Talk:Carrboro Powerdown

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Sammy talk  03:55, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Change the building codes/permits to require that all new city or governmental (or university) buildings are LEED certified – I would go so far as to insist that they have in place a means to provide a goodly portion of their energy consumption through renewable sources. (Hey – Chapel Hill doesn’t let fast food joints in town and they have certain other restrictions – considering the amount of water used to produce electricity from coal (which is our main source) and our continued water problems, this makes sense for any and all new buildings.

We want to build another landfill. The costs of shipping out our trash are going to be too variable. This way we also encourage more recycling – etc. I don’t agree with shipping our trash out. Family land area that could be used as a waste dump. Family dispute is stopping it.

Local effort to change national policy

Bad Ideas Per engineer friend of Mike S.

I asked a friend who's an engineer interested in helping institutions and gov'ts conserve energy for his input. I did not use the loaded term Peak Oil, but put it to him in terms of if he were in charge of local gov't in these times of rapidly rising energy costs, what would he fix first and why? Here's his response. Note that this very intelligent person doesn't believe in manmade global warming and probably doesn't agree with much of what some of us might take for granted politically and environmentally. Yet he still came up with ideas similar to what's been expressed by the group. (I disagree emphatically with him on impact fees for affordable houses, but he makes some excellent points.) Some of his suggestions, like encouraging working (4) 10 hr days as opposed to (5) 8 hour days cost little to nothing and yet have big ramifications in terms of cutting not just commuting, but the cost to heat/cool gov't buildings, etc.

Forget “walkable”. It is BS.

Forget biodiesel, it is eco poser.

Forget LEED, it is lame and expensive. Need to do things that really matter.

This area is way too diffuse to have meaningful “regional” transportation.

BTW - I believe the "they" he refers to at the end is the Carrboro, Chapel Hill, UNC and Duke governing bodies, whom he's tried to help and advise in the past.