barry liss on 
Kathy Tepsa on 
clhughes on Far be it from me to assert that taking care of the environment is for communists, BUT… I should point out that Rudy “I am not really a Republican, but vote for me anyway” Giuliani was mayor during the creation of the Office of Sustainable Design in New York City. Ahh, that’s just me being funny; sorry Rudy.
Anyway, tonight the Samuels Group and Wisconsin Public Service are presenting to the Common Council a plan called Sustainable Wausau. I am truly excited to see something like this come about. I have giant reservations about the folks involved – for example nowhere on the Samuels Group’s website was I able to find even a slight mention of green building practices, and Wisconsin Public Service is a giant corporation and the pseudo-green verbiage on its website is really just the basics.
My criticism of these two leaders – or definers – in this area are not so much of what they do, but rather of what they have a chance to do. Both are leaders in their fields, and have a bully pulpit to define the terms with which our area moves forward. They could, if they chose to, decide to step forward and become a more vocal supporter of these environmental initiatives that surround us daily. It is with that hope that I will be going to the meeting tonight, to see and hear firsthand whether these two companies step up to the microphone and hopefully address the issues.
For the past few years I have read about the paperless office, productivity tools, and the like. It started oddly enough with Bill Gates’ Book, Business @ The Speed of Thought. In it Gates discusses how the goal for his company is to be a paper-free workplace. Not that it’s possible to completely eliminate paper, but at least there wouldn’t be anymore of those interoffice envelopes with the little strings on them. Microsoft has an internal agenda to follow processes and systemic uses of resources like paper, and to evaluate them for environmental concerns first. It is hardly a unique or groundbreaking idea, but to see it come from an organization as large and as corporate as MS is an interesting thing.
When I worked at NTC, I saw first hand how the Personal Computer can be used as a true tool of work place connectivity. Chet Strebe and his staff had implemented Lotus Notes and the college culture had been educated enough to see the value of working within that software environment to communicate and schedule. It was an amazing shock to me to see several hundred people using a simple tool and using it with consistency.
I blather on, but at the end of this… I think small cities like Wausau are the ideal place to become green. We have smaller developments, smaller city departments, small small small. It is an easy place to communicate ideas from small departments to other small departments. These small towns can become beacons of hope for the future.
Can you imagine how much paper we could recycle? I mean sure there is a program at City Hall, but how active is it? Why not make it something that people buy into?
What about solar energy? Why not make City Hall solar-powered? Or at least try?
I think that is what this terrible blog post is about. I hope our city tries. Why not try? Why not have the legacy of this city council be the city council that embraced Sustainability? Why not, along with the giant tower, the Pala… (oh I have no idea what it is called), the parking ramps, Wausau Benefits, and all the rest of the great things… why not make Jim Tipple the “green” mayor?
Yeah,this costs money. Yeah, we’re spending 8 million on pools, and who knows what on all the other stuff. But Marathon County is a farming county. Farms need environmental practices to ensure long lives. We have seen that giant corporations like Monsanto are devils and are killing the planet… why not take a stand? Say in public and out loud, “It’s time for you citizens of Wausau to be leaders. We don’t need a new pool, we need to spend that money on solar power for city buildings which will save us money in the long run!”
For example, ask that all new developments of commercial property have to have a wastewater/grey water recycling plan. Make contractors do a public environmental impact study for all new buildings. Ask the deep checkbooks in this city to help out. Put solar panels on top of the Grand?
Why not have a plan? Why not charge Mike Morrissey with this very task? Mike…why not see that urban planning is now important? It’s not just about acquiring property for McDevco; now we need to put the needs of our area first!
We have a chance to embrace a life change, right now. We can demand green space, alternative energy, conservation education, hybrid vehicles, computer recycling (what does the city do with all the old PC’s?), aggressive handling of landfills and garbage, aggressive protection of our waterways, and paper-free workplaces in Government offices.
It’s 2007; is it not time yet for our City and County leadership to do just that? To adopt something, to show something other than voting block bickering? What about the common good?
http://www.samuelsgroup.net/greenscene.html
All you had to do was look on the side of opening page.
Hey look at that. Totally missed it. Sorry Samuels Group.
I do think it is a good little section, but I also think it could be more aggressive. We shall see tonight.
Sorry to barge in on this particular topic but am I going completely bonkers? I thought I read a recent post by Marcus about taking online offline. I tried to post a response and now the whole thing is gone. Did I break it???????
Dino, I’m all for green. My workplace is trying to be greener, I like that. Now I get the results of my football pool electronically rather than on a piece of paper. In all seriousness, the place is trying to do many small things to become green, not just the football stuff.
Speaking of green, did you read what I wrote about Stoney Acres?
moose
anonemoose, I like your username. Anyway, yes, post was there, post was gone, post is back again. Comment away!
It was a fascinating presentation tonight.
That being said, what do hospitals do with their waste? Look at how large they are, and the amount of sheets, and laundry, and waste water?
I think the cool green space outside of the hospital room I saw yesterday was pretty cool.
So……..
Facinating good? Or Facinating bad? You left us in the lurch here.
Well, since I think some of us have a dog in the fight shall we say…I shall temper my remarks. I thought it was a wonderful first presentation, but I did not think it was GOING TO BE a first presentation. I thought we had gotten to the point where Sustainable Wausau was going to propose changes to the city government systems, and discuss taking it to the professional staff for implementation.
I think what happens next is a wave of studies, and considerations, and evaluations, and more experts and consultants.
What I had hoped for was Mayor Tipple proclaiming, like he proclaimed Wausau’s support for the UN, that Wausau was going to work to become a green city.
I boggles my mind that the people behind me were grumbliing about what they were hearing. I have no idea who that was, but man at some point we need to allow for voices to be heeard. I think this person was angry that anyone would tell him or her anything at all ever.
I applaud the group, and I would like to see if there is a way for Citizen Wausau maybe to host the slides and the program you talked about.
Sorry if you missunderstood but I am not anyway involved with this project. I do however find it very interesting and hope that it moves ahead.
The only reason I new about the website was that I visited it and found it.
Going green takes a significant amount of education. Retrofitting existing properties is a major undertaking. Some of the technology is good. Much of the technology is oversold. The fact that Wausau has a large construction firm even taking a public position is remarkable.
My “dog in the fight” on this topic stems from work I am doing with several partners to not only retrofit 9 hotels but also integrate with the construction partner on all projects moving ahead this same philosophy. It starts with small things–not bidding metal halide lamps into the project, for example. Dallas is a different animal, but I think the conditions are the same on a community level.
Education first. Conservation second. And Wausau could use a healthy dose of both.
Was there discussion regarding environmentally-responsible remodeling of existing commercial properties? Seems like Wausau has a lot of empty buildings that could be rehabbed into retro-modern workspaces, in lieu of clear-cutting another hillside or waterfront habitat to build something big and shiny. Though I have no idea of the practicality or cost.
The area south/southwest of the Extension and north of Sherman St. comes to mind. I always picture a Wausau version of the Warehouse District or something.
http://www.solardecathlon.org/
A German College won this year’s Solar Decathalon sponsored by the US Department of Energy. U of Maryland was second. Santa Clara University took third place.
What does this mean? Anywhere in the global village is a possible center if you get the right minds together.
Barry
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
I think the enviornment is a huge issue today which must be given proper attention before it is too late. A sustainable Wausau would be a great model for other cities in the state and throughout the nation. There are assumptions about the enviornmental problem that lead it it not being solved, these are outlined by Jared Diamond in his recent book collapse. These assumptions and his feedback have been directly quoted from his book:
“The environment has to be balanced against the economy.” This quote portrays environmental concerns as luxury… and considers leaving environmental problems unsolved to be a money-saving device. This one-liner puts the truth exactly backwards. Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the short run and in the long run; cleaning up or preventing those messes save us huge sums in the long run, and often in the short run as well. P. 503
“Technology will solve our problems.” ….. Underlying this expression of faith is the implicit assumption that, from tomorrow onwards, technology will function primarily to solve existing problems and will cease to create new problems. Those with such faith also assume that the new technologies now under discussion will succeed, and they will do so quickly enough to make a big difference soon. …..
But actual experience is the opposite of this assumed track record. Some dreamed-of new technologies succeed, while others don’t. Those that do succeed typically take a few decades to develop and phase in widely… New technologies… regularly create unanticipated new problems. …..
Most of all, advances in technology just increase our ability to do things, which may be either for better or for worse. All of our current problems are unintended negative consequences of our existing technology. The rapid advances in technology during the 20th century have been creating difficult new problems faster than they have been solving old problems…. P. 504-505
“If we exhaust one resource, we can always switch to some other resource meeting the same need.” Optimists who make such claims ignore the unforeseen difficulties and long transition times regularly involved…. The current hope for breakthrough involves hydrogen cars and fuel cells, which are technologically in their infancy as applied to motor transport. …..
Equally instructive is the automobile industry’s recent development of fuel-efficient hybrid gas/electric cars, which have been enjoying increasing sales. However, it would be unfair for a believer in switching to mention hybrid cars without also mentioning the automobile industry’s simultaneous development of SUVs, which have been outselling hybrids by a big margin and more than offsetting their fuel savings. The net result of these two technological breakthroughs has been that the fuel consumption and exhaust production of our national car fleet has been going up rather than down.
p. 506
Another example of faith in switching and substitution is the hope that renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, may solve the energy crisis. These technologies do indeed exist…. However, wind and solar energy have limited applicability because they can be used only at locations with reliable winds or sunlight. In addition, the recent history of technology shows that conversion times for adoption of major switches… require several decades, because so many institutions and secondary technologies associated with the former technology have to be changed. P. 507
“The population crisis is already solving itself, because the rate of increase of the world’s population is decreasing, such that world population will level off at less than double its present level.” …. by many criteria, even the world’s present pollution is living at a non-sustainable level; … the larger danger that we face is not just of the two-fold increase in population, but of a much larger increase in human impact if the Third World’s population succeeds in attaining a First World living standard. P. 511
“If those environmental problems become desperate, it will be at some time far off in the future, after I die, and I can’t take them seriously.” In fact, at current rates most or all of the dozen major sets of environmental problems discussed at the beginning of this chapter will become acute within the lifetime of young adults now alive. Most of us who have children consider our children’s future as the highest priority to which to devote our time and our money. P. 513
Just a reminder that the “Sustainable Wausau” group will be having an open house type meeting tomorrow (Tuesday, Nov. 13) from 4:30-6:30 p.m. in the Birch Room at City Hall. This is the time to stop by, discuss some of your interests in various areas of sustainability, consider joining a committee and get involved.
I will be there