After my conversation with EOEEA Secretary Ian Bowles, Rep. Barry Finegold, the House Chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, reached out to chat about the wind siting bill, as well as other issues before his committee. I sat down with him last week to talk about the wind bill, the bottle bill, and also about the best way for folks like us to get in touch with him (short answer: get in touch). Here’s how it all went. Thanks to Rep. Finegold for taking the time — we hope to continue to the dialogue.
Please share widely!
You can hope to continue your dialogue.
and is both transitive and intransitive, at that. It has been in usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, since the late 16th century and in its transitive form means to “Express in the form of a dialogue; provide (a story etc.) with dialogue.” In its intransitive form it means to “Take part in a dialogue (with)” and dates from the early 17th century.
Awesome smackdown. 😀
<
p>FWIW, though, my post contains a typo – I meant “continue THE dialogue.” Will update.
I’m interested, but this video is almost unlistenable, because the volume of your questions is so much higher than of his answers. I can either set it so that I can’t really hear what he has to say, to I can set it so I can hear him and then YOU SCREAM A QUESTION, or I can twiddle with the volume back and forth and get distracted because I’m paying attention to the mechanics rather than the words.
It’s a simple camera. A by-product of my professionally-trained voice, I guess. 😉
If you both sit the correct distances from the mic the voice levels will be more, well, level.
<
p>I’m not suggesting that it’s easy to find a location for the camera that makes the interview comfortable, the video quality satisfactory, and the audio quality satisfactory… but the fix could be as simple as you sitting a bit farther from the camera’s microphone.
The most interesting thing: he points out that the legislature isn’t a policy think tank — they rely on good ideas from others. So, when you’ve got ’em, you’ve got to share ’em.
<
p>On taxis: I only half agree. I do agree that MPG matters. But, I also think that large vehicle taxis (vans, SUVs) do play a role, depending on the number of passengers, particularly related to the airport. Furthermore, it seems to me that other than police cars, taxi cabs idle more than any other passenger vehicle — so it’s also important for local air quality that the vehicles have engine-shutoff features. At this time, to my knowledge, only hybrids kill the engine during idling periods.
<
p>On bottles: love it. I’d like to see both wider and deeper. Wider: iced tea and water bottles, but also large glass bottles like wine or liquor bottles. Deeper: increase the 5 cents from the late 70s to 10 cents. Either expansion (or both) would be swell in my book. It’s not just about the increased recycling (which really does happen, and there are plenty of data about it) but also the reduction in litter in our parks and our streets, and even reduced pickup/overflowing of our city and town litter bottles. The concern about out-of-state redemption is one that can be reasonably solved, in two ways: (1) you only trigger the increase if bordering states do it too. For example, it could be that the bill only goes into effect if two adjoining states also sign a similar bill. Sort of a RGGI of bottle bills. (2) with the wider bill (water, tea, wine, liquor), it’d be new for the manufacturers, so their bottles would have a new label. Require it to be bigger, colorful, whatever — which would help the mom and pop redeemers (who can’t rely on UPC reading machines).