It’s pretty cool to live in a town where this even comes up in a city council meeting. We might not agree with the perspectives shared, but at least they’re sitting down to talk about it. It should be built into the moral underpinnings of any City Council to talk about its impact on the natural world; at the very least they can talk about it. I have friend who always says, no, the very least they can do is nothing. Well most cities are not doing anything. Cheers Flagstaff.

Somewhere along the way, we turned well-known facts into a belief system. It’s easy not to “believe” in global warming. I first heard about this stuff when I was a kid, and as a Phoenix kid from the suburbs, it scared the shit out of me. But then, like so many other topics thrust upon children in school, we moved on. For the majority of us, it didn’t stick, because it was taught as science instead of ethics.

Six of the seven members of the Flagstaff City Council, including the mayor, responded to a series of questions about a range of measures proposed to slow global warming, in line with the City Council’s 2006 pledge to cut emissions to pre-1990 levels by 2012.

With no changes, greenhouse gas emissions produced from residents, tourists and businesses across the city are forecast to increase by 52 percent from 1990 to 2020. Most climate scientists believe these emissions are a key component in global warmng.

I really wish people would stop calling it global warming. Warming here causes freezing there, and droughts over there. It’s climate change. It’s a much more accurate description. It’s a lot easier to make fun of global warming than it is to climate change.

Anyway, there are two members of city council that are still in the dark.

Two councilmen, Joe Haughey and Scott Overton, voted against the proposal to limit greenhouse gases at the city level in 2006 and say it is not the city’s top priority or role to combat global warming.

Because of the way we live on the planet, it is just crucial to include global environmental ethics as well as the local. It’s especially imperative for small towns that can experiment with a lot of different ideas and initiatives that, if successful, could perhaps be applied on a large scale in some cities.

Still these condescending city council members continue.

Haughey, who makes air quotes with his hands when speaking of the “global warming-climate change thing,” said global warming “could be, maybe not” a problem, and that the science is not entirely conclusive.

Overton’s response was parallel.

“It is not definitively known,” he said. “It’s still being questioned.”

Climate change is unbearably palpable in northern Arizona. The climate is changing and our civilization is causing it. We’re in the midst of a mass die-out of species at the level of the dinosaurs and our civilization is causing it. While residents of Flagstaff refer to last winter as a “big winter,” those residents who lived here 20 years ago shrug their shoulders and laugh. Take a look at some of the older houses in Flagstaff that have a back door off of the second floor, this is the kind of winters that Flagstaff used to have. I’ve seen a picture of my mother posing next to her bike in the 70’s and the snow is up to the handlebars. Today is November 26th and it’s raining.

Local ski resorts must be “saved” by producing fake snow with poisoned water. This is the extent to which we are willing to stay in denial. If the city were united in confronting reality, we would have no choice but to dismantle those systems that are not and can never be made sustainable. Keeping this a debatable issue only functions to justify an immoral and, frankly, insane lifestyle. We think we need cars, we need dams, we need cell phones, and we need cheap consumables and clothes made by slaves in other countries. So, anything that points toward the fact that this lifestyle is killing everything around us is “not entirely conclusive.” It must be called into question.

So we’re faced with the choice of driving, for example, and having a living planet that will sustain future generations. That logic is easy, but it results in giving up something we feel we need. So the parameters are changed and we pretend that the world is infinite, self-healing, and invulnerable to such mass destruction. It’s delusional. It’s selfish. It’s narcissistic. Anybody who refers to climate change as a belief or maintains skepticism, especially in Northern Arizona where the evidence is in our face all the time, is simply not paying attention. We don’t need people like that in positions of power in our city.

We need to live sustainably or we won’t be living at all. Even if Haughey and Overton don’t “believe” in climate change, measures that address climate change are also steps that will move us in a sustainable direction. Their condescending skepticism is dead weight.

Can anyone believe this is actually happening? The EPA outlandishly approved the Bush Administration’s plan to sell off land that borders National Parks across the country. And when did this news come out? On election day.

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing new air quality rules that will make it easier to build coal- fired power plants, oil refineries and other major polluters near national parks and wilderness areas, despite the fact that half of EPA’s 10 regional administrators have formally dissented from the decision and another four criticized the move in writing.

meanwhile….

Conservation groups have filed a lawsuit demanding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency force states to get moving on their obligation to clean up the air pollution overflowing into national parks, wilderness areas and wildlife refuges.

Okay, so the very idea that we have an “environmental movement” means that there is a big problem regarding our relationship with the world around us. But you know things are really messed up with environmentalists are suing the Environmental Protection Agency. And we’ve all heard the conspiracy theories about how the function of national parks is to preserve our country’s natural resources, to be extracted as and when necessary. With ANWAR constantly under attack and now this, it’s getting harder and harder to believe that anyone in power is interested in meaningfully protecting anything.

I woke up on Saturday anticipating a hike in Sedona with my roommate and his visiting family. We decided instead that we would ride our bikes down the switch backs on 89A, then get a ride back up. Then, when we were down there, instead of getting a ride back up or hitching, we decided to ride back up to Flagstaff on Schnebly Hill.

I’ve ridden down the switchbacks on 89A before. It’s sweeeeet to say the least. I suggest that anyone remotely in love with riding bikes in Flagstaff do this at least once. It seems reckless and stupid, but it’s quite safe – cars cut you a lot of slack, and when the turns are at their tightest, you can go just as fast than the cars around you. Just make sure your breaks are tip-top.

Unprepared, but determined, we dropped into a bike shop to get some extra tubes just in case. I had never been on Schnebly Hill before and the times my roommate had been on it with a truck, he was forced to turn around because it was too rocky to continue. Having not anticipated this ride up until we were down there, I probably would have chosen not to ride my cross bike. The old folks in the bike shop made fun of us. “What are you guys riding, cross bikes?” *Insert condescending bike shop old-guy laugh here*. Honestly I wasn’t that worried. Blowing a tube was possible, but as I’ve said hundreds of times, I can do anything on that bike.

As it turned out, the tubes were useless anyway. On the way up—legs pumping, wheels criss-crossing the trail—I asked, “you have the pump right?”
“What? No. I thought you had it.”
Silence.
“Now I know why I bought that tube, Kyle. To fucking strangle you!”

Going up, we passed several Sedona jeep tours heading back down. By the way, those Pink Jeep Tours? I found out a little history. A real estate developer founded the company. He would take prospective buyers out on his jeep to multi-million dollar properties, before the land was ruined (I mean developed). After he sold all his land and made a ton of money, he realized that he enjoyed taking yuppies out on his jeep. Anyway, the only time I fell on the trail was right in front of a jeep full of people. I didn’t even fall, I simply stopped and forgot I was clipped into my pedals and very slowly fell over. Laughs all around, even from me.

The other trouble was that we left around 5, which gave us only an hour or two of light, before it got dark. And it got really dark, really fast. The entire milkyway was illuminated by 7pm. All we had were these little frog lights, which allowed us to see maybe 5 feet in front of us at a time. We did happen to have some good rear lights, which wasn’t worth a crap in the middle of the desert. I was afraid it would get too cold, but it stayed reasonably warm until we were 6 miles from Flagstaff. Then it was, of course, freezing. We got home around 11.

Power Paths, a documentary directed by Bo Boudart.

WHERE: Cline Library Assembly Hall, Northern Arizona University

WHEN: Monday, November 17, 2008 at 7-9 pm

WHAT: Power Paths Documentary (55 minute), followed by a panel discussion.

Can America truly achieve energy independence?

Power Paths will reveal this story through the eyes of Native Americans who have
made a firm decision to protect ancestral lands and resources for future
generations. The production follows leaders of the Navajo, Hopi and Sioux as they
struggle to convert their Tribes dependence on coal toward use of renewable energy.

Sponsored by NAU Campus Climate Challenge and Black Mesa Water Coalition

Free race this Saturday morning!

Race starts 10am. Dollar prime to the rider who drinks a pabst in the “pit.” get a free beer and a buck.

Meet Saturday b/t 9 and 9:30 at Synergy fitness in the Cedar Safeway shopping center, east of Buffalo park. Race in the lower Jump trails and Paradise/Park streets. We’ll ride up together, take a lap all together to see the course, and then gather for the start.

Oh, and apparently, no smucking bystanders in this race.