Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has Santa’s back:
SEATTLE – Mayor Greg Nickels today launched “Operation Save Santa” to help protect the North Pole from the ravages of global warming. The mayor will enlist helpers in Santa hats to hand out 2,000 free energy efficient light bulbs prior to the tree lighting celebration at Westlake Center at 4 p.m.
The mayor kicked off the campaign today with an open letter to Santa. Concerned by the record ice melt in the Arctic Ocean this summer, Nickels reassured Santa that Seattle and 728 other U.S. cities are making progress protecting their communities, the planet and the North Pole from global warming. As he pointed out when he launched the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in 2005, Nickels is convinced that in the absence of federal leadership, cities must take action together.
“Some say that if we don’t do something to cut greenhouse gas emissions soon, the North Pole might be ice-free in summer as early as 2030. That’s why we’re launching ‘Operation Save Santa,’” Nickels wrote in his letter.
Nickels asked Santa to recognize that Seattleites should be on his “nice” list for all of their efforts to conserve energy. They helped make Seattle the first city in the nation to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 8 percent below 1990 levels. And they continue to make a difference through Seattle Climate Action Now, a grassroots campaign to help people reduce climate pollution at home, at work and when making transportation choices.
“I’m really proud that Seattle is making progress on protecting our climate. I know a few light bulbs won’t fix the ice maker at the North Pole, but it’s a start. And when we all work together, we can make a difference,” Nickels wrote.
It might be too late:
Yeh keep handing out the taxpayers money! Must be fun!
Ho Ho Ho
This planet has no problems that can’t be solved by the extinction of one species.
Recognizing that global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels and doing something about it are two different things. You can’t reduce greenhouse emissions simply by switching from petroleum transportation fuels to electricity-powered mass transit and/or cars if the electricity has to come from fossil-fuel-burning power plants. What is needed is technological innovation that will either eliminate (or at least substantially reduce) CO2 emissions or sequester them. Handing out flourescent light bulbs merely helps reduce the need for new coal-burning power plants by a marginal amount. What is really needed is significant investments in energy technology R & D by both the private and public sectors.
These largely-symbolic activities, however, are an important precursor to the actions that really count because they drum up public support for the more meaningful commitment of national and global resources that will have to be made to solve this problem.
Man, this mayor has become so like shrub Bush and Giuliani. Nickels just can’t find enough photo-ops to get his mug in the press. Maybe Seattle will get lucky and if some Dem wins the presidency they will pluck him and stuff him in some cabinet or preferably LESSER position. Get him out of our hair.
I’m a Dem too. But still, get the man in a spot where we don’t have to live with him and his Ceis sidekick, and BESTEST of friends Paul Allen who wants to own/run this town but figures it’s not good enough for him (Allen) to live in. Hell, maybe they could appoint Nickels to some position in FEMA! Then, he could really find some photo-ops when the crisis hits and he instead focuses on shutting down nightclubs (bet he could done a ‘Heck of a Job’ in New Orleans).
In the meantime, we’re stuck with the Alaska Way Viaduct that could come crashing down to squash people like a bug or swimming like sardines in the dark of the Battery Tunnel. Perhaps Nickels is hoping all his greenhouse posturing will take attention off the fact that voters TOTALLY disagreed with his tunnel squasher plan. And that he can’t provide any reasonable oversight or direction with the 520 bridge.
Report Finds Detention of AP Photograph Unjustified
An Associated Press internal investigation has concluded that Bilal Hussein, an AP combat photographer in Iraq, was kidnapped by U.S. forces in 2006 and has been held without trial for 1 1/2 years without justification.
The report says there is no evidence to support U.S. government claims that Hussein sympathized with insurgents, and suggests the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer was imprisoned because “very high ranking” U.S. government officials didn’t like his photographs.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....her21.html
What the hell. I hate Santa. Sayonara, Santa.
@6 The U.S. government’s treatment of journalists covering the Iraq war is reminiscent of how the Stalin and Hitler regimes dealt with journalists who reported things they didn’t want the public to hear.
Burl Ives, though, had a great voice, didn’t he?
@7 Santa’s ok. He’s definitely not a Republican! Republicans don’t leave presents under the Christmas tree, they steal the whole shootin’ match including the tree!
@3, yup, we’ve gotta plow as much money into energy research as we can, but scientists mostly do not expect a technological breakthrough to solve global warming.
This isn’t because they think science won’t advance rapidly; it’s because we need to cut our GHG emissions so quickly by such a large amount — while population continues to grow, and while giant Asian economies reach our level of affluence.
Given the magnitude and immediacy of the problem, the consensus is that we have to work on the big things, while simultaneously doing a lot of little things — like efficient light bulbs — none of which amount to much on their own, but which collectively can get us to where we need to go.
The Sept. 2006 issue of Scientific American had a nice layout of the technology landscape, as it was understood then. A more scholarly touchstone (but older, and maybe even more optimistic) is this paper:
http://fire.pppl.gov/energy_socolow_081304.pdf
Given the epidemic of obesity sweeping this country, it is inappropriate for the mayor to even attempt to intervene in favor of this “jolly old elf.” He presents a horrible example to our children on appropriate body habitus.
And were that not enough, the man compels vertically challenged slave laborers to work 264 days a year producing cheap foreign made toys in a workshop without even the most minimal OSHA protections, then compels harmless reindeer to lug this workload around globally.
Where is your shame, mayor?
George, that’s a classic!
Happy Holidays, y’all.
It’s really important to debunk the GW hysteria/myth. Just like the Population Bomb and Global Cooling. Why are liberals preventing the building of nuclear power plants and forcing environmental destruction such as mountaintop removal for coal? Why do liberals hate America so much?
I should also mention liberalism is a mental disorder.
@11 How much good will those lightbulbs do when China is building, on average, a new coal-burning power plant (without emission controls) every day? China is planning to bring 2,000 new coal-fired power plants on line over the next few years. In recent years, we’ve seen satellite photos of the smoke from Asian forest-burning covering the entire Pacific Ocean. Don’t get me wrong — I think we should do the lightbulb thing — but let’s not kid ourselves that it has any meaningful impact. It’s symbolic. Mankind is going to destroy itself. Ultimately, this planet will be the ultimate Easter Island, the final manifestation of the Tragedy of the Commons.
@14 “Why are liberals preventing the building of nuclear power plant”
Because of the Price-Anderson Act, which forces surrounding communities to bear the unacceptable (and unfathomable) financial risks of a nuclear reactor. The $500 million cap on nuclear operators’ liability is a deal-breaker. Why should I agree to let them risk my home and life savings, when I have no control over their operations, and the industry as a long and sordid history of negligence, malfeasance, and outright fraud? The problem isn’t the nuclear technology; the problem is the people in the U.S. nuclear industry. None of them can be trusted with our property, much less our lives. But nuclear plants aren’t even negotiable, as far as I’m concerned, until Congress repeals Price-Anderson and passes a law requiring every nuclear plant operator to carry enough insurance to fully reimburse anyone who sustains economic losses as a result of an accident. Yes, the operators will have to pay for the insurance, but that’s a cost of business they should pass along to the ratepayers. The surrounding communities shouldn’t have to subsidize the electricity customers by being forced by Congress to put their homes and businesses under the risk of something over which they have no control.
One reason why we don’t have more nuclear plants is because they’re not cost-competitive if you take the subsidies away. Even though Price-Anderson has been on the books since 1957, and has spared all U.S. nuclear plant operators the expense of liability insurance, nuclear plants are being closed, not built, in this country. That’s not because of permitting or environmental opposition, either, because the plants wouldn’t have been built in the first place if that were the case. It’s the economics. Nuclear power is expensive and can’t compete without subsidies.
@16, let me just say that your pessimism is not unwarranted.
However, the China argument is not strong, for two reasons:
First, if there is any path towards solving global warming, China and India must reduce their emissions instead of increase them. Yet both have made it absolutely clear that they will not do so until we reduce ours. This means that us doing our part is a necessary but not sufficient condition for climate sanity.
Second, China and India are right to insist that we take care of our own house first. Those countries combined produce maybe a fifth of the GHG’s per capita that we do. Unless Asians are worth less than Americans, we are in no position to point fingers.
18 So’s ethanol made from corn…at least here in the US.
I’d like to raise the question of whether a lot of things, including nuclear power, are “done better” in other countries these days because they have to pay for themselves instead of serving for sham “pseudo-enterprises” to cash in on government handouts.
5 Greg Nickels running New Orleans? Brings up a jarring vision of Bourbon Street being renamed Chardonnay Boulevard and lined with Smooth Jazz clubs.
Ok, all I’m getting here is excuses for not building nuke plants. If France can do it, we can do it. Fucking retards.