Another year, another climate action plan. This time we are gunning for zero emissions. Yes, Z-E-R-O, by 2030. Sound impossible? The standing-room-only crowd at the carbon neutrality forum at City Hall last night would have done their best to convince you otherwise. After all, Copenhagen’s trying to do it by 2025.
Believe it or not, under former Mayor Greg Nickels’ climate action plan, Seattle actually met its goal of reducing 1990 emission levels by seven percent last year (.pdf). Now the time has come for the Seattle City Council to update that plan. Eight volunteer groups brainstormed yesterday on everything from sustainable architecture to organic food—all aimed at making Seattle America’s first carbon neutral city. All good intentions, but nothing groundbreaking really (nobody tried to surpass Sheryl Crow and say people, stop using toilet paper completely). I did love Jenny Pell’s suggestion about turning Seattle’s public parks into fruit patches though.
Most of the ideas rang similar to the ones in Nickels’s old plan—you know, things that sound awesome on paper, but are difficult to implement when the city’s going through a $67 million budget crisis (light rail network across the county!). With transportation making up the largest chunk of greenhouse gas emissions in Seattle (60 percent), figuring out alternatives to driving is the obvious first step to reducing our carbon footprint.
“The city must avoid building mega projects and stay focused on walking and biking,” said Craig Benjamin, co-chair of the Streets for Seattle campaign, a clear dig at the deep-bore boondogle tunnel. “We need a paradigm shift in transportation planning.”
Council Member Mike O’Brien smiled throughout the presentation, pro-tunnel-highway Council Member Sally Clark took notes, while pro-tunnel-highway-quarterback Council President Richard Conlin looked rather pleased with himself. The only time they all really jumped to attention was when a senior community member asked how 520 and the deep bored tunnel fit into carbon neutral Seattle. Conlin explained that 520 would pave the way for light rail while the tunnel would reduce the number of auto lanes to six. “They will both be positive in the long run,” he said.
Yeah, good luck with getting everyone to bike instead of drive when it rains for half the year. Biking in the rain is miserable and unsafe. Maybe if you put a giant dome over the city.
How the hell are you beating us in carbon footprint, Seattle? Everyone here takes public transportation, is fined for not composting, and mostly just pees in the street (saves water!) Is it our 3,000 year-old in-city power plants? Better yet, how the crap is Los Angeles beating all of us?
@2: I think the Hollywood studios buy lots of indulgences, err, I mean “carbon offsets.”
@1: Average yearly rainfall in Seattle is 150 days out of the year.
In Copenhagen, it’s 168.
Copenhagen also gets 40% less sunshine and the average temp is at least 6 degrees cooler than in Seattle.
nitpick, I think you mean: Seattle actually met its goal of reducing emissions to 7% below 1990 levels. Or did we go back in time?
@4 – I always argued Copenhagen, arguably the bicyclingest city ever, has pretty unfriendly weather even compared to the Northwest. It’s mostly flat, or course, and the infrastructure is there, but Seattle could at least improve one of those things. Both, if the city wants to go all 1910ish on those pesky hills.
Concrete production accounts for 9 to 10 percent of the world’s CO2 production.
How in the world does a concrete bridge and tunnel become “carbon neutral”?
Democrats have gone insane.
@2: Overall density and self-contained micro-cities.
18,000 per square mile in a city like SF is all well and good, but if you equalize just half that that across 470 square miles it really does cut back on one’s usage of natural resources. LA, like Seattle (and NYC), is also a city of neighborhoods.
File this one under Stuff white people like.
@6: Grading and Olmstead-era boulevards have made it possible to go a rather simplistic but marginally-expensive route (if funding via existing monies) of simply creating specialized bicycle infrastructure. If we had the money, Seattle could easily utilize ramps and cycletracks to make a bike highway of sorts, and it wouldn’t take too many routes to get the desired effect.
For example, to tackle Queen Anne, one only needs to create access to the Aurora Bridge and an elevated bike pathway cutting around and over Kinnear Park with cycletrack amenities heading toward Elliott and Western.
Cap Hill on the west has several possible approaches, including a gentle flyover of I-5 from Melrose at Roy. On the east, you simply need a wiggle a la SF in the southeast and a wrap-around cycletrack on the northeast.
@10: Elevated structures are not allowed in Seattle, anymore. They cut off the [something] from the [something].
How is the city going to get the 20% of residential units in the city limits still using oil heat to convert? (And a smaller number but nonetheless some still use wood or coal as well.) That is not a trivial expense.
That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.
Copenhagen is like three times as dense as Seattle, and the difference gets much, much larger once you get out of the city limits. Our region is as car dependent — maybe more — than Los Angeles (the distances are just as far, only with far fewer people or things to go to packed into them).
The fact is, hardly anyone bikes in Seattle, and the current wave of bike improvements is likely to increase the percentages by a percentage point or two.
And Seattle doesn’t have any control over what happens in most of its watershed; the region is what counts, and Seattle is a small and shrinking part of the region. The region is becoming more car-dependent, not less. Whatever gains the city makes will be at the expense of economic activity moving out to the burbs. Copenhagen, by contrast, is mostly within the city limits.
And Copenhagen is almost entirely populated by Danes. Seattle is almost entirely populated by SUV mavens.
@13, you’re going to make MIke O’Brien’s smile turn puzzled if you don’t pipe down.
High-minded aspirations. Nebulous, non-binding goals. Painless prescriptions. A chance to present oneself in a benignly green light. And all without doing a damn thing. If ever there was an initiative that was tailor-made for Richard Conlin, it is carbon neutrality.
Carbon neutrality in 2030 is the kind of shiny bauble that Seattle politicians use to distract us from real environmental issues the way politicians in the rest of the country try to distract us with Mexicans and Muslims.
See, I’ve been in Copenhagen, and while Seattle is a nice place, it resembles Houston a hell of a lot more than it does Copenhagen, and always will.
@16 While I don’t feel the same fury you do, I do agree that Conlin is a classic greenwaher. He is the Uptight Seattleite incarnate. He is lucky he was recently re-elected. It will not happen again. The young and politically active have seen through his thin green veil.
Is Conlin a liar or an idiot?
I would prefer if Seattle became America’s Amsterdam…. think of the tourist revenue that would bring in and plus there are tons of bikes, fuel efficient scooters and electric cars there as well
No matter how bad he gets, Conlin will never be awful enough to meet all your villainy needs, you know. You should diversify.
I think Mike McGinn should turn Seattle into Central Islip, Long Island, where he grew up.
Seriously, Islip is where all the middle class moved to get away from the density. It’s pretty much an ideal community.
Seattle would be a step up in the world, if it could Islip-atize itself.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=central+is…
We should make it as easy as possible for people to move to Copenhagen, or Portland.
And stop enabling and institutionalizing people’s lifestyle choices by providing excessive inter-city mass transit.
Maybe people just need to move closer to their work, or shut the fuck up about their shitty commute.
#23
Agree. 100 percent. There’s more and better bicycle paths in Redmond and Issaquah. Go East Young Hipster.
#24: Leave us the fuck alone. You stay in suburban Kent and we’ll live in urban Seattle. We sure as hell aren’t bothering you, as most of us have never and will never set foot inside Kent city limits (let alone know where Kent is).
#26.
You sure know where our pockets are though.
Rotton Urbs tax the Country Party.
@26:
Dense urban centers are nearly always the net tax donors of their regions. Low-density wastelands are nearly always the net government service receivers (i.e. “welfare queens”), primarily due to the per-capita cost of extensive infrastructure.
This is especially true in a state with no fucking income tax.
You’re a thief, John Bailo.
Seattle is so full of shit.
and full of itself.
which is the same thing…….
we laugh at you.
You people crack me up with your crappy comments. What are you doing to make things better? Probably zero, unless you count complaining about everything on SLOG as something. Keep in mind we exceeded our previous goal. Seattle is by far the best city in world. Saying Seattle more closely resembles Houston is just ridiculousness. Stop it.
@13 and @17
FNARF you pretty much nailed this.
I’ll throw in my two sense worth. I think Seattlites are getting LESS not more creative than their blue collar forbears… The zombifying denialism about how corrupt our politics are saps the vitality out of the citizenry.
On the other hand, my house has a green roof…lots of moss rotting the composite.
@23 People need to stop comparing barely dense sprawly PORTLAND to Copenhagen. Also apparently no one has been to the Netherlands. It is a biker’s paradise. I share the America’s Amsterdam wish.
The revised 520 plan, with the BRT and light rail capability, if tweaked to enable carbon tolling, could be carbon neutral.
But the Billionaires Tunnel will always be the worst carbon choice of all three plans – not just in construction – which is a nightmare in total carbon cost factors; but in operation – which having fans and lights running 24/7/365 is an absolute mockery of Green in a city that doesn’t even WANT the damned thing.
We said no.
We meant it.
I haven’t even filed the WTO suit. But I will if you push me that far. And that will take down the Gates Foundation with it.
@19 – yes.
Sounds like Conlin needs some remedial basic math. Last time I checked, 6 > 0.
@13 actually, Seattle owns the watershed. You’d know that if you actually bothered to learn anything.
I moved to Copenhagen from Seattle five months ago. Here’s what I have seen:
The Danes love their cars as much as anybody else. But cars are simply too expensive for everyone to drive: gas runs about $7/gal and tax on a new car is 180%. In my neighborhood, there are big Audi wagons, huge Chrysler vans, and his & hers Land Rovers, but people in most places can only afford to train, bus or bike. Prices for light and heat are similarly exorbitant. Sales taxes like these would be hugely regressive — and just cause for a revolt — if it were not for the equally huge income taxes — the top bracket is 63%, and the gov’t plows the revenue back into free healthcare, free universities, and all those amazing bike paths (there are hundreds of Burke Gillmans).
Is this SOCIAL ENGINEERING? Yes. Is this what it takes to get to carbon neutrality. Quite possibly.
@36, which is what I was getting at with “populated by Danes”. We’re quite simply never going to have that kind of a tax structure. If gas ever hits $4 here there will be a revolution, and taxy Democrats will not be leading it — subsidize-my-SUV Republicans will.
@35, you don’t even know what the fuck I’m talking about.