Figure we can use a unified thread on climate change issues…
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A couple of from The Guardian…
Paging @chgoliz for the one above!
And for an international perspective…
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The intriguing point they’re not quite making is that Daniel Burnham’s Plan for Chicago (and then nailed down by Montgomery Ward…but read the first link for a more nuanced understanding of why public parks were so important to Burnham especially) included that the lakefront would always be public property, not private, but of course that was for Chicago as it was in the mid-1800’s. The whole south side had been separate towns but then annexed to the city in 1889.
As an aside: any home or apartment building already built on the south side when annexation occurred is officially listed as having been ‘built’ in 1889, because the records didn’t carry over so there are no original documents – except in individual circumstances – so they’re dated to when they joined Chicago.
So, you have some private ownership of lake frontage, but only on the south side. And then, between the fact it’s private, not public, and at this point basically 100% Black owned, well, yeah, doesn’t seem to be high on anyone’s list, does it?
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There have been 5 wildfires in the last two days within 30 miles from my house. Luckily and thru the hard work of firefighters, all but one was contained without any damage to buildings. The last one took out an apartment complex. But that still leaves the damage to fields and wildish areas. It’s been texts about red flag warnings for two weeks. Humidity is below 10% and high temps between 98 and 104 for two weeks. No rain to speak of since June 22.
This is not normal for north Austin. The droughts are getting longer and more severe. North Austin should be a humid summer place. Not as humid as Houston but this is not a desert.
I want the rain to come but I’m also worried. We don’t usually get gentle steady rain in summer or fall. A deluge right now wouldn’t get absorbed quickly and we’d have wide spread flooding.
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That’s so terrible. I was friends with a family who lived near a place where toxic waste and radioactive stuff was junked. Everyone knew it was bad, my ex’s dad could list off everyone in the neighborhood who’d had cancer or something, and it was a long list. Her parents have both died, and her son was born with birth defects. But that was where they grew up and where all their friends and family were there. And they weren’t rich enough to just move away, with no support network.
There are communities just like that all over the country.
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Yep. It’s fucked up. The EPA has been starved of the funding necessary to get shit cleaned up, sadly. Thanks Ronnie (and every Republican since then)!
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Here’s some GOOD news, everybody!
Ironic that the spokesperson for the state AG has the surname of “Flower”.
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This is excellent news
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The state argued that even if Montana completely stopped producing C02, it would have no effect on a global scale because states and countries around the world contribute to the amount of C02 in the atmosphere. A remedy has to offer relief, the state said, or it’s not a remedy at all.
This is rather like being at a loud party that’s disturbing the neighborhood and saying “well, I’m not making the party loud all by myself, and if I shut up entirely then the party would only be a little bit quieter… so I should be allowed to keep yelling as loudly as I want!”
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I think highways are what we have, but really they’re just right-of-ways, which is actually good. How so?
Well, I’ve been trying to put forward the idea that electrified light rail should use highway right-of-ways to move both people and container freight. It builds on the highway network to largely replace it without disrupting things too much in a bad way while disrupting the bad things about highways in a good way.
It:
- mimics the routes people drive
- mimics the uses people have for highways (especially the freight aspect)
- demonstrates it right next to the cars and semis while they crawl along
- increases capacity without driving new right-of-ways through communities
Basically, every divided highway and many roads that the planners think need 4 or more lanes of travel gets at least one set of tracks going both ways. Passenger and container freight moves on those rails, with spurs for park-and-rides and small container terminals. Because so many of those highways are in cities, this gets the freight handling back into the cities where local trucking can get it that last mile. Because so many of those highways connect our cities and the places in between, it enhances service to the between places without requiring new right-of-ways cut through the countryside.
It’s not high speed rail, but it’s electrified, and even in the U.S., going more than 75 miles an hour is a luxury that can be left to other modes. It’s electrified without requiring enormous batteries requiring every salt-flat on the planet to be despoiled. I’ve yet to see a real (ahem) roadblock to the idea except the looks of bafflement and rage on people’s faces when I bring it up.
And when it’s clear that more capacity is better put in place with multimodal light rail than highways, we can start cutting lanes of car traffic on wide-wide-wide highways with more rails. People will still be able to drive, but if you are doing it as Bizniss, take your ass to the train station or order a container at the nearest container depot.
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shutting down carbon-spewing facilities can benefit human health
Our city councillor for the ward where the old Lakeview Generating Station was located tells similar stories. Since it was decommissioned the school test scores have come up, and local health has improved.
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