Opinion: Turning a couple of red and blue states green
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Boy, you better not toss an aluminum can into the wastebasket at next summer’s Democratic National Convention in Denver.
‘It will be the greenest convention we’ve ever had,’ convention CEO Leah Daughtry tells the Rocky Mountain News. ‘We want to incorporate green principles into everything we do.’ The Democrats are working with the Coalition for Environmentally Friendly Conventions, which will also help the Republicans.
The Denver convention plans a wide range of environmentally-friendly measures to ease the impact of thousands of visitors to the five-day candidate-naming contest, Aug. 24-28. Bring your cuff clips because many will be expected to ride bicycles from downtown hotels to the Pepsi Center. Or take hybrid vans and taxis.
As you get off your plane on arrival, you’ll be able to purchase carbon offsets to help repair the damage that your plane’s jet engines just did to the atmosphere. You’ll be asked to take shorter showers and use the same towel more than one day. The goal is a paperless convention with everything going by email, so be sure to bring your rechargers.
Wind turbines and solar panels may go up around the Pepsi Center.
There is one nagging non-environmental problem. The all-volunteer convention organizing committee missed by ‘one or two million’ dollars its first Democratic National Committee financial deadline to have $7.5 million on hand by June 1.
Host committee president Elbra Wedgeworth says raising such large sums is ‘a challenge.’ Denver is not known as the home of many Fortune 500 companies, but was chosen as part of the Democrats’ effort to weaken the Rocky Mountain states as a Republican stronghold. The Republicans chose Minneapolis-St. Paul for their summer TV show, part of an effort to enjoy Midwestern summer humidity, tap into Minnesota’s traditionally liberal roots and prevent the starvation of millions of mosquitoes.
Despite cross-country fundraising trips by Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, it’s been hard to get corporate givers to write checks so far in advance. They do, however, have pledges from 30 local corporations and individuals, according to the Denver Post.
By June 16 next year the Denver committee must have $40.6 million in the bank and pledges of $15 million more of in-kind donated services for the August 2008 event.
The DNC says it’s ‘hopeful’ the local committee will continue making good progress. It better be. How’d you like to find 20,000 hotel rooms in Topeka on short notice?
--Andrew Malcolm