WOSU 02/07/2012

http://beta.wosu.org/news/2012/02/07/commentary-fracking-not-a-panacea-for-ohio/

What the frack is going on in Ohio?

Eleven earthquakes over the past year – that’s what’s going on.

While fracking may sound like ringing cash registers to the ears of gas executives, it sounds more like Carol King to the rest of us – “I feel the earth, move, under my feet…”
Shale gas drilling, as President Obama referred to it during his State of the Union speech, is in boom times right now. And like most politicians he wants to capitalize on it. Of course it’s possible that boom is coming from someone’s house blowing up.

According to endless YouTube videos of homeowners lighting their tap water on fire, but more importantly, according to several Duke University researchers, who completed a peer reviewed study in 2011, fracking has been linked to water pollution, and other researchers say the disposal wells, like those near Youngstown, have been linked to earthquakes and exploding homes due to methane build-up.

Perhaps rebranding it as shale gas drilling will make the flammable tap water taste better, especially since the drilling isn’t the problem, it’s the use of water to pressurize the ground below us and force natural gas out of the earth for collection – not to mention the then storage of that polluted water.

The move for greater domestic fuel production, spurred on by turmoil in the Middle East, has consequences. For politicians and industry leaders those consequences include increasing already astronomically high profits and using a small portion of them to, ahem, support candidates.

However for the rest of us those consequences hit more than just our wallets.
Those consequences include disasters – like the gulf coast oil spill, too many dead West Virginia coal miners, the Japanese nuclear plant meltdown, and, those eleven Ohio earthquakes.

But maybe you’re thinking, aw, he’s just a crazy environmentalist picking on Big Oil.
I’ll admit, even renewable energy has repercussions. Wind and water turbines kill birds and alter fish migration patterns, solar arrays take up a significant amount of space, and those potato-powered-clocks just aren’t going to solve all our energy needs.

Maybe those consequences aren’t quite the same as creating oceanic dead zones or turning soil radioactive – but they’re still consequences.

So why not power everything with renewable energy? Why not forget about oil, nuclear and especially fracking? Because our ability to produce enough renewable energy doesn’t exist yet.

But it will if we choose to change the status quo.

I believe the answer is to focus on lowering energy consumption through a combination of carrot and stick methods, rewarding low consumption and penalizing higher consumption. Until industry and individuals learn to control their energy appetite we’ll never satisfy our needs, and those hazards of fossil fuel production won’t go away, they’ll just creep closer and closer into our own back yards.

WOSU 12/07/2011

http://beta.wosu.org/news/2011/12/07/new-ohio-drivers-licenses-has-commentator-seeing-pink/

JobsOhio head Mark Kvamme must be the god-send that Governor Kasich told us he would be. You see, clearly Ohio’s financial and employment recovery is complete. I mean, Kvamme’s got so much freetime governor Kasich asked him to redesign our drivers’ licenses. I’m sure Kasich wouldn’t ask Kvamme to waste his time on something so trivial if there was real economic work yet to be done, right?

Earlier this year I laughed at Kasich’s insecurity about his manhood. It was funny when he suggested he’d look into changing out the pink from the drivers’ licenses because it somehow offended his tough guy image – but now that he’s actually doing it – changing the color to blue – suggests a significant flaw in our governor.

By his pursuit of a personal agenda at the state’s expense, instead of dealing with the real pain Ohioans are facing, Kasich continues to add insult to injury.

Consider the cuts to the local fund Kasich championed. He asserted that municipalities could then make their own choices about their own money (what money?!) so state funding wouldn’t be necessary.

And how’d that one work out? Well, in Kasich’s own school district, Westerville, there are at least 62 fewer jobs due to cuts after the most recent school levy, meant to shore up budgets against those cuts, failed.

You might think that would wake Kasich up, given that he lives in the district – but Kasich isn’t worried, he sends his daughters to private school.

And those jobs? Kasich doesn’t fear adding more people to unemployment, Kvamme will find them jobs.

Of course JobsOhio is claiming it’s created jobs – unfortunately the jobs it’s referring to came about before Kvamme’s organization existed. Even the Columbus Dispatch hypothesized that JobsOhio has yet to actually do anything, that current successes were achieved without them.

But I digress. What about those drivers’ licenses?

The current State driver’s license contract, according to public records, is with a company out of Massachusetts for an estimated cost of about $14 million – no small change. How much is this design change going to cost the state? I mean, just consider the recalibration of every drivers’ license printer statewide alone; what about reprogramming the system, etc.? And since this is a Massachusetts company doing the work, how many of those dollars are staying in Ohio?

Which brings me back to Kvamme. Let’s tally up his record so far. Kvamme claims credit for jobs saved or created by the Department of Development – which according to Kasich is broken – thus the need for JobsOhio, now, instead of hiring an unemployed professional, Kvamme got free labor from a college student for unnecessary design work, and may be sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to Massachusetts, just to change the gender of our drivers’ licenses.

Phew! Personally, I hope Ohioans give Kvamme and Kasich another pink to worry about – a pink slip.

WOSU 11/16/2011

http://beta.wosu.org/news/2011/11/16/what-columbus-needs-a-little-less-bickering/

What does Columbus need?

It’s the question Columbus Monthly Magazine recently posed to more than 100 community leaders from across the social-economic-political spectrum.   For how divided our country currently seems the answers were surprisingly similar.

The top ideas from the survey respondents about what Columbus needs :

Transportation, the Scioto, arts and jobs – particularly downtown jobs.

I couldn’t agree more with most of the suggestions.

A majority of respondents said we need improved public transportation. Specifically they suggested improvements to sidewalks and bicycle lanes, light-rail, and direct transportation from downtown to the airport, where international flights in-and-out of Port Columbus need to be a reality.

Many of the respondents also said we need to clean up the Scioto River. Make it an inviting recreational feature – instead of allowing it to continue to serve as  Central Ohio’s cesspool.

They also saw public art, and the strengthening of creative cultural in general, as an extremely important part of Columbus’ success.

Of course the list went on and on and included some extreme diversity, ranging from dress shops downtown to Democrats and Republicans singing Kumbaya. They were all great ideas.

However, most interesting was the final majority response.

Columbus.  Needs.  Jobs.

Of course we do, the whole world is suffering right now due to economic downturn. A staggering percentage of our population is sitting on their hands, wondering where the next paycheck – or worse – next meal is going to come from. And so far all attempts to change that fact have either failed or been stalled by constant partisan bickering.

So it’s odd.   All these people with different backgrounds, incomes and political feelings agree on what Columbus needs, but they fail to see just how many jobs these projects would create  – if only they actually tried to implement them.

Imagine if, instead of people occupying the statehouse, or holding tea parties, what if those people were given the opportunity to work on these public projects to help themselves and the whole community?

Think about what type of complex organization it would take to make just one of these ideas a reality?

That complexity represents a worthy challenge, not a roadblock. That’s because the people out of work today are not just laborers; they are executives, project managers, engineers and artists – they are the full litany of people who have the skills necessary to implement the complex changes  Columbus needs.

And what about me – what do I think Columbus needs?

I think Columbus, and the whole country, needs one thing more than anything else. We need to stop bickering and start working. Because working together, to accomplish great things, is what has always made our country exceptional – and I believe we need that now more than ever.

WOSU 08/30/2011

http://beta.wosu.org/news/category/opinion/

While Wonderland wonders where it’s going to land – I wonder if we shouldn’t instead consider
all of Columbus “wonderland.”

Last year the Wonderland organization set out to purchase the shuttered Wonder Bread
factory to provide a location that would be an all-in-one solution for keeping young artists and
entrepreneurial types productive, right here in Columbus.

Wonderland Executive Director Adam Brouillette said the Wonder Bread facility wasn’t
financially feasible. But, he said, Wonderland will find a location; in the meantime they’ll
continue hosting events where they can.

The goal of Wonderland is to act as a space where all sort of creative and entrepreneurial
collaborations happen. Something like, say, the current Junctionview Studios in Grandview
Heights (co-founded by Brouillette five years ago) except pumped up 100 times.

However, even without a defined space, Wonderland isn’t adrift.

In fact, I’d say they’re the most innovative organization in town. Just look at how they’re using
technology like QR codes – those little black and white squares you scan into your smart phone
– to sell art on the street. They hold events around town. One is called Wunderblender – a
kind of speed dating, matching artists with entrepreneurs.

I think much of this is happening specifically because they don’t have a space to rely on – or to
worry about.

Over the past couple of decades, the ease of transient movement of young people from one
city to another has been seen as a problem for Columbus.

But what if we think about how we, as a city, can embrace this transient nature as its own way
of staying competitive?

For example, the recent Food Truck Festival held at the new Columbus Commons brought
together 25 popular food trucks you would otherwise find scattered around the city, along
with live music and several artist tents. What resulted was 12,000 people descending upon
downtown – when was the last decade City Center managed to do that?

This isn’t to suggest that we should all live out of taco trucks or whatever; for those of us
too hungry to wait in the food truck lines, we ended up grabbing a bite to eat at a nearby
restaurant. Bricks and mortar are still relevant, but it makes me think – what are the real
ingredients to a successful city.

I’d say a place that brings people together for work, education, entertainment and, in the best
scenario, a place to live a healthy, happy life near those things.

That’s where I see the subtle divide between past efforts and this idea. A community does not
require a full time, single use, physical venue. For that matter, what we normally envision as a

proper purpose-built home isn’t really required by these up-and-comers either.

So what if we nurture this greater ideal of Wonderland, of providing innovation space – not
strictly physical space – for young artists and entrepreneurs to continue to be transient. Would
this flexibility itself create the vibrant, sustainable city we seem to be searching for?