The Salem Climate Action Plan, SCAP, recently adopted by Salem City Council -- including councilor Vanessa Nordyke -- was a generation in the making. The groundwork began shortly after a 1995 Presidential Executive Order called for adopting Agenda 21, now Agenda 2030, to be implemented in every Federal, State, County and City including Salem. Salem Futures under mayor Mike Swaim quickly followed. Only a few noticed the United Nations flag flying at City Hall and even fewer understood Salem was under UN rule.

Twenty two years before that the Oregon Legislature had adopted SB 100, the most restrictive land use laws in the nation. Few were aware that someday SB 100 would cause an imbalance between supply and demand so great that fewer than 50% of Oregonians would be able to buy a home. The average Salem citizen was equally unaware of Agenda 21 as City staff were groomed for Smart Growth and Going Green. Salem’s new Department of Sustainable Development under the direction of Vicki Harden Woods created a home and legitimized new prescriptive solutions for claimed environmental anomalies in all divisions of City government.

The City found eager co-sponsors within the business community. Day long conventions with workshops were an opportunity for community leaders to be seen showing their compassion for the planet. Group think was alive and well. The one day affairs were a hit, heavily attended -- at taxpayer expense -- planned and executed by over two dozen public officials whose full time jobs no longer were concerned with public safety, just in shrinking everyone’s carbon footprint. Chief among many of the practices called unsustainable was the need to stop anthropogenic global warming. If not, it was claimed, we only had a few years left before we would all go up in a cloud of blue steam.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed CO2 was a greenhouse gas and that our output of CO2 must be greatly diminished. To do that we would have to find substitutes for fossil fuels. Community leaders, uninformed and concerned with face saving, knew Salem’s economy would falter without abundant and affordable energy. Some say they were silent then and unfortunately still are. In the 1990’s Earth’s CO2 level went from 280 ppm to 420 ppm primarily due to volcanic activity. The IPCC funded 102 computer models showing Earth’s Global Average Steady Temperature, GAST, would rise quickly and uncontrollably starting around the year 2000. The premise for that prediction was that the rise in CO2 correlates to a rise in GAST. Except it didn’t happen.

It's becoming clear that there is no correlation between CO2 levels and GAST. After being caught in a coverup of their failure the IPCC continued their work opaquely. They insisted that 97% of the world’s scientists believed global warming was caused by humans. Recently, the founder of the Weather Channel was interviewed by a CNN anchor that looks like the fictional George Costanza of Seinfeld fame. He explained that science is not done by consensus and that those scientists are all paid to arrive at a predetermined conclusion. Salem became a United Nations International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives city in 2019. The bankruptcy of 100+ ICLEI cities in the 1990’s was a lesson ignored by bureaucrats and eagerly overlooked by Salem leaders as was the bankruptcy of Spain occurring between 2004-2008 when they adopted a green jobs economy.

The SCAP will begin by banning any new natural gas hookups. Switching to 100% electric energy is the stated goal. Electricity is generated outside the Salem UGB but natural gas is combusted inside the UGB. The SCAP doesn’t concern itself with emissions beyond its ‘city walls’. The SCAP claims stable pricing for electricity while hoping no one knows legislative mandates will double the cost to consumers, adjusted for and added to inflation, from 2013 to 2033.

The US Green Building Council has developed a set of standards called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, which they claim provides a framework for healthy, highly efficient, and cost-saving green buildings. LEED Silver requirements will be mandated for all new construction. The LEED program was shown to be a failure in a study conducted on its 10th anniversary in 2006 by Henry Gifford. Gifford studied the 500 LEED buildings in existence and found they had 29% greater energy use than their counterparts of equal size and function in similar climates.

The SCAP bases its action Scenarios I & II on temperature projections modeled after the failed, unsuccessfully covered up and disgraced IPCC claims from 2009 depicted in the previous graph. Climate change is blamed for wildfires in areas where forestry best practices have been abandoned and even blamed for causing ice storms. It even evokes fears over earthquakes to justify climate remedies. As dozens of new coal fired electric generating facilities are being built in China and India, Salem attempts to influence global temperatures from an insignificant pinpoint on the world map with economy killing measures that are symbolic only.

Racial equity is to be enhanced by the SCAP. Consumerism is attacked and a list of SCAP preferred vendors will help lead intimidation and virtue signaling. Tracking progress toward artificial goals will encourage neighbor to neighbor shaming. NW Natural Gas lost all gains in future business in Salem. They offered three different remediations for their emissions, but to no avail. Still they embrace the SCAP, believing being bullied by a City Council comprised of only one man capable of starting and running a business is a sensible way to negotiate the terms of what will be a slow and painful surrender.


--Tom Hammer

Post Date: 2021-11-22 16:38:10

Last Update: 2021-11-22 18:42:14