Inbox

[June 18th, 2008]

NOT KIDDING AROUND

I was very disappointed this week reading your article “The Price is What?!” on city budgeting [June 11, 2008]. This disappointment arose when I read your 13th complaint regarding the $10,000 grant included in the Youth Planning Program. There are youth interested and involved in city government who are “dying to hang out with local bureaucrats” and the fact that you’d stereotype all of Portland’s youth is very upsetting. I’m 17 years old and I just finished my second year on the Multnomah Youth Commission. As a selected board of 40 or so youth we’ve done everything from reviewing the city’s budget (yes, that means every single program offer) to constructing our own piece of legislation that now resides on both the city and county charter (The Youth Bill of Rights). So I’d have to say you’re wrong in saying that Portland’s youth simply don’t care, and I think that every penny of the $160,000 in the Youth Planning Program will be put to good use. After all, it’s not like we youth have $2.4 billion to throw around.

Joshua Olmsted
Northeast 11th Avenue

GOOGLE: GO FISH

Your June 4 cover story (“Googleville”) on Google’s server farm at The Dalles omitted a vital matter: What will Google’s big step into the Northwest mean for our endangered salmon?

The electricity Google will use is “cheap” only in dollars. Our vanishing salmon—and steadily vanishing salmon economy—is paying a high price for it. Like every Northwest citizen or business that uses cheap federal electricity, Google is now implicated in the looming extinction of many wild salmon.  The question they must now answer is whether the company will help restore our (and their) wild salmon.

The best test case is the four lower Snake River dams. These dams are part of the system providing Google its cheap power. The scientific verdict is plain that unless they are removed, the endangered inland salmon of eastern Oregon and central Idaho will go extinct.  These are also the salmon most likely—if they can reach the Noah’s ark of their habitat—to make it through global warming, because their high and largely intact spawning areas will warm the least.

The Northwest has a package job:  By 2050, we must close all our coal plants, meet our new load growth, electrify much of our vehicle fleet, and remove those four dams—all with non-carbon energy efficiency and clean renewables.  Google has the resources, expertise, clout, and, we hope, the ethics to help us do this. It can be done, though it will be hard, and Google could really help.

So, Google: will you?

Rhett Lawrence
North Commercial Avenue