Monday Mailing 100719

Monday Mailing

Year 26 • Issue 5 7 October 2019 1.

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Americans Fear Climate Change and the Cost of Fighting It (Michael Hoch) Dreaming Big for a Risky Hemp Crop The Cities Where Job Growth Is Outpacing New Homes Most Isolated Tribe In Continental U.S. Gets Broadband Seattle Looks To Churches For Help With Tiny House Villages — But Continued Tensions Could Complicate Efforts Courts Can’t Keep Columbia And Snake River Salmon From The Edge Of Extinction How Fossil Fuel Companies Are Killing Plastic Recycling (Michael Hoch) Overlooked by Venture Capitalists, Underserved Entrepreneurs Find Support from Local Governments Could a Solar-Powered Uprising Reshape Puerto Rico?

WEBINAR - Bringing Nature to Communities: The Role of Land Conservancies in Addressing Vacant Properties

1. Americans Fear Climate Change and the Cost of Fighting It More people are coming around to the idea that climate change is really bad news. A recent Washington Post poll found that 38% of Americans now consider climate change a crisis, with another 38% calling it a major problem. And denialism is in retreat -- an overwhelming majority, and even 60% of Republicans, admit that the problem is manmade.

Quote of the Week:

“The weak can never forgive.

Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

Oregon Fast Fact #13

The state park system has 159 yurts located in 19 parks. Yurts are a circular domed tent suitable for camping.

The question is what Americans would be willing to do to tackle the problem. The same poll found that only 37% believed that major sacrifices would be necessary, with 48% saying they would be minor. As for what sort of sacrifices people are willing to make, the poll found majorities opposing even minor financial burdens on the middle class: If Americans are unwilling to pay even $2 more per month for electricity, or see gasoline prices rise by even 10 cents a gallon, the prospect for really dramatic action on climate change seems low.

Although the wealthy can and should be expected to make larger sacrifices than the middle class, it’s vanishingly unlikely that any plan serious enough to slow global warming will leave the bulk of Americans financially untouched.

But if Americans are going to be asked to engage in a war on climate change, they should understand the material and economic sacrifices that will be required of them. The best way to do this is to look at an ambitious, well-crafted climate plan like the one put forward by Washington Governor Jay Inslee.

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Inslee’s plan calls for carbon-free power production by 2035. That means that coal and natural gas will be phased out, and replaced with sources like solar, wind, and nuclear. This will require extensive construction of new power plants, energy-storage facilities and electrical grids to dispatch power from where it’s produced to where it’s needed. Buildings will also have to be retrofitted to use electricity rather than gas for heating and cooking. And a switch from gasolinepowered cars to electric vehicles will require the construction of a nationwide network of charging stations.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Dreaming Big for a Risky Hemp Crop

Standing between two rows of thigh-high hemp crops close to the Tennessee-Kentucky border, the retired owner of a New Hampshire convenience store cheerfully recalled why he chose to grow his first hemp crop this year.

Barry Paterno, 67, is a gardener, not a farmer — he likes to grow tomatoes and corn. But he saw on the local TV news that an acre of hemp could bring in as much as $50,000 a year. Paterno, who now lives in Tennessee, was inspired to begin his farming career.

Stories like his have been repeated across the country: Farmers are rushing to plant newly legalized hemp in hopes of striking it rich, or at least making a good chunk of change in a period of low commodity prices. Hemp is a non-psychoactive form of cannabis.

But as growers across 34 states start to harvest as much as half a million acres of hemp this fall, many newcomers have no idea who will buy their crop or even who will prepare it for sale.

Paterno, speaking during a tour of a farm owned by an organic farmer with experience growing marijuana, said he doesn’t know what kind of return he’ll get on his $8,000 investment.

So far, Paterno has lost money on seeds that didn’t sprout and flower as promised. Some of the seeds were males even though he thought he was purchasing only the females that produce the CBD he wants.

To access the full story, click here.

3. The Cities Where Job Growth Is Outpacing New Homes

California is permitting new housing at the slowest rate since the Great Recession according to a new report released by California’s Legislative Analyst’s office, using data from the Construction Industry Research Board.

“Since 1990, only two other time periods—the first half of 1990s and the Great Recession—have had permitting declines as significant as the state has experienced over the past year,” analysts Brian Uhler and Justin Garosi write.

As it turns out, the rest of the country hasn’t rebounded so well since 2006, either. By analyzing Census Bureau data on building permits issued in the years since 1990, rental-property site Apartment List found that 38 percent fewer housing units were permitted nationwide in 2018 than in 2005, the year permits peaked before the recession.

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“The total number of residential housing units permitted in 2018 was roughly the same as the number permitted in 1994, when the country’s population was 20 percent less than it is today,” reads the report, which was released last month. For cities and states that are trying to combat the affordable housing crisis, and especially if they are scrambling to keep up with an influx of jobs—both true of California—this spells trouble.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Most Isolated Tribe In Continental U.S. Gets Broadband

Nestled among turquoise blue waterfalls and cottonwood trees, the tiny Havasupai reservation is accessible only by foot, by mule or by helicopter. It's a five-minute flight from the rim of the Grand Canyon to Supai Village on the canyon floor, where 450 tribal members live in small homes made of panel siding and materials that can be easily hauled or lifted in.

It's no wonder Internet access has been a challenge. But recently, the Havasupai have had some help from the Oakland-based nonprofit MuralNet. "Look at that," MuralNet CEO Mariel Triggs says as tribal members look at smartphones. "We got bars! Dang!"

Triggs trains the Havasupai how to install a network box outside a home. MuralNet — with the help of Flagstaff-based Niles Radio — built what's called a microwave hop from towers at the Grand Canyon's rim that beam a broadband signal down to Supai Village.

"And we were able to put up a network in just a few hours for less than the cost of a Toyota Corolla, frankly," Triggs says.

The total cost was closer to $127,000. Triggs says the isolated geography wasn't the issue.

Rather, policy was holding up the process. The Federal Communications Commission finally granted the tribe a permanent broadband license last spring.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Seattle Looks To Churches For Help With Tiny House Villages — But Continued Tensions Could Complicate Efforts

There are two ways forward for Georgetown’s tiny house village, the city’s current director overseeing homeless services told a packed room at the Georgetown Old City Hall.

The city could either close the village starting in March 2020, like the city closed Licton Springs Village last year. Or, with a sponsor from the faith community, the South Seattle site could stay open indefinitely.

“Faith sponsors have a lot more flexibility than the city,” Jason Johnson, interim director of the city’s Human Services Department, told the crowd Monday night.

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Georgetown residents and business owners had questions. Why a faith sponsor if Georgetown was on city land, where it’s been since 2017? Couldn’t the city keep the village open? Would community members have any input on this decision?

The city of Seattle is facing this decision with many of its tiny-house villages. Despite the fact that villages enjoy comparably more community support than when Seattle officials first opened them in 2015, existing city code doesn’t allow the city to keep them in one place indefinitely.

But there’s dissension among some village residents and community members over whether partnering with faith-based organizations is a good step.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Courts Can’t Keep Columbia And Snake River Salmon From The Edge Of Extinction On Sept. 20, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission voted to close all fall steelhead fishing on the Clearwater River and part of the Snake, tributaries of the Columbia, because so few fish had returned from the ocean. These steelhead are one of 13 threatened or endangered salmon and steelhead runs in the Columbia and Snake rivers.

Since the Columbia Basin’s rivers were impounded by dams — including four on the Lower Snake, and more than a dozen on the Columbia itself — a handful of salmon populations have died out. Now, about two-thirds of the remaining runs are at high risk of extinction. Compared to pre-dam returns in the 1950s, only 3% of wild sockeye and spring- and summer-run chinook, and 15% of wild steelhead, returned to the upper Snake last year, according to an analysis by the advocacy group Save our Wild Salmon. This year, returns look even worse.

Years of low salmon numbers, concern over endangered orcas that feed on salmon, and cracks in political support for the Lower Snake dams are breathing new life into the fight to breach those dams. For decades, lawsuits by tribal nations, state agencies and fishing and conservation organizations have forced changes in dam management aimed at improving fish survival. But those court-ordered tweaks haven’t pulled salmon back from the brink. Now, salmon advocates are looking to the court of public opinion in their quest to see the Lower Snake River dams removed.

To access the full story, click here.

7. How Fossil Fuel Companies Are Killing Plastic Recycling

So many things we buy come packaged in plastic containers or wrappers that are meant to be used once, thrown away and forgotten ― but they don’t break down and can linger in the environment long after we’re gone. It’s tempting to think that we can recycle this problem away, that if we’re more diligent about placing discarded bottles and bags into the curbside bin, we’ll somehow make up for all the trash overflowing landfills, choking waterways and killing marine life.

For decades, big petrochemical companies responsible for extracting and processing the fossil fuels that make plastics have egged on consumers, reassuring them that recycling was the answer to our trash crisis. Just last month, Royal Dutch Shell executive Hilary Mercer told The New York Times that the production of new plastics was not the problem contributing to Page 4 of 6

millions of tons of plastic waste piling up in landfills and drifting in oceans. Instead, she suggested, the problem is one of improper waste disposal. Better recycling, she implied, is the solution.

“We passionately believe in recycling,” Mercer told the Times.

But plastic recycling is in trouble. Too much of the indestructible material exists in the world, more than our current recycling networks can handle. And the very same companies that say recycling is the answer are about to unleash a tidal wave of fresh plastics that will drown recyclers struggling to stay afloat.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Overlooked by Venture Capitalists, Underserved Entrepreneurs Find Support from Local Governments

When it comes to attracting seed capital to start a business, entrepreneurs like 28-year-old De’Sha Bridges, founder of De’Shade Designer Eyewear, are at a clear disadvantage. Now living in Long Beach, California, she’s a young black businesswoman originally from Chicago. And while the number of startups founded by black women — about 270 in 2017 — has doubled since 2016, and their tiny share of venture funding is increasing, a majority of black women-led startups still aren’t able to raise any money.

Related Stories “It’s tough to be taken seriously,” said Bridges. “When I go to business events, people often ask me if I’m in the right place. It’s clear that when they look at me, they don’t always see a person who could have a thriving business.”

Women from all backgrounds don’t fare much better. In 2018, venture capital investments soared to $130 billion, of which women received only 2.2 percent, the same percent as for the previous year, according to a report in Fortune. In 2017, just 1 percent of venture-backed founders were black — men and women — and 1.8 percent were Latino. Yet these groups make up 13 and 18 percent of the U.S. population, respectively. The legacy of discriminatory redlining and lending policies also means that many entrepreneurs of color have no generational wealth to draw on to kickstart their businesses. Instead, they have to rely on restrictive — and often hard to get — bank loans.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Could a Solar-Powered Uprising Reshape Puerto Rico?

On a balmy day this past May, I sat on a white metal park bench outside of Plaza de Recreo Guanina, a small community meeting space consisting of a few fenced-off trees and a lot of concrete in Miramar, a neighborhood in the southeast Puerto Rican city of Guayama. Just outside the square, a few palm trees swayed in a breeze tinged with just the slightest scent of rotten eggs. A run-down green truck pulled up nearby, and two locals-turned-activists—Aldwin Colón Burgos and Erasmo Cruz Vega—came out to greet me. Upon shaking hands with Cruz Vega—a spectacled man in his early 70s who has called the community home for nearly 60 years—he handed me a white surgical mask. “You’re going to need it,” he said in Spanish.

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We piled into the truck and Colón Burgos, a man in his mid-40s clad in a t-shirt and jeans, expertly navigated us down a neglected series of public roads. I took Cruz Vega’s advice and kept the mask clamped tightly over my nose and mouth. Less than ten minutes later, we turned onto a street bordering a high chain-link fence. On the other side towered the Applied Energy Systems solid-fueled power plant, Puerto Rico’s only coal-burning facility.

As soon as we pulled up, what seemed to be security personnel appeared on the other side of the fence, partially blocking our view. But they couldn’t cover the 120-foot-tall mountain of coal ash—a heavy metal-laden byproduct of the coal burning process. Since the plant opened in 2002, it has produced around 400,000 tons of it per year, which workers have dumped in openair pits. With nothing to protect the soil and aquifers from potential contamination, each gust of wind is free to carry coal ash particles westward, past the road where we were parked and into Miramar.

Colón Burgos referred to the ash pile as “our Mount Vesuvius.” It only took a few minutes of sitting there staring at it before my eyes were watering and my sinuses began to burn.

To access the full story, click here.

10. WEBINAR - Bringing Nature to Communities: The Role of Land Conservancies in

Addressing Vacant Properties (Thursday, October 24, 2019 9am PDT)

Over the past five years, the Saginaw Basin Land Conservancy (SBLC) has conducted a series of vacant land projects in the city of Saginaw, specifically looking to improve quality of life, build a stronger community, and help people connect with the natural world. Saginaw, in midMichigan, was one of the leading industrial cities during Michigan’s lumber and auto manufacturing heydays. With the decline in manufacturing industries, Saginaw faces continued disinvestment and significant problems with vacant properties – both structures and land. In response to the significant need for vacant land management, SBLC made an intentional shift from focusing primarily on conserving rural natural spaces to bringing the natural world to urban spaces - meeting people where they live. SBLC’s success in leveraging partnerships and volunteer capital to tackle the challenges associated with urban land vacancy demonstrates how conservationists can partner with regional and municipal leaders to create unique solutions to vacant land. In this webinar, SBLC will discuss their motivation and strategies for working on vacant urban land, the projects they’ve developed, and the continued opportunities to develop innovative solutions for land-use issues in the region.

Presenters: Zachary Branigan - Executive Director, Saginaw Basin Land Conservancy Ted Lind - Director of Community Conservation, Saginaw Basin Land Conservancy To register for the webinar, click here.

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