Riding the Legacy Parkway

[Parkway Panorama] I bicycled the soon-to-open Legacy Parkway early Sunday morning with my favorite cycling partner. The 14-mile stretch between Farmington in Davis County to Redwood Road and I-215 in Salt Lake County is scheduled to open to traffic next weekend. We did a round trip of 28 miles.

As you can see here, the big plumb for recreational and commuting cyclists alike is the paved bike trail that runs parallel to the Parkway. The trail is pancake-flat, with few curves so it's easy for anyone to ride. Bike partner and I ran into about a dozen cyclists of varying ability and physical shape (including the two guys on touring bikes puffing away on a smoke break under an overpass) and not a one was struggling.

People with a memory of 10 years or so will recall the bitter division over building the Parkway. After a long legal battle between state Republican leadership and environmentalists, a compromise plan was struck, which included wetlands protection on the west side of the highway, as well as a ban on semi-trailer trucks. The speed limit on each direction of the two-lane road is 55 mph (uh, right. We'll see how long that lasts. Can you say "Bangerter Highway?"). People who want to drive faster and big rigs will have to stay on I-15.

Anyway, it's about the best mitigation we could have hoped for--knowing how Utah loves its roads at any cost. It took a legal fight to get the Legacy lovers to realize that the area needs protection. Riding the trail, I saw the power of political compromise up close and personal.

(Holly Mullen)

The New Math... for Environmentalists!

[Environ-mental Patients]

Is it me, or does the idea of moving the polar bears to the Antarctic as a last-ditch effort to save them seem like nothing less than desperate arrogance? ("Some species have to be written off..." WTF???) A few articles recently seem to think it's not only a good idea, but it's the only option left to save the cuddly things.

Now, I'm no Greenpeace-belongin', tree-huggin' hippie (just the boring, run-of-the-mill doobie-smokin' hippie), but I too would love to make sure we do anything we can to ensure their survival. But this? Really? I don't like it one biota!

Yet, there is a certain magical charm about the penguins and polar bears meeting for the first time. Maybe the politicos and talking heads had planned this all along: that the whole purpose of letting the Arctic melt from all this CO2 is so ig'nunt Americans everywhere can finally be right about these animals sharing a frozen habitat.



(David Alder)

Guv Going Green With the National Climate Registry

[Green Vibes] Gov. Huntsman back in May of 2007 happily signed onto a 30+ state green coalition called the Climate Registry. Now that the program has officially gotten started Huntsman has announced five Utah companies (including Kennecott) and two state agencies will be taking part in the great, green experiment.

With over 30 states participating, the idea will be to have a registry to track greenhouse gas emissions, and create a standard for the industry to follow and self regulate themselves on their GHG emissions.

The idea sounds enviro-riffic to me!

But ... my inner contrarian points out there are some shortcomings. One thing is that "self-regulating" is not something any industry as a whole has really pinned down, least not of all when it comes to the environment. The other thing is a concern brought up by critic Myron Ebell, of an energy policy think tank who figured the whole move was symbolic. Ebell said in a May 2007 The Nation article Ebell was quoted as saying "you look at these states and a lot of them are just jumping up and down trying to attract a lot of attention."

Ebell imagines the registry as something meant to force the national congress into a more concerted action. But beyond symbolic feet-stamping the initiative might not do much for states working with each other on a regional level. Beyond joining a common list, the initiative can't do much to help states work out their energy issues. Which would've been nice here in Utah where frustrated activists are finding they don't have much say when it comes to stopping a Nevada power plant from being put on the UT/NV border.

But as a united effort the initiative wouldn't necessarily be impotent. If for example the standards became widespread, and were subject to independent verification then there would be a huge incentive for the national house to accept the registry's standards. With voluntary standards reported through the climate registry then used as a measuring stick for federal rewards to individual states and companies, based on their reported progress in reducing greenhouse emissions.

Which could be a great way to harmonize the collective green-vibes of all the states involved, of course, what to do with all those green intentions still will be the decision of the feds. The only problem there being is that an initiative like this one is one that any federal legislator would eat up with a spoon because they can stand behind in their home state and then secretly screw it over in Washington. Then they get all the green they could ask for; green thumbs up from activists back home, and plenty of green dead presidents from the energy lobbyists on the hill. (Eric S. Peterson)