Thread started by trickmilla at 11.20.07 - 5:01 pm

I just heard this on KPCC about 5 mins ago. Cycling is mentioned in passing, however I think it is up to us to remind these people that cycling offers more per transportaion dollar than probably any other "green solution".

< ahref="http://www.scpr.org/news/stories/2007/11/20/08_green_city_112007.html">KPCC LINK

Listen

Can Los Angeles, where the blue sky is often brown, become the "greenest city" in America? Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa thinks it can. Many environmental experts share his opinion, but KPCC's Ilsa Setziol says it'll be no easy task to transform the sprawling city into a model of sustainability.

Ilsa Setziol: On a sweltering and smoggy day, biologist Rosi Dagit takes me to a creek in the Santa Monica Mountains. At the edge of a sycamore and willow-shaded pool, she points out a cluster of small fish.

Rosi Dagit: If you look amongst that group of Arroyo cub, you'll see there are some four-inch fish that look a little bit different. And those are baby trout, steelhead trout, that hatched out in May or June of this year.

[Sound of water splashing]

Setziol: I strap on a snorkel and dip into the pool. The rainbow-colored and black-speckled fish dart around me.

Setziol: I've just come nose to nose with four of the most endangered fish on the planet, right?
Dagit: You got it.
Setziol: And they're here in the Santa Monica Mountains, just a few feet from a road, people whizzing by.

Setziol: For Dagit and others, restoring steelhead to the Los Angeles River would be the ultimate sign that L.A. had reversed more than a century of environmental degradation.

Dagit: Wow! I think if we ever did that, that would make L.A. the greenest city on the planet. It would be really a remarkable feat to do.

Setziol: For one thing, the L.A. River's concrete channel makes the water flow too fast at times when steelhead migrate upstream.

Dagit: If you took out the concrete, flooding is a huge issue. In order to anticipate and deal with the flooding in a civically responsible way, you're gonna have to create buffer zones. Those become greenbelts that are accessible for everyone.

Setziol: Environmentalists say Los Angeles needs to rethink the massive infrastructure that moves water into and away from the city. They say L.A. spends nearly a billion dollars to import and deliver drinking water every year.

Meantime, the county spends millions of dollars on flood control channels that speed rainwater out to the ocean, unused and laden with pollutants.

Andy Lipkis: We're throwing away about half the water we need.

Setziol: Andy Lipkis, president of TreePeople.

Lipkis: If we were to capture and use it right, we could replace half the water we need to import. That's critical as we talk about sustainability and green city.

Setziol: Los Angeles is starting to move in this direction. The city recently redesigned a street in Elysian Valley so it captures stormwater and cleans it.

Andy Lipkis strolls through an oak and walnut woodland in Coldwater Canyon. Towhees hop along the ground. He says to be more sustainable, L.A. also has to get serious about the amount of electricity it gobbles up. Lipkis steps into TreePeople's conference center, now under construction.

Lipkis: The concrete looks like normal concrete, but it's 50% fly ash scraped out of Southern California Edison's power plant smokestacks. The walls are insulated with leftover scraps from Levi jeans factory. The building needs to use practically no energy.

Setziol: Earlier this year, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced an aggressive target for reducing greenhouse gases by 2030: A reduction to 35% below 1990 levels. To meet the goal, the city will have to tackle its biggest source of emissions: transportation.

[Sound of airplane flying over]

Setziol: Across town, Joe Lyou watches planes take off at LAX.

Joe Lyou: Unfortunately, because we're starting from a point where we have the worst air quality in the entire country, weaning ourselves from cars, and weaning ourselves from traditional power sources of fossil fuels, minimizing emissions form air ports and ports, is going to take decades and decades of work.

Setziol: Lyou sits on the board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Lyou: And it's gonna take long-term planning – reconstructing our city. We reconstruct the city in a way that's going to pollute much less.

Setziol: In his climate plan, Mayor Villaraigosa proposes to convert all MTA buses to alternative fuels, and retrofit city-owned buildings to be more efficient. He also wants to give every household two compact fluorescent light bulbs, cut the water Angelenos use by 20%, and get more people to walk and bike.

L.A. City Council president Eric Garcetti says even small measures could help.

Councilman Eric Garcetti: We spend an hour and a half in our cars; only about a half hour of that is our commute. So another hour is spent going to the grocery store, going to the dry cleaner, visiting friends... We don't have to get everybody on buses five days a week; we just have to get them maybe to walk two blocks twice a week, and we'd see a huge reduction in the traffic we have.

We grew up in this era of no limits, like there was this place called "Away" that we could throw things. And that's gone.

Setziol: TreePeople's Andy Lipkis heads for a hiking trail.

Lipkis: I think we need to mobilize the whole community. We have leadership that's willing. We have people who are generally willing. But we need to take literacy and understanding to a much deeper level.


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KPCC LINK



trickmilla
11.20.07 - 5:02 pm

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i sure hope so

Write the mayor, challenge him to make good on his words,

mayor@lacity.org



e-rock
11.20.07 - 6:30 pm

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I WUD LYKE 2 SAY SUMTING

LA CAN HAZ WORK TO DO

K THK BAI



sexy
11.20.07 - 11:09 pm

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Sexy's picture was a bit green so i color corrected it.




trickmilla
11.21.07 - 1:12 am

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I remember when the air was brown, I miss those days...



rev106
11.24.07 - 7:06 am

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Considering how good the weather is here (especially compared to Portland or Seattle), I'm always amazed that bicycling is rarely considered to be a viable transportation option. People take their cars to the gym to do "spinning classes", though. Figure that out.



angle
11.24.07 - 3:08 pm

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Yeah they also take the elevator to get to the second floor of their workout complex! Figure THAT out!



User1
11.24.07 - 4:21 pm

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This "Green" shit is all about a belief in the technology wizards bestowing upon us more consumer goods that are efficient.

The sad things about a sustainable economy is that if the U.S. become sustainable tomorrow, our currency would collapse and we'd be in a lot of economic trouble.



ubrayj02
11.24.07 - 9:31 pm

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I think the earth can take care if it's self. It will dust us off it's crust like dandruff when we're done.

Breathe deeply....



rev106
11.25.07 - 8:32 pm

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I totally remember when the LA sky was brown. Remember smog alerts? Those were the best.

But yeah, all the "green" awareness shit is just marketing bullshit to sell more stuff. People that "sell" green don't really give a fuck about the environment. They want your cash. It's no different than people that sell you their art. Ultimately, they want your money. Reminds me of this quote: "Gimme all your money!" - Fluffer Jeff.



the reverend dak
11.25.07 - 11:14 pm

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