[Vision2020] Tom Lamar's Editorial Re: Hawkins Water & Sewer

[Ted Moffett]

Pat et. al.

I first lived in Moscow, Idaho, in 1965.  Life was comfortable, safe and
peaceful (far more than now), and most all the reasonable necessities were
available locally, without having to drive long distances to shop.  The
reasonable necessities were shipped to Moscow even then (and many of the
reasonable necessities Moscow offered were not a matter of shopping) ...with
no mega malls: good food, materials for construction of shelter (our house
was newly built), dishwasher, washer and drier, education, culture, art,
safe streets and community, medical care, phone and television, electricity
(yes, even in those primitive and brutal days before the "Malling of
America" we had electricity, wired into our cave), a record/stereo shop
downtown, Haddock and Laughlin, from which I could special order most any
recording;  and very importantly, a sense of being connected to Nature
without feeling that connection being eroded by the manifest destiny of the
economic and lifestyle logic of endless development, population growth,
increasing resource extraction, and increasing energy consumption, a destiny
that if modeled just in
China and India, let alone the USA, will rape the planet of resources,
induce runaway climate change, ecosystems collapse and mass extinctions of
species on a global scale.

The US level of consumption of resources and energy, with an assumption
of endless development and urbanization, is not a sustainable model,
certainly not without massive roll out of alternative energy.  If Pat is
correct, I must be wrong in stating that Moscow, Idaho in 1965, with no mega
malls, was a good place to live, and that most all the necessities for that
good life did not require driving long distances to shop.

Pat, it seems you are not looking at the big picture of the impacts our
incredible consumer lifestyle has globally.  Local water conservation or
fossil fuel use are just part of the equation.  Consider the impacts of
buying goods made in China, that the Hawkins Mall will no doubt stock to the
roof.  For example, Home Depot sells wood products made in China.  China,
after devastating their own forests, now imports a huge amount of wood from
other nations, some of it illegally logged or logged with environmentally
destructive practices.  China in some respects is like the "Wild West" of
free market capitalism.  So US consumers are supporting global deforestation
to some extent when shopping at Home Depot.  And China's huge manufacturing
sector, growing in size at a fantastic rate, is powered in large measure by
coal power, polluting China's cities, pollution that drifts across the
Pacific to hit the USA; and emitting so much CO2 that US efforts to reduce
CO2 emissions to mitigate climate change appear futile to many.  Many of the
products US consumers buy from China are manufactured using dirty coal
power, dirty coal power that would not be tolerated if the coal fired plant
was located in the Moscow/Pullman corridor.  We export the pollution
resulting from our consumer lifestyle, at an increasing rate since the
globalization economic model has been expanding.

These issues are immensely complex, far too so for a Vision2020 post to
explore in detail.  If the Hawkins mall was being built employing
alternative energy and emphasizing sustainability, I would not feel so
uneasy about what it represents in the big picture.

But I think there is a moral question underlying our way of life that seems
to be forgotten in many of the discussions about economic growth.  Given
that US rates of consumption of resources and energy simply cannot be
realistically extended to the six billion plus other humans populating our
planet, as third world nations expand development, we have two
options: either we announce that we in the USA get to live the way we do,
and most of the rest of the world cannot, based on whatever economic,
theological, military and/or moral logic, or we downsize our resource and
energy consumption to more sustainable levels (though technological
breakthroughs may in part solve the energy problem).  There is another
option, lowering world population by billions below current levels.  This
may happen anyway, by necessity, due to war, climate change, agricultural
collapse, etc.

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/Contents.htm

Ted Moffett

On 2/17/08, pkraut at moscow.com <pkraut at moscow.com> wrote:
>
> I have attended city meetings for years and the talk about water and how
> much we do not have has gone on and on and on and on and on.....
> Many of us do not need to hear any more of it and we are well aware that
> the group who belives that will be unhappy with anything that
> might...just might have an effect on the water useage. My problem is that
> no difinitive study, and we have spent a lot of money on studies, will
> say we will be out soon or maybe sooner than soon. I the mean time
> Pendleton, Yakima, TriCities and many others are growing and using water
> at will. So, here we sit...not growing, still driving for an hour or two
> to find shopping and I say enough already. Lets spend our money on
> something that will help our population such as better options on housing
> and not driving long distances to shop. If it will help our no water
> crowd build a resevoir (SP) somewhere but lets get on  with life!
>
>
>
> > On Feb 17, 2008 2:32 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > chasuk at gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > > After reading Tom Lamar's Moscow/Pullman Daily News editorial
> explaining his
> > > no vote on the Hawkins deal with the city of Moscow, I am even more
> > > convinced claiming that "every nuance of opinon had already been
> expressed
> > > ad nauseum" is simply untrue, and expresses a dismissiveness towards
> the
> > > critics of the Hawkins deal that appears an attempt to shut down
> debate and
> > > discussion about an important set of issues that should have been
> placed
> > > before the public for discussion, as Tom Lamar stated:
> >
> > You may be right, up to a point.  The opinion I expressed was just
> > that -- an opinion -- and it may have been wrong.  I tend to be wrong
> > about as often as I am right, sometimes more.  However, I have no
> > sinister plan to shut down debate, which is what you seem to imply.
> > Debate away, please.  When I made my admittedly dismissive post, I was
> > of the opinion that the issue was akin to flogging a dead horse.  I am
> > still half of that opinion, but am feeling gently dissuaded.  Who
> > knows what tomorrow will bring?
> >
> > Chas
> >
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