Seattle

Mayors meet at that other Sundance for greener cities

Mayors from over 45 cities met this week in Sundance -- Sundance, Utah, that is -- to brainstorm on ways to make their cities greener and build on the momentum created by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' recent initiative to cut cities' greenhouse emissions, which he discussed with Amanda Griscom Little in Grist.

The Sundance Summit gathered mayors from some of the "usual suspects" (Seattle, Burlington, Berkeley) as well as some not-so-usual suspects (Des Moines, D.C., Pittsburgh, and two cities in Texas). The Summit featured talks by Al Gore, a representative from the Chicago Climate Exchange, and an attorney from the NRDC.

From the Seattle PI article:

"All of our major big boxes have to do green roofs," [Chicago Mayor] Daley said at actor Robert Redford's Sundance mountain resort just east of Provo. "When big boxes come to see us, we change their architecture. ... Everything's a planned development."

Making big boxes change their architecture? Imagine!

If these initiatives take root, and if I'm reading Dave's Sustainablog post correctly, this is an example of ecological "handprint" as opposed to footprint. It's also probably closer to the order of 1 percent reduction of "insult to the earth" rather than .000000000000167 percent.

Hippies still roam free, on this one day, in this one place.

I spent a lot of time with hippies with I was a young(er!) man, in many parts of the American West, primarily Missoula, Mont. I was even a bit of a hair farmer myself in those days. But these were modern hippies, who mimic the affectations of hippiedom -- pot smoking and earnest sanctimony -- without really feeling it in their bones.

Yesterday, though, I went to see what is one of the last vestiges of true dirty hippiedom in this nation of ours: The Fremont Solstice Parade, an annual bacchanalia in the Fremont district of Seattle.

An interview with Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels on his pro-Kyoto cities initiative

A Nickels’ worth of free advice … Meet the pied piper of one of the most exciting green grassroots uprisings to hit the U.S. in years: Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels (D). He’s managed to get roughly 300 mayors nationwide — from the Northwest to the deep South and everywhere in between — to agree that […]

U.S. mayors unanimously endorse climate-protection resolution

The nation's mayors have thrown their weight behind Kyoto (and thereby thumbed their noses at Dubyah). At the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Chicago yesterday, municipal leaders unanimously endorsed a resolution calling on U.S. cities to meet or beat the protocol's emissions-reduction targets. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels spearheaded the resolution, as well as a more specific campaign that's gotten 164 cities (so far) to commit to taking steps to protect the climate. Grist's Amanda Griscom Little tracked Nickels down amidst all the hubbub this morning for an interview, which we'll publish later this week. Stay tuned.

As Eric pointed out yesterday, we're at a tipping point on climate change (finally, jeez). Can Bush possibly hold out for another 3.5 years doing nothing on this issue? I'm betting he cannot.

Update [2005-6-20 10:34:49 by Lisa Hymas]: Check out Amanda's interview with Nickels.

It’s cool.

I went to the grand opening of the Ballard branch of the Seattle Public Library this afternoon (the old Ballard branch, a boxy, ugly blight, was replaced by a brand new one two blocks from my townhouse, oh happy day). It was a madhouse, with screaming, apple-juice-stained kids everywhere (I brought three myself), long lines at the desk, Bavarian folk music coming from one room and a chamber trio playing in another ... we had to flee fairly quickly.

However!

Although that other branch gets all the attention, the Ballard building is just awesome. A full list of its environmental features can be found here, but the coolest are the green roof, which visitors can look at through a periscope (!), the "notch and tab" furniture, each piece of which is cut from single sheet of laminated wood and fitted together (with a very hip modern aesthetic), and the solar panels. And check this out:

Rooftop scientific devices that measure wind speed and direction, sunlight and the sound of rain. The artwork - LED (light-emitting diode) displays and an audio composition of Ballard-area sounds - is derived from the weather data.

Art and music derived directly from the surrounding environmental conditions. Now that's cool.

(More from the Seattle Times.)

Hybrid buses

A little while back, Seattle got a lot of "the future is now!"-type press for ordering a full fleet of diesel-electric hybrid buses, which cost $200,000 more apiece than their articulated diesel brethren. Unfortunately, according to the Seattle P-I, claims that they would get up to 40 percent better gas mileage have not cashed out. In fact, their gas mileage is roughly comparable to the old buses', although they are quieter, produce fewer emissions, and cost less to maintain. Guess the future is still in the future.

UPDATE: For a much longer and more informative take on this story -- to which there is less than meets the eye -- read what Alan Durning's got to say.

Lessons in environmentally friendly living from New York City

In 1975, Ernest Callenbach published a slim book called Ecotopia, in which the Northwest secedes from the United States and establishes itself as an ecological paradise. The text became a counterculture classic, and the term “Ecotopia” entered the lexicon, embodying the American tendency to think of the continent’s forested far coast as a land of […]

Raking up the Rubble

All week I’ve been cringing at the news. Tear gas. Broken windows. Bloody faces. The National Guard called in to defend Seattle against anti-WTO demonstrators. From far away, totally in sympathy with the demonstrators, I’ve been yelling at them, “No, please, get hold of yourselves! Don’t tar our cause with violence!” Cops taking over the […]

Don't buy their official version of Tuesday's events

SEATTLE, Wash. An eerie half-calm, enforced by marching columns of police and troops in full-body armor, settled over downtown Seattle today. Street corners that had been scenes of dramatic confrontation yesterday saw small-scale, unthreatening protests this morning and early afternoon, as demonstrators, trade delegates, journalists, and everyone else in this stunned city got down to […]