"Rybak or McLaughlin: both will see that new unsustainable boondoggles (sports stadia and lots more roads) are built while vital sustainable infrastructure, education,, shelter and health issues are neglected. We need to go in a radically different direction than we are. Neither of the DFL endorsed candidates understand this. Neither will set a new course for Minneapolis. Same old same old," says Gary Hoover.
"For example, our local politicians dutifully refuse....," says Hoover, and "our local politicians carefully refuse.....," he says again and again and again that they refuse. I suspect that every human culture on earth has been unsustainable right up to the present day; it has been one resource after another exhausted as we adopt newer technologies to exploit and exhaust the next. Native Americans wiped out an older and larger species of American Bison thousands of years before European immigrants came and nearly wiped out the current species; the record for similar patterns on other continents is clear. "Population blooms" as Hoover calls them, are not limited to the last few centuries we have been using fossil fuels, but they did used to resemble the predator/prey population graphs of scientists studying animals other than humans more; except that after periods of starving following depletion of a given resource with a studied MO or the occassional draught, humans eventually figure out how to move on to the next instead of dying out. The idea that sustainable technologies and sustainable lifeways are the exclusive domain of the American Green Party is ludicrous. We have been moving in that direction with Two Party domination in the last half century in this country long before there was an active US Green Party; but I believe it began to fall apart with the appearance of the Greens. The dismantling of our environmental protections by the Dubya Administration paralleled by Pawlenty at our state level would not have been possible without the rants of Greens helping to oust the moderate and progressive politicians of both Democratic and Republican Parties who made them possible (not to discount "God, Guns, and Gays" rhetoric of the Right). Greens, as the Palestinians were want to do, are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. While it is true in the many posts of this thread that neither the mayor nor Peter McLaughlin can claim all the credit for every good environmental policy of Minneapolis or Hennepin County government (but RT tries all the same), the same is also true in assigning blame for the failures of our government. Hybrids are not the future. Both hybrid technology and biofuels are stop gap measures to reach cleaner and more sustainable transportation technology on the horizon; the laws of thermodynamics don't change 'cause you burn ethanol fermented from corn and distilled, or oil from soy. You probably can't manufacture and maintain bicycles without fossil fuels right now, same for planes, trains, and autombiles. And I wish I knew just what "sustainable urban infrastructure," as Hoover calls it, looked like. I know I've been involved with efforts in Minneapolis to use recycled materials and energy effiecient technology and solar where it makes sense in new construction and plans to recycle that construction when the time comes, as it always does unless it becomes historically significant for some reason. Let Greens like Hoover peddle peace and sustainable urban infrastructure, but the people who need to buy the former are not interested, the latter is gobbledegook, and I refuse to listen anymore. Bill Kahn taking my turn to rant in Prospect Park REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[email protected] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
