[Mpls] Twins stadium is a trojan horse

[Gary Hoover]

Dean C. scribed in part:
>>>
 Also if enough people disagree with any tax increase you do have a say - 
vote out those who approved the tax increase and vote into office candidates 
who promise to repeal the tax.
<<<
GH here:

But voting the politicians out after the fact.....isn't that closing the 
gate after the horse is loose....or maybe the Trojan horse is in the 
stadium....?

More seriously:

My son is doing a report on the Metrodome as a part of Minnesota history. 
According to the packet of info he received from the folks at the Dome:

-- the Metrodome is self-supporting today, with no current public tax 
subsidy for operations, improvement, or bond repayments.

-- 25,000 cubic feet of air per minute are pumped to keep the dome inflated. 
I wonder what the electric bill is?  I wonder how much of that energy is 
generated from natural gas, or imported from Manitoba Hydro....

-- the Pitcher's mound at the Metrodome weighs 23,000 pounds.  It is raised 
and lowered by an electric motor -- like a big elevator.  Up for baseball, 
down for football (and tractor pulls, I guess).

It takes lots of energy to build, maintain, and operate a place like this. 
Heating, cooling, and lighting the place must draw plenty of energy.

Looking at the energy and resource scenario we face in the next twenty 
years, such facilities will be obsolete within a decade.

Any new huge sports facilities will require huge amounts of energy to build 
and operate while we very much need these resources invested in more 
economically productive sustainable infrastructure.

The old paradigm views our city as having an infinite cheap energy supply 
and an infinite dump for our toxic waste.  We don't even have to think about 
it.  We can build what we want to when and where we want to.  We can also 
assume that the rest of the planet will surrender their resources so that we 
can keep living exactly as we are: "no change."

The planet does not have enough resources or enough waste sinks for us to 
continue this obscene way of planning for the future.  Already Canadians are 
growing more angry with us for assuming the we have "first dibs" on their 
resources -- oil, natural gas, hydro power, water, lumber are a few of 
these.  (NAFTA forces them to sell us about 60% of oil and NG no matter if 
they need the resources and also see their own NG production peak.)

Our resource war with China bubbles up with regard to Iran and the Sudan and 
Venezuela.  Other people in other nations have dreams of using their natural 
resources themselves.  From Bolivia to Nigeria these people question why 
huge energy resources are sold and shipped to us while they live in poverty 
without any say in the matter.

Never mind, let's just keep doing exactly what we've always done.....or 
not!?!?!

The new paradigm is this: we look at our bioregional renewable energy and 
resource budget.  We focus every effort to develop strategies to powerdown 
and conserve resources.  Relocalization and significant local self-reliance 
will be vital in coming years.  Let's raise tax revenue to prepare for the 
real future, not to try to retreat into the past.

pedaling for peace and ecojustice from Lynnhurst -- Gary Hoover