"All of the Above"

"All of the Above" that's the rallying cry from our Colorado representatives.

Last Saturday I attended the Club 20 Fall meeting in Grand Junction Colorado. It is a bipartisan lobbying organization for the Western Slope of Colorado but the members are predominately Conservative Republicans. The speakers - from both parties- craft their messages to that base.

Here are some of the things I heard from the speakers and from the audience.

Representative Tipton (R) cited the Senate 181 Public Lands bill (which sends 50¢ per acre of federal land  back to local companies aka ski and mine companies - not to local governments) and the Rare Earths bill from Michael Rubio. He said we could develop rare earth elements from Coal. He said the West Slope had a "lower per capita income" but never said lower than what.  He went further to say the "New Green Deal" had no meat on it's bones and would eliminate airplanes and cattle.  We need an "all of the above" energy plan, coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear, and solar (with the caveat that building a solar farm may give you 400 jobs during the build but only 4 jobs long term- something I have yet to find a source for or verify)

Responses from the audience included "7000 fossil fuel jobs lost in Colorado" I have yet to find any source for this statement.

Attorney General Weiser (D) spoke about the opioid  law suit, the Google sales tax law suit (no results searching for that on Google- I'm shocked I tell you- shocked), reforming cash bail, Crowley County selling their water rights, and then dipped into the controversial territory of a Red Flag bill firmly linking it to everything *above* 15 rounds (crickets from this audience). He walked on the wild side commenting on the sports gambling ballot question (% of sports gambling revenue for water). No one answered if that revenue is going to pay for diversions to the front range, dams, reservoirs or bothered to define what "voluntary demand management" of water really means.

Senator Gardner (R) was by far the most personable speaker of the day and he needed to be. He's considered a moderate by the Republican base (rated 5th most bi-partisan Senator) and his seat is in jeopardy. The biggest applause of the day was for the relocation of the BLM from DC to Grand Junction- a personal initiative by Senator Gardner. Of course there was no mention that Congress hasn't allocated money for the move even though the space has been leased as of November 1 or that by moving out of the DC power base it moves the department "out of sight out of mind". The BLM will be located in the same building as Chevron. I'll let you connect the dots on that.  This was closely followed by touting the Public Lands Act (which leaves out the Thompson Divide) $17 million for I70  improvements in Glenwood and Glenwood Canyon (given the almost $2 Billion budget for CDOT I'm not feeling the Western Slope love.) Reinventing the Obama era strategy of choking Russian oil and gas dependence by supplying natural gas to Europe by talking about  our "new" natural gas customers in Taiwan and Japan to choke Chinese oil and gas dependence.  "We shouldn't rely on foreign nations for supply and energy!" As we try and make other nations dependent on us and simultaneously send troops to Saudi Arabia.  (My head hurts) Although Rep. Tipton said "lower per captia income" on the West Slope Senator Gardner said we have a $5000 per family wage growth in Colorado (again- no sources for either statement).

I missed the big Pharma panel. (needed more coffee and a break) and got back in time for the Governor.

Governor Polis (D) Talked mostly about reducing health care premiums. It's no wonder this got a cool response since Grand Junction's #1 economic driver is Health Care.  For the rest of us relief is certainly needed since health care premiums in the Roaring Fork Valley are the highest in the nation but it needs to be emphasized that this reduction (41% in Vail) is for individuals not for companies or group insurance. We are predominately small businesses on the West Slope and in order for these small businesses to thrive there needs to be an insurance solution. Without that everyone becomes and independent contractor in this "right to work" State. I certainly would have liked more information on "no new diversions" for water and if that included the diversions in the State Water Plan... but the focus was on health care.

Insurance Commissioner Conway (D) - the back up band for the insurance message.

The Special Guest served up with the pork roulade (someone in the kitchen has a sense of humor) was Rifle Colorado native Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt (R). His message was how important Senator Gardner's "bi-partisan" efforts were, how great it was to have the BLM move to Grand Junction so that staff could see what sage brush looked like, how "all of the above" was the best policy for public lands, how quickly President Trump has been able to make good on all his campaign promises and then took credit for the Sage Grouse initiative and the partnership with grazing (ignoring the fact that this was an Obama 2010 initiative and the Trump Administration spin is to open the Sage Grouse habitat to oil and gas companies)

My luncheon companions then told me how I could use vanadium to power my Tesla and I would be able to stop at any gas station and "fill up" my battery with vanadium.  (I could not keep the image of "Back to the Future" out of my head.)

Dan Prenzlow and Dan Gibbs, from Parks and Wildlife and Dept of Natural Resources respectively, wrapped the meeting. The audience response was more direct to this presentation perhaps since it was the last one. This included a reference to controlling the wolf population "follow the science before wolves get on the ballot" and the pressure of people on wildlife  having adverse effects on the hunting season.  "Follow the Science" seemed a particularly ironic choice of verbage.

That was my Saturday in Grand Junction Colorado. It left me as hollow as the previous day's Climate Strike had left me hopeful.

What is lacking is discernment.  What is really lacking is the ability- or even the desire - to listen to rural concerns without pandering or playing to the lowest common denominator. 

J.M.O.

Climate Emergency

The mote in their eye…. and the beam in ours.

I listened to Public comments on the BOCC Climate Emergency Resolution yesterday which included an impassioned protest not to listen to a “Bartender”… “A Bartender!!” for advice. Well, who hasn’t? (and in my experience it tends to be better advice than pundits and politicians). This was after our  younger citizens quoted Greta Thunberg’s UN speech. As Ms. Thunberg has repeated… and repeated… “Listen to the Science”. If your bartender happens to have a PHD in climate science- well, then - you’re in Aspen.

To our local governments I say "Lead by example.” There are plenty of things each of us can do on an individual level but THAT IS NOT ENOUGH and that’s the point of a “Climate Emergency”.

What’s OUR Climate Action? Here are a few ideas,

1.Make all County/City owned vehicles electric or hybrid. (incentivize EV purchases through HOV access and free parking)
2. Make all County/City owned properties Net Zero
3. Carbon tax all jet fuel at the Pitco Airport
4. All energy supplied to County/City buildings and new construction must be from renewables.
5. Ban all single use plastics and micro plastics from retail vendors in the County/City.
6. Use recycled plastic as paving material.
7. Plant trees and replant every habitat area which has been destroyed for roadways (the roundabout springs to mind)
8. Build wildlife bridges over roadways.
9. Protect wildlife corridors (do not allow human encroachment - houses and/or ski trails).
10. Reduce the number of trails (foot, bike and motorized)  through wildlife habitat
11. Install a diagnostic PPM network which will give data points for Carbon and air pollution.
12. Monitor the carbon content of soil throughout the County
13. Improve the Pitco Landfill by pyrolizing construction waste and beetle kill for biochar compost, making rag paper, and mandating “drop and swap” for contractors.
14. Revegetate every abandoned mine site in the county with biochar compost like they did at Coal Creek.
15. Keep the water in the rivers and on the Western Slope Colorado River Basin.
16. Reinstate grazing for fire and weed mitigation (looking at you SkiCo)
17. Mandate Carbon offsets for all air travel by County/City employees and elected representatives.
18. Enact a Billionaire tax to pay for it all.

Less talk. More Action.

What would Yvon Chouinard do? Letter to the editor. Unpublished.

What would Yvon Chouinard do?

Lead by example.

1. Make all City owned and operated buildings net zero. That includes APCHA. Replace “City of Aspen” with “Pitkin County” copy and paste.

2. Make all new City building projects net zero. Replace “City of Aspen” with “Pitkin County” copy and paste.

3. Make all City vehicles EV. Replace “City” with “County” copy and paste.

4. Do not hand out a single City of Aspen subsidy to a company which isn’t net zero. Replace “City of Aspen” with “Pitkin County” copy and paste.

5. Do not hand out a single City of Aspen grant to a non-profit or entity which isn’t net zero. Replace “City of Aspen” with “Pitkin County” copy and paste.

These are not radical suggestions.  After all I haven’t suggested we give every deer, elk, bear, mountain lion, chickadee, nuthatch, blue spruce, lodgepole pine and wildflower an absentee ballot….we should because those are what make “Aspen Aspen”… but that would be radical and I doubt you’d get the bears to vote in March.

Lead by example, that is what I expect of my representatives and my government. Do more-300 City employees can make a bigger difference than any single citizen.

Gofundme bail for climate protesters 
@sunrisemvmt
#GreenNewDeal

Deal with it.

Who cares if Climate Change is man made?  That Diesel already left the barn. Regardless if you think humans changed the weather to our disadvantage the question remains can we change the weather to our advantage? Weather patterns which threaten the basics of breathable air, potable water, and fertile soil mean we need to adapt or die.  Sure, we all die, but a planet wide event means more than my death or your death - it endangers us as a species. Extinction doesn’t target by political ideology, nationality, or religion. Evolution doesn’t care about the deck chairs on the Titanic. Iceberg ahead. Deal with it.

We’re good at adapting.  I remember the threat of worldwide famine in the 60’s and 70’s- miracle rice got us out of that one. You can go into the DNA record and trace our current population to about 1000 individuals. We might be able to blame that on a super volcano. Pretty good comeback to 7 billion in mere 70,000 years if I do say so myself. The drought of 4000 years ago burnt walled cities to the ground but produced a lighter fast sailing society based on pillaging and global trade. Global trade facilitated pandemics from plague to influenza and yet here we still are with antibiotics and immunization systems. There have been a lot of “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” moments. 

Perhaps you think that weather is too large a challenge? After all adapting to weather is different than micro managing weather. We manage weather on small scale inside our greenhouses and homes but can we motivate the hive mind to tackle it on a large scale?

As a species we have a unique advantage.  We’ve sped up DNA the transfer of multigenerational memory with one spectacular invention : writing. Our knowledge, our observations, our successes and failures can be recorded and passed from generation to generation. Yes, we have destroyed libraries and wiped out databases but somehow we always search to rebuild that knowledge. It is a deep human need to learn from our past, imagine different futures, and pass that on to the next generation. Can we learn from our past to recognize a threat and use our imagination to craft a solution?

Cassandra or Chicken Little? I’d love to be wrong and the sky is not falling, the icecaps are not melting, desertification isn’t increasing, microbursts aren’t happening, February wasn’t a month of snowmelt, and the songbirds haven’t left my balcony.  Cassandra’s prophecies were spot on and her reward was to be mocked, ignored and murdered. Nope, rather not be Cassandra.  I’d much rather we thought of ourselves as  a team and worked together to sustain ourselves on our home planet.

(bonus podcast on evolution : David Sloan Wilson)

The Climate of Aspen

I went to the work session last night on Greening Aspen in the City Council Chambers. There was a lot of good but there was also a lot of same old, same old…  I wanted to hear solutions and a great deal of the presentation was a series of proofs that Climate Change exists and dire predictions for the future. I got it…. the City Council gets it…. now move forward. How do we leverage our unique position as a nature lovers paradise ,  a hub of international powerbrokering and a Syllian vortex for the ultra wealthy?  We have a start at leading by example with Canary and CORE but it doesn't begin to flex the muscles which are Aspen. Aspen doesn't excel by doing what everyone else is doing… Aspen is what it is because we risk new ideas… heart and soul.

Elizabeth and Walter Paepcke

our forward thinkers...

Starting with the biggest slice of the pie how do you get Residences and Rentals to reduce carbons emissions? Certainly Bert's suggestion of embedding the building code with sustainable requirements would help but that is only the stick. I get 20% of my rentals because of that little green leaf logo from Clean Energy Collective. That should have every Property Manager's ears prick up. A 20% increase because of a little green leaf logo. Which would you rather have $500 from the City of Aspen for being "green" or a 20% increase in revenues because of a little green leaf logo? I'd love to double down on my green leafies with a green aspen leaf stamp from the City of Aspen for my CORE improvements- and I bet I'm not the only one.  It costs the City nothing other than confirming CORE has worked with a Property Manger- and designing a leaf stamp.

http://www.easycleanenergy.com

We are "tracking" carbon emissions but not consistently. We track vehicular emissions by the number of cars and airplane emissions by the volume of fuel sold at the airport. We need better data than this- not all cars emit the same amount of carbon. Not all airplanes are refueling for the RT to Aspen alone.  We need to be more specific.   

And speaking of data manipulation…we are not tracking carbon sequestration. This is a big fail. Our trees, our grasses, every inch of good rich soil sequesters carbon. That is our most valuable asset- the nature around us- cutting down the trees at Ruby Park increased our  carbon emissions- dead grass in Wagner increases our carbon emissions- keeping Marolt green decreases our carbon emissions- bringing the sheep back to Aspen Mountain would decrease carbon emissions even more. 

This would take soil studies and that would be a game changer in the way carbon is measured and regulated. Aspen could lead in this area. 

 

Then there is the dump. The conclusion was that methane capture was not economically viable at this time but there was no mention of biofuels or supplementing heating with biofuels in place of natural gas. We have a great opportunity to expand the extremely successful biochar reclamation efforts seen at the Hope Mine and Coal Creek, enhance our compost into biochar compost, reinvigorate our local farming and ranching culture, and make carbon sequestration the yang to carbon emissions yin….

Virtuous Circles work….

Hydro Plant and Climate Change, letter to the editor, 2013

I'm posting some old letters to the editor. This is so I can remember what I wrote, and to keep myself honest.  I'm posting them in the order I wrote them so this goes back a couple of years.

The more things change….

This is from the Spring of 2013

For everyone interested in the hydro plant please read the latest report from NASA "New study projects warming-driven changes in global rainfall". 

The short version is longer periods of drought, less rain and moisture coming in a large event instead of a series of moderate events.

That means flash flooding in steams which cut deeper and allow little or no  water to soak into the banks of a stream.

That translates into a loss of riparian areas. Restoration of stream beds which have cut below the banks is an extremely costly process.

The Colorado has been named America's most endangered River. 

"The Law is an Ass." said Mr. Bumble. The awful truth is- you leave the water in the stream and someone else snatches it. Which one of our run-off Mayorial candidates has the stones to fight Denver and Colorado Water Law?

As long as we are hamstrung by Colorado Water Law we cannot allow rain gardens and rain harvesting where there is a municipal water plant. Think how much water could be left in the headwaters of the Colorado if the Front Range required rain harvesting. Think how much we could leave in Castle Creek and Maroon if we lead the way.