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Craig David: Parking policies: subsidies contradict our values
Recent editorial articles have focused on Boulder’s efforts to further align parking policies with climate, equity, housing and transportation goals. We appreciate raising awareness of the importance of parking, which has long been underestimated.
These pieces failed to address a key fact: Free (or underrated) parking is a massive subsidy for our least efficient mode of transportation – private cars. It is a massive subsidy for pollution. It is a massive subsidy for traffic.
As such, it goes against Boulder’s core values. The problem is, parking has been subsidized for so long that it is often difficult to see that there is a subsidy. Land costs money (in Boulder a lot of money). Maintaining asphalt costs money. Dealing with stormwater runoff from paved parking spaces costs money. Addressing the heat island effect of the entire pavement costs money.
Then there are the opportunity costs. Rather, a parking space could be a micro-park. Two parking spaces are sufficient for a local vendor stand. Or if protected from the threat of cars, a small playground.
If Boulder is to make progress on these environmental and quality of life issues, the board and staff must take the lead. It’s a simple reality: in places where parking is plentiful and heavily subsidized, people drive more. When parking is treated like a commodity, people drive less. We need to price parking so that it matches its real costs: the cost of the land it occupies, the traffic and pollution it creates, the lost opportunities for better use of public space.
Boulder’s massive parking subsidy goes against every fundamental belief we claim to have as a city. We need leadership to formulate a just transition to a more environmentally, financially and socially more sustainable parking regime.
Craig david
Community cycles advocacy committee
Grace Schwab: Climate: Time to Go Big and Bold
As the United States emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have the opportunity to “build back better†– to make substantial investments in our infrastructure to create transformative and lasting improvements for our economy and our environment. As the White House and Congress craft this unique legislation in a generation, they must include provisions that will produce millions of well-paying jobs in the clean energy sector, investments in sustainable and robust infrastructure across the country. countries and intentional actions. that prioritize communities disproportionately affected by climate change.
Every community across the state has suffered the impacts of a changing climate. More intense and frequent wildfires, floods and other severe weather events have now become the norm in Colorado. Colorado has experienced 30 extreme weather events in the past decade causing more than $ 50 billion in damage. We need to invest in research on climate resilience and work to improve infrastructure while supporting communities recovering from climate disasters. As United States House Representative Joe Neguse says, many of Colorado’s highways such as I-70 and I-25 are in poor condition, but transformative legislation can provide the resources to fix it. our damaged transport infrastructure.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the world in countless ways and changed what many thought the future would look like. Now is the time to invest in a bold and visionary plan for our future that invests in clean energy, tackles the climate crisis, provides clean air and water for every community, and ensures that we can all have a healthy and safe living environment. We must unite as a nation to put clean energy, the environment and our communities first.
Grace Schwab
Rock
Kimberly Walls: Vegan Food: More Orders Equals Less Suffering
Reading that a vegan sausage wrap beat a spicy chicken sandwich for Grubhub’s number one delivery order gave me hope.
More vegan food orders means less suffering for animals, the environment and us. When we choose a delicious vegan meal instead of a meal that includes meat, eggs or dairy, we protect intelligent and sensitive animals from being confined in dirt, separated from their babies and horribly executed for their parts. from the body.
We’re also fighting the climate crisis: Every individual who eats vegan saves 1,100 gallons of water, nearly 40 pounds of grain and 30 square feet of woodland every day. Eating vegan meals also helps protect our bodies against the development of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, and many other chronic diseases and conditions.
It’s no wonder that orders for vegan meats on Grubhub increased by 463% last year! So the next time you’re hungry, I hope you join me and many others in making your vegan meal.
Kimberly Walls
The PETA Foundation
Clark Hamilton: COVID-19: An Original Cover-Up?
A May 5 article by Nicholas Wade in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on the origin of COVID-19 reveals very strong evidence that it is an artificial creation.
The article is long and detailed, but here are some highlights: At the end of 2018, Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were deliberately making highly infectious corona viruses, allegedly to learn how to fight them should they emerge. naturally. Unlike SARS and MERS, COVID-19 does not have a traceable naturally occurring origin, it just seemed out of the box. Despite the danger of accidental release, Chinese researchers carried out their work in a minimal containment laboratory with little more than lab coats and gloves, well below the safety levels used for the most dangerous pathogens. . These facts and many more appear to be toxic to the mainstream media which continue to promote the theory that COVID evolved naturally. Why is that? The answer may lie in the fact that the blame goes beyond China. The dangerous research that may have released COVID-19 was encouraged and funded by the United States National Institutes of Health as part of a collaboration between American and Chinese scientists. The motivation to cover up the catastrophic result is naturally intense. The article is available at bit.ly/3wMn48E. Read it and draw your own conclusions. Nicholas Wade is a science journalist who has worked on the Nature, Science, and The New York Times teams.
Clark hamilton
Rock
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