Wilmette rethinks green car incentives

As a Wilmette resident I was just about to buy a green vehicle. Now, forget about it.

Trustee Watt and others were grandstanding on tax discounts for environmentally-friendly cars. Use of hybrid cars in the Village's fleet may have a modest impact of fuel consumption; but, what about the impact of disposal of batteries containing environmentally hostile materials? And E-85 fuels bring their own problems - including drawdown of groundwater levels near farms and processing plants.

These are the same people that are sponsoring a $15,000 tax for the purpose of discouraging teardown and replacement of old, energy inefficient houses whose owners do not pay their fair share of Village taxes because of low property assessments.

Our Village Board is long on lawyers and do-gooders; but short on technologists. For example, how many Trustees ever took a course in thermodynamics - let alone passed it? How many even know what is the fuel efficiency of a gasoline engine or what would be required to raise it?.

Some of our Village Trustees would have us believe that so-called do-good motives are a substitute for performance. Thus, the Village was left unprotected and many homes flooded because these same Trustees failed to provide backup electrical service for sewer lift stations that failed in the August storm. In short, we need to elect some new Trustees who have a more relevant set of priorities.

I'm getting really tired of Highland Park officials claims of fuel savings from their purchase of 21 Prius hybrids. The savings are in comparison to the large gas-guzzlers they replaced. If they had bought non-hybrid cars the size of the Prius, fuel consumption would also be way down, and they could have saved the taxpayers $50,000-$100,000 on the purchase price of the cars. I'm all for responsible efforts to reduce fuel consumption, but the Prius purchase was just pure political grandstanding.

Its cute when Wealthy Suburban Residents complain about a tiny increase in fee's while they drive around in gas guzzling SUV's designed to tow large trailers in the name of Vanity. It is irresponsible to use a Hummer or Range Rover to get groceries and drop of the kid at school. I grew up on the North Shore and my folks were fine with a Station Wagon and a Sedan, they did not need the Conversion Van or a Suburban to get their three kids around. I applaud the Village Trustee's leading by example despite what those who are too short sighted to see what they are doing is good for the Bottom Line and Environment.

The hypocrisy of the liberal Democrat elites who dominate the Northern Suburban village governments knows no end.

Take Skokie, where the liberal political class removed the decades old "Indians" name of the Niles West football team in solidarity with the "oppressed" American Indian.

But strangely, they refrained from removing the archetypical Indian chief in clownish feather headress inside an Indian arrowhead from their village logo. Why? Well, that would have actually cost the Skokie political power brokers money to replace their letterheads and signange.

Now Wilmette backs off from it's grand solidarity with the "global warming" theologists. Why? Because it will cost them actual cash from their ever-growing bureaucratic nest.

It's all about money and power with these petty little suburban liberals.

They are demagogic hypocrites of the highest order.

Wilmette's efforts to reduce the so called "carbon footprint" is a joke. The comment, "Smaller towns are well-suited to legislate changes in the way people live, drive or dispose of garbage because elected officials live locally and know how the community operates." is interesting since I thought the main goal of local government was to provide police and fire protection, period.

The whole idea of "carbon footprints" and man-made warming is bunk. Science has yet to decide on the issue of global warming, if it really is an issue and whom, if anyone, is at fault.

Yes, we see some very slight warming. This warming is during a very small period of time. Natural weather changes would indicate this.
Man's contribution to the greenhouse gases is so small we couldn't change the climate if we tried. To quote some of my friends in science, this will be a joke five years from now just as global cooling was a joke.

Maybe you remember the cooling scare, I was working on my masters at that point. Many of us laughed ... but science was convinced it was a real problem. No, the media was convinced and some of us in science, who wanted the ride the money train, got on board.
This is all a combination of misinterpreted and misguided science and much media hype all for the sake of socialist politics.(At least that is what I think is the reason for all of this)

Water vapor is responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which is vital to keep the world warm. Without the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time.

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFC's, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities is only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFC's etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.

This ought to be the end of the argument.

Dr. Robert Weed
PhD, Atmospheric Sciences
MA, Meteorology
MA, Geology

I would personally like to see Wilmette and a couple of other North Shore burbs -- most notably Evanston -- take a greater interest in the condition of their streets. They claim things like bicycle friendliness, but there's nothing bicycle-friendly in having asphalt so moth-eaten that it will knock cyclists off their bikes and throw even the best quality wheels out of true. Let's quit the special interest breaks and actually have paved streets for a change, as opposed to the gravel substitute they seem to be building up.

Boogie Man and Dire Warnings may be the only way to change. We are running out of Oil why not Go Green to, at the very least, cut down on Pollution.

Dem's get to hire the Bloated Union Structure as our Steel and garment industry are gone and Auto is on the same track.

Conservatives get to control the development of new technology and make a few bucks in the process.

Didn't think E-85 was a bad option. The problem was is got politicized by two faced politicians like Lugar (R-IN) who spout off on free market economics but put protective policies in place for corn producers. My understanding is that E-85 is more efficiently produced using Sugarcane. But Bob wanted continued patronage from family values voters so he helped put tariffs on sugarcane imports.

As far as the liberal/social/global warming conspiracy angles, I would merely advocate erring on the side of caution for the sake of the kids. You and I won't be here forever. A little less impact, lets conserve somethings now so there is a future for this nation. Hence the term, conservative....

What rubbish! The village sticker incentive for driving more efficient vehicles should stand -- in fact, it should be strenghtened. Isn't Chicago about to raise its SUV city sticker registration fee? Wilmette should have stuck by its guns and kept the discount. Yes, it's a small amount. However, the point is well made and it is a reminder that conservation is now even more important. Fuel efficient vehicles including hybrids and alternative fueled vehicles are a part of that solution and municipalities can play a part in encouraging their use.

As for those saying they use their SUV's to car pool or what not, well that's all very nice, but a Prius is a Prius 24/7/365. A 12-mpg SUV may only be used for carpooling a small fraction of the time it is driven. And the last time I checked, you can carpool quite nicely in a Camry or another 5-seat hybrid or a nice minivan just as with any similar sedan. No one "needs" a half-ton, fuel wasting SUV, unless one happens to be carpooling along with his family yacht hitched to the back.

Perhaps Wilmette's village council now includes one too many yacht owners....