Notes from the City Manager's Update

Not much transportation news right now, so a couple of quick hits from the City Manager's update.

As if these were the same kinds of businesses?

It is a little disingenuous to talk about the richest man in the world and his $3.7 million subsidy in the same breath as a very local cheese manufacturing project. One of these hits our agricultural, food-processing sweet spot, the other is big box generica that will change substantially with robot labor, and enriches someone who thinks outer space, not earth itself, deserves his investment.

A little worried about this as "we're doing enough already"

The idea that "the Salem community...[is] mostly unaware of the overall progress...in mitigating...greenhouse gases" is hardly relevant. We need to do so much more, and falsely anodyne proclamations about "look at us, look at how much we are already doing!" just are not very helpful at this point. The frame really needs to be our climate emergency, not tiny bits of incremental progress. The tone here is cavalier and worrisome, too much cheering for Salem, not enough on the work at hand.

Tree mortality from climate disruption, Monday

On air pollution, yesterday's Oregonian, front page