's upcoming events for Focus the Nation - a national event during which thousands of colleges across the country will spend educating students and community members about global warming.  The response we've been getting - both to the petition and to Focus the Nation - has been good.  People here care about climate change, and want to see firm action taken to prevent it.

With all of this, the total number of signatures on the Cool Washington County petition has passed 200; it now stands at 213 (it looks like there are 236 signatures, but 23 of these are invalid ones from over-enthusiastic souls who signed without realizing you need to live in Washington County to count, or who accidentally signed the same petition twice). 

If you haven't already, and you live in Washington County, be sure and SIGN THE PETITION YOURSELF, RIGHT NOW! 

Today the Oregonian's "Washington County Weekly" section ran a piece discussing the state of Washington County's global warming action plan (or lack thereof).  The gist of the article was this: while cities within its boundaries, like Hillsboro and Beaverton, are taking the initiative to put forward new programs that will reduce greenhouse gas pollutants, and networking with other local governments to inspire a truly regional movement to curb emissions at the local level, the Washington County government itself is lagging behind.

The article was authored by yours truly (link coming soon, but it doesn't seem to be on the Internet yet).  Considering my last post on this blog, commending Washington County for finally taking some steps in the right direction, does the above article description sound more like something I would have written a month ago?  Well, as it happens, I did write it more than a month ago, and the Oregonian only just now decided to run it.  So the article is a little outdated, but I stand by its basic message. 

Washington County is showing signs of moving in the right direction - and that's great.  You can urge them to keep up that good work RIGHT HERE.  But we've got a long way to go, and need to see verbal assurances translated into concrete policy.  One of the main points of the article I wrote was that the Washington County Board failed to send any of its members to Oregon's first Local Climate Action Workshop which took place, well, across the street from the county building (some workshop delegates came from as far away as Bend to participate).  Is the Board doing all it can to network with other local governments?  That's a difficult argument to make, after the Climate Workshop affair.  Maybe a day will come when I have nothing bad to say about the sustainability policies of the Washington County government.  However, while small steps in the right direction are worth of praise, that day is still a long way off.  I stand by almost all of what I said in the article.  If given the choice today between running it as-is and pulling it from the paper, I'd have chosen to run it.

Oh, and another of the main points of my article was the unresponsiveness of the majority of the Board members to citizen emails.  Today I sent messages to Commissioners Dick Schouten and Desari Strader, who are indeed now answering my emails, explaining that the Oregonian article was a little outdated.  As for the other three members of the Board - well, they've given no indication so far that they care about my opinions; a little article in the newspaper shouldn't bother them at all.

I have it from Commissioner Desari Strader of the Washington County Board of Commissioners that the Board is discussing a Washington County Sustainability Plan, which will probably go through in one form or another.  After four months of the Cool Washington County campaign doggedly working to generate emails to the Board, collect signatures on a petition, hold a rally outside the County Building, gain publicity in local papers, and more - all in the face of most members of the Board continually ignoring us or, at best, telling us to go away and bother someone else - I can tell you this taste of victory is great.  Of course, some  might say the initiation of the Sustainability Plan after four months of work on our part is coincidence; local governments in the Northwest are moving more and more toward sustainability, and Cool Washington County can take no credit for a recent poll that showed residents of the county are becoming more environmentally conscious, and probably prompted the Board of Commissioners to take this issue more seriously.  However, I don't think this is coincidence.  It's simple: an urgent global issue + citizen action = government response.  We are making real progress at last.  And Commissioner Desari Strader, who helped bring this about, deserves our thanks. 

To be sure, the fight's not over yet.  We have to make sure that the final Sustainability Plan has substance to it - that it meets or beats the goals the goals of the Cool Counties Declaration.  To this end, the Cool Washington County Petition is still collecting signatures - so if you live in Washington County, and you haven't signed it already, DO IT NOW!  And enjoy the feeling of being one step closer to victory.

-Nick

It is safe to say that the vast majority of the young people in this country have no idea how badly their future is threatened.  When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with a report last year, stating that the world has until 2015, at the latest, to stabilize greenhouse emissions and prevent the worst effects of global warming, relatively few of us paid attention.  It is no large surprise: we are all so caught up with our own lives - with school, with day-to-day activities, with plans for our future careers and the life ahead of us.  This is supposed to be one of the best times of our lives; in college, new worlds open up to us - new independence, new experiences, and new possibilities for the future.  And yet it is ironic that the very future we are all preparing for is in more danger with each passing year.  Massive shifts in global climate - and the drought, flooding, famines, and loss of biodiversity this will bring about - threaten to transform our world beyond recognition.  Will the college degrees we worked so hard to earn be meaningless by the time we are in our thirties?  Will the global economy and natural environment be in such chaos that no one cares what accredited schools we attended, what ideas once sparked our imaginations, what dreams once kept us awake at night? 

The world is altering around us - and it is hard to blame the majority of us for failing to see the danger.  Do we not have a right to enjoy young-adulthood as generations before us have?  To be relatively carefree for a while?  To just savor the experience of growing up?  We did not ask for the mess that previous generations made of this planet.  But now it is our job to set it right - whether it is fair that the task fall on our shoulders, or not.  Those of us who have awakened to the danger - we must kick, scream, agitate and protest at the injustice served to us, and attempt to set it right before it is too late.  But we cannot do it alone.

Realistically very few of us, if any, are going to be in a position to alter the course of history anytime soon.  Ironically, then, we depend on the generations before us - some of the very people who got us into this mess - for help.  We can and must do our part to become involved in politics, influence elections and laws, and bring pressure on our elected representatives ourselves.  But to a certain extent, our future rests in the hands of others - of people who may not even be able to understand what it is like to have your life blighted for no reason, because ExxonMobil wanted to make money.  The politicians currently in power - at all levels of government - are the ones who might be able to save us.  Yet most show little inclination to do so.  So what is there for us to do?  We agitate, we protest, we hope that our demands will be heard.  We watch the world crumbling around us, and wonder if it can be re-built.  We scan the newspapers for hope.  And we wait.

Any day now, I hope to be contacted by Commissioner Desari Strader from the Washington County Board of Commissioners - to learn whether she and other members of the Board are willing to work with some of us young people to reduce greenhouse emissions from this area.  I don't know what the answer will be.  I do know that I am grateful to her for at least trying to work something out.  I also know that if the Board still refuses to acknowledge our demands, we will keep fighting - what we students have done so far in Washington County is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what we can do.  I wonder, though, whether our efforts will come too late.  I wonder if all levels of government across the country can be wakened to act quickly enough.  I wonder.  And I think of the future.  And I wait.

-Nick

Some people have observed that this blog tends to take a harsh view of policy-makers in general, and certain county commissioners in particular.  Why do I seem so set on criticizing people?  Why don't I try to see politicians as allies, rather than opponents?  Haven't I heard that you catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar?

Well, there's a brand of environmentalism that says we will only get anywhere by focusing on the positive, cooperating with polluters rather than campaigning against them, and forging alliances with politicians rather than attacking their reputations.  Perhaps the loudest proponents of this view are Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, whose essay, "The Death of Environmentalism," argued, soon after the 2004 elections, that environmentalists were losing ground because they focus on doom and gloom.  Who wants to read about pollution and habitat destruction, right?  According to Shellenberger and Nordhaus, the route many environmentalists are pursuing would have been equivalent to Martin Luther King attempting to inspire his audience with the admonition, "I have a nightmare."  Didn't the Civil Rights Movement achieve success by focusing on the positive?  Shouldn't environmentalists do the same?

Well, I have some issues with Shellenberger and Nordhaus' analysis.  First of all, that's a pretty simplistic view of the Civil Rights Movement.  Listening to these guys, you would think that racial segregation was solved because one day day Martin Luther King came along and said, "Hey, people - wouldn't it be great if we were all equal?  Wouldn't you like to live in a world where everyone was good to each other?  Isn't that an inspiring vision of the future?"  Ridiculous, of course.  Visions of a better future were an essential part of the Civil Rights Movement, but so was protest - the loud, bitter criticism of racial prejudice and those upholding it.  King himself was often one of those loud critics.  And in fact, from the end of the Civil War to the classic Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, there were people pursuing both strategies - trying to work "with" policymakers, and railing against them.  To me, the groups and individuals suggesting today that we congratulate car companies for the few hybrids they churn out, and ingratiate ourselves with politicians so they'll do us favors later, are a little too reminiscent of Civil Rights strategists who ended up getting very little done, because they tried too hard to "cooperate" with those in power.

The livability of this planet is at risk.  Young people like me stand a greater chance of having our future destroyed than any generation since the one at the height of the Cold War.  Is this a time to "cooperate," and hope that politicians will do something about our problems if we just ask them nicely?  I don't think so.  Do I seem angry, or bitter, on this blog?  Well guess, what: I often am.  And I have a reason to be.  Let me end with a quote from one of my personal Civil Rights heroes - W. E. B. Du Bois.  It's from a letter Du Bois wrote in answer to a reader of his magazine articles, who thought Du Bois was being too negative and "bitter":

"For now  nearly twenty years we [African Americans] have echoed and applauded every shameful accusation made against 10,000,000 victims of slavery...And what was the result?  We got 'friends.'  I do not believe any people ever had so many 'friends' as the American Negro today!  He has nothing but 'friends' and may the good God deliver him from most of them, for they are like to lynch his soul...If this be bitterness, we are bitter."   - W. E. B. Du Bois

I'm not in this to make friends.  I'm not in this to suck up to anyone.  I'm in this because my own future, and the future of every other young person on the planet depends on it.  All of us have reason to rail against the catastrophe that has been thrown in our faces by previous generations.  We have a reason to shout.  We have reason to be seriously ticked off.  And if this is bitterness, we are bitter.

Well, today I met with Commissioner Desari Strader from the Washington County Board of Commissioners.  And I have so much to say that I can't possibly get it all into this one post. 

 One of simplest ways to curb your contribution to climate change, while saving on energy bills at the same time, is to replace ordinary incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent blubs (CFLs).  A CFL consumes about a quarter of the energy used by an incandescent bulb; while you might have to pay more for CFLs than ordinary bulbs up-front, the electricity saved over the bulb's lifetime will more than make up for this.  Another advantage to CFLs is that they can be recycled.  They do contain a trace amount of mercury, so be sure and recycle them at a toxic waste disposal site (unsurprisingly, fossil fuel interests, led by ExxonMobil, have hugely exaggerated the mercury content of CFLs - the truth is that they contain a very tiny amount, and the environmental benefits far outweigh this disadvantage). 

Over its lifetime, an average CFL will keep about 700 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.  If every household in the US replaced all its incandescent bulbs with CFLs, approximately 90 power plants could be retired.  Talk about fighting global warming!  Finally, unlike older fluorescent bulbs, new CFLs produce a light indistinguishable from that of incandescent bulbs; they can also fit into any socket made for incandescents.

Find out more about energy efficient lighting!