Everyone seems to be focusing on the fact that, during last night’s 60 Minutes piece, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he’d like to see the law changed so that he, as a foreign-born U.S. citizen, could run for President. I guess that’s newsworthy, but I was much more interested to hear the specifics behind California’s aggressive move toward energy independence and ecological sustainability. The California legislature has mandated that, in just a little over 10 years, 33% of all energy used in the state will be from renewables. And, they’ve given themselves just 8 years to cut tailpipe emissions by 30%. And, they didn’t mention it in this 60 Minutes piece, but California was also the first statein the country to establish a feed-in tariff system, which encourages the development of alternative energy infrastructure by promising producers of green energy that, if they generate power, it will be bought at rates set above current market prices.
Michigan, by comparison, not only has no real initiative underway to cut emissions, but has used what little political muscle it still has left to fight California for having the audacity as to suggest that cleaner running cars can be made. And, whereas California has mandated a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) of 33% in 10 years, Michigan just passed a rather anemic goal of just 10% by 2015. (Never a leader when it comes to such things, Michigan was the 28th state to adopt an RPS.) And, as we’ve discussed here before, the Michigan feed-in tariff legislation appears to have died an ugly death.
It’s clear, at least to me, where all the innovation will be taking place, and where all of the new energy companies will be locating… and, guess what, it won’t be Michigan. I hate to use the analogy of the Detroit Lions, but it just seems appropriate here. It’s like California and Michigan aren’t even playing the same game.
As we mentioned a week or so ago, according to new census data, it looks as though the population here in Ypsi is growing. Or at least it was as of 2007, when the data was collected. Apparently, however, the rest of Michigan hasn’t fared so well. According to today’s Detroit News, the state’s population is falling precipitously… Here’s a clip:
…Michigan’s loss rate increased, with an estimated 46,368 fewer people in the state on July 1, 2008. The bureau estimated the state lost 34,000 people the year before, and nearly 10,000 in 2006.
If the state maintains its losses for another year, its population could fall below 10 million for the first time since 2000. According to the Census Bureau, Michigan has 10,003,422 people…
The only other state to lose population this year was Rhode Island, where unemployment is also high.
If it is true that Ypsi is growing, I may have an idea as to why… It could be the blogs. Seriously. According to at least one Ypsilanti citizen – City Planner Richard Murphy – he’s here because, while a grad student at the University of Michigan, he read this blog, and the one that used to be run by Steve and Hillary Cherry… The following quote is from Murphy, who is guest blogging this week on Concentrate. In this particular passage, he’s commenting on the importance of human interaction in development.
…Some can be approximated online – the example of Mark Maynard and Steve Cherry’s blogs recruiting me to Ypsi being foremost in my mind…
So, if you just moved to Ypsi, why are you here? Was it MM.com? And, if so, do you now want to beat me up?
OK, I’m heading up to bed. If one of you could write something about the curious death yesterday of Michael Connell, a senior Bush administration IT consultant who had been implicated in the Ohio vote tampering that won Bush the White House in 2004, I’d appreciate it.
Really, I wish that I could just mention things here at night, before going to bed, and then wake up in the morning finding wonderful, comprehensive posts written for me. Surely there’s got to be an elf out there who would rather blog that cobble.
update: No elves came through with complete posts, but you’ll find a lot of good links in the comments section. And, here, if you haven’t seen it, is a discussion concerning Connell’s death from Democracy Now:
Local solar guru, Dave Strenski, just sent me this new image showing the total flow of U.S. energy in 2006. We had been talking about waste inherent to the system, and Dave offered this as proof of the fact that currently more energy is wasted than is actually used. As Dave and I talked about the diagram, which I believe comes from the Department of Energy, a few interesting things came to light.
[note: A larger copy of the image can be found here.]
Clementine took a ball of wool into the magpie’s nest we call her office this morning, and came out a little while later with a few wisps of wool wound up in wire and twist-ties. I asked her want it was, as she went running by, waving it in the air, and she told me that it was an angel. She explained that angels were part human and part bird, and that’s how they could fly. A few minutes later we heard her making sounds like little explosions, and asked her what was going on. That’s when she told us that some angels carry guns. When asked why, she looked at Linette and me as though the answer was obvious — if they didn’t kill the hawks, they’d be eaten.
So, we just had the big talk on predation, angels and firearms… I was hoping that we had a few more years… Kids grow up so fast these days.
