Hickenlooper on Denver’s Green Successes in Transportation, Housing, and Energy Efficiency

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Mayor Hick,

Won in a 12-way contest back in the days, the divide in CO herself is partly in due to "greenwashing" politics. The State is almost evenly split in half with the fertile plains in the East and the Arid Rockies to the West. The East supplies agriculture and the West supplies natural resources. The Front Range Urban Corridor sits right in-between where most of the population resides. This population is equally 50% native and 50% transplants. There is not only a sharp polarization but a sharp distrust between the Native and Transplants and the Conservatives and Liberals, all of which has to do resources and ideology.

It's like the 300lb gorilla in the room and instead of addressing the problem, finding the ideal rate of growth and the ideal range of preservation/excavation, he and many other politicians continue to play the game of appeasement and "catch up". Answer this, when is catchup with adding more infrastructure and tapping more resources ever really "green" that unfortunately is the real fact and not kool-aid. I'll give Mayor, maybe even soon to be Governor Hick (he doesn't like to be called that) this, he seems to be a very compassionate and intelligent person. And I have deep respect and admiration for those 2 qualities, what I would encourage is for him to have a plan and not only a plan that merely only seeks to appease the resident of one city in the whole state of CO, but a plan that works for all residents of CO. The only way to formulate one is to talking to the people, even those that may disagree with him, which is something else he never seemed so fond of.

Luke of CO 7:57PM March 08, 2010

I don't understand why 'green' vehicles are touted as a solution to the pollution problem when just 16 cargo ships produce more pollution than all the cars of the world combined - and there are 100,000 of these ships! Driving cleaner cars won't even begin to tackle the problem unless we address the ship problem first.

Jesse of TX 4:58PM February 27, 2010

Shell just pulled its filing for an oil shale water right in CO. Technology is simply not ready, and its not because of environmental regulations.

Pete of CO 6:02PM February 24, 2010

GO GREEN!...

!. Nuclear is about as green as it gets. Start building plants now! Find a nice deep cave. Maybe the same place where we used to test nuclear bombs under ground - can't do much harm there!

2. Wind farms and solar produce very little energy for the land (ecosystem) consumed by them. Windmills are nothing more than giant, whirling scarecrows, and as such, cause animals to flee the area.

3. Increase off shore drilling. Studies prove that drilling offshore actually reduces the amount of "natural seepage" from undersea fissures. Aprox. 1700 barrels of oil seeps from the seabed of North America daily - which is 150 times the amount lost through extraction and transport. Furthermore, if off shore drilling is curtailed then the amount of natural seepage would more than double! In the last 25 years less than 0.001% of oil extracted in U.S. Waters has been spilled. (Source, National Academy of Science, U.C. Santa Barbara and U.S. Dept. of Interior.)

4. Build (don't tear down) hydroelectric dams. They are a great source of renewable energy. If you're worried about "native fishies" than hire a limo driver to transport them above the damn so they can spawn there - or maybe build them a spawning ground somewhere else. They go back to where they were born - so give them a new homeland below the damn.

5. Get the enviro-regs out of the way of clean coal and shale oil.

6. Put a cork in Obama's and Gore's mouth - that should help with global warming.

R.L. Schaefer of CA 4:40PM February 24, 2010

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