17+Nov+2008+Environmental+Justice

Today we took the El up to Evanston to hear from Nathan Kipnis, who is an architect who works on sustainable buildings and is a leader of Citizens for a Greener Evanston (formerly known as Evanston Climate Action Plan), about the proposal for a windfarm off the shore of Lake Michigan. On the way, we read about the controversy over Cape Wind (the windfarm off the shore of Nantucket -- thanks for the suggestion, Andy B.!). We had an interesting discussion on the train about the NIMBY factor, sparked by a member of our group who spent two years at a boarding school in Boston offering his views about "snooty rich Bostonians" wanting to protect their precious Nantucket summer homes -- then insisting that nevertheless Nantucket is a national treasure (he kept underscoring Hopper's landscapes) that shouldn't be sullied by windmills. Another student said, but isn't global warming a bigger issue? Shouldn't everyone be offering to pay the cost of reducing its effects? We expected to hear about a similar controversy on the horizon in Evanston, but Nate said the only possible objections thus far have been bird advocates, who worry about the 3 birds/year that might be killed by the windmills. He said the city and university both support the idea thus far, and that if the Olympics come to Chicago it's almost a done deal, as Daley will want 2 windfarms in Chicago for that. Most of the presentation we heard was focused on sustainable building design, which was interesting but not something we would be taking action on. Well, we wouldn't be taking action on the windfarm either, but this is giving us more information about the technology that is possible and that we can advocate for at some level. I don't have any pictures, but here's a picture that the anti-windfarm group in Nantucket has on its website. Kind of a contrast to the images of polluting coal power plants we're usually spending time with.


 * [[image:http://www.saveoursound.org/images/content/pagebuilder/10941.jpg width="576" height="389" caption="FoggyShipAlabama"]] ||