Cool Belblog

Higher operating costs should be telling government something.

2011-02-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

Operating costs are the buzz word, from fire departments and caltrain, to family budgets. But thats were the commonality between cites and families end. Cities look at the factors that lead to operting costs like employee salaries. There is no concept of an underlying structural defect leading to higher operating costs. Everyone was used to living off debt, the ATM of unlimited growth, untill energy prices, the proverbial rug under their feet, was yanked out. At $4/- per gallon home owners were made acutely aware to having overstepped their capabilities. Large homes are not only more expensive to operate and access, they also cost more in post Prop 13 California. Taxes, the very force that directly highlights the cost of conspicous consumption, is also the force that turns people against their government. Governments on the other hand behave like children- instead of recognizing the structural cause of the national malaize they hope that people will come to their senses and see the value of the services installed for a society built as if gas is fifty cents a gallon. Forgiving the vehicle license fee bankrupted the state and did nothing to insure people from the effects of higher gas prices caused by living at the edge of the driving economy. We can't grow ciites and by default their services as if gas was 50c a gallon. People realized that at $4/- gallon. Governments instead are trying to blunder through with a concept of regionalism vaguely consicous that people are bonded out and cannot absorb more debt. Regionalism by combining sevice overhead promises lower costs. But regionalism increases the size the government when all indications point to downsizing, a concept that homeowners have absorbed.

Instead of listening to the problems of higher operating costs governments are trying to pretend that nothing is wrong except the ability of people to pay for services.

Greywater

2009-12-15T12:57:00.000-08:00

Recycling and reuse of greywater raises issues of pollution at the percolation level based on cleaners used by the household. A UCLA report writes: "The state revised 2007 California Plumbing Code has now eased previous permit requirements for certain untreated graywater delivery and distribution systems. Permit requirements are now based on daily discharge volume, number of household sources, and number of graywater system fixtures. According to the Draft 2010 California Plumbing Code proposed by the California Department of Water Resources expanded indoor and outdoor uses of graywater (e.g., toilet flushing, spray irrigation, etc.) are also possible if the source graywater is treated to meet the California Department of Public Heath statewide uniform criteria for disinfected tertiary recycled water. This implies that, for expanded use graywater (i.e., besides in underground irrigation systems), water quality of treated graywater from small-scale, on-site residential treatment systems would be held to the same regulatory standards as large-scale, centralized municipal water treatment plants."

Permitting greywater can lead to a number of benefits
- Shows an awareness of the toxic problem which until now is unaddressed

- May not be a problem at all if the average person is not growing anything.

- Localizes the pollution problem from what people use for cleaners. This will form a layer at where the water percolates into the soil. If toxic cleaners are used then vegetables should not be grown with this water. Fruit trees which get water from a deeper root system are ok. And over time the percolation layer would need to be aerated so that anaerobic bacterial process can deteriorate the polluted layer.
However note that localizing the pollution source means that greywater (toilet is black water) does not pollute the larger water bodies like the Bay and Belmont Creek.

- Provides an incentive for growers to shift to organic and bio degradable cleaners

- expands the market organic and bio degradable cleaners so that these products can be competitive or lower cost than toxics.

- Reduces the amount of water that needs to moved around the region. Landscape uses the same amount of water as interiors for single family homes (5% each of total freshwater.) In Multifamily homes interior use is 3% of total and external use is 1%! Water movement accounts for 30% of energy use. Reducing demand improves availability and energy efficiency.

Is garbage hauling sustainable?

2009-09-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Caveat: this is not a Recology problem even though they are the only named entity.

There are more than twice as many garbage trucks, 179,000, in the US as there are transit buses. These refuse hauling monsters get an average of 2.8 miles per gallon. Garbage trucks move at an average speed of 10mph, an incredibly inefficient pace for a combustion engine, but one that's necessary because of the garbage trucks duties. The average garbage truck guzzles 8600 gallons of diesel fuel a year. Together US garbage trucks use 1.5 billion gallons of fuel, about 4% of all the diesel used in the US, accounting for billions of dollars sent overseas. (from $20 per gallon by Christopher Steiner page 162.)

Now these trucks will also get to go load a train, with garbage from from the Peninsula to Marin, because we don't price out what we throw away. Senator Reid can fix this with a federal tipping rate fee of $100/ton. For the role of tipping fees see Understanding Dynamics of Landfill Gate Rates by Cary Pecket, page 32f. BioCycle, August 2009. Higher tipping fees enable business from recycling including home deconstruction. The money should go to Fish and Wildlife for enforcement of the Clean Water Act since a secondary problem of any dump is toxins leached into the water table.

The primary problem is garbage service as a mechanism to expand sprawl in existing polluted corridors; and roads into openspace, including the road to nowhere, which ends up creating a community by the dump (Steiner's point in the opening quote.)

Recology trucks in the Belmont area are biodiesel. But as Stanford Professor Jacobson showed, when their fossil fuel production component is factored in, biofuels are worse in most metrics.
Since Belmont just signed up with Recology (formerly Norcal) this article could be titled: Belmont boards for burial at Burning Man.

Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer

In the dusty Nevada desert, about 30 miles east of the playa where Bay Area artists and hipsters gather annually to build a temporary city at the Burning Man festival, a San Francisco garbage company wants to build a dump for Bay Area trash.

But a group of residents in the Winnemucca area, near where Recology seeks to build the 1-square-mile landfill, wants the company to leave the desert alone - and California to keep its garbage to itself.

"The notion that Nevada is some sort of wasteland because we don't have Ponderosa pines covering it is repugnant," said Jim French, retired wildlife biologist from the Nevada Department of Wildlife and a member of Nevadans Against Garbage, a group opposing the planned dump.

Article continues

A food shed on a walking perimeter

2009-01-10T18:14:00.000-08:00

City Government has spent the last 60 years building bigger faster roads to the far reaches of the city with all the water and sewer and garbage that can be efficiently and unaffordably moved around. And now we can't walk and bicycling is too dangerous and look: we find ourselves chained to Al Queda and Saudi Arabia and unable to grow old in our own neighborhoods. So lets retire to the Sierras and leave it to another generation to figure out what to do with the bad air water and oil soaked soil.

Council members says that the roads are now too dangerous to bike and can we build separate bike paths- ceding the public space to Bush and Al Queda. Another network is needed to get around slowly without pollution and in peace.

But how to grade separate this new facility? And connect community scattered to the outer reaches of our jurisdiction? It will be expensive, so do we have to live with what we got? One way is to move services into the neighborhoods on an 1/8 mile walking radius and then connect these great neighborhoods via bicycles boulevards. Ideally Transfer of Development Rights would restore the food shed on a walking perimeter of a complete neighborhood. I suggest we think big how we want to use the FARTP and use ABAG's and MTC's priority development and conservation areas monies to get us started repairing our world in the next 25 years.

TV and the four directions

2008-12-22T10:56:00.000-08:00

There are four basic needs for a citizens- home, food, health care and a job. The last one because how else can you pay your taxes? The first two are easy to justify. The third is essential if you want to get to work so that the government can tax you for the scandals to warm to.
Quoting Stanley in the Times:
The nation is engrossed in an orgy of scandal, a 24-hour cable news burlesque of greed, graft, cronyism and corruption, with appointed villains so lurid and over-the-top they could be characters in “Bleak House.” (Even their names, Madoff and Blagojevich, have a Dickensian ring, like Skimpole or Pardiggle.)

Credit is frozen, the stock market looks perilously close to flatlining, and neither politicians nor economists can begin to predict the short- or long-term consequences of $700 billion government bailouts and a national debt topping $10 trillion. The root causes — an impenetrable tangle of derivative securities, heedless lending and binge corporate buyouts — are too vast and uncharted to examine for long. The solutions are insoluble.

As Neil Postman writes in Amusing Ourselves to Death we are distracted from the four basics by nonsense by the elites need to reduce taxes instead of jobs.

For one the government is not addressing jobs and homes or health care for all.

And maybe it can't, a whole new emphasis on where we are in the era of Peak Everything.
Quoting Uchitelle in the Times:
“It is not in the nature of a market system to have adequate private investment all of the time,” said Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “So we used public investment to smooth things over and improve the climate for private investment.”

That changed. In the 1970s, the public reacted against high taxes and growing budget deficits, and conservatives argued that putting money in private hands would lift the economy more effectively. Public investment tapered off, and was used less as a tool of economic policy as the economy experienced the increasingly sharp ups and downs of the 1980s, 1990s and the new century.

If shortages drive up prices, a good thing, then the pain of being unable to consume frivolously , like the paintings of Dahen, will be difficult to impossible. This will allow resources to go farther since shipping trash around will be impossible. China to the rescue? No but we can learn to live within our means- a concept presently unknown to government, the concept of business itself and us.

For example what's with the rootless society? If we really need a home why don't we settle down and build community and family linked to the neighborhood? Because GM has driven over the dream and created a gridiron of streets which imprison homes away from the community and neighborhood. Without the proximity of a walkable neighborhood there aren't any services, like dentists and farmers markets, wherein to meet and talk to neighbors, and so we move in search of "home."

What missing from this whole scenario? An acknowledgment that without equity we can't solve the peak everything problem and keep from deteriorating into balkanized walled rioting communities. Mumbai is a measure of how far the outside world penetrates comfort to create the trend to balkanized communities. In the movies we get tough on crime, poverty, and punishment delivered. Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood, can erase the margin between constitution and Guantanamo, squarely under the holy cross of Abu Grahib. On the front page America continues to get tough on black and Hispanic youth, spending a whole generation, on the slogan of a racially neutral class free society. Even a fiscal disaster in California won't stop our racist drive over the edge. "Class resentment is the rage" but it doesn't extend to equity in prison spending, education, keep the home economy with jobs, or health care.

Instead we knock charity for economically distressed communities, like community developers (remember Oboam versus McCain), without acknowledging the role of economic empowerment provided by the organizations nominated. In the Brundtland Report which gave us the common parlance of the phrase "sustainable development" we must overcome our elitist disregard for the conditions pf poverty under the mask of a sustainable meritocracy.

Brundtland laid out four principles in Our Common Future in 1987
1- the elimination of poverty is necessary not just as a human right but as an environmental issue.
2- we in the first world must reduce our consumption of resources and production of wastes.
3- Global cooperation on environmental issues is no longer a soft option.
4- Change toward sustainability can occur only with community-based approaches that take local cultures seriously.

Brundtland said they must apply simultaneously to achieve global sustainability.

Work toward the four basic needs is the only way to keep the goddess happy and the home from being nagged to death as any laid off fellow will tell you.

Infrastructure change challenge and opportunity

2008-12-10T09:11:00.000-08:00

Society pays for education in the hope of a reward that will benefit the larger public good. Resources undermine this goal because they offer the road to wealth through speed i.e quick ill-gotten-gains. Education produces Engineers who figure out how to use resources, like diamonds, to make a product that no one wants; and Marketeers who figure out how to get people to ask for it; and products from the schools of public policy who torture people far from the intended markets (because of local depletion which led to the formation of empires) to work in the resource industries and produce the goods and rules to keep competition from the product markets. AIG shows that private insurance is another such useless product.

That infrastructure of military and government and markets is overbuilt. The energy source of cheap fossil fuels is running out. If that was it we would be fine. But transferring them from the ground to the air, water, and our body tissue has given us the problem of global warming. Worse the intellectual edifice around the engineers has collapsed- the experts don't know what to do; their solutions try to retard innovation and entrench the past. The challenge is to build a coalition to address necessity is immense since the discourse around the topic is shrouded in the fear of the power of state inspired terror and the business elites- BAU. We need to go beyond the calling cards of power: entitlement and corruption.

However as long the challenges remain unaddressable and the discourse is limited there will always be the O'Tooles and GW Deniers who make an industry from seeming to be right.
The Guardian writes Wednesday December

Discussions in Brussels and Poznan this week will be decisive in terms
of setting the tone for next year, when the world must agree on a
successor to the Kyoto protocol or face irreversible and devastating
climate change. The signs do not look good: in Brussels, Italy, Poland
and Germany are trying to water down commitments on emissions
reductions, backed by shortsighted business lobbies. Meanwhile in
Poznan everyone appears to be waiting for someone else to move first.

Society needs to reevaluate its goal of economic progress. Everything points to the immense benefits of recessions and depressions including a lower population. Government needs to get out of the economic progress business so that we can live in a healthy depressed economy where we grow our own food and recycle our own trash. We need to address consumption. Without addressing the necessity of the demand side why put in (a different) infrastructure? Is it any different then?

A carpet showroom and a parking lot got bombed by ice- I would think that's just global warming deserts for melting the ice caps. But the fact that these losing enterprises are around, except powered by windmills, is not a long term solution. Government builds industrial blocs like autos through subsidization of land uses, easy money credit, and unethical thumb in the pot Congressional oversight which results in zeroed out 401ks. Shouldn't we know better?

If we go around wailing for leaders we are lost. We need to know how to grow our own food or support a local food system with a farmers market in walking or biking distance. And we need to figure out how to recycle our own trash including composting toilets. That is not leadership material. Its the end of asking for government to design in economic progress since we now know for most generations it leads to worthless 401ks.

petition on globla warming

2008-11-26T05:11:00.000-08:00

Save our Environment dot org has a petition to Obama saying "It's time to Repower, Refuel, and Rebuild America.

We need to get our economy moving by building a clean energy future. We applaud your efforts to make energy a top priority, and urge you to adopt these goals:

* Move to 100% electricity from clean small distributed sources such as wind and solar

* Cut our dependence on oil and coal by 95%

* Create 5 million new clean energy jobs

* Reduce global warming pollution by at least 80%

* Tax fossil fuel consumption not working America.

We call on you to introduce a plan in your first 100 days that will reach these goals, and to utilize the federal budget and any economic recovery package to get us started.

Infrastructure and pollution to end life

2008-11-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

Worst crab season since the clean water act! The problems of unmitigated pollution and extraction clearly affects life itself on this planet.
Depleted coastal fish stocks displace sustainable farmers moving fuel intensive operations out with drag net fishing that causes havoc in the high seas which allows for pollution intensive hotel uses on the coast. A good resource is Save The High Seas.
Instead of treating symptoms with a blatant disregard for conformance goals we should use the successful energy model in CA to tier price the demand side and change the supply side infrastructure needs. The goal should be to shrink the footprint on the biosphere. Leonhardt writes:
Government agencies usually don’t even have to do a rigorous analysis of a project or how it would affect traffic and the environment, relative to its cost and to the alternatives — before deciding whether to proceed. In one recent survey of local officials, almost 80 percent said they had based their decisions largely on politics, while fewer than 20 percent cited a project’s potential benefits. Please, please don’t just pour more money into the current system.

The SF Examiner highlights one problem of our current infrastructure- permanently damaged lungs for our children.

Harvey Wasserman writes: So let's convert GM's infrastructure to churn out trolley cars, monorails, passenger trains, truly green buses.

The environmental justice result is that congestion management expands capacity at the expense of all other modes. Because of the low real estate cost expansion is disportionately in poor communities.

Equity in infrastructure pricing

2008-11-19T09:01:00.000-08:00

Set an equitable cost distribution on pollution. Infrastructure pricing should reflect the burden of polluting the biosphere. The model is tier pricing in energy.

Examples:
CA needs to develop a model off-street parking ordinance that implements "Intelligent Parking" similar to what SF wants and Redwood City may have the begining off (from Mike Bullock).

Traffic impact fees, estimated at 40k per car per ten year period would fund zero pollution changes to the way the air and water basin are destroyed.

PAYD road financing should replace the highway gas tax using GPS or license-plate RFID tags. Roads should be priced so that they produce an agree-to rate of return on the VALUE of the lane. Note that I said value. Value is the price of land plus construction, at the time of collection. Privacy concerns should not allow drivers to permanently impact growing lungs by large roads (Mike Bullock).

A revenue neutral carbon tax to address imports. The market partially addresses this but the impact varies with the price of CO2 intensive fuels like gasoline. Without an extraction fee 96% of fossil fuels won't stay in the ground through 2250 for 350 ppm of CO2.

Universal single payer health care to address pollution through environmental justice.

Tie Federal funds to a tangible goal like reduced traffic or carbon emissions.

Landuse efficiencies for sustainable communities

2008-11-12T09:12:00.000-08:00

When evaluating landuse Efficiencies needs to have their total impact evaluated. For example saying a Prius is efficient leaves out the landuse element. A Prius is more efficient than a Ford F150 in fuel consumption; but the issue of fuel consumption arises because of the poor landuse choice of living out in what used to be the sequestered carbon of open space. Politically moving policy in favor of a Prius thus means we can continue to expand usage of air and water and food and land basins, i.e the biosphere, that we pollute.

The efficiency is thus only relative to the reduced variable of fuel consumption and not the total impact of the biosphere disruption. The sustainable state would go beyond what architect S. Mouzon called Gizzmo Green in The Original Green. Growing Cooler points out that if VMT continues to grow three times faster than population growth any improvements in fuel mileage will quickly be negated. Without a competent urban strategy gains from technological improvements will be overwhelmed by suburban inefficiencies leaving us less sustainable in the future.

A combination of strategies are necessary taking advantage of efficient building types, efficient locations, reused infrastructure, efficient goods and service movement, rebuilt carbon basins, efficient technologies, and equity efficiencies to attain a sustainable state. As Zack and Lyon say the important indicator is lower per capita resource consumption, not necessarily deploying flashy new machines.

GW GHG solutions

2008-11-10T12:23:00.000-08:00

Worldwide agriculture is the largest generator of green house gases partly because carbon sinks are burned for vast mono cultures sold into the industrial food markets for packaged food like substances (Pollan's words) or feedstock. Indigenous self sufficient subsistence farmers are displaced to acquire the land thereby entering the "economy" as poor peasants or landless slum dwellers. I been thinking that's what's really needed is the right to land to feed oneself. It seems counterintuitive that a human on this planet does not have the right to plant his food and feed himself. And if we feed ourselves the CO2 footprint from food would go to zero but the desire to work would also be reduced thereby reducing the availability of funds to spend recklessly toasting the planet.

Solving climate change will need to change the way we consume which means a sustainable way to get by. Right now only taxes and death are certain which means we have to be part of the consuming society to earn money to pay taxes and its killing us as a planet. So if we could feed ourselves we can ignore all the fuss around the latest ipod etc.

The carbon tax is just a way of moderating consumption and cap and dividend is a way of providing an incentive to consume differently. But land reform, through community gardens or whatever, can be a fundamental change.

1- Sign the ILO which recognizes right of indigenous peoples to their lands.
http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/indigenous.htm

2- Enact land reform to allow creation of farm belts around cities with Traffic Impact Fees and Congestion Charging going toward Agland preservation and the right to community gardens.

3- A revenue neutral carbon tax that replaces a portion of the income tax and DOES NOT TOUCH FICA.

4- A cap and dividend on emissions including other sources like methane which is returned to all Americans and not used as a extension of predation on the public commons by renting out our lungs.

5- Enable existing technologies with 15mph neighborhood and collector streets in the city and 20 mph in city arterials to make Neighborhood Electrical Vehicles viable. The goal should be to reduce pollution of the air and water sheds and expand environmental services outside the urban boundary. Vehicle tracking for Pay As You Drive insurance should be required for engines that generate CO2.

6- Require green building standards to address locations.

7- Make a $1/kwh excess feed in tariffs and allow choice within 300' of a renewable location to dramatically expand renewable power and reduce the cost of transmission from non co2 sources.

8- Allow Transit Agencies (like Universities) to control landuse decisions within 1/4 mile radius of a transit center to achieve sustainable revenue streams.

9- Tax gasoline with a ladder to bailout fossil fuel intensive industries like auto.

One and two can address imports but can address the need for solar overs elsewhere if the equity issues are taken into account. The carbon tax on extraction and processing should go to viable solutions from agriculture, landuse, and fuels.

Bailing out the fossil fuel economy

2008-10-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

Bonds have been the traditional instrument for government to spread the cost of installing a fossil fuel intensive infrastructure. The fight over road building and reconstruction on many of the nation's inventoried but undeveloped areas is an example.

In San Jose the RDA (with projects in light rail, 87, etc.) offices are across the hall from Merrill Lynch. Its ironic that the AB32 governor pushed bonds; and then gas prices raised family expenses 25%, stretched by debt to benefit Vehicle Miles Traveled, on the outer suburbs of the job intensive cities, and threatens his legacy. Bonds were necessary because the governor got his job by bankrupting government so commuters could own a planet toasting car with reduced vehicle license fees.

Banks Albach in the Palo Alto Daily News notes that, only from Lehman, Belmont Redwood Shores school district will lose about $3M in construction monies. The San Mateo Community College district lost $25M.

In another write up on the melting planet of bond financing Mark Olbert, a trustee on the San Carlos School Board of Trustees, observes:
I found it interesting that Lehman was almost the only investment discussed. The fund invests in many other names that have been in the news lately. As of Sept. 24, more than 80 percent of the investments are in what I think of as the financial services sector, a fascinating concentration given what’s been unfolding over the last year or so. I hope the Treasurer’s Office knows what it’s doing... and I personally hope it diversifies the portfolio as soon as it can.

In other words business as usual at least as long as gas stays under $4/- a gallon.

bail our of the fossil fools economy

2008-10-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

People would consider it ludicrous if we suggest that we privatize the air. But there is a company today in Japan that is selling oxygen in China where the air pollution is very bad. People also surprisingly would consider it ludicrous if we suggested that they must buy water. But in the US we essentially do that today paying Coca Cola and Pepsi 10,000 times more to buy bottled tap water which doesn't have to meet any of the quality tests for municipal water (and a third of a bottle of water equivalent in gas to ship it around.)

Surprisingly people today won't look back and say we have a right to growing our food the way we have a right to air and water. And yet that's what's happened two hundred years ago when the right to land was privatized and a bank system to finance purchase was setup. The creation of the federal reserve and the privatization of the creation money put in place the ability to enforce property rights on privatized land.

What sprawl did was extend the area of where banks could function. The result was exponentially larger consumption of resources like water and wetlands and deterioration of both the commons and the resource basins (like air) and their ecological services. For example Rice harvest in CA was delayed because smoke from the fires stunted growth. Even in sparsely populated areas fire departments were restricted by sprawl to "save lives" instead of keeping large tracts from burning.

The larger question to address concerns this corporate warfare state; that cannot sustain itself; and is taking the country to a similar post soviet union Russian debacle; which we can see in the story of GM, Ford, etc.; primarily because the end game around declining oil resources for the range of banks will place unequal down-spirals on the value of money.

Instead Congress in the pocket of the fossil fuel special interest is betting that the fossil fuel era can be extended with a global decline in fuel prices from decreased consumption due to the ongoing credit crisis and praying that the effects of peak oil can be postponed.

Not this bailout

2008-09-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

When you add the interest, because this make and sold $700B money is borrowed from the banks, and then add in the fees they'll charge to figure out what home values are relative to their toxic mortgage, the cost will be $3T.

Gas prices by raising costs 25% pushed stupid negatively amortized keeping-up-with-the-jones families over the edge on the outer rings of sprawl nation. And as these home compete in the foreclosure market, and future gas prices and related food and energy prices rise, the effect of increased poor quality inventory, will continue to be felt in declining home values.

So if a bailout is to occur it should change the way we do business, particularly the fossil fuel economy of the warfare state, that brings us to this stage, with incentives for walkable cities and penalties for a jobs housing imbalance. Interesting to see that houses on the outskirts of the driving economy, like Modesto, Merced and even the suburbs of Sacramento, if you google foreclosure and put in a destination like North Fairoaks, will show houses in the 50ks which is no where near where housing prices are in San Jose or SF, are, an equivalent price decline putting values at 220k; while Cheney is still having wet dreams over sending our kids to Iran. The papers are full these days about hedge funds. If I draw up a list of the first hundred people I'd care to talk to tomorrow not one is in a hedge fund. So who are we bailing out and why not do something useful to help people get local jobs and walking access to services and food.

We actually have affordable housing these days. And 5 to 7% unemployment is not horrific. And there are many good solutions out there. For example the government could take a house before foreclosure and negatively capitalize it. i.e. take the loss in value plus 10% (for a down payment if necessary)and park it, until the house is sold (the same way a senior can borrow from a house until they die and then the sale pays back the loan). Simultaneously reduce the mortgage by the parked value and fix the rate to the new mortgage less 10%. Very little out of the government's pocket, it keeps people in their homes, and when the market stabilizes (not recovers, because just as pets.com is not coming back, so this housing bubble is not going to realize the same high prices as before in our life time; and on another topic its all relative) the government can share the loss with the lending authority. Amortize and defer in other words.

There are other more complicated schemes out there like this one by Stiglitz who projects in addition that the $3T cost of the Iraq war will hamper future generations for decades.

The majority of the "market drop" is not related to the fundamentals but to hope that this administration's scorch and burn policy can once more allow their funders on Wall Street, of what Norman Solomon in Made Love Got War calls the Warfare State, to once more bank on their irresponsible actions.

This looks like the Japanese Economy (which looks like it foretells us by about 5 years), the bubble in the late 80s and 90s was similar to the 1920s. Many sane heads have been saying for twenty years that we should reduce debt and address the consequent ecological problems like dead seas and fish stocks and poisonous air, and depleted resources like oil and water, which lead to conflicts like Iraq, and Darfur.

population consumption and equity

2008-09-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

Paul Ehrlich and other population experts debate the consequences of a crowded world, and how a McCain administration could set back decades of progress.

Its good that in the beginning they all agreed that the problem is consumption not population and in particular the type of consumption. Connell solution of living in larger households was mentioned by the Archbishop of Cantebury. And they all agree on the need for women's education.

The most interesting aspect of the discussion, is this kernel of equity, that floats through the discussion and is not really fleshed out. That challenge is before the world community today- that a workable climate treaty must bridge the gap between the affluent and the aspiring. Erlich hits on equity on page 2 of the salon article, but from a charitable standpoint- the generous american "We need to see that all the people have enough to eat and have decent shelter, water and medical care."

The third world is far more aware that the imperial consumption of the west brings resource supplying dictators and storms and droughts into their part of world and creates poverty by displacing sustainable systems for resource annexation. Charity is not what they need with the coddled Musharraf's of the world; they need an equal share of the resource basins, like air, which sustain life. If the cost of polluting (i.e. development) the biosphere (i.e the sum total of resource basins) were equitable, then we have a solution to Erlich's followup posit: A much tougher problem is what to do about everybody wanting to consume like Americans, and have an SUV.

The rest of what they say on education etc is just more details, but without bridging the gap, its not going to work, because some will make money of poisoning someone else's food or water or air basin and in the process offer the wrong model of development for the survival of the species.

Erlich comes across as a rabid right wing social engineer and Connell as a leftist pro human rights social engineer. Without equity you have an imbalance that requires engineers! And its also where these guys go overboard- instead of preserving the natural wealth (benefits of wild lands) in the resource basins of subsistence societies with an ownership model, like ILO 169, they see poverty and want their development model imposed on it. Though to their credit they don't quite say that- I'm reading it in between the words wealthiest and subsistence- when they agree to "take the wealthiest lawyers and bankers and send them to subsistence societies."

Erlich's defense of the Population Bomb was very forceful- applied to the US. Don't preach, practice. A home grown solution to a domestic problem. It put Connell on the defensive- and arm chair quaterback who though that the study was his end all. At which point the discussion actually turned into a debate.

People suffering environmental harm are also consumers

2008-08-28T15:34:00.000-07:00

The environment and consumer benefits from Pay-As-You-Drive insurance. A 30% participation rate reduces carbon dioxide by 55 million tons, equivalent to taking 10M cars off the road. Transit revenue increases because drivers exercise choice. All the benefits of reduced driving recur. But the Examiner article goes on to say that participation and reporting are voluntary, making PAYD ripe for gaming, because of opposition from consumer groups.

Why is Richard Holober, Consumer Federation of America's Executive Director, on the wrong side of the environment? Consumer groups have championed narrow rights against corporations, as both of them are locked in a buyer-seller pact, to toast the planet. The last thirty years has been a wash for injury prevention. Dangerous jobs have shifted to illegal "unrepresented" immigrants. The injuries has come at the expense of a resource expended planet and a deterioration in privacy rights across the board; and deprivation of life, liberty, and happiness without recourse for groups, like pedestrians and cyclist, on the wrong side of the consumption paradigm. Senator Leland Yee too bought into this resource depleting pollution centric position. Worse driver behavior that has a clear social harm like reckless driving, which uses more gasoline and kills more people, will not be tracked.

Not tracking irresponsible driving behavior sells more cars and allows for more dangerous roads since cities have to accommodate wider streets because of the speed creep law. This in turns sells bigger more polluting engines which can't go slow enough to be safe. The general ignorance of traffic and priority by tree hugging environmentalists is a problem which allows them to continue their polluting behavior that's strangling the biosphere.

We can’t buy ourselves out of global warming and protect consumers in the process and be successful on AB32. The planet suffers and exporting pollution to hapless consumers elsewhere doesn't cut it. We need to strengthen our environmental laws with a carbon fee on imports, not allow loopholes as big as the Global Accord on Tariffs and Trade. Poisner's plan tries to mitigate the harm of auto externalizes by offering consumers an alternative that they can measure in pocket book savings while seeking to preserve our common resources like the biosphere.

Why has personal virtue got us in such a bind?

2008-08-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

It hasn't worked since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring because
1- the government takes all our money and through the lobbyists that underwrite them turns the subsidies into pollution.
2- The majority of people are looking for the cheapest buy. That means the most heavily subsidized pollution will sell. Unless there are regulation like the Clean Air Act to regulate pollution we will not get Priuses that the few personal virtuers can use to make a difference.
3- The underwriters of government will always benefit from our consumption. Just driving increases the need of oil companies to grab land in Santa Barbara and drive the Gwitchen in Alaska to extinction and lobby against the polar bears.
4- The underwriters of government want to sell us crap we don't need and the government in turns calls it progress and "the economy" and our kids go to school and get brainwashed in becoming consumers.
5- The government will promote consumption rather than ask for sacrifices that can will save our kids blood and treasure instead of war for more pollution.

Change needs get-real-change

2008-08-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

Lots of talk about change these days. Here is a five point program for letting people keep more of their money, breathe clean air, get good local jobs, and have time for their families and community.

1- Congress can pass HR 676 - One plan; one nation. Its the least we can get for our taxes- not wars in Iraq and protective policy give aways for overseas jobs. Welfare for the public is in the constitution. War for oil and corporations is not. Without the security of health care people are wage slaves tied to jobs they don't like taking time away from their families and community. We can join Healthcare-NOW

2- Carbon tax on poisons replaces all or part of the income tax- Gore proposed replacing FICA as a means of reliving companies and the tax on work. But FICA pays for our social security, our retirement, and should be the consequence of our labor. The income tax on the other hand seems to go to many things like wars and poisons that are and is and should be unpopular. We can walk and ride a bike until that happens.

3- Cap and dividend- Congress and the governor want to cap carbon as well we should and at 350 ppm of CO2. But they want to leave the pollution out there for us to filter through our lungs without compensation and make fatter cats of Goldman Sachs. Instead return the money to Americans in a flat payment. Hansen and conservatives have also embraced this idea. More than a revenue neutral tax on poisons, cap and dividend allows us to right the wrong to the planet from vaporizing fossil fuels into the breath-o-sphere and what should be the life giving waters. We should know 350, the most important number on the planet, and pursue a low carbon lifestyle- grow a garden, reuse, stay away from toxins and plastic, take the bus, beware of the consequences of packaging.

4- Carbon fee on imports- take away the incentives to move jobs to polluting distant lands and disenfranchised peoples. Change will come if we dump Economics 101 on its head. We shouldn't have dead cats for Chinese pet food or medicines and ecolie on Mexican peppers to know we have a problem and they are suffering more than we are. There is a reason why McCain praises the nasty excess of the Ahmed Chalabi, Pervez Musharaf and Mikheil Saakashvili-s. We know the dangers that can cause and the world it leads us into and need to heed the call to stop now. We can buy and eat local. Use sustainable lumber and water.

5- Enable existing technologies now with carbon credits for cities. Instead of pursuing the siren call of new highly polluting technologies and poisons like hydrogen cars and lithium batteries lets make our cities smaller, slower, and walkable. For moving goods and services lets use golf carts and electric trucks and freight to rail. Most important lets give local government the incentive to make it happen. We can go to city hall and ask for 15 and 20 mph streets.

All things green buildin

2008-08-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

The Sierra Club priority is 30% efficiency in buildings though codes.
Quote: A comprehensive, integrated campaign to boost new home model code energy efficiency by 30% Because homes and other buildings consume almost half of America’s energy, they must play a significant role in any successful effort to improve energy efficiency. The 30% Solution before the International Code Commission is an ambitious, yet achievable and affordable proposal to reduce wasted energy from our homes.

San Mateo Green Building Ordinance was passed in February 2008
Quote: Homeowners and developers who use green building techniques like environmentally-friendly materials in the unincorporated area will speed through the approval process faster under a new program approved by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday to encourage the practice.

The new policy, spearheaded by Supervisor Mark Church, awards points for green options used during new construction and remodels. After a minimum of 50 points is achieved, builders will receive incentives like fast-tracked application processing from 10 to 12 weeks down to four weeks when 75 to 100 points is reached. After 100 points, the county guarantees to reduce building inspection from three to four working days to two working days.

California passed SB811 which Belmont should adopt. As a result California law allows cities to give loans for energy-saving improvements with a financial structure similar to a utility tax.

The new California Green Building Code pdf for new construction is available here and read the associated writeup.
Quote: It goes into effect in 180 days, will be voluntary until 2010, when its provisions are expected to become mandatory, commission leaders said. The voluntary period gives builders, local governments and communities time to adapt to the new rules, the commission said.

The code sets targets for energy efficiency, water consumption, dual plumbing systems for potable and recyclable water, diversion of construction waste from landfills and use of environmentally sensitive materials in construction and design, including eco-friendly flooring, carpeting, paint, coatings, thermal insulation and acoustical wall and ceiling panels.

"By adopting this first-in-the-nation statewide green building code, California is again leading the way to fight climate change and protect the environment," Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement released Thursday. "This is literally a groundbreaking move to ensure that when we break ground on all new buildings in the Golden State we are promoting green building and energy efficient new technologies."

Marin acknowledged the efforts by saying the process brought together groups with "very disparate interests" to develop the building code. The code "sets a floor, not a ceiling," she said, adding that builders, cities and counties are encouraged to exceed the standards.

The standards cover commercial and residential construction in the public and private sectors as well as schools of all levels, hospitals and other public institutions. The green thresholds include a 50 percent increase in landscape water conservation and a 15 percent reduction in energy use compared to current standards. All the measures if acted upon would at least be comparable to the requirements of a "silver rating" under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), commission representatives said.
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We should be pushing for LEED ND because the commute can blow a green building's carbon budget. This is currently a pilot project endorsed by Smart Growth America and the National Resource Defense Council.

What does 350 world look like?

2008-07-31T17:14:00.000-07:00

Bill Fulton asks: So what’s the Carbon-Free Futurama? Can you really create a compelling alternative vision for the future that’s about walking and bicycling and golf cart type vehicles and so forth.

In Global Cooling from the Urban Land Institute the answer is compact development. More below.

But doesn't Bill McKibben's most important number on the planet gives us a hint? Its us in 1960. Kennedy on the campaign trail. The planets population at 3B. And consumption rates staying at the nutty levels of the 1950s after being amortized over the planet's population. Houses were a 900 sq ft with large families and people were just beginning to build 1200-1600 sq ft monster homes for the nuclear family.

But it this isn't as bad as it sounds at least for 1950. The cold war and resource predation was just round the corner. People lived in sustainable villages in the third world that were the preferred destination of Americans. Then came the resource wars between communist and capitalist proxies that drove these lifestyles out of existence and by the 70's connected them up with the new roads that symbolized development. That's not an eden we can go back to now.

But high gas prices are forcing a new relationship to the road and the role of cities. People are resourceful and adaptive. The Venezuelans and Saudis must see the benefit of forcing the established power structures to adapt to really high gas prices, $20-$50/- per gallon, so that people can use their resources to better ends. Compact development where all services are located within an 1/8 of a mile or a 1/4 mile are a type of city that used to exist on the Peninsula and were connected by the UP train now Caltrain. We need to move beyond resource consumption because the economics are taking us to a new level.

How resource intensive are we now? Californians consumed: 15.67 billion gallons of gasoline last year, about 1 percent less than in 2006. Demand during 2006 dropped to 15.83 billion gallons from 15.94 billion in 2005, the first decline in 14 years. Diesel fuel use fell 7.8 percent in April from a year earlier, the agency said. Consumption was down 4.7 percent from March.
The decrease "reflects both the impacts of higher diesel prices and the slowing economy, which is associated with less freight movement on California roads and highways," the agency said. California drivers used 1.257 billion gallons of gasoline in April, down 2.2 percent from a year earlier and the lowest for the month since 2001, California State Board of Equalization said. Consumption was down 52 million gallons, or 4 percent, from March.

Phillip Lagdon writes: Defenders of sprawl — and they have been legion — failed to see what was coming. Sprawl’s defenders insisted that no matter how many flaws might be ascribed to dispersed, low-density development, a large number of Americans like it, so it will just keep on growing. James Howard Kunstler was much more prescient. He repeatedly said and wrote, in his thundering cadence, that it doesn’t matter if people like it. If you can’t afford it any more, the energy-intensive style of life doesn’t have a future.

Compact development versus high flow users

2008-07-31T08:34:00.000-07:00

We know compact development is sustainable versus the resource intensive development we have today that has resulted in peak everything. When we look at high flow users what models can we demonstrate. Garbage and water and good places to start.

There are four houses on my east west running considerably sloped street-block. On the south side are me and an elderly neighbor. Four in our household one in hers. We both put out twenty gallon garbage cans that are mostly empty. Today was only garbage day. Next week on an alternating schedule is recycling day.

Across the street on the north side there are two houses also. The westerly house has six, four small children and the parents, and use the 32 gallon trash can. The easterly house has two residents both retired and use a 20 gallon trash can.

The trash company sends out a huge biodiesel powered garbage truck. The truck has powered arms shaped like a fork which can pick up and empty a 32 gallon can. The two operators know the street and pick up the trash from the upslope or westerly side. They split the job. One guy has a 64 gallon can on wheels which he walks down the hill. He picks up the two 20 gallons and toss them into his 64 then crosses the street and gets the 20 gallon of the retires. His 64 gallon can is still not full so he continues onto the next block.

The other operator runs the truck and picks up the 32 gallon trash can across the streets. After he unloads the can he gets back in the truck and drives off after his partner. I assume they empty the walking can out after five or six houses.

I suppose in our lower rates for 20 gallon or ten gallon cans its possible to see a benefit from the efficiencies that a walking infrastructure offers the garbage company. However we don't live in a compact development for obvious reasons- one in four residents requires a big massive truck. That truck requires a big massive road which requires resurfacing every ten years and a big massive public works department. And as you add up the associated needs in water and sewer and power and food and its eventual demise in the garbage truck and sewer its possible to see that the infrastructure needs for the few large "wealthy" high flow users determine the public cost amortized over everyone. Charging for garbage by weight and sewer by volume and adjusting the costs for the increased infrastructure can reduce consumption.

Requirements for compact developments and great neighborhoods could put surcharges to ensure compliance with a compact infrastructure designed on sustainable costs.

Next week I'll take a video and show it at the city council.

Eye on the prize

2008-07-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

Eduardo Galeano in Upside Down lays out the case for the rapacious consumption of resources by they corporations and politics which brings to the unsustainable state of peak everything with a planet where life itself is imperiled. But politics won't address peak anything even when the benefits are clear.

Higher gas prices have reduced revenue for road widening, reduced VMT, reduced gas consumption, lowered fatalities, raised public transit usage, reduced pollution, etc. For years public officials were trying to raise public transit usage - now the buses and trains are running full and capacity is an issue. The Peninsula Traffic Relief Alliance reported at the Belmont Green Advisory Committee that all their last mile shuttles are running full. When will policy makers stop moaning and start cheering a ladder for $20/gallon along with some minor TDM strategies?

The GAC has asked for a 20 mph city that would enable NEV- Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, they max out at 25 mph, reduce pollution, enable hybrids to run on their electric motor, make the environment safe for walking and bicycling the two sustainable transport modes, and reduce danger to children, seniors, and pets/wild animals. Most streets today are 25 mph or less so that change the speed environment much. The few arterials like Ralston (25-40 but with schools and neighborhoods needing 20 -25), El Camino (35), and Alameda (25) within the city would show marginal changes. However teh difference for walkers and bicyclists would be immense. And the attitude of drivers on side streets like Monserat and Folger which could use 15mph are posted at 25 and get speeds in excess would be the main benefit.

Building local distributed power for water, sewer, and electricity with solar panels would also significantly the infrastructure load of cities. Wind can then be used to fill reservoirs near citeis which can run hydro at night when the wind is not blowing and recharge the NEVs.

Alternate thinking for significant resource consumption declines face daunting tasks as wind demonstrates. Coal and nuclear lures despite clear liability in pollution, waste, and liability and continue to enjoy subsidies which lower the cost of power delivery because the problems are exported to poorer areas (also documented in Upside Down.) The only bright line is that rising prices cause subsidies to exert a bigger force on the market in reduced subsidy or taxed areas.

Ignorant development of water, timber and land have lead to this unsustainable consumption state. Some universities are working to correct this with programs that involve a new approach to day-to-day living, and the reappraisal of the existing infrastructure to achieve genuine change and keep sight of where we need to go.

325? What global new deal?

2008-07-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

McKibben says 350 Hansen says 325. Where do we stand?

We stand on the edge driven by the winds of climate change, resource depletion/peak everything, and the particular- at present beneficial- forces of one peaking resource- oil. Climate Change really doesn’t capture the problem- acidification of the oceans destroying marine life, rising sea levels, the instability of climate systems that disrupt the food supply and our ability to feed our cars while starving our people and soil.

Tom Athanasiou said a crash program was necessary and that today's defining silence about this overarching challenge is inconsistent with any true crash program.

He followed up by pointing to the groundswell from people like McKibben and Gore and saying that: The situation is in rapid flux. Peering forward into the fog, the question is how to prepare for the political and institutional transition that's so clearly necessary, and to do so while at the same time winning the ground war. So please, the fight in Bali -- a fight to lay down a negotiating timeline that will lead to a meaningful successor agreement to Kyoto -- is not a "surreal waste of time," as I heard it called just this morning. Keep your eye, instead, on the ball -- the successor agreement.

Politically the stalemate remains one of virtue versus action. Non profits and individual home owners are motivated to purchasing panels or bike, driven by sense of responsibility for the environment. Government, business, and the more general public however are used to consuming cheap dirty power, free of pollution cost, and will have questions related the costs of producing from PV or the time lost on a bike commute or with bike infrastructure gumming up the driving systems. Belmont may wish for a 20 mph town but getting there with irate drivers toasting the planet is a depressing goal. Or is it? We may not have been having this conversation two years ago. Until a price is established for pollution local governments have the option of solving exiting needs around pollution and safety in their communities.

At the state level there is considerable prodding. CARB announced a carbon credit trading system in June and CA proposed joining a large market with other western states and British Columbia, which is weak on transportation and home energy use. This is an area where most of the new business' are being established such as Terra Pass in Menlo Park. Twenty years ago these guys would have been non profits. PG&E has its own system which has been criticized for having very little oversight. The USP in this area will be on transparency. Kyoto and Europe are in the process of revamping their market and I can't see India and China being left out again. At a minimum a price on carbon in imports would change things overnight there. In a related area note how California adapted to the court order on diesel engines with Low Sulphur Fuel For Ships. The Sierra Club teams up with Cool It to offer offsets that go into wind power installations.

Last year the Governor vetoed an attempt by PG&E to take over the carbon credits from home PV installations. He said they were essential to growing the market. In response Carbon Retirement was formed to try and preserve the atmosphere by retiring the credits in effect creating a higher price for carbon.

The way to offset transportation costs is to enable a walkable city with low speeds and then selectively allow electric cars filled up by solar PV. The market for cars that can go 300 miles on a fillup at 100 mph is not there and may never get there in our lifetime. Tesla is pushing the technology but not the cost and there are pollution issues with their batteries. What does exist are what are called NEVs- Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (fancy name for a golf cart) that go 30 miles on a fillup at a max speed of 25 mph. Cities should be talking about setting a speed cap in the urban area of 20 mph (faster speed would only be permitted on large connecting arterials,) and there is not much change here from existing policy except for the big changes needed in parking policies similar to the '70s to advantage smaller vehicles, and developing denser more walkable transit oriented neighborhoods. The Urban Land Institute, has weighed in with an influential document called Growing Cooler which articulates policy changes to make the proposals a reality.

As Tom said the situation is fluid, and for now, either goal post works.

Solve resource depletion with a pollution penalty

2008-07-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

The challenge for the future is 350 ppm of CO2. How do we get there?

CO2 is produced from consumption of fossil fuels. Consumption of fossil fuels need to be reduced to the absorbtive capacity of the biosphere. Resource depletion has lead to peak everything. The challenge is not only to live within the capacity of the biosphere but to provide resources for the needs of future generations.

However no government or mainstream newspaper is looking at the future and laying out a plan of how to get there. Many non profits have worked out the strategies like a shift to renewables. The Sierra Club has a plan with the American Solar Energy Society to get there with 2% reductions per year. Others talk about a massive shift to photovoltaics. The Urban Land Institute calls for using landuse tools to reduce the impact from transportation.

But problem solvers are having a difficult time getting traction in the mainstream. Cheney-Bush-think of problem solvers as a person virtue is still the mainstream as to how government is organized and subsidies dispersed. Why isn't this different from business as usual? Because Gore and McKibben have elevated the public conversation. Instead of being a bunch of crooks in govenment looking to hand public resources to their friends today we can see some of the carbon footprint that results from resource usage. This visibility inturn leads to a discussion of why Belmont signed a single stream garbage contract instead of more resource protective dual stream contract. Or why we want to raise fees on low flow users of the sewer system to pay for the infrastructure cost incurred because of high flow users. Now we can ask questions like a set aside fee for future infrastructure costs that can be tiered, i.e. a placeholder in the budget of how the fee will be used instead of the present practice of subsidizing high flow users.

The overall result is that government continues to toast the planet because that is where the big money is invested. Greenpeace and NRDC have called unsuccessfully for a moratorium on coal plant building currently responsible for more than 40% of green house gases, to no avail, as the price of energy continues to make the old way of investment with massive government subsidies and no pollution penalty viable; while now options like solar are either regulated into non competitiveness (with varying state regulations that coal or nuclear don't have to contend with) or have subsidies eliminated in the middle of growth years (like the sunsetting 30% federal investment tax credit.) Even nuclear, despite its public face of horror and death, remains competitive without solving its waste, cost, and implementable timetable issues in the face of massive write downs on insurance and power purchase agreements. Like GM the business model is do what you know until you run the company into the ground even when the future is staring you in the face.

How can we get to a pollution penalty? How can the virtue of resource conservation change to an economic incentive? Non profits would like to change the tide. Pope of the Sierra Club says "One of the reactions it's very easy to have when you read a report like this (ASES) is, it's too good to be true. If all these things were possible, why aren't they already being done? And the unfortunate answer to that question is they are not being done because we have massive examples of policy failure and market failure in our energy sector."

Pope cited a number of problems, like building codes that don't allow white, reflective roofs to reduce summertime cooling loads, grid regulations that limit solar and wind production, and builders who have no incentive to build energy efficient buildings because they don't have to pay the energy bills. Pope vowed that the Sierra Club would aggressively pursue solutions to these problems. He promised that "This is not a report that will be sitting on a shelf."

Problems to overcome in pedestrianizing landuse

2008-07-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

We can build efficient pedestrianized uses by localizing housing in low infrastructure cost zones.

Writing in the Chronicle Lynn Vannucci notes, "High-density, mixed-use communities make more efficient use of resources for heating, and electrical and water-delivery systems than low-density suburbs." She points to the problems with pedestrianizing a space, "causing the pedestrian to feel that rather than strolling in a cozy village square he's wandered into the countryside - except that from its far border the vista is of the local Chevron station."

Dan Burden notes "quality of life is the level of access we have to the things we value most - jobs, safe streets, affordable transportation and housing, and quality health care, schools and civic spaces such as parks and other gathering places. The ability to walk to many of these places from our homes or places of employment generally raises that quality-of-life index. When researchers look for places where people are happiest, it's often in communities where they can live near where they work, walk their children to school and shop at stores within walking or biking distance."

Reducing the stress of commuting over long distances with pedestrianized mixed use development is key to a sustainable future. The problem of peak resource consumption has come about from us spending trillions of dollars. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae own half of the $12T mortgage market. The federal government since the depression has spent trillions to make home ownership possible outside the transit linked downtowns in the process consuming farmland and open space and creating the problems of pollution, stressed consumers, and resource wars like Iraq. An unafordable driving infrastructure is our inheritance from 100 years of policy based on the false promise of cheap oil.

By building in open space we deplete environmental services raising the cost of emergency services and health care through lost disease sequestration.

Hard infrastructure include roads, sewer systems, septics, etc. Soft infrastructure is risk, a financial infrastructure like bonds, that links currency and commodities. Another Chronicle write (July 12th page A5: Costly Fuel Prevents Car Crash deaths) up notes that a 10 % rise in fuel costs leads to 2.3% decrease in crash fatalities from Vehicle Miles Traveled irrespective of improved driving behavior or law enforcement. Presently infrastructure like health care is amortized over everyone and the rules are made up in Congress and the state legislature. Without the state's subsidies, resources like Tejon Ranch are not financially feasible to exploit.

There is clearly a much higher cost to
- delivering water, sewer, power, health care, security, and roads at Tejon versus El Camino, the biggest difference being eyes on the street (able to call in a broken main or a mugging.)
- risk of not maintain the environmental services of Tejon in water purification, groundwater seepage (prevent overloading stormwater facilities,) air quality management, healthy streams, floodwater plains, disease sequestration, and wildfire control.

These costs need to be priced in and passed on. As the Federal government discusses the bailout of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, IndyMac, Smith Barney, etc with socialized risk and privatized profits we need to ask for localizing housing in low infrastructure cost zones like Belmont Station.

Car-free mixed use development is the key environmental challenge of our time. Development in a transit nexus affords opportunity to wean people of cars. By restricting car free development to TOD we can reclaim our cities of old while directly influencing less than 1% of the city scape.

For a pedestrianized square downtown Belmont we need
- the Transit Agency, Samtrans, to benefit from, or control, the landuse decisions within 1/8th of a mile radius (650 ft) of the TOD (zonal permit parking.)
- Floor Area Ratio Leniency directed toward demographic trends.
- Accommodating trip demand with a walking infrastructure by reusing existing infrastructure.

Politics is allocation of resources

2008-07-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

Politics is the allocation of resources, the process by which we allow for the exploitation of open space, water, and timber. Politics allows for the construction of infrastructure. Risk allocation is a financial infrastructure like bonds that links currency and commodities. Hard infrastructures include roads, sewer systems, septics, etc. Policy balances infrastructure against the needs of the exploiter, exploited, and those caught in between.

Writing for the Associated Press Sue Major Homes points out that the western fire season is longer because we are building in fire prone areas like wilderness. So instead of fixing the problem and not insuring, building or charging more for roads and water and sewer to wilderness "Officials predict a longer fire season."

Check out the levels of allocation that occur with the fire season in Homes' AP writeup:

"What's at risk determines who gets what resources.

Top priority goes to fires with the potential to harm human life, Nieto said. Second, fire managers need to keep enough reserves home to tackle new fires and get them out before they grow. Lastly, they consider the possibility a fire could destroy such things as major power lines, critical communication sites, cultural resources or special habitat.

The priorities sometimes prompt federal land managers to fight a smaller fire and send fewer resources to a larger one."

Worse as mentioned earlier with the sewer rate in Belmont, we tend to build for the largest users and charge the smaller users to implement a public bad. Because of political graft we end up having resource access wars instead of solutions.

The challenge before the GAC

2008-07-03T08:59:00.000-07:00

Belmont convened a green committee after cities around the bay like Palo Alto had formed task forces and written a green charter. The green response around the bay and the world has been to peak everything- salmon, clean air, water, fire, oceans, oil, climate: going green was a way of forestalling the rapacious consumption that is threatening to destroy our home.

In 350 dot org Bill McKibben is trying to get people to understand that 350 ppm of CO2 is the carbon budget of the planet that we need to GET BACK TO! We are currently at 384.

Kunstler, of The Long Emergency, says we can't get there by driving. All the faith in technology is delusional, resource draining (at a peak everything period no less!) and exacerbating the problem. We need to be building walking and biking cities now.

James Hansen said two years ago that we had ten years to change Business As Usual based on present rates of the increase in CO2 of about 1 ppm per year.

Geroge Monbiot has a slew of proposals in Heat but still says we in the US need a 96% reduction in what we currently produce of CO2 by 1930 to be able to GLOBALLY manage the problems of a two degree rise in planet temperature.

Kohlberg recalls Carlson about a town that lived in harmony with its surroundings and that fell silent while writing on a the disaster in the making.

We need to dust off and implement our pre-50s technology when we lived in houses that required 90% less heat and cooling because they were smaller breeze houses that fit more people, consumed 90% less because we had an ethic of resource limits from the war and depression, ate 90% more nutrient and 100% more tasty food because we grew more of what we consumed and knew the farmer next door, drove 90% less because we owned fewer cars and life was relatively expensive versus earnings, and spent 90% more time with our community and family because we earned less and had more time since the post war ethic was to keep mom at home because of fewer jobs and because speeds were slower, closer to 20 mph on our roads built for horse and buggy and not yet expanded by Eisenhower to fight the Russians in a nuclear war on our streets. 20 mph streets can accommodate golf carts, an early 1900s technology still in use for and by people who understand the good life!

We know today how to build zero energy homes and low utility cost homes that we don't have to go to work for. We have built our unsustainable life styles on stress that has lead to chronic diseases from heart to cancer, literally abandoned our families by driving away, and lived couped up like the chickens we consume, gaining weight on a slew of drugs that destroy more that just us, while waiting for the shoe to drop (what Pollan said was a move from denial to despair without a stop in between.)

350 means stop moving cars.

2008-06-25T22:48:00.001-07:00

Stop trying to figure out how to move cars. Moving cars is just a substitute for producing CO2. We are at 384 ppm of CO2 and we need to get to 350.

350 is our challenge and our goal.

We should instead do the opposite of the last 50 years. Gum up the works for cars. Make it more difficult. That is the only way to make it easier to walk and bike and help the environment.

Take South and Ralston. We are obsessing over the crash rate, making a left turn eastbound on Ralston, should we have a stop light or a traffic light? The costs keep rising. The problem arises because there is not enough traffic on South to justify any fix. Meanwhile this is one of the worst intersections to cross over to Twin Pines when walking literally across the intersection. A pity because the views from South are dramatic and complement a walk to the park.

So lets take the half block from Holly to Ralston on South and convert it to a neighborhood pocket park. The little traffic from South can use Norte Dame or Middle to get out. Walkers would now have a nice means of getting to the intersection which can be narrowed to benefit the crossing. Autos would not have to worry about turning traffic and can go gum up another intersection. A two lane street on Ralston would also be feasible now.

350 allows us to re-imagine the whole street from 101 to 6th. Instead of the townless highway, one slab of asphalt from San Francisco to South San Jose, we can build a nice multistory office housing park gateways at 101 and turn the rest of the street into a Disney land main street like Santa Cruz in Los Gatos. A first step is a stop sign that meters traffic off the highway so that it can be slow and appreciate the town.

What have we got to lose its a complete loss right now, a speedway through a slum, the other side of the tracks.

Get rid of traffic to make a livalbe city

2008-06-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

Cities need to figure out how to live without the pollution the traffic, & the crime. Restricting or getting rid of cars, with development by transit, and Transit Oriented Development will solve the first two. Removing the residential parking space requirement, allowing the transit agency to control streets and parking landuse decisions within a 1/4 mile of the transit center, and unbundling parking will solve this issue.

Eyes on the street via good development around a plaza will solve the third. By collecting streets into a public open space we can reduce the opportunity for anonymous crime that cities become plagued with. The plaza should collect the parking of Caltrain, Blockbuster, Walgreeen, and City Hall along with the already mentioned church and Safeway into one underground charged parking lot. Reducing parking and charging for the rest will allow us to free space for viable city development and extend the reach and viability of Twin Pines.

The incentive to do so is happening around us, driven by fuel prices. Last year a house on 6th street sold to a family from Tracy. They shortened their commute and saved on gas by moving to Belmont, near work. They have still not been able to sell their McMansion in Tracy. Another friend of ours say their fuel, insurance, and repair bill exceeded $1000/- last month for their commute car from Tracy to Cupertino. For most of us this is an affordable number which means that gas is still low and we need to do more as a city to deter driving.

And as discussed at the council last night, under Item 6C, cities need to be cautious how they give away crucial resources on local institutions. Carlmont and Norte Dame for example have statistically our worst drivers. Socially these students should be getting better grades to benefit our property prices- not spending their time earning money for gas and insurance and repairs. Creating pollution, traffic, and crashes within less than a half mile of the transit center is not good policy. Yet it was appalling to hear the Dean say that there was no alternative to driving and that we need to adjust to pollution, traffic, crime, and stressed out students.

Council Member Christine Wozniack was right on when she said we should stop making it easier for cars and in the process making it difficult for people to walk or bike. We got to make it worse for cars, like gas prices are presently doing, because that clearly benefits the environment, bikes, and peds.

The NY Times article goes on to say "In March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles on public roads than in the same month the previous year, a 4.3 percent decrease — the sharpest one-month drop since the Federal Highway Administration began keeping records in 1942.

Long before the recent spike in the price of energy, environmentalists decried suburban sprawl a waste of land, energy and tax dollars. Governments from Virginia to California have in recent decades lavished resources on building roads and schools for new subdivisions in the outer rings of development while skimping on maintaining facilities closer in. Many governments now focus on reviving their downtowns."

We should focus on a plaza downtown too and a systemic solution to traffic. We can't let the tide of history sweep us toward another untenable development.

Comments on the June 24th Council meeting

2008-06-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

4.0 specific items to be removed for separate action.
B. Resolution Approving the Filing of the BAAQMD BFP Grant Application for City Contract Number 433 - U.S. Highway 101 Bicycle/Pedestrian Bridge Project for an Amount of $57,500 and for Installing Bicycle Lanes on Alameda de las Pulgas South of Ralston Avenue for an the Amount of $15,000.

I commend the council for considering bicycle lanes on the Alameda.

I ask you to please consider complete systems. Often the facility is incomplete and terminates in the most unfortunate situations. We build astounding levels of redundancy into automotive systems and take overcapacity for autos for granted despite an immense cost to the city. The energy output of the different modal groups are orders of magnitude apart. Its much easier for autos to have to go miles between connections. Instead all streets are auto accessible; but when you get over two lanes, the speed deferential, space allocation, priority, and position puts bicyclists and pedestrians at a life threatening disadvantage. Incomplete bike lanes on Ralston are a prime example of disparities caused by incomplete systems.

We have opportunity to reach out to our neighboring cities to ensure that multi modal access is achievable via the San Carlos Train Station where more baby bullets stop and to Samtrans by extending the bicycle catchment around our local stations. Providing a connected infrastructure for zero co2 modes like walking and biking to transit, can benefit both cities regionally by reducing congestion, pollution, and costs from expensive auto infrastructure.

With regards to Ralston 101 the council should CCAG to adopt a platform of Routine Accommodations so that bicyclists are not penalized today for the promise of future infrastructure.

6. OLD BUSINESS
B. Discussion and Direction Regarding Striping Plan for Alameda de las Pulgas

Please consider multimodality. Narrow sidewalks and wide streets force pedestrians into the street while giving fast traffic a free pass. Fast turn lanes create unique opportunities for automobiles to collide with pedestrians. Wide streets force seniors to try and jog unsuccessfully arriving stranded in the middle while traffic shamefully asserts its right away- for example in front of the library. Bicycles are challenged to take lanes to the left of stopped buses or vehicles parked for free. Belmont in turn responds with expensive enforcement fixes like lighted crosswalks and police officers to nab offensive drivers enabled by poor multimodal designs.

A stripping plan with parking, narrows lanes and clearly marked bicycle lanes can calm traffic and provide pedestrians with a refuge before crossing auto lanes. Seniors drive at a speed that feels cautious and safe which benefits city dwellers. Youth drive at a speeds that feels dangerous. Our infrastructure should enable the former not encourage the latter.

At a minimum, arterials need a complete bike network because they go where people want to go.

C. Discussion and Direction Regarding Traffic Conditions along Ralston Avenue between Notre Dame Avenue and Sixth Avenue
Increased auto capacity only comes at the expense of diminished bike and ped access which affects the quality of city life.
1. Walking and cycling are an integral transport mode and need to be given
our attention.
2. More capacity with lights and lanes is not the answer and cities that have been built around the car have been "destroyed". San Francisco and Berkeley have reponded by pulling down freeways and blocking roads to make the city more accessible to safe clean and quite modes like pedestrians and bicyclists.
3. Rail systems are good but enormously expensive and we already have one. Shuttle loops, taxi scripts and BRT is far more effective in delivering high-capacity public transport in a city, and can offer an alternative to NDNU and Carlmont.
4. Finally it doesn't make sense to be addressing congestion problems with scarce city resources at Carlmont and Norte Dame. These are statistically our worst drivers and socially they should be using transport modes that can get better grades instead of spending all their time trying to earn money to pay for gas and insurance.

D. Discussion and Direction Regarding the Collection Request for Proposals for Solid Waste/Recycling Collection Alternatives

Dual stream recyclers like South City Recycling allow for some level of reuse. Local enterprenuers can access resources. Single streamers like Allied only shift the waste problem to far away landfills; polluting water resources and making it convenient to load barges and carry the problem out of sight. Any innovation from resource reuse must come from where the barges stop. Raw material use continues unabated.

Extended producer responsibility and zero waste programs are really the way for us to conserve air, water, and land resources by shifting costs upstream.

9. MATTERS OF COUNCIL INTEREST/CLARIFICATION
Items in this category are for discussion and direction to staff only. No final policy action will be taken by Council.
A. Consideration of renewal of membership in the Housing Endowment and Regional Trust (HEART) (Lieberman)

Green House Gases are caused by our consumption patterns. The two biggest contributors to green house gases are cars and houses making up more than 80% of the total community and government footprint. How we address these issues are critical to how we solve our environmental. While HEART does not approach housing from the angle of green house gases they do understand the jobs housing balance, transit connection, green housing, and have been able bring resources to address the issues in San Mateo. They are a critical component to making San Mateo County function and cities like Belmont should be members of this group.

B. Consideration of a resolution against light brown apple moth aerial spraying (Feierbach)

- The problem with LBAM comes about because the food is transported by air these days. It used to, and should, come by ship, which is a lot more fuel efficient and the long trip was detrimental to the moth which would metamorphosis and then die at sea. Today's airborne moth, while generating tons of green house gases, gets to arrive, metamorph, find food and raise a family here.

- The fix against this moth used to be "targeted pheromone baited sticky traps" tied to a fruit tree. This works for small farmers with a few acres under cultivation. It doesn't work for corporate farmers who farms hundreds of acres and won't hire the labor to bait all the trees each month. Therefor USDA's spaying essentially supports large farms and is an anti local, one more disincentive, against small local farms.

- I buy from the farmers market which is where small local farmers go to find consumers like me who want fresh tasty food. These farmers are now in competition against an imported airborne moth with more frequent flyer miles than the average consumer arriving on fruit picked early so it can travel well and whose price is artificially low because of global subsidies like the war in Iraq.

- The moth has been in CA for years with no damage. However exporters, large farmers with global connections, again in competition against my farmer market supplier, have to spray outgoing shipments, and it is this "perpetual quarantine" that worries USDA which has no interest in the family farm or the consumer. This business model doesn't add up in an era of climate change.

We should instead-
fight global warming and protect the family farm by not spraying. Instead give a portion of the money allocated to this emergency to family farms earning under $30,000/- per year to pay for targeted pheromone baited sticky traps and let larger corporate farmers pay for their own programs while the destroy the air, soil and streams.

Shoreway is ideally located for low CO2 strategies.

2008-06-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

In "City eyes luxury hotel off highway" reporter Oremus says that "higher and better uses of these parcels" would entail "a new full-service hotel, offices, shops and restaurants just east of Highway 101 and south of Ralston Avenue."

Caltrans 2007 report on low VMT (vehicle miles traveled) development says:
"In the past decade, frustration with increasing congestion, air pollution, and suburban sprawl has led to a resurgence of interest in land development patterns, often labeled as “smart-growth,” including: mixed land-uses, urban and suburban infill, pedestrian and bicycle-oriented design, and transit-oriented developments.

For example, clustering of services such as dry cleaning, day care, restaurants, and stores near major employment sites can provide the opportunity for workers to take care of personal errands on foot from work and possibly avoid unnecessary motor vehicle trips."

Belmont should consider a movie theater, a mix of services and housing, including studios, and SWKs (studios without kitchens) that would benefit Oracle engineers, use a means of capturing the land value in the businesses, so that the housing can be built free of the land cost, use unbundled parking, and develop a walking link to the west side of 101 on O'Neil with a prefabbed metal bridge that would arrive in the shopping area at Shoreway Place.

This is an ideal location to develop alternate parking strategies. Since its close to work at Oracle and Twin Dolphins, people can walk to work. Charge for parking. There is sufficient employment to justify services for live work arrangements. The city should use its Floor Area Transfer Policy to enable walkable and distinct neighborhoods with a 1/1.5 transfer ratio so that open space, parks, wildlife corridors, and trails can be enabled.

If Ralston from 101 to 6th was a single lane in each direction, bike lanes, and wide sidewalks with outdoor mall type shops, restaurants and seating, with housing above, this whole area could be transformed into a gateway to the Belmont Open Space with things for visitors to do and a viable link across the toxic barrier of 101 to the Bay Trail.

Why should Belmont do this? Because Jerry Brown has aggressively defended AB32. And Caltrans is now requiring MPOs to reduce VMT. Meeting the blueprint can get funding. And various guidelines are coming down on how to include green house gases in the RTP process. CEQA updated with AB32 will make it impossible for cities and Caltrans to slip though on a negative declaration such that "When approving developments, local officials have sidestepped laws meant to limit the effects on traffic." So why not set an example for what we'd like to see at Bay Meadows and RWC Downtown Specific Plan?

PAT Brown Kids.

2008-05-14T09:57:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to have green kids? No. AT (Affluence x Technology), the emissions in PAT, P for population, causes a problem.

Two examples-

We live by transit, two blocks from El Camino and four blocks from Ralston. We own two cars. My wife drives one to work- she can take transit to Cupertino, her work has a shuttle from the MountainView train station, but needs the hours to finish her work past when the shuttle runs. The other is a backup for emergency- a dubious proposition since Merit Taxi runs an efficient service here in Belmont. We don’t sell it because we can afford to keep it. But the kids know we have the car. They will refuse to go places on their bus passes and want to get driven or picked up.

And we are not talking miles here. Carlmont is 1.2 miles away. Ralston is 2.2 miles. I can bike there and pick them up on our tandem if they gave me adequate notice or hung out with their friends. But they will say they have homework or something and must be picked up in five minutes and my wife will agree.

By affording to compromise and let the technology into our lives we have turned them into brown instead of green kids. And the city accommodates us with wide streets, free curb parking, unrestricted connections across El Camino and Caltrans and over Hallmark at 50 mph, and a mandated requirement for a two car garage- the infrastructure we build without regard for emissions.

We have three showers because we can afford to have three showers. The result is that the kids expect privacy and will get into a screaming fight over who is in “their” bathroom. They don’t clean or pick up in “their” bathroom- privacy doesn’t extend that far. They also will not conserve water or paper- not their green problem either. But a space, heated and cooled and cleaned with chemicals, just themselves behind a closed door is an essential expectation. OK its solar hot water heated and on a northern wall with a window for cooling and we use vinegar to clean, but still, can't you see the infrastructure for emissions and the expectations that are bred into browning the kids?

One of the principle characters in the Poisonwood Bible, a teacher, is talking to an American child, in a village in the Congo, and is disbelieving when he hears, that their family owns two cars in America. Why he asks, one is sufficient for a whole village and can go pick up supplies for everyone once a week?

AT leads to emissions. Indirectly it threatens the kids since they could be called on to fight another pocketbook war for another Cheney that transfers another $2T to another set of Exxons. But try and make them see that. Once A brings T into our lives there are no rules on usage that can apply even if grandma gets run over by a thirteen year old.

population x affluence x technology

2008-05-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

We know the problem- the resource limited carrying capacity of the earth is caused by population x affluence x technology which attenuates toward a point of no return.
The evidence is everywhere- reduced snow packs, water shortages, overfished resources, spreading ocean dead zones, bee die offs, pesticide pollution, air pollution, oil wars over scarce resources, depleted soils, struggling infrastructure, polluted air and water.

Removing affluence and technology has a big impact. Africa, 57 countries, 12% worlds population, has less than 3% contribution to world Green House Gases. But if you look at where the GHG originate, Nigeria, Angola, and South Africa, and how, from the production and shipment of resources like oil and gold to the developed world, Africa's contribution to world GHGs is less than 1%. Taking into account deforestation and the mechanics of poverty creation from displacement of indigenous populations still leaves a negligible GHG number. We in the developed not only have a disproportional share of GHG production we are responsible for the third world's footprint in providing resources to us.

Making people work only one day a week would solve the affluence technology disease. But are there other solutions?

Consider another example: ONLY 8M people own cars in India. 350 M can’t afford a bicycle. Yet the demand for fuel for the 8M drivers (and the transfer of critical local resources for roads and infrastructure) added to already fuel tight markets between the US, China, and Europe cause prices to rise four fold. Additional perturbations in the food markets with biofuels cause food riots. Its increasingly likely that the 350M will never partake of the industrial revolution.

Our lifestyle sets a wrong and unfair example on how to install infrastructure worldwide. We need to know how we’ve paid to allow ourselves to produce so much GHG. Adding roads brings cars and unsustainable infrastructure needs to unmanageable slopes while taxing runoff at the sewer plant. Belmont is struggling with these infrastructure issues. On 4/18/08 Thomas Fil supplied council with a model on charging for infrastructure through a Community Facilities District plan.

How do we change it around? Do we use the easement law? What goals, indicators, and measures do we develop that are different from business as usual? Can we use brown fees and green credits to guide affluences uses of technology?

Al Gore condensed the infrastructure problem down to Coal Cars and Buildings. Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in the May 9, 2005 issue of The New Yorker that the longer we wait – and the more infrastructure we build without regard to its affect on emissions – the more daunting the task of keeping CO2 levels from increasing beyond dangerous levels. And McKibben sets the goal post with Project350 where we need to get back to 350 ppb of CO2.

Bill Howard writes in FIDIC 2005 CONFERENCE, WORKSHOP 7: Sustainable Municipal Infrastructure Workshop Introductory Remarks: New approaches to restoring and managing urban environments and infrastructure are appearing everywhere. Concepts like “livable cities,” “urban sustainability,” “green buildings,” and “smart growth” all focus on balancing urban infrastructure, environmental values, quality of life, and economic opportunities.

Sustainability means balancing needs with environmental protection to improve the quality of life for us and for future generations. sustainable development provides a framework under which communities can find the efficient use of resources and infrastructure to protect and enhance the quality of life and strengthen the economy.

Models like STELLA can be used to generate information and promote more informed and balanced decisions via rapid comparison of the performance of alternatives using physical, environmental, and economic metrics.

An opportunity to reinvent community

2008-05-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

We need to say NOW where our infrastructure dollars will go. The problem is that business as usual will continue to drag us off to Iran and Kazakhstan from Iraq to control the next scarce resource. Like Al Capone we will go in search of other peoples property to satiate our out of control appetite.

On the one hand, the painful lesson of resource shortages, salmon, or gasoline, take your pick, should be obvious today. Shouldn’t these lessons apply to other areas of shortages like water and fire, an unlikely yin yang twin hovering like death angels over Belmont today, sewer and roads maintenance, parks and open space, trails, etc.?

On the other hand, we know that Cheney and Bush are morally crippled by their petrol interests and transferring $2T to their pocketbooks in oil profits is completely normal. But we are unable to intervene and change the infrastructure that allows these tax subsidies to flow uphill. And while McKibben and Hansen tear off their cloth and cry on the mountain the California Climate Action contingency plan has quietly proceeded and will be found lacking because of the lack of citizen participation.

There is considerable reluctance to see a new future, like the new mobility paradigm, beyond the entrenched interests of business as usual.

The good news is that in three year we could convert parking to housing, put pocket parks in intersections and convert streets for playgrounds and housing; removing the infrastructure that accounts for more than 50% of Green House Gases in Belmont today, in the form of free curb side parking and easy pedestrian killing access across El Camino, Caltrans, and over Hallmark at 50mph. Walkable transit friendly cities will benefit all other sustainable indicators by helping people reduce their cost of housing, healthcare transportation and DALY- disease adjusted life years. While the paragons of business as usual, like McCain/Clinton/Obama are worrying how to keep auto companies in business who brought us the Cheney pocketbook war in Iraq, and the New War Times is worrying about how to keep housing unaffordable, we continue to face an opportunity to reinvent our community.

Infrastructure for efficient use of community resources

2008-05-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

What kind of infrastructure should we be building? Modern life involves the taking of the public commons without recourse. We can kill the oceans and pollute the air and overfish salmon. An article on sustainability consulting to cities says instead Sustainability is planning for the most efficient use of community resources.

The author Ed Brock goes on to write: America's Climate Security Act, proposed by Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., which seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent of the 2005 level by 2050, could feed the market for buying and selling carbon reduction credits by setting the rules and standards for carbon trading, Murphy says. “It will create a whole new market in carbon trading, and it will require calculations that [most local officials are not] going to be able to do,” he says. “So, you're going to need lots of consultants to help.”

Instead, sustainability consultants need to take a completely different approach to engineering, Wallace says. Consultants in different disciplines should find a way to work together to achieve maximum effect, he says, but an even more difficult challenge will be replacing the nation's current infrastructure. “To be sustainable in the truest sense, you need to change the way infrastructure is designed,” he says. “[Local government planners must] step back and revisit the entire infrastructure and [ask], ‘What do I have to have to reduce the use of resources and energy and really try to achieve super conservation?’”

Earlier he notes:
While many cities want to take steps to protect the environment — evidenced by the more than 800 that have signed the Washington-based U.S. Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement — most officials lack the technical know-how to make the changes necessary to achieve sustainability goals.

The article raises important questions about the type of high CO2 infrastructure that was installed and financed and how local decision makers don’t know how to go about correcting it, while at the same time creating unacceptable problems with mobility, water, sewer, food, air quality, recreation, and ultimately the ability to distribute scare resources fairly to reduce tension. Our carbon footprint infrastructure from transportation is easy to understand: free curb side parking, two or three or more car garage requirements, non existant bus shelters or sidewalks, every street accessible to automobiles, pavement improved for automobiles on streets with deteriorating sidewalks immediately alongside, no incentives for small vehicles like the small compact parking in the 70s, or electric vehicles, or 20 mph streets for hybrids and Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, easy access across El Camino and Caltrans and 50mph access over Hallmark, children driven to schools and playgrounds less than a mile away, etc. etc. The infrastructure subsidies in water sewer etc. can be similarly ascertained.

Confronting the amount of change that is needed, is necessary, if we're going to redefine our pattern of living into something that is sustainable. Writing in the LA Times Bill McKibben says we don't have much time- maybe four years if we want to get 350PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere. The problem was one of stuffing the biosphere with the effluence of our resource consumption. The solution must entail a convergence to a stable state so that efficient use of resources preserves the planet for future generations.

Belmont needs to ask that Warner-Liebermann start by providing a path to convergence to 350 and allowing cities to make decisions to reduce their footprint; not giving control over the air and water to the same corporations that brought us the infrastructure that we are trying to change. Carbon Credits for cities (Supervisor Hill said it was a necessary tool for CARB) would be a first step, so Belmont could do more, after its leading effort on diesel traps under the Carl Moyer program. I talked to Thomas Fil and he said he would look into it when he had time.

Fund infrastructure sustainably

2008-05-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

The Peninsula has been living on borrowed time. We haven’t put money away for Hetch Hetchy and now we have billions, $4.3B to be exact, due to upgrade the water supply. And rate payers bills which has policy makers concerned everywhere. The Examiner writes: San Francisco and San Mateo counties have both been hit by this cycle more than once. Most famously, The City’s decades of diverting funds for more visible purposes, instead of spending on necessary upkeep of the aging Hetch Hetchy regional water system, has resulted in a $4.3 billion renovation program being largely paid by client water districts throughout the Bay Area.

We haven’t put money away on sewage either and now thirty years later we have a huge $40M bill to upgrade the sewer system. Other areas of deffered maintenance include our parks and roads ($30M in Belmont). And these will have to go into the rates increases, and the people who were stuck with handing out the bill, the current council, is likely to get voted out, in 2009.

And as usual we will try to cheat and deffer the true cost by "keeping rate increases gradual." This means that the next heavy rain storm can overload the system and require a higher bill. Add in the possibilities of floods, where the treatment plants are located (and require energy to pump the treated water up), and we really aren't ready for a rainy day! With the sewer cost the council wants to defer a portion and raise other rates equally thus subsidizing large users but keeping the cry down from them as well.

We need a sustainable infrastructure that reduces waste and reduces subsidies for consumption. We need to plan now and put in financial structures that can see us through the days ahead. We can't continue to expect to balance our books on the backs of our children. They will have problems of their own in the days ahead.

We are going backward

2008-04-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

Global Warming is a consequence of lifestyle choices; of resources used because they are there and no negative consequences to us thinking we need to use them. We are evaporating eons of fossil fuels into the air we breathe and changing the earth's albedo.

Government provides rules for the allocation of resources, like how much air can be polluted. As a consequence of resource use governments manage growth and crisis- not very well. Business is exploitation of resources for growth and the deferral of risk in crisis.

James Hansen said Business As Usual was what will prevent solving the crisis of Global Warming; not a absence of available solutions.

Take Belmont's desire for a flat sewer rate or three cars per unit downtown.

According to City Manager Crist low intensity water users are not paying for the cost of infrastructure. High intensity users require larger infrastructure. LIU use it but don't pay for it is the argument. The Public Hearing will then be held on May 13, 2008, at 7:30 p.m. at One Twin Pines Lane, Belmont, CA 94002 in the City Council Chambers.

But that infrastructure is built up for the high intensity water users. And the city's unrequited commitment to sprawl has resulted in miles of non permeable roads, which have steadily increased over the last 30 years, causing runoff into the sewer, exacerbated by the higher rainfalls of global warming, now overtaxing the sewer system from 50 years ago. The total cost is estimated at $40M.

Someone said its unfair that she has to pay more to water her yard which benefits all of Belmont because it meets residential design standards for landscaping. Native plants, recycled water, and low water landscapes may be on the GAC charter but they are not presently policy. Why should a high flow user bear the costs she asked?

Because at the same time, in the Green Newsletter that Belmont sent out, we are asked to conserve water for our supplier Mid Peninsula Water Company. Given that we live in a 25" per year, semi arid low temperature climate, conservation makes sense. What is the harm with conservation anyway? That there will be more for our children? We could be even greener if local water capture, community gardens and home gardens got similar incentives like the solar waive fees and streamline guidelines to encourage installations.

In the past local government felt that growth was in the community interest and needed to be subsidized. Sewer, garbage, water, postal, electricity and gas rates and utility charges were averaged over the community to pay for consumption of open space. Downtowns were taxed to pay for sprawl; and deteriorated as people saw more value in exploiting open space than losing services downtown. Local government with the various departments at city hall make it possible to consume our way through the planet.

That infrastructure for Global Warming consumption patterns remains in place in all the jobs at city hall. Today the same low growth, now pro open space arguments, are saying that in the community interest, increased consumption (of water in this case) needs to be subsidized. Averaging the sewer rates means government still ends up subsidizing consumption rather than efficiency; while at the same time feeling a need to remind us to conserve for Mid Penn!

All things green

2008-04-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of our Green Advisory Committee, ABC presented 6 ways to make your life more "green." I expected little tweaks like using compact fluorescents and recycling more - BUT

- They showed a man living in a 100 sq. ft. house and suggested that we sell our "McMansions" and downsize our living space!
- The report suggested that we move to a large city, citing New York as a green city due to the fact that most people use public transit and walk instead of owning/driving cars. The implication was that vertical development was better than suburban sprawl.

The Economist on newstands now, has an article on the politics of food for fuel called The Silent Tsunami: The Food Crisis and How to Solve it. I didn't like the proposal they have to expand aid or their nuclear bullet- enabling GMO frankenfoods; however in their defense in parallel they make an argument for enabling self sufficiency for small farmers. They can't seem to admit that we can't drive ourselves out of this pickle. Reduce driving with charged parking to reduce the need for biofuels which is raising food prices. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year said Lester Brown when he predicted this crisis two years ago.

By the way this article contains an alarming piece of data that analysts haven't picked on yet- namely that all the defense of exporting labor, with cheap fuel and manufacturing overseas, since Bush the Elder proclaimed the New World Order, was that the greater prosperity that resulted from the maquiladoras was raising living standards worldwide particularly for the poor. The Economist article, after arguing the problems for the deteriorating living standards in the middle class says "Roughly a billion people live on $1 a day. If, on a conservative estimate, the cost of their food rises 20% (and in some places, it has risen a lot more), 100m people could be forced back to this level, the common measure of absolute poverty. In some countries, that would undo all the gains in poverty reduction they have made during the past decade of growth."

And the current issue of Time has a rather weak article on How to win the war on Global Warming which essentially relies on new technology.

The last issue of Time had a great article on The Clean Energy Myth which captures the inability to think past consumption for our cars. Our cars are not only stealing our food and killing our seas, policy makers are hoping the next generation of ethanol will starve our soil.

All of which was neatly captured in Darkow's cartoon from 4/16/08
In the pull down menu pick 4/16/08

The consumerist source of green house gases are brilliantly summarized by Michael Pollan in 4/20/08 issue of the NY Times Magazine in a column titled Why Bother? He says for us to wait for technology to solve the problem means we are not serious about changing anything.

There were other good articles in this issue including Not-So-free ride by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner on using insurance to get people to drive less by correctly pricing the externalities of driving; and The Green Issue- Some Bold Steps, which left out the boldest step, which is that there is no way to drive and still get to the carbon production level that the biosphere can sustain (5lbs of co2/day) which concludes this excellent article by Seth Zuckerman in Sierra magazine, and matches a number 1.3 times higher of 1.2 tonnes of CO2 annually calculated by Monbiot. The average American produces 133 lbs of CO2 mostly from driving. Carbon emissions are expected to rise through 2020.

Does government always find a way to pass the buck?

2008-04-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

At the Belmont Green Advisory Committee meeting there were a lot of great ideas on how to green the city for climate change. However we never set a base line on how to measure emissions or what goal we were going to develop policy for (more later).

We know at the federal level that there is very little happening. Renewable energy was still underfunded and big oil and coal continue to rack in the subsidies. Almost a 6/1 difference. And the President continues to drag his feet. CA ability to regulate tailpipe emissions is attacked. And the feds are doing everything to keep 1493 from becoming law.

At the state level we got AB32 which mandates changes. However the implementation is seriously struggling. AB 2744 by Huffman would allow MTC to charge 10 cents per gallon for 25 years to fund transit. Its stalled in committee with a 6-7 vote today. And incredibly Southern California, is pursuing its own gas fee at 3% of the retail value of gas which looks like 12 cents at present prices and may be a better way to access it.

But it will probably have a harder time in committee.

On a national level NY was unable to move congestion pricing through because of a conflict between the mayor and the legislature and governor in Albany which doesn’t bode well for cross jurisdictional agreements.

Global Warming is caused by the use of fossil fuels which requires an infrastructure of power lines and fueling stations and roads all of which are built by city government. 80% of the fossil fuels we consume need to stay in the ground through 2300 because of the 200 year lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere. That means that to a rough extent we need to live on 20% of the infrastructure we have.

Can Belmont address its challenges without pointing fingers at state and federal sources?

Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement (MCPA)

2008-04-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

We've met with all the council members about the mayor signing the MCPA.

The Mayor has asked for a followup meeting to discuss some more.

To summarize:
1- The MCPA is a request (we urge) from cities to Congress to address Climate Change.
2- The MCPA is an agreement between cities to reduce GHG toward Kyoto's targets.

For the US the Kyoto target is 7% below 1990 emissions.

There is nothing binding on cities on how to achieve Kyoto targets. No density limits or housing and transportation links or green building criteria or coal reductions. The third section of the MCPA provides 12 examples of what could be done (such as) one of which offers a density example.

Cities (which make up 70% of Green House Gas emission worldwide) need Congress to act
1- so that energy loads don't shift to polluting countries through imports.
2- incentives are developed for people to live an alternate energy or low energy lifestyle.

Past Mayor Coralin Fierebach said she would not sign this agreement objecting to the density example.

But as Chris Mohr of HLC points out there is a huge environmental impact to how policy is currently implemented primarily because a lack of transportation choices and a job housing imbalance result in super commuters who benefit no one. We need regional solutions to many of today's problems from air quality to water to a jobs housing balance.

By not requiring anything the MCPA takes into account that Belmont is a unique suburban city requiring its own unique solutions to climate change. 7% below 1990 levels can be achieved without density by addressing three of the five big emissions sources that Al Gore identified: coal, cars, and buildings.

At a recent Senate hearing of the Sustainable Transportation Committee in Redwood City before Senators Leland Yee and Tom Torlakson the major points of all the transportation chiefs in the Bay Area was
1- we need to plan better to get to a jobs housing balance by taking advantage of what we have
2- we already know how to build low emissions walkable cities. Now we need to incentivize people to live an alternate or low energy lifestyle.

Signing the MCPA is part of the Sierra Club's Cool Cities program

The Cool Cities web site for California shows 106 cities that have signed. 16 of these cites are from San Mateo which is over 50% of our cities.

Three parking spots per unit downtown?

2008-03-27T10:13:00.000-07:00

On 3/25 Belmont approved a 24 unit complex at 1000 South Rd on a mitigated negative declaration with three parking spots per unit. This is the wrong approach to the downtown.

1000 South is only 1500 feet from the transit center in Belmont at Ralston and El Camino. It is at the intersection of South and Ralston. What is the vision for the downtown? Residents dodging cars doesn’t cut it.

What does Council Member Dickenson mean when he talks about efficient transit? What does the council mean when they want to reduce cut through traffic on 6th Ave one block east of the South development? How will residents get around the downtown when we are older? Do council members intend to live here when they get old?

Samtrans just gave us four accordion buses to help additional kids get to Ralston Middle and Carlmont. What message are we sending about the role of buses in this important transit corridor with a three car per unit policy? Three cars per unit need access lanes, which means clogged streets, and additional lanes and parking requirements. This increases the visual blight of ugly parking lots in the downtown while reducing the fare box recovery of transit. Cars also move more rapidly than people. This means longer blocks like we have on 6th and 5th and El Camino which reduces the fine grain grid that makes for a successful pedestrian district.

What did Council mean when they agreed with past council member Warden that cars were as dangerous as cigarettes? How does going to a 3 car per unit residential requirement solve that problem?

We inhabit a time when green house gases from cars are a challenge to the Bay Area. Both MTC and ABAG say they don’t know how to reduce particulate emissions with the expected growth in vehicle miles traveled. Three cars per unit in of all places the downtown feeds into unsustainable practices. Unaffordable units, as another speaker pointed out, add to the dilemma of how we can sustainably house our parents and our children. This is unfortunate because I have three elderly neighbors whose children bought homes in Belmont. It was obviously a nice place for families to live in. Today, as in the case of Mrs. Johnson, just walking down the block is a major enterprise.

This is also where council wanted to put a roundabout because of traffic from South. Despite increasing traffic on South with the development, Public Works said it was withdrawing the roundabout from the developer mitigation requirement, in reply to a question from Council Member Wozniack.

The Problem of Energy Use

2008-03-26T10:28:00.001-07:00

Modern society rewards fossil fuel consumers with wealth, and penalizes those who don’t consume fossil fuels.

More than 5o% of natural gas and electricity and water is consumed by four communities in San Mateo County, Hillsborough, Woodside, Portola Valley, and Atherton, who make up .3% of the population of San Mateo County. Anecdotally these communities also make disproportionate use of the airport, a green house gas (GHG) generator that has no immediate fix; and drive most of the low mileage cars in the county.

In the Bay Area 50% of GHG comes from transportation mostly the private car. See page 17. This problem will worsen because Vehicle Miles Travelled is increasing. A roundtrip to the moon (RTM) is 477,736 miles. In 2000 in SMC we did 35 RTM. In 2015 we will average 39.

Solutions
Walkable cities are the key to the GHG puzzle. In State of the World 2007: Worldwatch writes that cities cover 0.4 percent of the Earth’s surface but generate the bulk of world carbon emissions, making urban areas key to alleviating the climate crisis. More than 70% of GHG come from cities.

Molly O'Meara Sheehan writes in Volume XXXVIII, Number 1 2001, of the Department of Public Information that, "As cities grow to accommodate motor vehicles, they push built-up areas over forests and farmland, pave over watersheds, and invite accidents and pollution from ever-greater vehicle traffic. Various reports suggest that car-reliant cities not only damage the environment but also worsen social inequities and impede economic growth. As the world becomes more urban, a major challenge for societies will be to reorient current patterns of urban development away from car-dependent sprawl and towards walkable neighbourhoods connected by networks of bicycle paths, bus routes and railways."

Dead? Whew-Traffic not affected

2008-03-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

Why do traffic articles on freeway crashes involving deaths turn on the issue of congestion? In this case a person is found dead by the freeway and the articles ends by saying: Traffic was not affected by the incident, Chase said.

Its the same reason why so much of the news is dedicated to congestion. Our time is more important than anyone else's life. Its irrelevant what we use our time for- TV, iPod, sports, gossip or fast food.

Drivers will charge down our roads heedless of pedestrians trying to save a minute of their time at the expense of a locals life. I watch in amazement every morning as I try to cross O'Neil or Emmet and traffic is bent on getting to work without consideration for the neighborhood around.

Automobiles are toasting the planet. But in the process they've turned the neighborhood into a jail and made our notion of time auto dependent.

Global warming and spraying for the LBAM

2008-03-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Gail Raabe, SMC Agricultural Commissioner, says she hasn't heard any opposition to aerial spraying for the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). A group of legislators have introduced legislation to prevent spraying- San Mateo is not one included.

My position, which is a farmer's market consumer position says:
- The problem with LBAM comes about because the food is transported by air these days. It used to, and should, come by ship, which is a lot more fuel efficient and the long trip was detrimental to the moth which would metamorphosis and then die at sea. Today's airborne moth, while generating tons of green house gases with travel food miles, gets to arrive, metamorph, find food and raise a family here.

- The fix against this moth used to be "targeted pheromone baited sticky traps" tied to a fruit tree. This works for small farmers with a few acres under cultivation. It doesn't work for corporate farmers who farms hundreds of acres and won't hire the labor to bait all the trees each month. Therefor USDA's spaying essentially supports large farms and is an anti local, one more disincentive, against small local farms.

- I buy from the farmers market which is where small local farmers go to find consumers like me who want fresh tasty food. They are now in competition against an imported airborne moth from fruit picked early so it can travel well and whose price is artificially low
because of global subsidies like the war in Iraq.

- Where is the problem? As a Sierra Club article states the moth has been in CA for years with no damage. However exporters, large farms with global connections, again in competition against my farmer market supplier, have to spray outgoing shipments, and it is this "perpetual quarantine" that worries USDA which has no interest in the family farm or the consumer. This business model doesn't add up in an era of climate change.

The CA Sierra Club has taken a position opposing spraying for the LBAM. See A controversy coming to a neighborhood near you on page 3 but for different reasons. Baited sticky traps are mentioned here, as is perpetual quarantine and absence of a problem.

We should instead-
fight global warming and protect the family farm by not spraying. Instead give a portion of the money allocated to this emergency to family farms earning under $30,000/- per year to pay for targeted pheromone baited sticky traps and let larger corporate farmers pay for their own programs.

Calculating CO2 from cars

2008-03-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

If someone knows a better way to calculate this please post-

Every 1000 cars at a school dropoff produce 4 tons of CO2 and 1 ton of noxious emissions.

Every 1000 commute cars produce 12 tons of CO2 and 3 tons of noxious emissions.

- 21 mpg average CAFE standard

- 12 mils is the average one way commute trip in the bay area. The "average weekday daily VMT" in the Bay Area, was 157,172,000 in 2007, or 80 roundtrips to the moon every day and increasing.

- 20 lbs of CO2 in one gallon of gasoline. One gallon=6lbs produces 19.4 lbs of CO2

- 2.25/1 is the ratio between the Honda Civic hybrid/Prius average and the CAFE average.

- 50% of trips in the morning commute are school related

- 43% of all trips are two miles or less when the engine is most inefficient. This is why we need to account for children landuses in general plans.

Other MTC numbers quoted by car here

The Problem of Energy Use
Association of Bay Area Governments report on the Bay Area GHGs says 50% of CO2 from mostly the private car. (page 17)
and recommendation (including staff)-

Noxious emissions
The EPA monitors 188 air pollutants.
The CA state Air Resource board identify three sources of particulate matter Area, Point, and Mobile; with mobile sources being by far the largest problem. These sources, coming from vehicles, generate two kinds of particles presently measured- PM10 from vehicles, construction sites, unpaved roads, factories, wood burning, and fuel combustion at power plants and in industrial processes and PM2.5 from fuel combustion and combination with other pollutants.
The World Health Organization (2005) has proposed tighter standards to improve public health because “an increasing range of adverse health effects has been linked to air pollution, and at ever-lower concentrations” page 10. However EPA has't gone far enough even with staff's own weak recommendations. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who heads the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, sharply criticized the agency's decision, "Once again, the EPA has rejected the recommendations of its scientific advisors and failed to protect our communities from dangerous air pollution." Lifelong damage is found in 13-year study of 3600 Southland youngsters living within 500 yards of a highway. Major roads like Ralston can be just as toxic.

Council Agenda Tuesday, February 26, 200: Financial Overlay Map-

2008-03-14T09:08:00.000-07:00

Public Works director Ray Davis described a council agenda item for bringing garbage services in house. As expected there were large costs associated with labor and equipment maintenance. However there was a marked difference in costs for the district areas, Carlmont and Downtown, and the hilly neighborhoods. A fleet of smaller side loading trucks was necessary in the hills with their unique maintenance requirement. Understandably hills were almost 50% of the total cost but unevenly spread between the districts and the neighborhoods. From a development perspective we should look at how these costs can be equitably distributed.

City Manager Jack Crist addressed another agenda item on sewer rates. Again there was a marked difference between the downtown and the neighborhoods but in the downtown there was a marked difference between residences and businesses, the primary difference being the area of landscaping that gets watered. The city is proposing that costs be averaged out. This means that low flow users will get penalized for using less and for requiring a lower infrastructure development cost for city services. There was a marked difference between low flow ($225) and business ($22,500) in the new rate proposal which would lower the business cost and raise the low flow cost so that they were essentially equal.

At an earlier meeting Ray Davis had described the $30M requirement for rebuilding city streets. Again access , equipment, and manpower are issues here between neighborhoods and districts.

These unequal costs are widely spread. Andres Duany in Suburban Nation says that the primary reason for the loss of neighborhood postal centers was the need to establish large offices with huge parking lots to access the sprawled out neighborhoods that developed after WWII and which overextended the small electric postal vehicles causing a shift to polluting gasoline vehicles and higher costs.

Financial overlay maps which showed the cost of infrastructure and services would make useful planning tools.

Council Agenda March 11 2008: FATP

2008-03-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

Describing a council agenda item on the protection of the San Juan Canyon area Community Planning Director Carlos Demello introduced a fabulous concept called Floor Area Ratio Transfer Policy which was shortened to FATP.

FATP allows for the city to permit landowners, to move their development rights, from an area with desirable protection characteristics, to an area where development is preferred. This is similar to transfer of development rights known as TDRs.

Carlos said that the receiving attributes would need to be developed. As an example of a receiving area he offered the downtown, which everyone agrees needs a density characteristic tied to the business type we want to attract and retain. Coralin expressed concern that the sending characteristic should not increase development on the street or neighborhood, and the receiving characteristic should include a cost factor linked to a developed street, so as to not drain the city budget.

Another model would be start with the Association of Bay Area Governments and Metropolitan Transportation Commission criteria of defined Priority Conservation Areas and Priority Development Areas. Overlay on the PCA wildlife, riparian, and connected trail corridors. Add attributes to the three corridor elements such as open space, parks, urban pocket parks, children’s landuses, species, and a countryside preserve.

Develop a FATP financing mechanism that preserves the neighborhood model and enhances the district model. This can be done with financial overlay maps which identify where the infrastructure and service costs are cheaply available and preferred, and what desired feature of each model, such a traffic speed, needs to be controlled.

Then go out and get an ABAG/MTC grant to make it happen.

Where's the food?

2007-10-31T13:06:00.000-07:00

There is shortage of decent organic food downtown Belmont.

We have Safeway which has been trending away from most organic labels in favor of its in-house factory organic label. The selection has declined significantly.

A G Ferrari has a small selection of specialized organics.

The Farmer's market is fantastic but its only once a week.

I could use a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods style store. They are short bike rides down El Camino to Redwood City but I'd rather walk.