San Pedro Bay
COOL CITIES WATERFRONT
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| High quality recreational areas close to home are an important component of reducing driving distances and fighting climate change. The Greater Cabrillo Beach area should be preseved for personal, outdoor recreation, and be free of industrial operations like cruise terminals. |
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Attend: Waterfront Hearing Monday, Oct 27, 6 p.m.
Action: Write a letter of support
Next Update: Sunday, Oct 28, 6 p.m. PDT
Climate change may be the worst crisis humanity has ever faced. The slow-moving nature of the climate crisis means that by the time we clearly "feel the pain" it will be too late to act. By then, we will have painted ourselves into a dangerous corner with no safe way out. This won't be some far-off environmental disaster that extincts polar bears and penguins but otherwise leaves mankind alone. At best, it will destroy the quality of life we are used to and lead to economic collapse. At worst, it will lead to mass starvation and the greatest suffering people have ever experienced.
So, the challenge with climate change, is developing policy that deals with it as Public Problem #1, while we face many other problems for which we already "feel the pain." As just two examples of other crises, we have the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Our nation is suffering from failing schools in many urban areas. In Detroit, only one in four children graduate high school. In Los Angeles, only about one in two.
Nationally, we face many more urgent challenges, besides the economy and schools. They are all important and we need to tend to them. If we are to successfully deal with these and with climate change, we need to look for solutions that help us solve more than one problem at the same time. Otherwise, we may work for solutions that solve one problem at the expense of aggravating another.
The purpose of the Cool Cities Waterfront Plan is to provide leadership into a new urban lifestyle that confronts climate change head on and in doing so helps revitalize the economy of a struggling urban core. This effort begins with the realization that urban blight and poverty leads to urban flight—which itself contributes to climate change. We can't fix climate change just by swapping out light bulbs and driving hybrids. We need to deal with core urban problems that force far too many people into long commutes for work, shopping, school or recreation. These same long drives diminish the quality of our life, eat up our time with driving rather than living, take away from a sense of community, and rob much of Southern California of a sense of place and destination.
Attend: Waterfront Hearing Monday, Oct 27, 6p.m
The Port of Los Angeles and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will hold their only public hearing on a draft environmental report for the Los Angeles/San Pedro Waterfront Project at 6:00 pm on Monday, October 27, 2008. This meeting will be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 601 S. Palos Verdes Street, San Pedro, CA 90731 (map).
This meeting will begin with a presentation by the port on the waterfront plan. This presentation will be followed by presentations by a variety of groups, including a Waterfront Work Group which will present a sustainable waterfront plan (which the Sierra Club supports). Among the presentations will be a presentation on the Cool Cities Waterfront Concept by the Sierra Club. The presentations will be followed by general public comments from the audience.
Whether or not you make a public comment, your attendance is important — both as a show of support and to hear what the port and members of the public have to say.
Action: Write a Letter of Support
We need your letters to help support a "Cool Cities" waterfront for Los Angeles and to reduce the global warming impact caused by cars and driving and to protect Los Angeles' tidelands area.
Please download, printout and sign this letter (PDF, RTF) and then print your name and complete street address below your signature. (You may add your e-mail address if you like.) Mail it to us at:
Sierra Club Angeles Chapter,
3435 Wilshire Blvd., #320,
Los Angeles 90010.
"Attention Waterfront"
And we'll forward copies to Mayor Villaraigosa and other decision makers. Or, you can paste the text of the letter in an e-mail and send it to us electronically to waterfront@politeo.net. If you do, please be sure to include your complete street address as well. The address will help make your letter count.
If you would rather, use our letter as a guide and feel free to write your own.
For more information or to help further, you can also call Maddalena Serra at the Sierra Club office at 213 387-4287 ext. 210, or Tom Politeo at 562-618-1127.
We will have more information posted on the Waterfront here on August 18, 2008.
Correction: Due to a press error, the August 2008 edition of the Angeles Chapter newspaper, the Southern Sierran, omits a short sample letter to Mayor Villaraigosa.
Special Features Knoll Hill files (Sep./Oct. 2007)
Public disclosure documents by the Port of Los Angeles concerning Knoll Hill development.
Clean truck rally action & gallery (September 2007)
Action is needed now to clean the twin ports' truck fleet and get decent working conditions for their drivers. Action item and photo gallery.
Is world trade a poison apple? (September 2007)
Those organic apples on the grocery market may look great. But, if they're imported, they may cause more harm than good and are part of a destructive pattern of world trade and goods movement that harms public health, labor, communities and the environment. The September Southern Sierran, has more than a dozen articles on world trade and goods movement
San Pedro Bay: Start of the Diesel Death Zone
Welcome to the "Diesel Death Zone" — the home of the two largest ports in the United States: The Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. Air pollution related caused by the goods movement industry kills about 2400 people in Southern California every year—and the number is growing.
The products you buy in big box retailers, Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Home Depo, Fry's, K-Mart all contribute to the death and destruction in communities near the goods movement corridors of Southern California. They also contribute to global warming. Around the world, they contribute to harsh labor conditions, child labor and extreme toxic pollution. They contribute to our loss of good manufacturing jobs and to our balance of trade deficit.
Forty-two percent of the goods that come into the United States arrive in the twin ports in San Pedro Bay—located on the southern edge of mainland Los Angeles County. From here, goods travel to inland distribution centers all over Southern California. A trail of pollution, noise, blight, industrial sprawl, neighborhood and habitat destruction follows the industry inland on a 100-mile journey.
Today, it's impossible to get by without contributing to this problem. The gadgets, shoes, clothes, food and supplies we buy almost all pass through our ports—or smaller ports with smaller ports with similar problems.
We need to prod Congress to take action. We need to produce more goods and food close to home rather than half a world away. We need to ensure that all the products we import are manufactured with good labor standards. Workers need the right to organize independent labor unions without fear of reprisal. We need to ensure environmental standards are comparable to those used in the United States. We should insist that citizens of our trading partners have the right to redress their government for grievances on these issues without harassment or imprisonment.
Otherwise, each and everyone of us will continue to enable a system that is exploiting workers, tears up communities and is destroying the planet.
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