Get involved in the 10/10/10 Dig in for Climate Justice!
Mass Direct Action against Climate Crime

Council of Canadians 10/10/10 Dig in for Climate Justice information meeting

Wednesday Sept. 15, 7.30pm sharp

Holy Trinity Church, 1440 West 12th Ave. (main floor)

Global warming related disasters, such as the floods in Pakistan, are a growing threat particularly to low income people. Now transportation is Canada’s largest and fastest growing source of the greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating this crisis, making freeway building a climate crime.

Come and get involved in making the 10/10/10 Dig in for Climate Justice a success.

About the 10/10/10 Dig in for Climate Justice:

On Sunday October 10, 2010 as part of the 350.org 10/10/10 Global Work Party people around the world will be doing hands-on projects to shift humanity off the path towards runaway global warming. In greater Vancouver, we are organizing a mass direct action against a deliberate climate crime – the South Fraser Freeway.

The South Fraser Freeway is an est. $2 billion freeway to be paved through BC's best farmland and the delicate banks of the Fraser River.

We will remove ‘preload’ sand from the proposed freeway route and fill sand bags to raise nearby flood control dikes around a diverse Surrey neighbourhood, to protect it from flooding caused by global warming.

Organized by the Council of Canadians and GatewaySucks.org

For more info visit www.dig4justice.org

email edoherty at uniserve.com or call 604-877-1223

See the Sept 7, 2010 call for mass direct action from Bill McKibben of 350.org at http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-05-call-for-direct-action-in-climate-movement-we-need-your-ideas

Note:
Our Chapter is joining with two other COC chapters and Gateway Sucks to help organize this event. Our meeting will give you some background about the South Fraser Freeway Project and then let you know how you can participate in and support this day of action on October 10th. The more people who take part, the more effective this action will be. Come and help us get our message through to the politicians and the public.

For any of you who like the line "building freeways to solve congestion is like buying a longer belt to cure obesity", you will not be surprised with the following:

No relief for commuters under Fraser mouth
New ring road won't ease congestion
Brian Lewis, The Province
Published: Tuesday, August 24, 2010

If you commute daily through the George Massey Tunnel and think that the $1.2-billion South Fraser Perimeter Road will ease the 51-year-old crossing's congestion when it opens in 2013, you'd better think again.

A significant portion of the tunnel's daily gridlock is caused by an ever-increasing number of trucks, running to and from Deltaport and B.C. Ferries' nearby Tsawwassen terminal, that merge with commuter traffic from South Delta, White Rock and south Surrey into the tunnel's inadequate four lanes under the Fraser River.

Figures obtained last week by our sister weekly newspaper, the Delta Optimist, show that the B.C. government estimates truck traffic through the Massey Tunnel will hardly decline once the 40-kilometre SFPR is completed sometime in 2013.

[snip]
blewis@theprovince.com
http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=4e36d95f-74d1-40ff-b640-a06937541be8

But really, the quote should be something like "building freeways to solve congestion is like spending a billion dollars on a longer belt to cure obesity"

This is what Metro Vancouver chief administrative officer Johnny Carline said recently:

"We don't think we'll be able to afford full-scale investments in the Evergreen Line, south of the Fraser and UBC all in the life of this plan . . . We can't afford to have investments going out to UBC that take away from investment in the major growth areas."

Read the quote carefully - "full-scale investments" really means Skytrain type light metro, or the kind of light rail highway engineers love, with lots of underground stations and underpasses so road space for cars is not reduced.

The fact is that if the province shifted all the billions they plan to spend on urban freeways and other roadway expansions we could have even this kind of gold plated transit well before 30 years is up (noting that most of the gold goes to serve the automobile rather than the transit rider).

Photo: The consequences of climate crime - floods in Pakistan

But we don't have 30 years. Just think about what global warming is doing already in Pakistan and in Russia.

As I wrote earlier, we don't have to wait as long if the transit is on the surface using existing road space. We need a full network of rapid transit within the next five years, and we can afford it if we put the priority on transit not freeways.

Mark your calendar for 10/10/10 www.dig4justice.org

In case anyone is feeling dispirited about stopping the South Fraser Freeway, in an almost unheard of example of protest stopping a project in Russia a series of protests culminating in a banned concert has stopped a freeway project on the outskirts of Moscow. We are not alone, and the tide is turning.

See you on 10/10/10 www.dig4justice.org

MOSCOW (AFP) – President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday ordered the suspension of plans to build a motorway through a forest outside Moscow, in a rare case of the Russian authorities responding to popular protests.

His sudden announcement came after least 2,000 people turned out Sunday for a banned concert in central Moscow protesting plans to build the motorway through the Khimki forest north of the Russian capital.

The protest was much larger than previous opposition protests under the decade-long rule of strongman Prime Minister Vladimir Putin where unsanctioned rallies have been characterised by thin turnouts and police crackdowns.

"Although a decision was taken by the government to build the motorway, people including the ruling party and the opposition, social groups and experts say that additional analysis is needed," Medvedev said.

"I order the government to halt the realisation of the construction and carry out additional discussions," Medvedev added, speaking of the "increased resonance" surrounding the project.

"This decision must be carried out, taking into account the appeals and the worries," he said in a message posted on his video blog.

The numbers at Sunday's protest were undoubtedly boosted by the presence of Yury Shevchuk, a Soviet-era rock star who has become an outspoken Kremlin critic and defiantly sang at the rally.

The order came following an apparently well-choreographed appeal earlier in the day by ruling party United Russia to halt the construction of the road.

It was not immediately clear if Putin -- currently on a highly-publicised trip to the Russian Far East which has seen him chase whales and go bear-watching -- was consulted over the decision.

United Russia, whose overall leader is Putin and which dominates parliament, has become known for consistently rubber-stamping Kremlin policies without quibbles.

"We have different opinions within United Russia about this question. But the situation does not look simple," United Russia's chairman Boris Gryzlov said in a statement.

Activists welcomed the move by United Russia as long overdue but better late than never.

Environmental campaigners have campaigned for months to block the construction of the highway which aims to relieve traffic on the Moscow-Saint Petersburg route but has become a rallying cause for the opposition.

"We are very happy," said Yevgenia Chirikova, the activist who has led the protest movement against the motorway. "But it is hard to explain because until now the authorities were not reacting to the civic protests," she told AFP.

The decision was the latest sign the authorities were keeping a beady eye on the protest movement in Russia after the economic crisis and wildfire catastrophe.
[snip]
Full text at http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100826/wl_afp/russiapoliticsenvironmentpoliticsprotest_20100826164612;_ylt=AlxarnDnq4o_YBIi12Ma5PaQOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTNnNGowN2JvBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDEwMDgyNi9ydXNzaWFwb2xpdGljc2Vudmlyb25tZW50cG9saXRpY3Nwcm90ZXN0BHBvcwMyOARzZWMDeW5

by Eric Doherty

Bus lane in Brooklyn - Photo www.mta.info

About 15 years ago one of the hot topics in the Vancouver papers was the plan for an at-grade light rail line from Coquitlam to UBC that would have taken up two lanes on Broadway and the Lougheed Highway. The plan was that rapid transit would connect Coquitlam and central Broadway within a few years. Shortly thereafter, the provincial government suddenly switched to a much more expensive - and never completed - SkyTrain line: today’s Millennium Line. Both Coquitlam and UBC are still waiting for rapid transit, and they may wait for decades, given the estimated $4.2 billion needed to connect both with SkyTrain on elevated guideways and subway tunnels.

The long-promised Evergreen Line SkyTrain branch to Coquitlam and the Northeast Sector is estimated at $1.4-billion but only $800 million has been committed by senior governments, leaving a $600 million gap. Translink is so strapped for cash that it was forced to mothball one of its three Sea Buses to reduce operating costs. The $2.8 billion estimated cost of extending the Millennium line to UBC is so daunting that it makes this funding gap insignificant.

In New York, the squeeze on the transit system is more intense. As transit ridership is growing rapidly, the aging subway system needs billions in upgrades, and even a modest extension to one line would cost billions they don’t have. But instead of crying about the expense of new subways, New York is putting rapid transit on the street with Bus Rapid Transit.

Full text at http://thecanadian.org/k2/item/226-doherty-bus-rapid-transit

Well, I can`t even see the North Shore mountains from Vancouver because of the smoke from forest fires. Much of the rest of the province is under a much thicker blanket of smoke from 400 or so fires burning. Because of global warming, many of the trees in the interior of BC have died - making a very ordinary forest fire season start to look like it could become a disaster after only one week of extreme conditions.

Maybe it is time to stop talking about all the nice green jobs we could have by dealing with global warming, rather than letting it spiral out of control. As Bill McKibben puts it: "The task at hand is keeping the planet from melting. We need everyone -- beginning with the president -- to start explaining that basic fact at every turn."

Maybe it is time we started pointing out what most people have already figured out, no matter how quickly we reduce emissions we are going to feel some severe fallout. An August of smoke and evacuations is just a warm up. Sea levels will rise by at least a meter in the lifetimes of today's children, and Delta and Richmond will have it easy compared to many areas of the globe.

But that is if we take decisive action now, allowing the climate criminals to run the show will make things much much worse. As Bill Mckibben explains, it is past time to start building a climate justice movement with teeth:

We’re Hot as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take It Any More
Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming

by Bill McKibben

Try to fit these facts together:

* According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.

* A "staggering" new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.

* Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.

* And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn't do less than they could have -- they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.
I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I've spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I'm a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.

For many years, the lobbying fight for climate legislation on Capitol Hill has been led by a collection of the most corporate and moderate environmental groups, outfits like the Environmental Defense Fund. We owe them a great debt, and not just for their hard work. We owe them a debt because they did everything the way you're supposed to: they wore nice clothes, lobbied tirelessly, and compromised at every turn.

By the time they were done, they had a bill that only capped carbon emissions from electric utilities (not factories or cars) and was so laden with gifts for industry that if you listened closely you could actually hear the oinking. They bent over backwards like Soviet gymnasts. Senator John Kerry, the legislator they worked most closely with, issued this rallying cry as the final negotiations began: "We believe we have compromised significantly, and we're prepared to compromise further."

And even that was not enough. They were left out to dry by everyone -- not just Reid, not just the Republicans. Even President Obama wouldn't lend a hand, investing not a penny of his political capital in the fight.

The result: total defeat, no moral victories.

Now What?

So now we know what we didn't before: making nice doesn't work. It was worth a try, and I'm completely serious when I say I'm grateful they made the effort, but it didn't even come close to working. So we better try something else.

Step one involves actually talking about global warming. For years now, the accepted wisdom in the best green circles was: talk about anything else -- energy independence, oil security, beating the Chinese to renewable technology. I was at a session convened by the White House early in the Obama administration where some polling guru solemnly explained that "green jobs" polled better than "cutting carbon."

No, really? In the end, though, all these focus-group favorites are secondary. The task at hand is keeping the planet from melting. We need everyone -- beginning with the president -- to start explaining that basic fact at every turn.

It is the heat, and also the humidity. Since warm air holds more water than cold, the atmosphere is about 5% moister than it was 40 years ago, which explains the freak downpours that seem to happen someplace on this continent every few days.

It is the carbon -- that's why the seas are turning acid, a point Obama could have made with ease while standing on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. "It's bad that it's black out there," he might have said, "but even if that oil had made it safely ashore and been burned in our cars, it would still be wrecking the oceans." Energy independence is nice, but you need a planet to be energy independent on.

[snip]

Which leads to the third step in this process. If we're going to get any of this done, we're going to need a movement, the one thing we haven't had. For 20 years environmentalists have operated on the notion that we'd get action if we simply had scientists explain to politicians and CEOs that our current ways were ending the Holocene, the current geological epoch. That turns out, quite conclusively, not to work. We need to be able to explain that their current ways will end something they actually care about, i.e. their careers. And since we'll never have the cash to compete with Exxon, we better work in the currencies we can muster: bodies, spirit, passion.

[snip]

Full text at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/04-1

So are you going to be an active part of the movement? One place to start is with the 10 10 10 Dig in for Climate Justice.

While passing by 82 6th Avenue, the old Helios spot currently being transformed into a beer bar, we noticed wood has replaced the previously metal storefront. And when we popped our head in the door we got some more details on the spot. The exterior wood is from an old home in Park Slope, and it's also being used for the big wooden tables inside. If all things go well, the place should be open in a few weeks. You can expect smoked meat and cheese, Belgian beer, and Belgian fries. Looking promising?
Beer Bar for St. Marks and 6th [Brownstoner] GMAP

The city has hired a consultant to do a feasability study. More at The Post, The News and NY1.

· Car share program could be coming to Hollywood by Nov 1[Hollywood Unbound]
· Sudden shutdown of SM skate park has parents upset [SMDP]
· The five things America's strongest 20 cities have in common [Atlantic]
· Pasadena bikers to recreate infamous Pismo Beach photo [PSN]
· Councilman wants neighborhood councils to have more power in re: bike lanes [Streetsblog]
· Decisions coming in LA elephant zoo exhibition case trial [NBC4]
· Seven big development initiatives to watch in the Planning Dept [CityWatch]
· LACMA won't take over Watts tower unless liability issues are covered [LAT]
· Interative look inside an award-winning solar powered-house [NYT]

The yoga scene in Williamsburg will get a jolt next week when a popular Tribeca studio opens up a branch on the northside. According to the blog Well and Good NYC, Kula Yoga Project Williamsburg is set to open next Thursday in one of the commercial spaces at 85 North 3rd Street. The new studio, which is being constructed out of reclaimed wood floors from the Catskills, will also feature a shop for yoga accessories and a vegetarian cafe. GMAP

Pacific Center retail space formerly leased to Tony's Italian Steakhouse Photo by Rich Alossi.

Two years after signing a lease agreement on a prime corner space across from Pershing Square, Tony's Italian Steakhouse's lease has been terminated, bringing closure to a project that left many Downtowners scratching their heads. Though planned to be an elegant, upscale eatery, major construction never took off at the long-empty and highly visible corner space in the Pacific Center at 6th and Olive streets.

Owner Primo Hospitality Group announced plans for a rapid expansion across Los Angeles just before and during the height of the recession, but financing issues stymied the company's growth and have left a trail of questions in Downtown. The original Tony's location in West Hollywood closed earlier this year, and several Downtown projects have slowed or stalled mid-construction, including the firm's Primo Cucina, a restaurant and gourmet market in the Arts District, and Primo Bistro in City West. However, construction has begun once again on Caffe Primo, a mid-range restaurant at Wilshire and Flower, and completion is tentatively scheduled for the end of the year.

Derrick Moore, vice president of brokerage services at commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis, tells blogdowntown that a non-restaurant tenant may take the space vacated by Tony's in the next few months, though no details could be given at this time.

By Rich Alossi.

A reader sent in this picture of the newly renovated PS 107 on 8th Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets. The facade was spruced up, and our tipster thinks new windows have been installed. They also add, "The pipes that run vertically up the eastern side of the building have some public art on them. On one set of pipes, there is a large sculpture of a spider. On the other, a caterpillar." Click through to see the oversized crawlers. GMAP

The headline pretty much says it all. The new Subway location at 713 Fulton Street that we noted last month opened this morning with requisite flags and balloons. A little deeper into Fort Greene, the popular Cobble Hill Thai joint Joya opens a new location at 723 Fulton Street on, we hear, Monday.
Subway Coming to Fulton Street [Brownstoner]
Joya Takes a New Angle in Fort Greene [Brownstoner]
Streetlevel: Joya Expanding to Fulton Street [Brownstoner]
New Restaurant Coming to 723 Fulton Street [Brownstoner]

Approaching a meter that still has a minute or two left on it to find a cop already teeing up a ticket on his hand-held device is one of the most infuriating experiences one can have living in this city. And though the NYPD has long denied that quotas are driving this kind of behavior that undermines the generally law-abiding citizens' trust in the men and women charged with protecting them, an audiotape of an 81st Precinct meeting now confirms the quotas are true. Read more at the New York Times.