With the location, staging, photo ops, and direct comments, the President expressed an underhanded dismissiveness to climate for this Earth Day.
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| Front page today: Airport mania |
The framing was all about investing in airports and celebrating costly and polluting air travel. Not about shoring up support for future climate action, but expressing retrospective worries that "you're not appreciating me and my party enough" as the midterms approach.
Maybe the demands of the election really require this, but it seems like a real failure of nerve and vision, a refusal to meet the moment.
More locally we have our own version.
At Council on Monday there is an update on our own airport:
The airport has received a letter of interest from a regional commercial air carrier, and is expecting letters of interest from at least one, and possibly two additional air carriers in 2022....
The airport will also be required to develop and seek approval for an updated Airport Security Program (ASP)....If commercial air services return, the FAA will upgrade Salem Airport’s operating category from Category IV (no scheduled air service) to Category I (scheduled air service), placing additional requirements on existing airport operations and maintenance staff.
Approval of an airport fee waiver program to support new startup airline service, and which is standard practice at airports. A fee waiver policy has not previously been approved by City Council. FAA allows for up to 24 months of fee waivers of the direct costs to airlines including landing fees, terminal space rental fees (if any), and ramp parking fees (if any). These fee waivers will be of minor significance to the airport budget and are likely to be offset by increased parking and fuel flowage revenue. [italics added]
More subsidy, more greenhouse gas pollution. No sense that any kind of climate analysis is part of this decision.
This is not the right direction.
1 comment:
I’m disappointed with every politician who has expressed support for this airport plan. We should be spending money on a commuter rail connecting Salem to Portland and PDX. That will have climate, economic, and social benefits unlike air service that will help only a few and is doomed to fail.
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