- Bringing EV back. After pulling its EV1 from the market (see Who Killed the Electric Car), GM realizes it’s fucked up and plans for a whole family of EV vehicles. If GM’d just obeyed Cali’s original zero-emissions vehicle mandate instead of fighting it tooth and nail, maybe it wouldn’t be going through another round of job cuts and plant closings now. Now that the company’s tanking, GM finally sez it’s “abandoning business as usual.”
- Ecolimo “a Santa Monica-based limousine service that combines privilege with environmentalism.”
- Traffic concerns make Long Beach residents oppose a new Home Depot. “Long Beach’s environmental impact report estimated the project would add 5,780 vehicles on weekdays and 8,500 on weekend days to already busy roads.”
- Los Angeles deputy mayor for transportation, Jaime de la Vega, apparently drives a fucking hummer. Sez columnist Steve Lopez: “I know it’s a free country, but we have to hope the transit boss in a city with legendary smog and traffic is no longer tooling around town in a goofball buggy the size of a tank.”
There are already two home depots in LB as it stands. And the spot where they want to build it is not somewhere where I’d like to see traffic increased (it’s just south of CSULB and the 22/Studebaker interchange is already a bit of a mess without adding the traffic that a big commercial development would add). Throw in the fact that it’s right near protected wetlands and I’d say that the Home Depot opposition is more than just NIMBYism.
Comment by don hosek — January 7, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
I think Mr. de la Vega should be replaced with someone who takes rapid transit in Los Angeles. Anyone who drives a hummer has shown they are totally cluelenss about transportation in Los Angeles and doesn’t deserve the job.
Comment by Julia — January 7, 2007 @ 3:22 pm
Technically, LB has no Home Depots, as both are in Signal Hill. Also, there’s a Lowe’s.
So, the City Council wants the tax revenue currently going to Signal Hill. As for consumers, apparently HD doesn’t think the market is satiated, and that we are so lazy that we aren’t driving 1/2 mile to the closest store.
So what’s going on here?
-inter-municipal competition for taxes (Thank you, Prop 13)
-Environmentalists motivated by nimbyism
-Environmentalists motivated by wetlands protection and sprawl reduction
Don is mostly right that this is a complex issue.
At least I haven’t heard anyone play the race card/day-laborer card. Yet.
Comment by Rafi — January 8, 2007 @ 8:03 pm
Just wanna make sure it’s clear that I’m not criticizing the people opposing the new Home Depot in any way — I think we need more people saying no big box stores that’ll create lotsa traffic and lotsa pollution.
Julia — What’s scary is that the governator still owns a few Hummers…. That said, he’s been doing some good enviro work — v. odd that he doesn’t carry that into his personal life though. Annoying, actually.
Comment by Siel — January 9, 2007 @ 10:27 pm