Legalectric

Dear ol’ Steiner has lost a lot of weight, and her intake and output is way down.  Today she didn’t even want to eat chicken bits or get up to say “Good Morning” to her friend Kady.  She’s also not hanging around in the kitchen asking for treats, and for a while was quietly huddled in a corner near the fridge.  She’s resting on a pillow near a window… I wish we had a southern window where she could lay in the sun, it would probably feel good on her old bones.  She’s at least 14 I think, I inherited her around 2001? 2002?  Time for some medicinal catnip!

Today Alan got to stake the locations for the new trees, after the City Forester had come by to talk about options and locations.  We’re getting four, three to replace the three we’ve lost, and one to get a head start on the BIG, MASSIVE one that will come out when the redo Sturdevant.  Hate to lose it but they say no way, it’s up so high over the curb, the sidewalk is coming up.  But this tree is at least twice the height of the house, as is the one across the street, probably planted way back in the 1920s when they built our house and the one across the street.  Do NOT want to lose it.  Oh well.  As Alan says, we’ll be in the nursing home before they look like anything.

And the Great Wall?  It’s coming together, they poured the first couple panels last week and the forms came off, and today they’re pouring the second group of panels:

And here they are pouring the concrete:

Long live net neutrality!

Last night we went for another picnic, this time near home, at Memorial Bluff.  They’ve spent a lot of time, money, and effort to rehab the park, and at the Upper Stone Quarry, have put in the most amazing stone picnic tables and benches, HUGE hunks of rock.  The trail near our old house on 8th is now dubbed the “Cow Path,” apparently they regularly herded cows up to the top to graze!

We went to the Upper Quarry, and again picked the table with the view:

Yes, it’s got the “best view,” but look at this!  Who would put a picnic table directly under a transmission line, with the upfront close and personal view of this transmission tower?  What were they thinking?  Not everyone has an affinity for transmission!!!

But some do — we were joined by two flapping and calling birds, hawks or immature eagles, who hung out on top of the structure objecting to our presence.  Lighten up, birds!

Alan and I were invited to attend a climate change bicycle tour meeting, joined/hosted by Red Wing locals Mayor Dan Bender, and Evan Brown, cook extraordinaire (see his blog, Cooking for the Future) and member of the Sustainability Commission, so we went.  What’s a climate change bicycle tour meeting?  Well, they’re on tour, and there have been other meetings as a part of this tour, in Lakeville, Northfield, Winona, and here in Red Wing, other locations perhaps?  I think there were five.

Participating organizations were:

Citizens’ Climate Lobby

Cool Planet

MN350

When I first heard about this, what came to mind was Neil Ritchie & the solar bike tour back in 2004, they were in Northfield in September, 2004, and many other locations in SD, IA, and MN, raising awareness about renewable energy and urging people to contact their legislators!

This was similar but slightly different, focused on getting word out about climate change.  Hopefully, it raised awareness and got Red Wing residents interested in the doings of Red Wing’s Sustainability Commission.  The Sustainability Commission played a large role in getting the City’s solar project going.  It’s a treat to go to City Hall, which we did yesterday to attend the West Avenue Construction meeting, and see the city vehicles parked under the solar array canopy.  LOVE IT!!  And there’s additional solar on the roof of the fire station and at the city’s Public Works vehicle parking lot.  Yes, PUBLIC WORKS!

We had to do the “go around the circle” thing, and I noted “garbage” (the loud and stinky incinerator right behind me), “transmission” (directly overhead), and “nuclear” just up wind and upriver in the city limits, and that RES must be tied to shutting down coal.

Here’s that transmission line, and it seems to have been redone recently, look at that beautiful, decorative cortend steel:

Alan raised the incinerator issues he’s been working on, that the City of Red Wing burner has been shut down, and it was clear that they’d not really thought about incineration and the contribution of burning to CO2 generation/climate change.  In discussing garbage and shutting down the incinerator, “zero waste” was not part of their vocabulary, and instead the binary response was “well, where will we put it?”

Here’s a photo as we were leaving of that former coal plant, now garbage plant, the one David Sparby and an IRP said would be shut down — ask Ramsey and Washington Counties about that:

Their handouts didn’t note shutdown of incinerators or coal plants:

Promote a just transition to clean energy to stop the progression of climate change.

Resist the aggressive expansion of extreme fossil fuel extraction, including tar sands, that threatens life itself.

Nothing about shutting down coal.  ???  Nothing about decreasing burning.  But again, there’s that insidious link that “clean energy = less CO2” which we know isn’t true.  Now that we have the electric market set up, and the transmission infrastructure in place to ship all that excess generation from the Dakotas through Minnesota eastward, they won’t be shutting it down anytime soon.  Now that Sherco 3 is up and running after a year and a half off-line, we lost that opportunity to keep the biggest coal plant in Minnesota shuttered.

If you’re looking for reduction of CO2, and Renewable Energy Standards won’t do anything towards that goal unless it’s explicitly linked.  RES MUST BE LINKED TO SHUTDOWN OF COAL.  Otherwise, it’s just adding “renewable” generation on top of a surplus, and they can sell that surplus coal generation now that they’ve got the transmission to do it.