In the face of our great national crisis, it has been anodyne this weekend to register a couple of details on our Climate Action Plan.
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Bob Cortright in today's paper
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Community Advocate Bob Cortright has a short piece on Our Salem in the paper.
And the City and consultant team appears to have executed a little bit of a course-correction, jumping a climate plan activity farther up in the queue.
Over the weekend the City and consultant team launched a digital sticky note project to collect ideas on greenhouse gas reduction. By name, it appears to be something that had been planned for the Spring and may have been moved up and bumped the "vulnerability assessment," which is our current phase.
By itself this doesn't cure the deficiencies we've seen with the planning process so far, but it's a move in the right direction.
It is, in fact, what should have kicked off the first round of brainstorming instead of the "Envisioning a Resilient Salem" sticky note project.
The consultant team could break it down more specifically: We need to reduce driving by 25% (or 50%), what specific things would help you drive less? Questions that are too general may not capture the magnitude of change that is necessary. If we need to reduce VMT very significantly, is allowing people to get sidetracked on reducing idling at intersections and drive-thrus at all constructive?
It's never been clear that the messaging and rhetoric is focused on the right substance and scale, and focused to appeal to the right people.
The reception of rhetoric and hopes for resulting persuasion are important to think about.
If there is one thing our crisis has made clear, it's that criticism on climate is not always offered in good faith. Advocates have known this, but the media sometimes over-commits to a both-sides frame, and maybe we can correct some of this now.
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Thursday's New York Times
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Wednesday was a big day, an historic day of infamy.
Now that the revolutionary aims of the reactionary right are more clear, it might be time to go back and revise our understanding of the Cap and Trade protests here.