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Monday, April 17, 2006

“A Global Warming Hero”

Posted by on April 17 at 13:32 PM

That’s how Laurie David, the wife of comedian Larry David, describes Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels in this gushy post on HuffingtonPost today. She’s praising Nickels for his push to get U.S. mayors to adopt the Kyoto Protocol, even though the Bush administration has rejected the agreement.

Nickels has received lots of coverage for his leadership, including a glam photo spread in the current green issue of Vanity Fair. “It’s a strange role for someone whose job it is to fix potholes,” Nickels says, “But American cities care about this issue even if the federal government doesn’t. I wanted to send a message to the rest of the world to stick with it, because America will catch up.”

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Only in Seattle would self-loathing liberals bash a Mayor who does stuff like this. I am moving to a more progressive city like Tacoma!

Laurie David is a sanctimonious twit who chases people down in the street to ask them why they aren't driving hybrids. She and others of her ilk are all about style and surface appearances, not about real issues or responses.

Her poster boy Nickels likewise is happy to talk the talk but when it comes time for action that will actually impact greenhouse gas emissions, he fails. Witness the way he has bent over for Paul Allen's Streetcar To Nowhere, which will save zero emissions over anything, but deliberately killed the monorail, which was a real transit alternative. If Seattle can't provide transit choices, it will never make a difference on emissions or anything else.

And the real meat of the issue isn't the city limits, but the region as a whole, which continues to drastically increase its emissions, and vote emphatically for sprawl and clearcuts, while leaving Seattle to crow about its meaningless reductions. Moving the problem from one pocket to the other accomplishes nothing. Though it does apparently get you into Vanity Fair.

Well said FNARF.

This is the same mayor that just approved the Lafarge plant in South Seattle to start burning whole tires as fuel for the next 2 years, approximately 3000 tires a day.

Carbon monoxide will be monitored, but formaldehyde, benzene and toluene will not.

thanks for nothing, Mayor "Green"

This also a Mayor who is advocating building a new intermodal waste staion even though he claims to pushing 'recycling'.

He only talks and spends the green.

His best efforts won't even begin to counteract all the hot air that he emits.

FNARF ----huh?

You give the man horns and blame him for all that you think ails the city.

Geez, how strange. Their own board killed the monorail. There were even people who questioned the adequacy of the whole car tax system at the beginning - they got hooted down by the know it alls- who it turns out, knew nothing.

The new street car is electric, no emissions. You may not agree with the idea - seems street cars are going to spring up in two or three other lines.

I think it is tth skill of a master poilitical mind that goes to national meetings of mayors, a give a shit type mundane meeting, and enfuses the body with the political will to oppose the necon agenda on destroying the air quality of the world.
Impressive political and activist skils.

Master strategy, it worked, the world applauds and you snarl.

Get real - Nickels is still a younger leader, I am sue he has decades of leadership open to him, national and international.

Go Greg.

By the way the mayor of SEATTLE does not control the whole region. Duh. And the effect of any of policy is not immediate and automatic. Duh.

Electric equals no emissions, huh? Small consolation to the fish being killed at the dam that provides the electricity. And streetcars and rails do not magically sprout from trees; they're manufactured in stinky factories. But that's not my point: my point is that the streetcars are a classic Seattle cosmetic measure that does NOTHING to reduce emissions anywhere. It doesn't matter if it runs a thousand times an hour on fairy dust -- no emissions are saved, because it doesn't go anywhere.

The monorail was killed by the concerted effort of the political establishment in this town. The board couldn't win because they were never granted the political capital to win. The leader of that murder? Greg Nickels. If Nickels had wanted a monorail, we would have gotten a monorail, full stop.

Nickels gets to make a nice speech in front of the mayors, which furthers his national political ambitions, but does fuck-all for reducing emissions in Seattle or anywhere else. It's LIP SERVICE.

As for leadership in the region, Nickels has never even tried it. He has no interest in it. And there's no way in hell any Puget Sound area politician outside the city gives a damn what Nickels says about anything.

Seattle is the engine of the region's economy, but it's run by children. Nickels gets to run things like his own feifdom, which SHOULD be a fantastic opportunity to bully his way through difficult changes. Instead he "accomplishes" negative results. The streetcar is just the latest in a series of national humiliations; transit people are still chuckling over the bus tunnel of a previous generation...

look, two ways to look at this:

one, to people who don't live here, they just see the public pronouncements, so they see it as an example, which is great.

two, to people who live here, we have to live in this mess, or like me go visit Vancouver BC this past weekend and see all the new Skytrain lines all over a city half our size and realize what a SNAFU we live in. but we push green stuff to everyone else around the world, so they assume our mayor must be like us.

in a way, they're right. he is like us.

It is super that the mayor wants the city to adopt the Kyoto protocols that W has no interest in whatsoever. However, claiming to be a "green" mayor is a bit two faced. The streetcar may be electric and have minimal emissions, but if it fails to get people out of their cars in significant numbers, then it fails to alter the overall emissions of the city and/or region. Yes, the monorail board made a hash out of the project, but FNARF is right, Nickels acted at every turn to kill the monorail for years, rather than looking for solutions, and is every bit as responsible for the monorail's demise as the board is. And his grand plan to build a six-lane underground freeway through the city will only encourage more cars and increase emissions. On top of that, the tunnel will cost so much money, it will seriously impair the city's ability to afford any other major public transit projects for decades. Way to go, Mayor Green.

The only way do significantly reduce emissions is to get people out of their cars. Instead of spending $8 billion on an underground highway, if he even spent half that on light rail or monorail or any other significant public transit to West Seattle, we'd eliminate the need for the stupid tunnel, and dramatically reduce emissions.

now, one thing I noticed in Vancouver BC this past weekend, other than the really excellent Belgian Chocolate (organic, fair trade even) at every coffee house and on all the drugstore shelves (Easter candy oh my), is that they're way ahead of us on Kyoto.

Every hotel has nifty well-designed compact flourescent light bulbs.

Most cars are way smaller and get amazing gas mileage (or kilometerage) and have way fewer emissions.

They have bus service and Skytrain EVERYWHERE! Even in industrial areas late at night. And they're making more.

They charge out the ying yang for parking - it cost me $19 a day to park there. See transit above.

They have a lot of multi-person building complexes that looked way more energy efficient - but smaller - than ours.

They have solar panels on the roofs of most business buildings, even run down ones in Chinatown.

Man, we're like ten years behind.

oh, and Vancouver BC had way cuter girls. and guys. way more into fashion too (handbag city, couldn't walk a block without ads for handbags or handbag stores).

Again with the potholes?

Nickels is just using this to get tagged early in his national political career as an enviro. He killed a transit system and is fighting to build a highway: Greg Nickels, a portrait.

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