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.
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You pick up on the “Honk if you’re against parking” sign, but I laughed at the “Get Off Your Ass Bike To Class” poster.
Maybe I’m just lazy, but most the time I’m on my bike, I’m still on my “A”.
Oh and Ralph, Houston dwarfs even Las Angeles. My city is approximately a circle with a radius of 25 miles, nearly 2000 square miles (4400 sq km). I drive the entire length of the city each morning and each night. It takes me a long time, yes. However, I have the advantage of being outside the flood zone while giving my daughter a good school and a nice-sized yard to play in. It’s my choice to do so. Other people choose to live in midtown or downtown within walking distance of everything, often without using their cars more than once a week. That’s their choice. Oppresive, backwards laws like in Perth which mandate compression are foolish (especially given Australia was blessed with huge expanses of land) and inhibit freedom for no benefit.
Your “large cities must be car-free” comment is so idiotic it’s beyond reproach. You simple are demonstrating your superior attitude while expousing ignorance of the American way of life. I don’t criticize Russia or New York for having vertical cities. Nor do I call you ignorant for your daily routine keeping you within 10 miles of home. That’s your choice. Please respect mine
Would a Honk if you think Environmentalist Chicks are Easy get a lot of honks?
When I was a student at Humboldt State, I had a roommate, who had given serious consideration to organizing a ‘chew-in’, on the lawn near the administration building. Why, you ask? Because there were no spittoons in the classrooms to accommodate the significant minority of tobacco-chewing students there. 🙂
The “chew-in” of course was the lame excuse created by the fella who represented and fulfilled that 0.87% of the students that just hadda do something to gain their 3 minutes of fame while in college. Hope in their life they went on to chose more legitimate or productive means to seek the remaining 12 minutes. Is better for them to do the Chew-in and spare the rest of us, with something worse to vent his frustration to get noticed. It must be awful to see other folks getting all the attention and you are being ignored. Life is not fair!
Ralph, Are you kidding me? In the US and many parts of the world that I have seen high density housing is synonomous with high crime area. ( I know the latest green thing is yuppie high density urban living complete with local shops and a gated entrance to try and keep the riff raff out) Do you go to Compton or Watts or West Sacramento or East Saint Louis or stay East of the Potomac in DC because you can ride your bike to the local grocery? …its cheap housing too you just can’t go out at night without a police escort! Wonderful low rise or high rise apartments with gang activity going on every evening makes for great socializing with neighbors… just make sure you lock your windows!.(and yes I have had a gun pulled on me in Europe walking near a high density area after dark) I’m sure that we just need to incarcerate a few more! There is a reason that people even in Germany and Russia (see Study by ITS Davis 2005 Asilomar Conference) move out of these types of situations just as soon as they can afford it… sometimes sooner. Maybe I’m socially backward and full of unwarranted fear but anyway you look at it high density housing always means more encounters with people one wouldn’t normally choose to associate with and without a speedy way of leaving the situation (ie car). Glad to hear you are happy with your HD choice but please be cautious.
APE
Speaking of honk messages, another former roommate came up with a great one for a bumper sticker: Honk if you’re a fuddy-duddy! 🙂 It certainly applies to me.
High density urban housing? I guess it’ll work, if all the housing is constructed of concrete, stone, metal, and similarly non-flammable materials, with everything inside likewise being non-flammable including all furnishings. Otherwise fire departments will have to have a near-instantaneous response time, preferably alerted by automatic means, to avoid possible losses of many lives at once. With the fire equipment finding quick passage through walkways not designed for even mere cars. And no burning of fuel for any heating-type purpose can be allowed to prevent mass death from the accumulation of dangerous gases, especially natural gas, with only electric and possibly solar permitted.
Yup, that’ll sure work. Feel free to live in such conditions if you want. I won’t.
>>flicka
>>Have you ever tried walking in LA? Los Angeles is physically 10 times
>>the size of Naples.
Pffff !! That is what I was saying – if you want social communities and functional cities, where you do not have to spend 6 hours a day in a car, you need to design them properly.
.
I’m an architect, and have been doing LEED projects for a decade. Without the insane home-brew electricity, a LEED project is consistently 25-40% more costly to design and construct than a comparable non-LEED job. Case in point, a hotel that is starting shortly (rare, I know) is the same cost as an non-LEED apartment building I’m just wrapping up. I use the two for comparison because the systems and construction type are quite similar.
The Apartment building is phyiscally much larger, perfahs 40% more floor area, has more costly and construction intensive fixtures and finishes, appox. 20% more dwelling units and so forth – it is a lot more building with a much better chance of breaking even that the LEED building ever could.
But true to form, these guys OPPOSE a parking structure because they think someone will be planting corn in it’s place were it not there? No. The the contrary. Someone will need 3 times as much surface parking.
Seriously, why is that these folks so predictably think this way? And for DECADES and DECADES on end!
If the cost of the use of a parking space in Chico is so low that there is never a free parking spot, then the price of parking is too low. Parking rates within two miles of Chico State should be raised immediately to the point where most Chico State students cannot afford to park near campus [the howls of protest will let you know when you have reached the market clearing rate] and everyone will automatically adjust their lives, living arrangements, and commuting strategy so as to maximize their benefit and minimize their cost. Businessmen downtown can give vouchers for parking to their customers at the register [as they do in some other cities already]. This is called democracy in action – I mean a free market – people vote with their wallets, their feet and their pedals.
A system that is 100% efficient at filling parking spaces is stupid, time to add some intelligence. If you keep the price of a commodity set at FREE, there will never be any of it on the shelf, this goes for parking spaces as much as milk, or egg, or bread. Here is an interesting discussion of the economics of the situation as it played out in Chicago with privatization of the city’s parking meters Here is a tid-bit:
“Think of all the time you have to circle for thirty minutes to find a place to park. Think of all the traffic that consists solely of people in the endless hunt for the perfect spot. These are real costs. Just because they aren’t monetized doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
Some of the costs are environmental I might add.
W^3
That missing link if you are interested is a page at distributedrepublic.net entitled shortages-are-bad dating to 3/22/2009.
http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2009/03/22/shortages-are-bad
W^3