Utah Clean Air Now is Born; The Shot Heard ‘Round the Beehive
This is democracy. Heck- it’s bigger than democracy. It’s life itself and just as important today as the beginning of time (whether 7,000 or untold millions of years ago). It’s called community. And that’s what the Clean Air Summit held Thursday at the Salt Lake City County building was about: saving our community. People representing businesses, churches, schools, government- some just themselves- made this unprecedented 
gathering the most important thing they would do that day: more important than their kids, more important than their jobs. Brought together by Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and Utah Moms for Clean Air, some of Utah’s most talented, successful and experienced citizens united to take action to solve our state’s biggest health problem: our air. Led by Moms’ founder Cherise Udell (below), the summit was appropriately opened by mayor-elect Ralph Becker (right), himself a long-time environmentalist and urban planner. All the corporate media were there and some even did stories (do the words “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” ring any bells?). After six hours and some great sandwiches (thanks 
Sierra Club!), UCAN was born: Utah Clean Air Now. I actually got choked up when I realized this was how our country was created (sadly, not what it is now). UCAN is a confederation, much like the original United States, with a common goal: inspire the state legislature, the governor and people of Utah to take immediate action to reduce air pollution. Like the original 13 states, the numerous organizations involved maintain their individual identities and causes but join to fight a common enemy and achieve a common goal. Conservation, education and legislation are among the 
weaponry. Of course, my favorite is renewable energy and I’m proud to say that the Utah Solar Energy Association (and our friends at Utah Clean Energy) were the only renewable energy organizations attending this crucial conference. Now, the hard work begins. But as I drove home, I peered through the thickening, rust-colored blanket of PM2.5 at the peaks of the spectacular Wasatch Range and imagined how much more beautiful they will be when our work is done.
Media coverage: Only the newspapers sent reporters. Three TV stations were there (I won’t flame the no-show) but no reporters, just “producers” (interns) to get a few words and slap them over the video. Here are the stories (Deseret wins): Tribune, Deseret Morning News, KSL, KTVX, KCPW.
November 9th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Hey Ken; the smog makes those sunsets, that beautiful red and purple miasma? Smog filtered waning sunlight.
It would be cool if would happen. That said, our consumer economy is so all encompassing, that what we have shipped in the form of jobs and manufacturing is so profound, it can travel over the entire Pacific ocean, to deposit in our Continental interior.
One of these brown clouds was identified and calculated to have come from industrial pollution from china. Stayed in western Colorado for 10 days, and caused air quality more than twice the dangerous levels for health.
Check out the aircar.com. So simple, so sensible, so French, for metro transport. It is the answer for SLC valley, as most of the problem is vehicle borne emissions.
November 9th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Twenyfive years ago we held a similar conference (not the first by any means). Many of the participants biked home! Even up the hill.
We’ll see.
November 10th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Granted, other culprits may be responsible for some of our problem but that’s a different battle. And yes, there have been previous conferences. But things are different now with the spector of global warming and technological advances making renewable energy and alternative transportation not only affordable but more efficient. I choose to delude myself into believing it can work this time. It also looks like the governor and Utah businesses are on board which puts unprecedented pressure on the legislature to act.
You’re right, Caveat. We’ll see. If it doesn’t work, you’ll know who to blame- again.
November 10th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Ken, we’ll all keep after it as good as our imagination and pocketbooks will allow, and thanks for your efforts.
It’s not a blame game I want, rather a little quality of life for our kids, and thiers.
There are a lot of ideas that will develop to help out, and I too am excited by the possibilities. I for one am about ready to cut the political circle loose. (If only).
November 11th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Clean air makes your food taste better too.
December 12th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Hummer or Prius? That is the question, not all things are exactly as they appear. I have been to Sudbury, and can vouch for the appearance, that and its leavings and that of coal fired plants in the mid west have rendered all the fish in my home inedible due to mercury contamination. It is recommended you eat none.
TITLE: Hidden cost of driving a Prius
Totaling all the energy expended, from design to
junkyard, a Hummer may be a better bargain.
By James L. Martin
When it comes to protecting the environment, senior citizens should
concentrate more on the total energy consumed in building and operating a
car than its fuel efficiency no matter how impressive the statistics appear
on the window sticker at the showroom.
A prime example is Toyota’s Prius, a compact hybrid that’s beloved by ardent
environmentalists and that fetches premium prices because it gets nearly 50
miles-per gallon in combined highway/city driving.
Yet, new data have emerged that show the Prius may not be quite as
eco-friendly as first assumed - if you pencil in the environmental negatives
of producing it in the first place.
Like most hybrids, the Prius relies on two engines - one, a conventional
76-horsepower gasoline power plant, and a second, battery-powered, that
kicks in 67 more horses. Most of the gas is consumed as the car goes from 0
to 30, according to alarmed Canadian environmentalists, who say Toyota’s
touting of the car’s green appeal leaves out a few pertinent and disturbing
facts.
The nickel for the battery, for instance, is mined in Sudbury, Ontario, and
smelted at nearby Nickel Centre, just north of the province’s massive
Georgian Bay.
Toyota buys about 1,000 tons of nickel from the facility each year, ships
the nickel to Wales for refining, then to China, where it’s manufactured
into nickel foam, and then onto Toyota’s battery plant in Japan.
That alone creates a globe-trotting trail of carbon emissions that ought to
seriously concern everyone involved in the fight against global warming. All
told, the start-to finish journey travels more than 10,000 miles - mostly by
container ship, but also by diesel locomotive.
But it’s not just the clouds of greenhouse gases generated by all that
smelting, refining, manufacturing and transporting that worries green
activists. The 1,250-foot-tall smokestack that spews huge puffs of sulphur
dioxide at the Sudbury mine and smelter operation has left a large swath of
the surrounding area looking like a surrealistic scene from the depths of
hell.
On the perimeter of the area, skeletons of trees and bushes stand like
ghostly sentinels guarding a sprawling wasteland. Astronauts in training for
NASA actually have practiced driving moon buggies on the suburban Sudbury
tract because it’s considered a duplicate of the Moon’s landscape.
“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants, and
the soil slid down off the hillside,” David Martin, Greenpeace’s energy
coordinator in Canada, told the London Daily Mail.
“The solution they came up with was the Superstack. The idea was to dilute
pollution, but all it did was spread the fallout across northern Ontario,”
Martin told the British newspaper, adding that Sudbury remains “a major
environmental and health problem.
The environmental cost of producing that car battery is pretty high.”
A “Dust to Dust” study by CNW Marketing Research of Bandon, Ore., shows the
overall eco-costs of automotive hybrids may be even higher.
Released last December, the study tabulated all data on the energy necessary
to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from drawing board to
junkyard, including such items as plant-to-dealer fuel costs, distances
driven, electricity usage per pound of material in each vehicle, and
hundreds of other variables.
To put the data into understandable terms for consumers, CNW translated it
into a “dollars per lifetime mile” figure, or the energy cost per mile
driven. When looked at from that perspective, the Prius and other hybrids
quickly morphed from fuel-sippers into energy-guzzlers.
The Prius registered an energy-cost average of $3.25 per mile driven over
its expected life span of 100,000 miles. Ironically, a Hummer, the brooding
giant that has become the bate noir of the green movement, did much better,
with an energy-cost average of $1.95 over its expected life span of 300,000
miles. And its crash protection makes it far safer than the tiny Prius.
Such information should be of major concern to senior citizens - especially
those on a fixed budget.
If seniors need a small gas-sipping car for city travel, however, the
undisputed champion is Toyota’s own gasoline-powered subcompact, the Scion
xB, whose energy cost averaged a negligible 48 cents for each mile traveled
over its lifetime.
Fully armed with all the facts, seniors may want to zip down to their
nearest Toyota dealer and trade in their Priuses for Scion xBs. That would
be the equivalent of reducing their energy footprint from a size 24D to
about a size 5A. In the case of global warming, one small step for man may
turn out to be a giant leap for mankind.
Course of you wreck hard in Scion, yer dead, got to see a wreck with one on I-5, single car, the thing killed the driver after his error, as will any vehicle if you err and are unlucky, just the ways of death are different.* g