Don's Tuesday Column

               THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   4/26/2016

Does Corning really need cars?

For those who like the “participatory” part of representative democracy: There will be a State of Jefferson town hall at the Elks Lodge, at the south end of Gilmore Road, on Saturday. Doors open at 3 PM, the 4 PM program includes spokesman Mark Baird. I must make an observation about the Supreme Court “one man, one vote” decision. It narrowly applied to a Texas redistricting policy, which disallowed non-citizens in the population count for representatives. I pointed out last summer that including immigrants gives an empirical advantage to Democrats—the districts with the largest immigrant (non-eligible to vote) population, have contributed to an outsized number of Democrats in office.

While the State of Jefferson cause may fall victim to the decision, the actual judicial opinion that changed California’s state senate from one based on counties to one based on similar population sizes (which greatly diminished rural counties’ political power in Sacramento)—that was not a part of the Texas case and may still have legitimacy for future litigation. Hope lives!

This last week included Earth Day events, which, while well-meaning, are rather benign and ineffectual even as they generate feel-good-ism and outsized media attention. I know that because my Saturday paper had caressing hands holding a light green/dark green globe with green things growing on top. Happy Earth Day!

By luck or design, the top story was “Transportation plan approved,” by Heather Hoelscher, outlining the improvements voted on by the Corning City Council, which will “assist in advancing the city’s effort to improve bike and pedestrian safety, design a signage system and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the agenda report.”

The first parts of that, regarding “safety” and “signage,” are commendable and deserve the state grant which covers 90 percent of the cost. However, it might also backfire when the bicycle lanes by design reduce the width of the traffic lanes for the good intentions of slowing traffic. Might there be an unintended consequence if someone decides to drive to the right around a left-turning car, thereby encroaching on the bicyclist’s right-of-way? A new law entitles bike riders to a 3-foot buffer that may require a halt to traffic if there isn’t 3 feet between said left turning car and the bicyclist.

I can tell you assuredly from my exposure to Oregon media reports and analysis that, although it might be little noticed and rarely admitted, there is a dark underside to shifting “from sharing single passenger cars to more active forms of transportation.” Public transit, bicycling and walking are intended “to decrease vehicle miles traveled, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve public health.”

What often ensues over time is that efforts to facilitate the primary, and obviously the most practical, mode of transportation—the family car—become gradually disincentivized to the point of gross inconvenience. In Portland, under similarly enlightened transportation overlords, major surface streets—4-lanes for cars with bike lanes commensurate with the tiny percentage of actual bicycle commuters—have in some cases been reduced to one lane in each direction while bike lanes become two-lane bike thruways. Yes, the auto traffic becomes congested, as you would expect, while the expanded bike lanes remain largely empty. All in pursuit of nudging the populace out of cars and onto their feet or pedals, whether they want to or not.

So, Corning’s transportation plan is replete with the obligatory salutations to “reducing greenhouse gases and improving public health.” This is where the whole idea goes off the rails, as I see it. I’m sure some technocrats can jigger computer models and estimate that, for every reduction in vehicle-miles driven in Corning’s downtown, there will be a statistical decline in lung-related problems, or a projected improvement in people’s health through increased activity.

First, few people will ever, in a retirement-oriented town, actually take up lengthy walks for their necessities—nor will they risk injury or death on bicycles on busy streets as their equilibrium declines. If they desire improvements in their health, it can be easily done at home with inexpensive equipment or by biking or walking around their neighborhoods.

Let the record show that so-called “greenhouse gas emissions” have absolutely zero ill effects on peoples lungs. You disagree? Then please show me how carbon dioxide is simultaneously exhaled from our lungs but, when emitted into our air in minute amounts from vehicles and power production, it somehow becomes a pollutant, harming our health. Ludicrous.

When literally anything and everything done by you or our society is related to “global warming/climate change/climate crisis/climate disruption, then nothing is so related. When everything—from heat to cold, rain to snow, wind, storms or drought—proves global warming, nothing proves global warming.

And yet, also from the Earth Day edition, “Gov. Brown’s greenhouse-gas cuts scrutinized” provided a glimpse into the lunacy of his jihad against global warming. “High-speed rail officials tinker with $64B plan” highlights, without intending to, the fiscal foolishness that is supported by illusory cuts in greenhouse gases to come from Brown’s bullet train to nowhere.

The best postscript to Earth Day is “The Stuff Greens Keep Getting Wrong,” by J.C. Carlton (posted at donpolson.blogspot.com), which itemizes almost two dozen predictions over the last 45 years that have (often spectacularly) failed to come to fruition. “Why do we listen to people who have always been wrong?”