Y' know, Dyna, I'm starting to see your point:
Alternative energy - too expensive. Go cheap, externalities (pollution -
which tends to congregate in poor and working-class communities and kill
them later) be damned.
Sadly, for a lot of renters who pay for heat and folks that don't have the capital to buy energy efficent homes or retrofit that's the case.
Organic food - too expensive. Go cheap, externalities (pollution - which
tends to degrade land and lead to environmental problems where replacement
nutrients are mined) be damned.
Same situation- the food shelves can't keep up with the demand, never mind the folks that can barely afford CUB or Rainbow prices. These folks have no choice but to eat the conventional food they can (or can't) afford.
I realized this is such a good principle that I need to apply it more broadly:
Union labor - too expensive. Go cheap, externalities (workers unable to buy
the fruits of their labor, social justice, social stability) be damned. I
mean, union labor costs just makes things more expensive everyone else to
buy stuff, right?
That's exactly the business logic that got us into this mess.
Really, let's not look at the big picture - it's a Wal-Mart world all the
way around!
Sad but increasingly true- the good paying jobs have largely left our area- remember Honeywell, etc.? The Ford plant is hanging on by a thread and even government is laying off workers today.
[Of course, this is not a way to build healthy communities, including
Minneapolis. Attention needs to be paid to the effects on the poor when
moving to a healthier, more sustainable system. THAT'S an appropriate role
for government spending - to ease the effects of moving to a better
long-term strategy. So the question is - since this is a MINNEAPOLIS issues
list - what can city government appropriately do here?]
Agreed. I continue to be amazed that we let Exel off so easy- they switched to gas because it was cheaper than cleaner burning coal technology and let us think we "won". The Mississippi River drops over a hundred feet within our city- why are we not using that enormous gravity power to generate electricity? We have windswept ridges along Theodore Wirth Parkway, why can't we generate power with that wind? We sit at the juncture of several major railroads in the middle of one of the planet's largest granaries. perfectly sited to collect biomass fuels. Why do we not have a biomass burning energy plant?
Perhaps Exel's lobbyists have a bit too much sway at city hall.
hanging on in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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