Poll: who do we blame for today’s heat? – Slog

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“Ah, here’s the problem it’s a car” Thinkstock / Getty Images

While doing your best to find the least miserably hot place to hide today, it’s important to focus on what matters most: holding a grudge against anyone who has done this. Who is to blame for today’s terrible heat?

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Clearly, there is a complex web of contributing factors spanning decades and beyond geopolitical boundaries, but it’s a tough target for resentment. It is essential that we choose a single person or organization that we can rack up all the blame and grievance on at times like these.

Let’s start with a few assumptions: This horrific heat wave, peaking today but expected to linger all week, is just a small symptom of an ongoing climate crisis caused by human activity, and the main one of these activities is the burning of fossil fuels. Now let’s reduce our resentment even further and direct it towards emissions related to transportation in cars in particular. Cars! They, of course, are the real villains, ruiners of cities and bringers of death. Cars are choking Seattle on every street, roughly half a million of them, when there should be none, each worsening our air, trapping greenhouse gases, and dragging us deeper and deeper into the air. ‘climatic hell.

So what a great idea has been to put all of these cars in here? Let’s go through a few possible scapegoats, then pick the part most worthy of the blame.

First on the list: WSDOT, the state transportation department that has never encountered a freeway it didn’t want to expand. With a budget of $ 6.7 billion, WSDOT works tirelessly to keep cars on the road and make more room. They are in charge of Seattle’s most toxic highway sewers, like Aurora Ave; they block bicycle projects; they encourage people to drive; and at a time when the only job on highways should be dismantling them, the WSDOT is building more.

Or maybe it’s the fault of the state legislature, especially Republicans and Democrats who fought to water down the clean fuel standards bill that passed this year. A group of five Democrats demanded that the bill keep fuel cheap, along with a handful of other provisions that would make it “unworkable,” according to Representative Fitzgibbons. Lawmakers have also proposed spending around $ 5 billion on freeway projects and only around $ 188 million on bicycle and pedestrian projects.

Or maybe the blame should be a little more local. How about Save 35th, the group that formed to oppose the bike lanes on 35th Ave? The neighborhood could have gained a beautiful, sustainable transport corridor, but instead this anti-cycle lane group fought so hard to preserve space for cars that the city had to hire a mediator. Finally, Mayor Durkan gave in to the pressure and the SDOT reconfigured the street without cycle paths. A few days after the end of the project, a driver injured a person on a bicycle.

Durkan today canceled a bike path on 35th that had been under construction for years in response to neighbors angry with the parking lot. No security concerns, no climate concerns. Seattle has a suburban advocate as mayor. https://t.co/GS1KpgtwILMike McGinn (@mayormcginn) March 26, 2019

While we were talking about local personalities, what about the Seattle Design Review Board? Seattle is expected to frantically build tons of housing near public transportation right now, so there’s less need to generate transportation emissions; but instead, the developers are subjected to the whims of a group of volunteer architects who slow everything down with three-hour arguments about the color of the bricks.

we spent 20 minutes talking about the alcove of the exit staircase in the small corner of the building Pushing The Needle (@pushtheneedle) June 24, 2021

Besides, why not blame Seattle voters for the heat? As a group they may be a bit limp, but voters blocked railroad expansion programs in 1968 and 1970 “the dumbest vote Seattleers have ever cast,” said one. legislator, especially since most of the construction would have been funded by the federal government. Instead of building regional railways in the 1970s, we just got more roads for cars to slowly poison the air. Great job voters of the late sixties. I hope those of you who are still alive enjoy your homes that are appreciating quickly.

Okay, this is a good place to start with the blame. Now, which of these organizations is responsible for today’s heat, or is it someone else? Express your legally binding vote below.

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