The Future is Green

Green Cities in America: Guest blogger Daniel Pike, Mayor of Bellingham, WA

Photo: Paula Tullar

Bellingham, WA is one of the greenest cities in the United  States. Among numerous lists that have cited this city in northwest Washington as among the top five or ten green places to live, Forbes magazine has rated Bellingham the second greenest metropolitan area, and Country Home magazine rated it as the third greenest city. Whether it is first or third or twentieth, there is no question that this is a place where people take their responsibility for the environment seriously.

Today, I am pleased to welcome Bellingham's mayor, Daniel Pike as a guest blogger. I asked Dan to write about his city's green initiatives, its commitment to sustainability, and to what extent that has helped mitigate the current financial crisis. Here's what he had to say. Take it away, Dan. . . .

"Bellingham is a community of about 75,000 people tucked into the northwest corner of Washington State, itself tucked into the northwest corner of the continental United States. As a community, we share the challenges and joys common to most communities: tough finances, a rising unemployment rate, businesses struggling, but also a shared sense of place and connection with our neighbors. What makes us a little different from the mainstream, though, is our commitment to a triple bottom line, or TBL, approach to the issues before us. In Bellingham, the conversations are not about jobs versus the environment, rather the community talks about how to grow better. This is a community whose ethos receives notice from authors such as Bill McKibben and Paul Hawken, and that National Public Radio’s “Marketplace,” in its Nov. 15, 2008 broadcast, described Bellingham as “the epicenter of a new economic model for a post-consumerist economy: locally produced goods and services focused on what surrounding communities need and can sustain.”

Does this approach, does this ethos matter in an era where most economies, large and small, personal and communal, are deteriorating? I think so, though perhaps not for intuitive reasons. Bellingham is not being spared from economic pain because it strives to do right, as a community. However, we are working together well to deal with both the immediate crisis and longer term solutions.

We are, in fact, a community, not just a haphazard collection of souls sharing a living space.

What $800 billion doesn't buy

The dollar just doesn't go as far as it used to. Not long ago I would have guessed that you could buy a lot of cool stuff for $800 billion. Take trains, for example. Wouldn't you think you could buy a bunch of really nice trains and still have enough left over for some windmills, a national smart electric grid and a few schools? 

A serious commitment to mass transit would do far more to stimulate the economy, create jobs, and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels than most other things in the bill - like roads, for example. Yet the amount of money for mass transit in the stimulus package wending its way through Congress (on a slow train) is woefully small. 

Let's just look at job creation which, obviously, is a high priority right now. According to a study by the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, mass transit creates more jobs than defense spending, tax cuts, health care, education, or home weatherization. I'm a big advocate of weatherization for other reasons, but here are the number of jobs that would be created for each billion dollars of spending in the following areas:

Defense: 8,555

Tax cuts: 10,779

Home weatherization: 12,804

Health care: 12,883

Education: 17,687

Mass Transit: 19,795

So why has Congress cut stimulus spending for education and transit to the bone. Can't these people read? 

What is slimy, green, and flies? (Answer - jet fuel made from algae)

On January 7 a Boeing 737-800 owned by Continental Airlines will take off on a flight powered partly by algae. The two-engine plane will use regular jet fuel for one engine and a mix of jet fuel and biofuels made from algae and jatropha for the other. It will be the first flight by a commercial airline using algae as a fuel source.

It is not, however the first flight using biofuels. Air New Zealand flew one of its Boeing 747-400 aircraft from Auckland to Wellington on Tuesday with one engine powered by a 50-50 mix of jet fuel and jatropha oil.

Jatropha oil comes from the abundant seeds of the Jatropha curcas plant, which can grow in marginal soils almost anywhere. Along with switch grass and algae, jatropha is considered one of the most promising sources for biofuel production. Compared to petroleum-produced fuels, biodiesel significantly reduces the emissions of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, sulfates, particulate matter and other harmful gases.

Air travel now generates about 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, a figure that is expected to double in the next decade. The Air Transport Association , which represents 230 airlines, wants 10 percent of aviation fuel to come from biofuels by 2017.