Raisin'Hell’s Recent Comments

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  I met current Spokane mayor, Mary Verner, fifteen years ago when we were both fighting Newmont Mining's plan to import more radioactive waste to the Dawn Mining uranium processing plant on the Spokane Indian Reservation. We won that fight, although Newmont has still not finished cleaning up the messes made at the plant or the Midnight Mine. Now, Mary is Mayor, and Spokane is making its first real progress on environmental issues since Expo '74. The city has made huge strides in the past few years on becoming bike-friendly. A sustainability plan is being fought over now in the city council. The Spokane River is still being treated badly, but even there there's been progress with phosphate-containing dishwasher detergent having been banned. A movement called Envision Spokane is proposing charter amendments that would install a Community Bill of Rights which would include renewable energy and river protection. It's a long hard fight to beat back the rabid developers and real estate interests, and a mayor can't do it alone. City council races this fall will be extremely important. All three seats up for grabs are currently filled by folks on the pro-development side of the aisle to varying degrees. Picking up even one of these seats will flip the council to pro-environment, and there's no reason all three can't be won.

  On 15 green-leaning mayors posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago 17 Responses

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  @ David Camp- "On its way to a nearly carbon-free electrical supply"- Well, the voters did pass I-937 last year, calling for a renewable energy portfolio. The final results aren't in yet, but the state leg and the Governor are well on their way to gutting it.

  On Washington state can lead the way to a green economy posted 7 months ago 6 Responses

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  McCain, as usual just wants to continue corporate welfare. The cost of pollution has been passed onto the public in a major way since the Industrial Revolution, why stop now? His shameless pandering to the far right, calling Obama's plan, where the polluters would pay for the damage they cause, a tax, shows how utterly bereft of morality he is. Aren't you glad he's not our president? Let's hope Arizona (where there's at least a fair possibility for a profitable solar industry, dontcha think?) voters wise up in 2010 and retire him.

  On McCain rails against Obama cap-and-trade plan posted 7 months ago 6 Responses

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  As a Washington Democratic leader, I've worked for Gov. Gregoire's election twice now. No more.

  She's great with rhetoric and way short on delivery. Her inept handling of issues like Washington's regressive (most in the nation) taxes, and having to make her bosses at  Boeing happy, keep her from having the political horsepower to get anything accomplished on the environment. Witness the failure to pass a carbon cap and trade in the legislative session.

  The Washington State Dept of Agriculture is dedicated to paying lip service to local, sustainable agriculture while regulating it out of existence. Our state ag programs are geared 100% to export and non-sustainabe industrial production. The WSDA oversees delivery of fertilizer with toxics in it, and one of its largest programs subsidizes the certification of pesticide use.

  The state's water policy is a disaster with more multi-billion dollar dams on tap. And these won't be power generators, but power users, designed to deliver more irrigation water to corporate farms in the desert.

  The dams we already have, of course, have destroyed salmon runs, but they are also destroying estuaries, putting the states ocean beaches at risk, and, primarily supporting non-sustainable agriculture.

  The state's Growth Management Act is a sham. There is no enforcement except by outraged citizens on their own dime. Farmland continues to be gobbled up by sprawl, growth is mandated by the state and allowed without regard for sustainable water availability. 

  As Grist recently published, state Dept. of Ecology offices in Vancouver have been routing their raw sewage into storm drains for more than a decade.

  While Washington is a blue state, and Seattle may be the most Democratic city in the nation, the Governor, along with Frank Chopp and Lisa Borwn, the House and Senate leaders, has displayed no leadership, no agenda for progressive environmental action, and no results.

   

   

   

  On Washington state can lead the way to a green economy posted 7 months ago 6 Responses