“The biggest challenge just might be convincing some residents they need to go.... That means some residents might need to be forced out. . . . we need a more aggressive eminent domain approach where the state helps coastal residents realize the climate change reality.”
The reality:
Boston residents try to brace for several days of snow
"Yet another full day of an unrelenting winter storm. The latest snowfall is predicted to dump as much as 2 feet on the region by Tuesday morning. The slow-moving storm, expected to intensify Monday, is the third in two weeks to hit Massachusetts, and the latest snowfall, added to what is already on the ground, could leave snow depths of as much as 80 inches in parts of the state, officials said. And more snow may be on the way late in the week. Mayor Martin J. Walsh said recent storms have created an “unprecedented” amount of snow for the city. Boston has already spent its $18 million snow budget for this fiscal year, he said. “Our top priority. . . is the health and safety of every Bostonian,” Walsh said during a Sunday afternoon news conference at City Hall. Giant machines are being used to melt snow removed from city streets, in order to create enough room for new mounds of fresh snow. Walsh said the city will vigorously enforce city regulations requiring businesses and homeowners to shovel sidewalks or face a $50 fine. In recent weeks, the city issued 1,500 tickets to residents, businesses, and institutions that did not shovel their sidewalks during snowstorms. “We’re asking you to please shovel your sidewalks and fire hydrants,” the mayor said. “We don’t have the ability to get to every single one, so we’re really looking for help.” The city also plans an aggressive crackdown on residents or business owners that shovel snow into the street. Walsh asked local residents to be on the lookout for scofflaws, urging citizens to “call it in if you see that going on in your street.”
Yeah, the streets haven't been plowed, but at least you still have late night service and the parade went off well.
Snowstorms no match for their spirit of service
City, parents scramble amid more snow days
Boston's 30-day snowfall total highest in recorded history
Globe explains it all:
"When a historic blizzard dumps a record-breaking amount of snow on the region, it’s only a matter of time before someone ventures a wry joke about climate change. Maybe there’s an upside to a warmer world, after all? Less shoveling. But the halfhearted punchline doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny, according to recent research from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher. In fact, a warming world could mean less overall snow in a given year, but no reprieve from extreme snow events, at least in places like Boston. To science, not all snowstorms are the same: average snowfall will probably decrease in most places as the climate warms, but the most aggravating, traffic-snarling, work-stopping, back-straining extreme storms like the one that just buried Boston could actually get bigger."
They are truly pathetic, people, and just look bad.
You think maybe someone upstairs is trying to make a point regarding fart-mi$ting liars?
Ready for some more hot air?
"A call to cull homes threatened by the sea; As flood losses grow, so does sentiment to pay homeowners to move on" by Beth Daley and Shan Wang, New England Center for Investigative Reporting February 08, 2015
SCITUATE — The owner of 48 Oceanside Drive had just repaired her $1 million vacation home from a devastating 2013 storm when the Atlantic came crashing through a giant picture window last month. The Jan. 26 blizzard marked at least the 10th time the house has been damaged in four decades — and probably the 10th time it will be rebuilt, in part with taxpayer dollars.
Scituate is the front line in New England’s expensive, losing battle against the sea. The coastal town, with few offshore barriers to curb a storm’s fury, accounts for nearly 40 percent of Massachusetts homes and businesses that are so flood-prone the federal government calls them “severe repetitive loss” properties.
Nearly all of these estimated 150 properties in the town of 18,000 have received at least four payments from the federal flood insurance program over the years, meaning federal taxpayers have helped foot some of the reconstruction bills. Though property owners pay for flood insurance, the program is in the red and relies on billions from the federal government to stay afloat.
And the flood risk is getting worse as sea levels gradually rise.
Except they are not. It's all an agenda-pushing lie that keeps getting repeated.
******************
Now, a growing movement is underway to level the homes that cost taxpayers the most to keep dry.
This government is acting more like Israel every day.
The state Legislature in July set aside $20 million in a bond bill to begin a voluntary buyback for repeatedly damaged coastal homes and convert the land to recreational areas or wildlife refuges. Coastal legislators are urging new Governor Charlie Baker to tap into the fund in the wake of January’s blizzard.
Unbelievable.
“It would be great if [the Baker administration] wanted to’’ launch the program, said Senator Marc Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat who proposed the buyback fund.
At least some homeowners have mulled the possibility of a buyback. A few residents on storm-tossed Plum Island tried to apply for federal buyout dollars but couldn’t qualify, said Senator Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican. “That’s why we need a state program,” he said.
The case for a buyout fund relies on simple economics: It might actually be cheaper for government in the long run to buy the most flood-prone homes rather than keep paying for emergency services, seawall repairs, and flood insurance claims that the “severe repetitive loss” homes are almost certain to generate.
The National Flood Insurance Program, which provides coverage against damage that private insurers won’t, has been particularly controversial, both for its cost and the incentive it provides property owners to continue living in hazardous places rather than relocating to higher and drier ground.
Though the insurance program once paid for itself through premiums paid by property owners, a series of punishing storms starting with Hurricane Katrina in 2005 changed all that. The program is now more than $20 billion in debt, forcing federal taxpayers to cover the deficit.
How about ending the program completely? If richer wants to build there, he can take the risk.
************
But while the buyout program’s challenges range from the enormous expense of a buyback to public distaste for bailing out the owners of pricey homes, the biggest challenge just might be convincing some residents they need to go.
Like I have been saying time and again, government serves money not us.
“This is your major investment in your life, and you can’t just walk away,” said a distraught Rosemary Dobie, a retired school teacher who lives in a Gambrel Cape that her family moved back from the water in Scituate after it almost flooded in 1978. She fears that if the government starts buying and destroying houses closer to the sea, it will only clear a path for the water to reach the next row of houses.
“It’s a very bad idea,” she said.
Coastal buyouts are gaining in popularity in other parts of the country, especially in New York and New Jersey following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. Such programs have long had success in some inland states, such as Missouri, where riverine flooding can be severe.
And now this bankrupt government wants the chump change it doled out back!
Yet history suggests the program might have relatively few takers in Massachusetts. While more than a dozen homes were part of a federal buyout program that ran through the early 1990s on Peggotty Beach in Scituate, few coastal homes in the state have been bought since. That reluctance to leave — bolstered by the federal government’s continued payouts — means some residents might need to be forced out, some academics and environmentalists say.
“We need to have an unpopular but bolder approach,” said Douglas Zook, associate professor of global ecology and science education at Boston University. “When you make things like buybacks voluntary, it’s just not something that many people will sign on for . . . we need a more aggressive eminent domain approach where the state helps coastal residents realize the climate change reality.”
Has he looked outside lately?
The Globe then tries to tell us "ocean levels off Massachusetts have risen 5 inches since the 1970s — greater than the global average, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
Only one problem with that; water will seek the lowest point and and will flatten and disperse, not gang up on one coast. These people are shoveling shit and they can't even smell it.
************
And flood insurance is only one cost to taxpayers to maintain flood-prone houses. Taxpayer dollars through a federal grant are paying part of the bill for 15 homes in Scituate to be elevated on stilts so that future storm surges pass beneath them....
Since when did the Globe start caring about taxpayer dollars?
The town of Scituate and the state also have spent almost $8 million to repair sea walls in the last five years, and each time a major ocean flood occurs, hundreds of thousands more dollars are spent for disaster workers, the removal of debris, and other related items. The town just hired a full-time coastal resource officer.
But Patricia Vinchesi, Scituate town administrator, said holding back the Atlantic is too big a job for any municipality.
“It is so much bigger than us,” Vinchesi said. “We are just maintaining the status quo.”
Convincing people to leave
Politicians in Massachusetts and Washington alike have long known that policies that give people financial incentives to live in hazardous locations are costly and potentially dangerous.
Three years ago, Congress voted for sweeping reforms of the flood insurance program that included a phase-out of subsidies and higher premiums to better reflect the risk of living in flood-prone homes.
Yet, Congress had little appetite for a fight with coastal property owners when newly drawn federal flood plain maps sparked widespread complaints about skyrocketing flood insurance premiums, including by some people who had never needed flood insurance before.
See: FEMA Flood Zones Anger Boston
Congress then passed another law last year that rolled back some of the premium increases. As a result, the flood insurance program will continue to be subsidized by tax dollars. Some properties, including those dubbed “severe repetitive loss” were not subject to the rollback, but those homes can still receive taxpayer-supported grants to elevate and fortify them against flooding.
Governor Baker has been silent thus far on whether he would launch a buyout program. If he does not, Senator Pacheco has filed a bill that would launch it.
“The administration will review all options to safeguard and support the resilience of Massachusetts’ coastal communities,” Baker spokesman Billy Pitman said.
The state’s buyout program, on its own, won’t stop the effects of climate change in coastal regions. Even if $20 million is available, it would not go far in a state where coastal homes routinely sell for more than $1 million. But environmental advocates say it’s overdue.
“It’s a piece of the solution,” said Jack Clarke, director of public policy and government relations for Mass Audubon who also sits on the state’s Coastal Erosion Commission, which supports a voluntary buyout program. “This problem is only going to get worse.”
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What a mess, huh?
Speaking of demolishing homes:
"Torrent of home teardowns claims some classics in LA" by Adam Nagourney, New York Times February 08, 2015
LOS ANGELES —Early one January morning, a team of demolition workers, armed with crowbars and backed by a bulldozer, showed up to begin a methodical dismantling of this piece of history in Cheviot Hills, fending off neighbors alarmed by the racket....
Also see: Banks Acting Like Israel
The loss of the Ray Bradbury home at 10265 Cheviot Drive, a bright-yellow stucco home built in 1937 that is tucked away on a winding street in an eclectic and charming, affluent neighborhood on the West Side of Los Angeles, was the latest in a tidal wave of teardowns that has spread across Los Angeles over the past two years.
Developers, seeing the potential for high profits in this housing-starved region, have been bulldozing vintage homes in middle-class enclaves to replace them with lot-filling, towering modern homes that typically sell for over $2 million.
It's a rich man's world.
Fights over this kind of redevelopment have broken out in communities across the nation, but the battle has become particularly pitched in Los Angeles, with its rich diversity of architectural styles, abundance of wealth, and streets that look like movie sets.
Everything is framed in terms of war in my war paper.
This is in no small part because many of the most striking neighborhoods here were built, or are lived in today, by a sizable contingent of set designers, movie producers, and actors.
For builders, the teardown frenzy is a welcome sign of a recovering Los Angeles economy. They see a market response to demands of people who want bigger homes with the kinds of amenities that were not even imagined when houses were built 80 years ago — media rooms, sprawling bathrooms, elaborate kitchens.
“All of this comes down to a matter of personal choice,” said Scott Ouellette, president of the Los Angeles-Ventura chapter of the Building Industry Association of Southern California. “Some people want a neighborhood to never change; other people want larger, more modern housing. There needs to be some balance.”
But the destruction of thousands of classic homes is disrupting and dividing neighborhoods, raising alarm among civic leaders about potentially irreparable damage to handsome, historic and architecturally distinctive communities that they argue define Los Angeles as much as Hollywood or Venice.
Under rising pressure from neighborhood groups, the Los Angeles City Council is moving to toughen regulation of home construction — and destruction. A law that was passed in 2008 in response to an earlier wave of teardowns is now viewed as full of loopholes.
“This is already out of hand, but it could clearly get a lot worse,” said Paul Koretz, the City Council member pushing the legislation. “We are trying to respond to it as quickly as we can.”
But the effort has been slow, as the proposed changes are reviewed by city planners, fueling suspicion among neighborhood groups about the influence of developers on City Hall.
“This is not a complex process that should take two years,” said Dick Platkin, an urban planner who used to work for the city. “It could be done for three or four or five months if it was a high priority, which it’s not.”
***********************
At a time when Los Angeles continues to struggle with homelessness and a lack of affordable housing, this subject is dominating conversations in many neighborhoods.
See? The political cla$$ doesn't give a shit about you.
“It’s one of the hottest issues in the whole district,” said Teddy Davis, a Democrat running for City Council who has pledged not to take developer contributions.
“I hear about it from Toluca Lake to Silver Lake, from Sherman Oaks to La Brea-Hancock,’’ Davis said. “It really rattles people: They feel like, here are these 100-year-old homes and they are gone in two hours. And then they have a giant aircraft carrier parked next to their homes.”
Los Angeles has always been known for its tear-it-down, build-it-up ethos, to the concern of preservationists. The intensity of the current opposition has challenged the notion that this is a city with little interest in preserving its past....
Clark T. Carlton, a screenwriter who lives in North Beverly Grove, said, “The growing populist movement to save these neighborhoods of charming prewar homes is evidence that Los Angeles is finally becoming a world-class city and its people realize they do have a beautiful and interesting history to preserve.”
Still, this is a debate about both the future of neighborhoods and the rights of property owners.
“Some people like big ostentatious boxes — other people don’t,” Ouellette said. “When you live in a neighborhood and own a property, whether it’s for one year or 40 years, your rights are coequal. Neither of them really have the right to tell the other what to do.”
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And at the bottom of it all:
"Boston nonprofit Ceres stresses green effort; Its philosophy: Good environmental policy is good for business" by Jill Terreri Ramos, Globe Correspondent February 01, 2015
Ceres, celebrating its 25th anniversary, has become one of the world’s most influential environmental advocates by harnessing capitalism to convince companies that sustainability is central to their competitiveness and bottom lines. Ceres pushes its way into corporate boardrooms by enlisting a network of some of the nation’s biggest institutional investors — including the $300 billion California Public Employees Retirement System — and once there demonstrates how combating climate change, cutting energy use, and preventing damage to the environment is in firms’ economic interests.
Ceres has spurred multinational corporations such as PepsiCo Inc., Nike Inc., and Ford Motor Co. to change the way they act on climate change, including Ford’s support of higher fuel-efficiency standards. In addition, the nonprofit has persuaded more than 1,000 companies, including General Motors and Apple, to sign the nonprofit’s “Climate Declaration” urging Congress to adopt new laws to combat global warming.
It's all about making a buck.
“What will change the debate on climate in the US Congress,” Ceres chief executive Mindy S. Lubber said, “will be when leaders of the largest economic firms and financial firms go up and say, ‘We need to act because this is hurting us financially.’ ”
Like the GMOs are?
From its offices on Chauncey Street, Ceres also has become a significant player in the international climate debate. Lubber has spoken at the United Nations, last year addressing 500 global financial players at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk, and the World Economic Forum, a gathering of policymakers, intellectuals, political leaders, and corporate executives, in Davos, Switzerland.
Oh, it's another agenda-pushing outfit of elitists trying to get into your wallet.
Ceres was founded in 1989, just months after the Exxon Valdez oil spill that dumped more than 250,000 barrels along a pristine section of Alaska’s coastline and ultimately cost Exxon, now ExxonMobil, more than $4.3 billion in penalties, lawsuits, and cleanup costs. The disaster inspired the idea that still drives Ceres: Corporations are harmed financially when they don’t pay attention to the environment — and that matters to investors.
Does it?
************
Ceres’s clout with corporations comes from its network of 110 institutional investors, which see the connection between sustainability and profitability, including public pension funds in New York and California. All told, these investors control $13 trillion....
This support makes it much easier for Ceres to open the doors to corporations, where the nonprofit aims to make decision-makers aware of their companies’ environmental and social effects.
Related: "nonprofits provide new ways for corporations and individuals to influence"
As if they didn't have enough already.
The backing gives Ceres the clout to insist on buy-in at the chief executive level, access to company data, and rigorous examination of operations by investors, environmental specialists, and social activists chosen by the nonprofit.
The companies then pay Ceres for this work.
Bloomberg L.P., the financial data and news organization, enlisted Ceres in 2008. Ceres has helped Bloomberg determine how to reduce its carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from what it was in 2007, a period during which the company will double in size. Among the steps: using energy-efficient LED lighting and encouraging recycling and composting at its facilities.
Curtis Ravenel, global head of sustainability at Bloomberg, said Ceres was able to challenge the company’s practices and drive change, without being adversarial.
“What I like about Ceres is that they are aggressive, but not too aggressive,” Ravenel said. “You want them to be pushing you. That’s why I hired them, to keep us honest.”
Meaning your not?
Geoffrey M. Heal, a professor at Columbia Business School who teaches the business of sustainability, said it’s difficult to measure the effect that Ceres has had. Investors and companies are much more aware of climate change, partly because of the media attention, partly because of Ceres, and partly because of other players, he said....
Lubber, however, maintains that Ceres is responsible for significant changes in attitudes about climate change in capital markets....
As companies and investors learn the economic benefits of sustainable practices, Ceres hopes that they’ll work to convince lawmakers that acting on climate change is not only good policy, but also good for their businesses. After all, Lubber said, money talks.
“That’s part of our theory of change,” she said....
What, that greedy scum won't do the right thing unless it is in their be$t intere$t?
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Related:
"H.T. Berry Co. of Canton, a distributor of janitorial and sanitary supplies, is part of the greening of the supply chain as companies, whether for corporate responsibility or public relations, increasingly adopt environmentally sensitive practices. This trend has been “going on for a decade, but only in the last few years has it achieved critical mass,” said Liz Harriman, deputy director of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts Lowell."
They JUST ADMITTED it is for PR PURPOSES!
Well, I wanted to do more for you today, readers, but it has been an all day shoveling event here. I think I'll seize the moment and stop blogging for the rest of the night, especially since the web has been acting real funny.
