[Mpls] Twins Stadium, Urban Infrastructure, and Petroleum Depletion

[Gary Hoover]

C-Span will carry an educational speech tonight relevant to the topic of planning urban infrastructure in preparation for lower-petroleum lifestyles.

I encourage citizens to tune in, and to encourage our elected representatives and candidates to do likewise.  Perhaps the Twins management could tune in as well.

Bartlett's third Special Order Speech on Peak Oil:
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Congressman Bartlett will discuss how the U.S. can overcome the threat to America's economic prosperity and national security posed by growing world demand for oil and consensus projections of future declines in world oil production.
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Info can be found here:  http://www.energybulletin.net/5710.html   

(Bartlett's speech will be on late, by the way -- sometimes can be accessed online as transcript or audio/video feed after the fact.)

Will Bartlett be likely to recommend that we spend nearly half-billion per professional "sports" entertainment team, per city for new stadiums?

Perhaps the professional "sports" entertainers will contemplate whether or not their own children will really benefit from flying teams all around the country to events which encourage folks to sit in traffic congestion and then eat junk food (which could very well be a third more expensive within 5 years or so)  while sitting and watching the game.

Urban park infrastructure is easily worth 100 professional "sports" entertainment complexes -- but urban park infrastructure is much less expensive, healthier, more sustainable, and far less energy-intensive than the former.  And actual (participatory!) sports events occur in local city parks.  Real baseball games happen when local, grassroots teams play or kids and adults in families and neighborhoods play together.

It looks like Bartlett will focus more on steps to take tonight, though he will review current petroleum production/usage projections.

Perhaps our local news media would do well to re-tether our city and state to the planet rather than reporting on huge urban infrastructure projects as though we are not at all a part of an ongoing ecosystem crash, or as though we are not at all a part of a very violent (largely petroleum-oriented) geopolitical clash and perhaps the most significant economic dislocation since the Great Depression?

Visit EnergyBulletin's homepage and click around to various articles about petroleum, agriculture, and future implications of resource depletion.  Think about why we would even think that professional "sports" entertainment will continue in any way like it is now -- for even ten more years?  Maybe our "sports" reporters -- who report more about a narrow entertainment industry than about sports -- could breathlessly discuss how to run this industry on one-fourth the energy it uses now?

Perhaps the Twins could lay out a plan for "sustainable sports" in Minneapolis?  Would that plan include any stadium at all?

The Mayor and Commissioner McLaughlin are now doing a dance to court the local talk-show media, the Pohlads, and the Twins organization.  The issues we need to face are being displaced by a nonsense discussion.  Interestingly, Bartlett notes that industry has lied to us about these things because the only concern is "next quarter's profits and stock prices" while politicians lie because they are completely dependant upon huge corporations, and are only concerned about saying the right things to get contributions for the next election.  My thought is that any issues beyond the next election are "re-framed" by politicians so that huge corporations have short-term happiness while voters are drugged by the media.  We see that happen now with the stadium issue.

My question is this:  will citizens, local politicians, media, and business people take a careful long-term approach? Will we see how far we can carry the lies before reality crashes the party?  The sooner we act like citizens again regarding this matter, the better the outcome will be for all.

-- pedaling for peace and ecojustice (a sporting event every day!) from Lynnhurst, for now -- Gary Hoover