“Passenger tries to pay cab fare with marijuana”

I can’t believe this guy got arrested…It’s clearly a misunderstanding as he made a good faith effort to pay his taxi fare.  But, even in the greenest city in America, the merchant did not recognize bartering.  Yes, barter has made a comeback as a recognized and sustainable form of commerce.  This passenger is clearly on the cutting edge, and his means of barter is not even considered an illegal substance by most Americans!  I think the mayor’s office of sustainability should issue an apology to this citizen who is clearly trying to be an integral part of the city’s green economy.  Even his eyes are green!

Hey, man, I thought this was a Freedom taxi…

WHEN, not IF, a Tree Falls in the State Forest in Pennsylvania…

If an official is fired because he’s opposed to timbering in state parks and almost nobody hears about it, should we care?  With the exodus of a number of high-ranking officials from the Corbett administration (like rats from a sinking ship) why worry about a single firing?

Well, maybe because this particular state employee seemed to do his job extremely well in the face of industry pressure.  John Norbeck increased park attendance as well as the accompanying revenue, and even his performance reviews were top notch.  The one thing he didn’t do was knuckle under to the logging and mining interests in the state – some of whom are big Corbett contributors.

Michael Krancer, on the other hand, has been praised by those mining interests.  Though it’s not clear whether these two men ever tangled, you wonder if firing a highly respected public servant who worked diligently to protect our environment, might be even a little dismaying to the head of the DEP…?

Krancer has served Corbett well, but he appears to be a smart guy – not the type to actually deny the reality of climate change.  One wonders if he just got tired of defending such an anti-environmental administration as the leader of the state’s Department of ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION?

Krancer may not be a great loss for Corbett, as he has attracted controversy, and the fewer guys like Norbeck you have, the less you have to worry about annoying things like scientific evidence…So it looks like the administration is lean and mean and in tip top shape for reelection!

Smarter than your av-er-age boors?

Krancer has his Head in the Clouds (or foggy minds at PADEP)

Isn’t it great that our own state chief of environmental protection leans toward the camp of climate deniers…Then again, maybe he was just being overly grammatically correct.  Though, one would hope that the head of the state DEP would be just as concerned with science as he appears to be with parsing “compound” sentences.  It’s actually a little surprising that there are some PA legislators who DO appear to care about the environment and seem to understand the science behind the issues.

We’re not denying that plenty of pseudoscience was given much credence in times past, and there are some other crazy theories that a lot of people believe in, too…

Philadelphia City Council: Ungreening by Undoing Zoning Code Reform

Thank god someone in city hall is finally reigning in the riduculous misuse of valuable real estate in this city.  Some of these are large plots of land that are used by crazy hippie types to GROW FOOD!  Helllooo…um, food comes from the grocery store.  And grocery stores EMPLOY PEOPLE and PAY TAXES.  Land is for development, not so some dilletantes can pretend they’re under the Tuscan sun…

Luckily, Brian O’Neill is taking us back to the good old days of Philly zoning, when you could have a nice hat factory or a smelter in your neighborhood.  Not some useless plot of cabbages taking up valuable commercial space.  He’s not going to let 2 years of zoning reform stop him from keeping the Far Northeast just the  way it was since the mid-century.  His new bill sends the clear message that we liked our zoning just fine, thank yous very much.  Brian’s been on council longer than anyone, so he’s probably more nostalgic for Philly’s political salad days when cronyism outweighed crop-raising.

What even is a community garden anyway???

Limerick Nuclear Spill of no Interest to the Public

That’s right.  According to Exelon officials, this event was not an EPPI,  so why bother folks with some anxiety provoking announcement?  And they release radioactive water with some regularity, so it would be a nightmare trying to inform everybody who might have even a passing interest.  As a courtesy, they did informally notify some downstream localities when the spill occurred — very civic minded of them.

And the NRC knows that the solution to pollution (or radioactivity) is dilution, so once the discharges hit the river the problem is solved!  Though, if I could speak for the creatures that live IN the river, I might have  a few questions…

 

 

 

 

Trees are Dirty…

I, and several acquaintances who are not native Philadelphians, have heard the phrase, “…trees are dirty,” on more than one occasion.  It is, apparently, a not uncommon local sentiment.

If you believe a report in today’s New York Times, maybe we’d all breathe easier with a little more of that kind of philth in the CoBLo

But some Philadelphians are actually giving away FREE TREES (I guess in a place like this they figure nobody would actually PAY for such a thing?)

The mayor seems very supportive of this tree planting effort, so why does he allow our local electric utility to butcher our street trees on a routine basis?

Well, even our own Fairmount Park Commission does not always appear to be a friend to trees, though there are many arguments for removing mature trees in the city — erosion be damned!

With “The Lorax” booming at the box office, perhaps we can convince all our citizens that we should be blooming with trees!

“Invasive snakehead fish found in Tinicum”

Uh, oh!  There’s a NEW invasive fish species in town!  I guess Pylodictis olivaris is old news because he’s just not fearsome enough.  The scariest ichthyological newcomer is Channa argus – the Northern Snakehead.  The bad news is that both these invaders have voracious appetites and pose a threat to native species.  But maybe they’ll go fin to fin in an attempt to be top dog in our local rivers, and not have time to eat every other fish in sight.  (Ultimately it may just be a losing battle as there are plenty of other organisms just waiting to invade — the rusty crayfish, quagga mussel and “rock snot” to name a few.)

 

School Buses and Vacant Land to Generate Revenue Thanks to City Council

Wow, Blondell Reynolds-Brown is looking to raise money any way she can.  First keeping tourists and YOkels drinking till 3 a.m. and now putting advertising on the sides of school buses.

I wonder what other revenue producing schemes she’s got up her sleeve?  Collecting outstanding bail payments?  No.  Getting unpaid taxes out of local scofflaws.  No.  Hmmm…what about putting up cell phone antennas?  This seems like an easy source of funds, but they should be placed unobtrusively.

Is that a feather in his cap?

There are some other obvious avenues to pursue like naming rights.  We have Lincoln Financial field and Citizen’s Bank park (until of course they all become Bank of America) and there are still plenty of unnamed buildings in Center City.  Darrell Clarke is already planning to plaster advertisements on municipal properties.  And he wants to increase “street furniture” that will be covered in ads as well.

But why not think waaay outside the box.  Vacant land figures prominently in many of these schemes and the mayor is always bragging about how “green” we are.  Why don’t we use those brownfields to grow some CASH CROPS?  Nutter went to Rio to talk green.  Why don’t we send some of the folks from the Horticultural Society south of the border to get some economic tips!?!