Posted on by Californiacontrarian

China Coal vs. City Council

The other night I was driving along minding my own business when . . . Boom! My left front tire had hit something, something big. The next day in the light I was able to see that this was a huge rectangular pothole, large enough that a large dachshund could have curled up in it for a nap. Now granted that this pothole was larger than the average-sized pothole, but those of the smaller variety are everywhere, and none are good for your tires or alignment. 

Coincidentally, that same morning one of the articles on the front page of my local newspaper was titled, “$1M Deal in Latest Cycling Injury Lawsuit.” This particular lawsuit was because a biker was severely injured because of a bike accident due to a pothole. Now granted this payout was not nearly as large as the 2017 $5M lawsuit payout to a bicyclist that had been launched several feet because of a damaged city sidewalk. One would think that $1M and $5M could fix a lot of potholes and damaged sidewalks, but surprisingly I could not find an increased allotment for fixing potholes or damaged sidewalks in the latest city budget. There is a lot of “touchy-feely” stuff in the proposed budget, like more tree planting because of the beneficial effects of trees on CO2, and improvements in bicycle paths and pedestrian walkways to encourage decreased use of cars, and thus combat global warming! Why do these City Council men and women feel that their job is primarily to “make the world ‘a better place’ for future generations by combatting ‘global warming’?” Will they ever realize that increasing the number of bike paths is not going to prevent “global warming/climate change” when, according to the New York Times in 2017, the Chinese are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal. Most of these plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries. Over all around the globe, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. While these new plants will expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent, the know-it-alls on our City Council are expanding bike paths and not fixing potholes! Go figure!!

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