Wow. Interesting.
Chrono-recap of Crompton's speech:
- Council won't allocate $25k for tree maintenance next year, "bet your life on it".
- We're essentially going to abandon this project if we don't do it right now.
- We can do this at minimum standards at $5k per year, which can easily be found because "Mr. Cisneros has a $9M budget."
"So it goes like this, Mayor..." [and here we go...]
You've got a rowboat, and you're going across the Pacific Ocean. And its a sort of 25-ft rowboat. And you look after it real carefully, because there's 3,000mi of water. And you take great care of that rowboat; you make sure you've got plenty of water and plenty of food onboard...and so on and so forth.
And we have this little thing called Earth roomed in this massive cosmos of infinite size. Its kind of like my rowboat on the Pacific Ocean. And this little thing called Earth has a very fragile environment, very fragile, and if you shift that environment 3 or 4 degrees you essentially wipe out life.
And so, we see, we see temperature change, we see carbon issues now, and if you pick up Nature and you pick up Science, in every month's issue the conclusion of the top scientists in those top journals is "its worse than we thought it was." And the situation accelerates... And so nobody was forecasting 5 years ago the melting of the Arctic, and that's happened. And so, as the Arctic melts and the permafrost melts and the tundra melts, the carbon gets released and its magnified and as the temperature heats up the oceans become sterile because the plankton becomes toxic in those 2 degree raises in temperature and so the massive sinks of the Amazon and the Congo are disappearing and not only disappearing but the carbon is accelerating...
And so, I go forward in my lifetime I'll get by before the catastrophe happens, before the apocalypse happens, but my grandchildren won't. And in 50 years time, Bethany will say to Sherwood, "Look at Grandad's journal. And on September 24th, 2009, look what he wrote: 'The city council declined to start the beginning of an urban forest which will be a carbon sink because they couldn't raise 5 or 10 thousand dollars.'"
And Sherwood will say to Bethany, "$10k and 92,000 people, that's about 12 cents each, isn't it?" And Bethany will say, "Yes, that's right."
"So that's a cent a month, isn't it?"
"Yes."
And Sherwood will say, "Bethany, were they so stupid, were they so irresponsible, were they so lacking integrity like all the other public officials in those days, that they refused to safeguard our future?"
This is not about tree hugging, and you can smile all that you like at my analogy, but we have a responsibility here and its a very serious one. And we need to get on with it and take it seriously and do it. And we need to plant these trees and I move that we do #2 and get on with it.
Maloney basically says, "Look, I don't know about Global Warming and don't really care. I just like a whole bunch of trees."
Massey states for the record he doesn't want to ruin the earth for his grandchildren, and that in providing for the health and safety of our citizens choices in funding must be made.
Crompton: There is nothing more fundamental to the health and safety of our citizens than the survival of our ecosystem. And economics is absolutely trivial alongside that; its absolutely short-term thinking, and in my view as I said, stupid, irresponsible and lacking in integrity not to get on with it!
[This message has been edited by Nom de Plume (edited 9/29/2009 8:03a).]