The City is discussing a reconfiguration of the lanes on Orange Grove which has caused a fiery storm on social media and in the Council chambers.

Does this City want to face the future and accommodate the growing class of folks who do not own cars by making Orange Grove safer for bicycles? I think they do. We now have high-rise condos at several Metro stations to accommodate carless residents and folks who care too much to burn fossil fuel to get across town.

Felicia Williams, who was previously the Transportation Advisory Commissioner, laid out the forgotten history of Orange Grove in a recent Guest Opinion piece in Pasadena Now, describing it as a promenade for horses and carriages when Pasadena was first established. She tells of how the speed limit was raised in 2008 to 40 mph, making it one of the top two speed limits in the city. Citizens clamored for a slower street. And now that the discussion is back on the table citizens are fearful of going on a speed diet.

Pasadena Environmental Advocates, PEAs, is a collaboration of nearly 100 members who have concern for the environment in Pasadena. We came together during 18 months of (successfully!) lobbying the City Council to pass a styrofoam ban. We now have a bimonthly Eco Breakfast to keep connections vibrant and stay abreast of the issues that are driving change in Pasadena.

This month, one of the 15-minute "Spotlights" will be the Orange Grove issue of redistributing lane assignments for the sake of safety and equal access for bikes as well as cars and pedestrians. Growing the miles of bike lanes in Pasadena is a component of the Climate Action Plan. This issue, according to the Pasadena Star-News, has been postponed for approximately one year, but we will be educated on the factors that will influence public and council members' support or rejection. As Felicia Williams says, we must always look to keep improving for the common good. 

The potluck Eco Breakfast will be held 7:15-9 a.m. on April 25 at Throop Church Patio. Eco Breakfast is a single conversation around a table. If you are an environmental advocate who would like to reserve one of the 20 limited seats, contact Transition Pasadena at  [email protected].

—Therese Brummel

Have you ever wondered whether your water capture projects have increased groundwater supply?

I went to a lecture by Cathleen Jones, a radar scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Jones said that she measures the height of the ground with a radar device on an airplane. Using GPS, she can compare, over time, changes in the elevation. If there is too much pumping of a particular well, she will see it because of the subsidence; the land literally falls.

In my head, I could see that data being really valuable to validate the use of swales. (A swale is a water-harvesting ditch.) I contacted Jones and set up a meeting with Water LA, which is part of The River Project, and Pasadena Water and Power to talk about just that.

At the meeting — Jones brought along another JPL research scientist, Andrea Donnellan — we learned that there is so much data that no one has had a chance to look at it all. Donnellan pulled up some data on her laptop computer. She said it was the first time she had ever looked at that particular data. She pointed at one point on a map that indicated where there is a tripod screwed into bedrock (see photo). As solid, non-moving items those tripods help with GPS whenever the researchers fly over with radar and do measurements; they act as points of reference. (Everything the scientists do has to be relative to something else.)

Jones explained that when you want to measure ground water and you use subsidence as one of your tools, it’s helpful but that doesn’t mean it’s the only tool you are using. With data analysis you can make a model, overlaying data on top of data on top of data. And then you can talk about the actual water. It is still assumptions about the water but through pooling data you can make more informed assumptions. (Yes, I felt like I was in science class; it was really fascinating.)

There is data on subsidence going all the way back to 2009. And data is continually being added as they continue to fly over. Hopefully, there is data that we can mine. 

My goal is to find out, retroactively, whether some swales and other water catchment projects have caused less subsidence.  I’d like to overlay two maps: one map of the conservation work and where it is, and one map of the data showing subsidence (or lack thereof).

Both scientists thought there was enough interesting data to justify a study of some kind. The conclusion was that we need to find a recent PhD graduate to take an interest and do a study.

Do you know anybody who would be interested?

—Sylvia Holmes
Beautiful Swales

Renewable energy is now more financially feasible and morally responsible than any fossil fuel. How can Pasadena shift quickly to renewable wind, solar and battery storage for our electric power?

In August 2019, Pasadena has an energy contract coming up for renewal. Pasadena Water and Power and City Council may be tempted to sign up for a new natural gas contract if our city officials are financially shortsighted. But natural gas is not a good bridge energy source due to the methane that escapes during extraction, transport and storage. In the name of ecological justice and the health of the planet and all its inhabitants our city must decide now not to renew our long-term contract for fossil fuel energy.

The state has mandated that Pasadena create a 20-year plan for sourcing energy for our city, the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP).

1) Pasadena Water and Power, must provide reliable, environmentally responsible electricity at competitive rates.

2) The IRP must have three scenarios: a plan for 50 percent renewables by 2030, for 75 percent, and for 100 percent. We currently are at 32 percent renewables.

3) There must be a citizen advisory group.

4) There must be opportunity for public input.

The state deadline for Pasadena's IRP is January 1, 2019.

The Stakeholder Technical Advisory Group, STAG, a cross-section of citizen volunteers from all rate payer categories, will provide input on IRP analysis and portfolio selections.

We know that of the dozen or so seats on the STAG, the big stakeholders in Pasadena (Kaiser, Huntington Hospital, Cal Tech and Art Center) already have guaranteed seats. Councilmember Margaret McAustin, who chairs the Municipal Services Committee, a representative from the Environmental Advisory Commission and at least one environmentalist will fill the other seats.

Pasadena 100, an organization of local activists for 100 percent renewable energy, knows that the cost of solar power and battery storage is dropping rapidly. Pasadena 100 hopes that each STAG member will hold PWP, the handsomely paid consultant group and our City Council responsible to balance the harm to climate, air and water pollution, and to health issues that result from continued use of fossil fuels for electricity. It is clear that cost and reliability will have loud voices at this table. Each STAG member should understand they must weigh climate in as well.

The main ask we have of this process is that there be no new long-term contracts for natural gas. This is a very specific thing the IRP must address.

There will be two public meetings this summer for citizens' input. (The dates will be posted on the Transition Pasadena web page.) The final IRP will go to City Council for a vote in October or November. Will they do the responsible thing for our children and grandchildren and do everything in their power to alleviate climate change?

California, as the sixth largest economy in the world must lead the way to a sustainable future. Pasadena has a wealth of brilliant thinkers. We should be leading the state.

​—Therese Brummel

City Council will be voting to adopt the Climate Action Plan on Monday evening.  This is a formality, really, since the Municipal Services Committee (the "experts") already voted unanimously to recommend adoption of the CAP a few weeks ago. Nevertheless a show of force in Chambers during the vote would be a statement to Council about our insistence on a more aggressive transition plan; it would set the stage for the level of clean energy in PWP's portfolio when the Integrated Resource Plan comes before them later this year for a vote. Public Comment period opens at 6:30 p.m. and ends at 6:50 p.m. Speakers are limited to three minutes. However, if you speak less than three minutes, more speakers can gain the podium. If you wish to make a public comment, arrive before 6:30 p.m. in order to fill out a Speaker's Card. Bring your friends too.

The CAP is number ten on the evening's agenda, but the first seven items are dispositioned with a single, quick vote — so the CAP is more like the third agenda item.

—Rob Haw

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City Council Meeting
March 5
​Public Meeting Starts at 6:30 p.m.
Council Chamber, Pasadena City Hall
100 North Garfield Avenue, Room S249

Recognize some of the faces in the picture below? Transition United States recently featured Transition Pasadena in a story about the spread of Repair Cafes. You can read the original piece here. To participate in our next Repair Cafe, be it as a tinkerer or as someone needing a fix for anything from a broken toaster to a torn shirt, join us on March 17.
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Repair Cafe
Saturday, March 17, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Side Street Projects (adjacent to John Muir High School)
Canada Ave
Altadena 91001
Map 

For further details go to
https://ww5.cityofpasadena.net/water-and-power/scholarshipnews/

With any questions please contact Pasadena Water and Power at
[email protected]. 

For all the people last month who saw despair in the title and didn't want to read it because it might be too depressing, please have a look at last month's article. It was positive and not depressing. This month on the other hand — well this will be more complicated. Actually, I think it is a hopeful message once you've digested it. "Despair Part 2" isn't going to be the whole thing. I'm finding hope in these topics, and I think it's possible that you could too. There are, however, several big-picture concepts to digest first.

The other preamble is that I didn't come up with the following ideas. There have been many sources, but I discovered a great synthesis by Terence McKenna. He generated a good bit of notoriety and, depending on your point of view, McKenna could be seen as a negative influence through his promotion of psychedelic drug use. His advocacy was largely around the indigenous use of natural plants in ceremonial ("religious") patterns. Use of these plants goes back many, many millennia.

On the absolutely positive side, McKenna is a very entertaining speaker as can be found out by Googling his name and listening to the many recordings of his talks. I recommend choosing one talk and listening to it several times. 

Here's two concepts to begin with, Deep Time and the Great Turning. Deep Time is simply the recognition that humans have been walking the face of the Earth for something like two million years and we are really late to the party when you consider that there are other species that were around 500 million years ago. Our human industrial civilization has only been around for three hundred years. Deep time is a recognition of the vast nature of time and how inconsequential our place in it is.

The "Great Turning" is a term that can be credited to either Joanna Macy, David Korten or both. I'm not sure if they thought of it together. As the habitability of the Earth continues to degrade, there will be a point where humanity and other species will face a bottleneck of survivability and there will be a "Great Turning".

I have hope that humanity will survive this bottleneck. 

Life has always been a risky proposition, and we are mortal so we are all going to die anyway. Nobody gets out alive. Life has always been about making choices and living full out despite the risk and the eventual outcome. After all life is the only game in town. As I said in part one of this series on despair, there's plenty to despair over but I think one description that sums it up pretty well is that we can no longer assume, as we have in the past, that life will go on.

​So now, more than ever before, make your choices and live full out. This isn't a practice life. Nothing new in this paragraph, but in 2018, we get to be alive and conscious in a time of great change.
​
—David Cutter

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David Cutter is a pianist in Pasadena. His free ebook "Artistry and Piano Students: Inspiring a Lifetime of Enjoyment" will be out soon. Stay tuned!

This post is the first in a loose series of entries on the topic of inner transition.