SCALLOPS and Sustainable Ballard both totally rock. I have to say, I'm quite excited about a lot of what they are doing locally and they are inspiring people across the country with some of the things being spearheaded here, giving hope to those who live in areas that are, shall we say, not as forward thinking. I am a proud Ballardite and feel very lucky to live here and have the opportunity to participate.

If you want to read a brief report of what was covered at this week's Sustainable Ballard meeting, you can read my synapsis here. I look forward to working more with the local groups and getting more involved in both the SCALLOPS aspect as well as the Seattle Peak Oil group.

-Crunch

Good Evening Sustainable Ballard

Very nice exposure for land dwelling scallops in NW Washington State. I am also an area resident and a relocated New Jerseyite (1967). Just thinking out loud now. Perhaps you and our list readers can help.

We have an opportunity to make concrete recommendations to local governments. Most interesting to me are events relevant to this economic bubble and the impending 'perfect storm' preventing recovery from this recession/depression via downslope of global oil production. Can we accept the fact that recovery will not be current status quo for American's 'way of life' ?

This said then we need to address the downward adjustment to what is to be our future sustainable economy. There will be a painful transition in the process of devolving from our current consumption levels. Associated with this will be, in my opinion, systemic underemployment and deflation followed perhaps by inflation as occurred in Argentina.

Now here is my trial balloon . Should government be proactive in growing localization and making jobs for people in the transition - what do you think? Our local production systems of manufacturing and food production are held in check by cheap imports, industrial agriculture and cheap transportation. This will not go away under economic duress, witness the crowds at Wal-Mart and Costco. And everyone struggling to survive will be shopping the specials. We should also assume declining ability of national government to support local iniatitives. We need to take care of ourselves.

What if we propose this to our local governments -

1.Increase our use of people in government services, ie make jobs, instead of using machines
2.Use county/city land to make farms, orchards, dairies to grow food to supply schools, government and welfare recipients. Make jobs and basic training in agrarian skills a priority. This puts them (government) in business. this local produce will displace imported goods at subsidizedcompetitive prices.
3. Use city/county land/facilities to launch business ventures. Some ideas are recycling for reuse electronics and computers. Remanufacturing from frame cars and trucks replacing engines, etc with updated technology

A little further west of Olympia is Grays Harbor county where the local PUD (public utility district) is "owned" by the people: today we get our electricity from various sources, but primarily a big power company, but wind power and water-based ocean tide power are being planned for.

Being the poorest county in Washington State, Grays Harbor has benefited from that status by having a majority of human scale dwellings and a minimum of McMansions (which I assume exist, though I haven't actually seen one), a great public transit system, and many local farms.

Puget Sound ought to install a progressive food tax. Install it gradually, but start it now to get local government, farmers, and residents hooked on the income. Put a tax of a penny a mile per $1.00 value of food for each mile between farm zip code, store zip code, and residence zip code. Rebate 2/3 of revenue equitably to registered residents. No tax for food produced and consumed in neighboring zip codes.

If the average person spends $5000 a year on food which comes from an average of 100 miles away, he/she will pay $5000 in taxes but receive $3300 in rebate, leaving $1700 for the local government. A town of 30K would have $50M in additional funding, so other taxes could be dramatically reduced. A poor person who spends $3300 on food which comes from his neighboring farms would pay nothing in taxes but receive a rebate that entirely paid for his/her food. Farmers would require no subsidy. Since there is no tax, sales between farmers and local residents would not need to be regulated.

The key component is that government, residents, and farmers all benefit in a tangible way. If you don’t leave money for the politicians and poor people, it will never gain political traction. Equally key is an isolated region where few calories are purchased elsewhere and imported without tax.

Of course the WTO would have a conniption fit and it is patently unconstitutional so TPTB would come in and knock heads in a big way, but you guys (and gals) don’t seem to care much about world powers anyway. http://content.lib.washington.edu/wtoweb/

Cold Camel

At first, excuse me for my provocations!

I was looking for a while at the picture at the start of the article. I was starting to think what is really sustainable at this photo. In my mind, I was starting to remove everything that was made of oil or that uses a lot of energy to be producted.

That is, what I finally see in my mind: I see some naked people swimming in a see.

I think, there is really a long way to go to balance everything out without having to go back to the Dark Mid Ages.

Just one quick calculation regarding transportation: A car takes about 8 litres of gasoline per 100km in town areas; a big truck takes about 40 litres of diesel per 100km; going shopping people usually are not transporting more than 20kg of food to their home at once. A big truck transports about 20 tons. This means: when driving just one km to the next store, the big truck can go 200km consuming the same energy per kg of food. This means saving half the energy for transporting food is simple by just walking to the store or using the bicycle to get the food. There always to sides where you can look at! (Do not misunderstand me - I am not supporting the irrational long transportations of food or other things that cheap energy made possible.)

I also live in Seattle and all I see are forests of SUV's. Ballard is jam-packed with them. Maybe in our sustainable future (10,000 ad?) they could be recycled. Mound them up, cover them with soil and use the resulting mountain for terrace farming... organic of course.

Wow, what an informative, spirited piece on sustainability initiatives in the Seattle area! This commenter had the opportunity today (at Seattle's Green Fest) to personally speak with both TOD reader Sustainable Ballard and Sustainable Ballard founder Vic Opperman--both approachable, knowledgeable, unassuming and committed leaders in the local sustainability scene. That burgeoning map of SCALLOPS communities shown above speaks volumes to all that they've been able to achieve here in the Puget Sound area through Sustainable Ballard and the SCALLOPS network. Let's hope that both groups continue to grow robustly!