Eugene Climate and Energy Action Plan: a mix of good intentions, greenwash and self-censorship

"When politics enter into municipal government, nothing resulting therefrom in the way of crimes and infamies is then incredible. It actually enables one to accept and believe the impossible..."
-- Mark Twain, letter to Jules Hart, 12/17/1901

SustainEugene.org does not use "cookies" or other spyware to track visitors

to contact this website:
mark at permatopia dot com

SustainEugene.org is a grassroots effort to profile the economic, energy and ecological crises as we pass the end of cheap oil and the start of climate change. It highlights key issues surrounding regional food security, forest restoration and preservation, transportation choices, governmental policies and public awareness of how these topics are interconnected.

Urgent Topics

• Burning Forests for Electricity and Liquid Fuels

• Highway Widening Plans in Lane County and Oregon, including widening of the I-5 Willamette River Bridge

• City of Eugene "Climate and Energy" program
  a mix of good intentions, greenwash and self-censorship
  an effort that avoids critical discussion of Peak Oil implications, Eugene's support for highway expansions, urbanization of farmland and other problems that make these crises worse

SustainEugene.org vs .com

SustainEugene.org is a grassroots, volunteer, non-governmental effort focused on deep solutions for individuals, neighborhoods, companies, and governments, since we are past the time when "baby steps" could be adequate. Moving toward sustainability would require profound changes to the dominant paradigm, governmental budgets, laws, corporate structures, financial institutions, the way money works, how food is grown and distributed, and nearly every other aspect of modern industrial life. Considering that even small efforts toward efficiency are extremely difficult to get enacted, the idea of "voluntary simplicity" seems unlikely to be achieved before resource depletion, economic collapse and other forms of breakdown force reduction of consumption. This is not a pleasant conclusion, but unfortunately there is also an enormous amount of credible scientific evidence for this perspective.

SustainEugene.com is a project of the City government's "Sustainability" Commission, which claims that the City will somehow become "carbon neutral" by the year 2020 without having to cancel plans for highway widening, end "growth" or even ban lighting of billboards. Some of the participants on this Commission privately agree that our society (modern industrial civilization - not just Lane County) is past the point of "overshoot" and it will be a scramble to mitigate the crash as best as possible -- but they are not willing to say these things in public. SustainEugene.org exists to say the unmentionable truths to help pressure officials to move faster toward sensible shifts -- and also to encourage citizens to move faster than the glacial official responses. Rhetoric for sustainability coupled with budgets for more highway widenings, more clearcuts, more "growth" is just a form of "greenwash" that merely confuses the public and delays necessary changes.

SustainEugene.com is also the home for the City of Eugene's Climate and Energy Action plan, a public relations effort to convince concerned citizens that the City is proactively addressing Climate Change even as it continues to promote highway expansion, sports arenas, big box stores, paving wetlands, another Urban Growth Boundary expansion onto farmland, paving the Willamette River bank, to cite a few of the detrimental projects currently plotted at City Hall. The "Climate and Energy" project gives only lip service mention to Peak Oil and other forms of resource depletion, since official plans for more roads and other boondoggles would look even more ridiculous if a City department openly admitted that Peak Oil means more roads will not be needed.

subdivision under construction in West Eugene
the standing water next to this home is slated to become the extension of Roosevelt Blvd through the West Eugene Wetlands between Terry Street and Royal Avenue.

note: this page - and website - is under construction, although there is a lot of background information available via the "menu" system on the left of this page.