Media

Bike Couriers Bike Shop in the News

Raising the bar with the Green Convene

by Jackie Green
The Courier-Journal
Monday, 23 March 2009

As several vehicles simultaneously approach an intersection, the result can be harmonious convergence or violent collision. Several elements are approaching Louisville - the federal economic stimulus plan, Kentucky's $3.7 billion road plan, the Partnership for a Green City's Climate Action Report, global climate instability, and the meltdown of unsustainable consumer economies. Those watching the approach include the Green Convene, a forming coalition of local organizations promoting sustainability in public policy.

Our over-consumption contributes to climate instability. Even as our failure to build a sustainable economy will more quickly destabilize global climate, accelerating climate instability will destroy consumer economies. We can elect harmonious convergence or violent collision.

The Partnership for a Green City (Louisville metro government, Jefferson County Public Schools and the University of Louisville) is releasing their Climate Action Report. The measures and timetables outlined in the document could be stronger. Nevertheless, the Report's 174 recommendations include items such as: 1) sourcing renewable (not coal or nuclear) electricity, 2) constructing more efficient buildings, 3) reducing sprawl while encouraging public transit, walking and biking. All very reasonable in light of the 2008 Brookings Institution ranking of Louisville as fifth-worst among 100 largest U.S. metro areas in per-person carbon emissions for residential and highway energy use.

'Dusty' concept
Enter the Kentucky road plan - a dusty 40 year old concept promoting highway building. This year it includes items such as $175 million in bonds for the Ohio River Bridges Project (a $4.1 billion project) and $42 million to widen I-64 to six lanes for five miles in eastern Jefferson County. KY Road Plan projects such as those, and the Partnership for a Green City Climate Action Report’s position on reducing sprawl and encouraging public transit, walking and biking are on a collision course.

The KY Road Plan seems content to engineer collisions. How does widening I-64 to six lanes relate to Cochran Tunnel's four lanes? How do one or more new Ohio River Bridges relate to plummeting car sales, fragile fuel supplies, diminishing highway freight and increased need for public transit? Why are we budgeting $30 million to relocate (for the second time in recent years) Crittenden Drive to make way for a runway large enough to accommodate the huge Airbus at Louisville International Airport when UPS cancelled the Airbus contract in 2007? Why spend $4 million just to buy some rights of way and do utility work only along Billtown Road where a crossing guard was killed last week when the entire region needs an undisputed pedestrian right of way around every school?

Stimulus dollars
Enter the tens of millions of federal stimulus. Will we spend those funds on energy intensive, automobile dependent, sprawl inducing, climate destabilizing projects? Or, will we revitalize the urban, preserve the rural, reduce consumption of energy and material, improve public transit, and make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists? And, what public input will guide these funds?

The Green Convene, a forming coalition of local organizations promoting sustainability in public policy, recently prioritized Wide Impact Focuses. They are: Transportation, Local Food & Agriculture, Energy, Land Use, Consumption, Climate Change and Education. Sound familiar? The Green Convene has raised the bar. It challenges every local sector to clear this new sustainability bar. The Green Convene challenges us to spend the limited federal and state resources coming to Louisville on projects that will reduce consumption, improve public transit, diminish automotive dependence, make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists, limit sprawl, conserve fuel, preserve the rural, revitalize the urban and slow global climate instability. The Green Convene challenges the community to avoid violent collision, seek harmonious convergence.

Jackie Green A Green Convene spokesperson