WUWT readers may know of the famous zombietime.com where an anonymous photographer captures some of the bizarre things that happen at protests in SFO and Berkeley. Today on the campus of Chico State University, a protest of sorts was held, I went there to take photos to document it. It was much more down to earth than some “zombietime” offerings, but it was still a bit strange and full of mixed messages. The main message: stop a parking structure (with solar panels on it even!) and others, the secondary message was something about climate, but it isn’t clear what.
I first noticed this protest when I saw this image on Facebook advertising it:
I sent an email to organizer Dr. Mark Stemen of CSUC stating my concerns over the imagery and what it represents to some people in the community and he agreed to pass it on to the students. I’m happy to report that I didn’t see any masked faces at the event today.
That was followed by another sign on Facebook, one far more normal and inviting:
The stated objective from their Facebook page reads:
Critical Mass, Climate Action Protest
Our Objectives:
1. Two more parking structures are scheduled in the CSU, Chico Master Plan after this one is complete. We say, Never Again. Revoke both of these projects immediately.
2. Zingg [president of the CSUC campus], we offer you the stage for a public discussion about what “Campus Climate Neutrality” looks like off of paper, revoke your signature or redefine your perception of sustainability– We won’t stand for greenwashing.
* An apology for calling your students ‘uninformed voters’ would also be appropriate during this time; for democracy… & science.
3. Stop selling parking permits to students within one mile of campus. Getting these students to campus without a car will free spots for individuals that commute and need a space.
…
In the 2011 CSU, Chico AS Elections, 76% of students voted in OPPOSITION to this University proposed plan. The structure will cost $14,000,000 and incur 30 years of debt that will be paid for by an increase in student fees. With this semester’s tuition increased by more than 32%, this plan does not represent the interests of the students and the student vote is evidence of this realization.
The University has gone along ignoring its President’s commitment to “Campus Climate Neutrality” as well as the overwhelming student dissent and will begin construction early this August. This project supports an infrastructure that is not responding to the demands and needs for sustainable transportation. At a campus where 80% of students live within two miles, the students believe they can do better, much better.
Here’s what the event looked like as I approached on foot in downtown Chico. Click all images below to enlarge them.
I annotated the image above to show that the protest was held next to the parking structure under construction. Some background is helpful.
For years, downtown merchants have been asking the City Council to do something about the parking situation. On certain days and hours, finding parking downtown is an exercise in futility, and you can find yourself driving in circles for several minutes trying to find an open parking space. A newspaper article in 2005 by the alternate weekly highlights the problem.
Plans were made for a new parking structure by the city, but anti-growth people launched a referendum to vote it down. Chico State decided to forge ahead on their own to solve the problem and recently got approval from the CSU trustees to build the parking structure, even though Stemen’s class had a vote and sent the trustees a letter arguing against it. The local daily newspaper praised the decision to go forward in an editorial on May 12th:
Our view: The CSU trustees were able to focus on the obvious — that Chico State University needs more parking for its students.
In Chico, where things such as election dates, disc golf and bridges over irrigation ditches become full-blown controversies, no decision is easy. That’s why it was a relief that the decision over Chico State University’s planned parking structure was made by a board in Long Beach.
The also printed a comment from CSU trustees who were surprised to get a complaint about adding more parking saying usually such plans are met with open arms by the students. But, as the newspaper editorial points out, this is Chico were getting things done that are considered normal by most of the rest of the USA turn into full-blown controversies. In this case, Professor Mark Stemen and a handful of students (who won’t be around in a few years to live with issues they protest) are driving this controversy.
If it was just a parking garage, then maybe, one might be able to argue that such protests might have a basis. But there’s a bizarre twist to this. This parking structure is part office space and part sustainability shrine, with a 15 kilowatt solar power array (expandable) and with LEED certification.
Here’s the architectural drawing from the CSUC web page on the structure, annotations mine:
Features:
- 15kW photovoltaic array with trellis and infrastructure to expand
- 10 electrical vehicle charging stations
- Heating and cooling system 15% more efficient than required
- Water efficient fixtures
- Drought tolerant plants
- Low e-windows
- Occupant sensored energy efficient lighting system
- White interior walls and ceiling (in parking structure)
- Open/Full capacity sign at structure entrance
- Recycled materials used in concrete
- Designed to LEED Silver equivalent
And here’s a video made by students highlighting some of the features:
Here we have a parking structure with solar panels, a combined office with LEED certification, and made with recycled materials. What’s not to like? Automobiles, that’s their issue. It seems that with Eco-zealots, it is never enough.
Oh, and who’s the LEED certifcation and sustainability guru at CSUC? Why CSUC’s Dr. Mark Stemen of course, the same guy organizing opposition to the LEED certified parking structure and today’s protest.
So here’s the pictures of the protest today against this structure, others like it to follow, and somewhere in all that some protest about climate and using bicycles is mixed in. Click images to enlarge them.
Later in the day, one of the protesters put this photo up on the Facebook page for the event:
A couple of closing images. First, from Dr. Mark Stemen’s Facebook page. I never thought of parking and eating being linked. I guess I just don’t have my mind right…yeah, that’s it, “Cool Hand Mark” has it all figured out:
In the face of such logic, I suppose it would be pointless to point out that parked cars don’t produce CO2 (as opposed to the ones still driving around looking for a parking space) and that increased CO2 actually benefits agricultural production worldwide. As NASA says, The biosphere is booming thanks to increased CO2 [insert electrical short circuiting sounds here].
Nature’s wind today had other ideas though, and turned one of the signs posted up on the construction fence a block away into litter, only to be trampled by one of the hideous CO2 belching beasts:
Of course I’m sure some of the protestors will say I staged that photo, what with me being a “denier” and all that. But no, that’s exactly how I happened upon it. In fact, it was the first hint I was getting close to the protest, as it was the first sign I saw today one block west of the protest.
In closing, the protest was pretty mild, the students didn’t wear face masks as the poster advertised they might, protestors got to socialize, listen to some pedal powered tunes, free speech was upheld, and I had a good chuckle from it all. I hope you did too.
That Chico protest might seem poorly focused and disorganized, but compared to Zombie’s photo montages of Bay Area activities the focus was almost laser like. BTW, if you’re thinking of going to her site to check it out, be forewarned, there are things which once seen can never be unseen. It would seem that no protest in the BA is complete without a large compliment of poorly preserved old hippies gettin’ nekked, as well as numerous others engaged in activities which, in some dark corner of your mind, you may have suspected to exist but for which you really don’t want to have visual confirmation.
>>Ralph’s vision of driving nonstop and never socializing is
>>also an “edge of the spectrum” observation.
Maybe – but if some dumb-ass town planner designs your town in that fashion, you are stuck with the results. There must be many in the US, whose lives have been ruined by the mistaken worship of the car.
And the observation someone made of East Coast towns (and most European towns) is equally valid. A large city can only absorb so many single people in tin boxes travelling into town. By definition, a very large city has to be a largely car-free location for many citizens, otherwise the entire city becomes grid-locked. But if you know that, why not design cities with that in mind?
And having done so, you might discover something wonderful – if you can walk or cycle from home to city center in less than ten minutes (through higher density housing), and the city center is vehicle free, your quality of life improves dramatically. And I am not saying this to be Green, it is just true – a fact of life.
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@Ralph:
Shall we bulldoze all our cities and start over?
BTW: Why is it that many people forced by central planners to live the way you describe will choose to purchase a car as soon as they can? False idol worship, perhaps?
@ur momisugly Ralph says:
September 11, 2011 at 1:03 pm
Maybe – but if some dumb-ass town planner designs your town in that fashion, you are stuck with the results. There must be many in the US, whose lives have been ruined by the mistaken worship of the car.
And the observation someone made of East Coast towns (and most European towns) is equally valid. A large city can only absorb so many single people in tin boxes travelling into town. By definition, a very large city has to be a largely car-free location for many citizens, otherwise the entire city becomes grid-locked. But if you know that, why not design cities with that in mind?
And having done so, you might discover something wonderful – if you can walk or cycle from home to city center in less than ten minutes (through higher density housing), and the city center is vehicle free, your quality of life improves dramatically. And I am not saying this to be Green, it is just true – a fact of life.
There are also many who’s lives have been ruined by not having a car, or by being forced to live in “high density housing”.
The point here is that people should not be forced to adopt somebody else’s idea of nirvana. People are not objects to be arranged, stacked, and labeled like so many cans of soup. In addition there are a great many who must have private transportation available to them to do whatever job it is they do in the “Big City”. Not everyone is a cubical rat who sits in one place 8 hours a day and only needs to go from home to work and back. If these Chico students want to walk or bike, that’s their choice. But for them to try to impose their life choices on others is unacceptable.
Thanks, James, my first thought, too.
If they are the face of change, then why are they afraid to show their faces??
Apparently thuggery in the name of “change” is no crime to them.
“We are the extremely immature, still-riding-our-parents’-coattails, little kids – trying to act and feel important.”
I’m afraid these are not the hard-core radicals I so admired in my youth. This looks for all the world like a car wash…
juanita says (September 11, 2011 at 8:22 am): “There’s an old saying: you get more flies with honey than vinegar.”
Apparently juanita doesn’t watch “The Big Bang Theory”. Check about 2:40 into the following video for a better way to attract flies:
Sorry Ralph, but I’m not biking to the grocery store (over 1 mile away from my house) in -22 degrees F. We usually get 2 weeks in February that run -22. No way I can stock up enough groceries for the 5 in my family on a bike. Nor can I keep the food from melting in the over 90 heat before I get it home. (It’s not safe to bike after dark in our neighborhood when it’s cool enough to keep the food from melting.) Then there’s the 3 to 6 feet of snow we can get… Bikes don’t work very well in that, either.
I lived within a mile off campus in college, and usually walked. But, it was not safe for a female to walk across campus after dark without a male, so if I had a class that ended after dark, I usually drove. Now, our campus was nice enough to have an “escort service” – guys that would walk girls across campus to keep us safe, and I utilized that. But again, when temps dip to about freezing, a car is a heck of a lot warmer and safer than walking across campus just to “save the planet.”
“We are the dreamers”
No you are the children of privilege that have absolutely no brains worth a bowl of chili.
Hum, did I fill in the blank right? Do I get a prize? And what’s wrong with my language?
A famous song says, “When will they ever learn?”
I attended a very large and well-known university in the center of a small city in the early 70s, also with almost no parking. The only parking available was for faculty and staff, but not for students except a limited few with special needs. The student body numbered just over 40,000.
There was a satellite parking lot where I parked my car for days at a time. I only drove on the rare occasion such as weekends with a date, or a roadtrip with friends. This was during my freshman year when I lived on campus.
The University, not being totally stupid, provided free shuttle buses for the students. This included routes of several miles that collected students from their apartments and brought them in to campus each morning and back each evening. I believe that the first bus in the morning ran about 6:15 am and the last bus at night was about 11:00 pm.
This was 40 years ago. Nobody protested, nobody made an issue of our transportation solutions. It worked, and worked quite well. As the University has grown over the years, the only thing that has changed is the shuttle buses have more efficient engines.
B-but, each of these little green weenies needs to have some confabulated “cause” by which to make their sad lives “meaningful” – mostly by non-specifically controlling the rest of us regardless of what their “issue” happens to be. Plus, how else would their Charismatic Leaders distract them from noticing that they are merely serving as useful idiots toward the goal of Totalitarian State Control, instead of “saving the world” from whatever they happen to notice or concoct as evidence of its imperfection and thus our impending doom?
Man, sure I hope Sarah Palin doesn’t show up there. They’d get so high on “being meaningful” that it might get pornographic.
It certainly seems like downtown Chico and the university need more parking- as noted in the the provided reference link. I can understand why some folks might consider the design plan for the battery plug in stations as being unsustainable. http://www.csuchico.edu/fcp/projects/parking.shtml#
“Several energy-saving features are planned for the office and parking structure project. Up to 10 battery plug-in stations are planned for electric vehicles. The electricity for these recharging stations will be generated by photovoltaic units on the structure’s roof, so users will not incur a cost, nor will the stations increase the campus’s electrical load.”
The university has likely started up a new quarter so I’d like to suggest that electrical engineering prof’s ask their students what they think about the statement above.
Jeff Alberts says:
September 10, 2011 at 9:24 pm
nope a farmers market and a craft show would have far more people in attendance.
Doesn’t that protest belong in the “Climate Fail” thread?? 😉
I wonder if it’s time to start calculating up the energy budget of the bikes that they’re lauding? If they’re steel, they’re made from coal and iron ore shipped across the world by ship. And steel is the lowest footprint metal they’d likely be built with. The high-temperatures needed for the light-weight metals… well, they need steel to build the infrastructure, and then a lot of electricity or carbon-based combustion to achieve the temperatures once the foundry is built. But that would mean looking deeper than the surface, which mobs are not noted for being very good at doing.
Ralph
People who live in european ‘car-free cities’ still own cars. But they park them outside the limits, thereby causing more congestion for those living in the places around the edge. Oh what irony! Oops, sorry, hypocrisy.
>>Shall we bulldoze all our cities and start over?
>>BTW: Why is it that many people forced by central planners to live the
>>way you describe will choose to purchase a car as soon as they can? False
>>idol worship, perhaps?
Why not? Cities are re-modelled every 100 years anyway. I note in Perth, Australia, that there is a high density law, where if a single house is pulled down, you have to build four in its place.
And why do people choose to buy a car? Cause and effect. If you live in a city that has been designed around the car, with sprawling suburbs, you have to buy a car to live – otherwise you are stranded. However, if you live in somewhere like Naples, buying a car is utterly stupid, and so a majority buy a scooter or go on foot. But who needs a car in Naples? Everything is there beneath your flat.
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>>Sorry Ralph, but I’m not biking to the grocery store (over 1 mile away from
>>my house) in -22 degrees F
Because your cities are designed stupidly. When I was in Moscow, it was -28 c, but I still did my shopping on foot. How? The supermarket was under the flat. All the flats were grouped together, with the shops (and the metro station) underneath.
Actually, I am not a fan of Russian high-rise flats (even if they were built properly), but the low-rise you get in Germany and Spain are just wonderful. Now this means that you need to walk a bit further than in Moscow (or catch the tram), but I think low-rise flats are the better option for maximum quality of life.
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>>The point here is that people should not be forced to adopt somebody
>>else’s idea of nirvana. People are not objects to be arranged, stacked,
>>and labeled like so many cans of soup.
Ahh, the American cry of ‘freedom!’ The freedom to be 10km from the nearest shop. The freedom to starve if you cannot afford a car.
Do you think that Germans or Spanish are ‘forced’ to live in flats? Do you think we have a totalitarian state in Europe and you are allocated a flat at the point of a gun?
Face facts. Europe is much more crowded than many parts of America, and so having a detached house in the suburbs is often a liability. Do you want to spend your life in the local park with your family or on your balcony with a crate of beer and a few friends – or sitting, frustrated and fuming, in yet another traffic jam trying to get into town?
This is why flats sell in Europe. In Germany I can walk 200m to the tram-stop, from the superbly appointed 5 star flat (with garage below and private gardens), and be in the city in 5 minutes. In L.A. you can drive from your detached plywood shack (a normal American-build house) and be in the city in 1 1/2 hours – and still not find a parking place.
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And this is the other problem with the American obsession with the car – obesity.
http://eurthisnthat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/fat_person2009-med-wide.jpg
But don’t worry, the Dutch have designed a bicycle especially for Americans who visit Holland – it is called the Americana Fiets. It has a strengthened frame and extra-fat tyres, to spread the weight.
http://www.selectism.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/core77-dutch-master-bicycle-1.jpg
Best of luck in your next traffic jam.
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>>People who live in european ‘car-free cities’ still own cars. But they park
>>them outside the limits, thereby causing more congestion for those
>>living in the places around the edge. Oh what irony! Oops, sorry,
>>hypocrisy.
Have you ever been to Europe? Do you own a passport?
Some flats have private car parking below them. Some people do park on the streets. Some hire a car, for the odd occasion when you want to drive to another city. …. But there are a sizeable majority of people in many cities who do not have a car, and wouldn’t want one. Or they have a scooter or bicycle. Have you ever tried driving, in Naples?
How big would Anthony’s little car-park have to be, to accommodate this lot?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3540/3468732491_95d26ae739.jpg
http://lh4.ggpht.com/RandRWassenaar/R7LtmSlI_UI/AAAAAAAACWE/nn0rXDxDKLs/s800/bikepark.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3096/3129792109_7a04354a04.jpg
This reminds me of a day in Amsterdam in the 70-ties. They were building the underground and some houses had been demolished exposing the bare walls of the neighbours. The local protest movement (“provos”) and the budding green activists used it for graffity and painted supersized slogans on the wall to broadcast the message.
One week there was “Amsterdam Car Free” on the wall and the item for the week after was “Cuba Liberated”. So on one day, and one day only, the wall was adorned with the gloriously surreal:
“Cuba Car Free”.
Ralph…
Have you ever tried walking in LA? Los Angeles is physically 10 times the size of Naples. That is 502.69 square miles make up the city of LA, as opposed to 45.5 for the city of Naples. Many Californians grow up with the knowledge that the California missions were placed approximately a days ride on horseback apart…that’s 20 miles. So, if LA was a square that’s a day and a half on a horse or bike one way to get to work, or the grocery, the dentist…
More importantly is you seem to want to ignore what folks are saying, if you want to live in a little town like Naples so you can walk everywhere within a reasonable bit of time, feel free. Just don’t think you have any right to tell others how they should live.
I don’t even live in a “town” or an incorporated area, the closest town to me is almost 15 miles away. That’s the way I like it, and I have as much right to live where I want as you have to live where you want. Period.
Ralph, since you apparently love Europe so much, I suggest you stay there. Enjoy your little socialist paradise.
The local community college where I teach recently reserved several parking spaces for EVs and converted those spaces to EV-recharging stations.
Problems with this include:
1) No EVs are sold in this area.
2) The spaces aren’t metered, so anybody with enough money to afford an EV gets free electricity.
3) The college has endured and is still enduring major budget cuts.
If only we were all smart enough to follow the ideas of those who are smarter than us!
I actually would have rallied against the parking structure. If the CITY of Chico needs parking, let them build it. Why should students be forced to pay student fees for parking to accomodate ignorant city folk.
Disclaimer: I have two children in College, driving CO2 belching autos I purchased, attending partly at my expense.
The frustrating thing is that they have a point about the parking garage and debts. They are just making themselves look bad with these ludicrous.
At UH, there was significant student opposition to a $40 million 4-floor parking garage that had an entire floor for visitor parking, a second floor for employee parking (despite the fact that there was more employee parking than employees), two restaurants and some offices. As it was built on an existing parking lot, there was only an increase of about 300 parking spots available to students. Plus, there was an upgrade of $100 per semester for garage parking permits. It was pushed through and less than half of the 1,500 garage permits were sold the first year despite many complaints about parking.
Of course that’s the difference between California and Texas. The Cali’s protest. The Texans just refuse to use it on principle.