Call and join this conversation – 612-341-0980 – or Tweet us@TTTAndyDriscoll or post onTruthToTell’s Facebook page.

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As the climate heats up once again around the wisdom of allowing the Hennepin County Energy Recovery Center (HERC) – or as it’s colloquially known – the downtown Minneapolis garbage burner – to up its garbage-burning capacity by 20% over its currently permitted limit, the advocates from every corner – the State Legislature, the MPCA, Hennepin County, Covanta Energy (contractor-operator of the garbage burning generator), Minneapolis, and several citizen commissions and advocates are active again in staking out recalcitrant positions for and against both the facility itself – and its application for increased burning. The heat comes from sometimes totally unrelated arguments regarding the same project:

Is Hennepin County’s and Covanta’s Waste to Energy (WTE) facility – the HERC – better at reducing the city’s and county’s wastes by not dumping them in landfills the way we as a society have done for centuries? Probably. The United States remains one of the very few industrial nations which still landfills nearly 70% of its waste while some European nations actually reuse and recycle up to70% of theirs, some of them almost down to zero landfilling.

But the questions don’t stop there. Just what are they burning in those furnaces and what by-products of that burning are adversely affecting human health? And, after the burning, what’s left in the ash and where should the ash go? If any or all of these things are as toxic as the burning facility’s critics say they are (and they must be, since it requires a Pollution Control Agency permit to even run the place). We know that deadly mercury, lead, cadmium, hydrochloric acid, Nitrogen Oxides – or NOx – carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and a couple of other pollutants are emitted in some quantity down there.

Some friends of the HERC insist that the WTE facility has reduced those toxic emissions by massive percentages and that the waste would be dumped in landfills if not burned. It’s opponents absolutely insist this is not so, while also saying that any burning of anything whatsoever is far too detrimental to the public health and adding exponentially to the greenhouse gases (GHG) responsible for climate change.

This is hardly a partisan issue since supporters of both the HERC and its opponents reside in all the parties and across the political spectrum.

Helping to feed the latest controversy was a MinnPost Community Voices columnsubmitted by well-known Minnesota science writer, filmmaker, and novelist, Shawn Lawrence Otto, who bio states that he “lives in a wind-powered, passive solar, superinsulated geothermal home he designed and built with his own hands. He recycles, composts and drives a hybrid car.” In his piece, he plumps for TWE as at least the current answer to landfilling garbage.

As for the process of approvals and appeals submitted to the umpteen agencies in charge:Hennepin County, the City of Minneapolis Planning Commission and City Council, The MN Pollution Control Agency (MPCA-permitting authority). Lara Norkus-Crampton, a nurse who has sat on the Planning Commission continually reminds whoever will listen that

“In the last four years that this Appeal has been dragging out, we have observed the County wanting to talk about anything besides the required findings this proposal couldn't meet to get the Conditional Use Permit to burn 20% more garbage per day at HERC. The issue before us is whether or not a HERC Conditional Use Permit should be allowed to be granted to burn approx 400,000 pounds more garbage per day. The required findings they were judged unable to meet by the Mpls Planning Commission are: 1) Will not endanger or be a detriment to the public health, safety, comfort or general welfare; and 2) Will not be injurious to the use and enjoyment of other property in the vicinity, and will not impede the normal or orderly development and improvement of surrounding property for uses permitted in the district.

“The County and Covanta appealed our denial but in four years have still have not presented the data to prove that this proposal won't impact the health of people living downwind or negatively impact the property rights of those unlucky enough to be getting regular showers of toxic emissions.”

State Rep. Frank Hornstein and Ms. Norkus-Crampton and other opponents will face off a bit with passionate supporter of the increased capacity, Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin, as TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI query some of the key players in this four-year drama of application, appeal, revisions and more appeals and, ultimately to answer the questions we should all be asking: what is the safest alternative to the HERC facility and should it be allowed to burn even more than currently allowed. And what roles do all the elected and appointed officials in each jurisdiction play in all this?

GUESTS:

STATE REPRESENTATIVE FRANK HORNSTEIN (DFL-61A) Mpls – Member of the House Energy Policy and Ways&Means Committees

COMMISSIONER PETER MCLAUGHLIN – Hennepin County Board of Commissioners - Chair, Public Works, Energy & Environment Committee; Member, Solid Waste Management Coordinating Board

LARA NORKUS-CRAMPTON, RN – Former Member, Minneapolis Planning Commission; Community and Environmental activist; Presented with Minnesota Nurses Association 2012 Bettye Shogren Health and Safety Award.

ALAN MULLER – International Environmental Watchdog; Founder, Green Delaware; Active opponent of HERC – and all burning.

JUSTIN EIBENHOLZL – Former Southeast Como Environmental Director; Founder, Como Green Village; Co-founder, Southeast Como Solar Pilot Project & the former MIMO (Move In/Move Out Waste Reduction Program); Co-founder, Clean Energy Now! (Coal-fired plant mitigation)

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It seems appropriate on this Memorial Day (started by former slaves and Civil War veterans) to revisit our conversation with American History Professor Emeritus, David Noble.

Some questions posed by Historian and American Studies pioneer, David Noble, might have some of us scratching our heads – for a minute.

“Why do modern people believe that there will be perpetual economic growth?”

Let’s stop right there and give some thought to this question. By modern people, David Noble is not zeroing in on living Americans; he sees modernity as dating back to the Greeks when men the likes of Plato began an era, nay, millennia, of thinking that instead of caving into the reality of our limits, or of the cycles of life, or what he calls a timeful culture, there began the hubris of timelessness inherent in mankind’s perceived ability to control nature, interrupting its built-in cycles of life and death and disease, and extending life, perhaps forever someday, by conquering death.

Such beliefs formed the core, the nucleus of modern humans trying to throw off traditional cultures and insisting that nothing can – or should – stand in the way of human “progress” and ever-expanding capitalism that presumes that economic and natural Utopia lies just around that next corner only to see how the natural limits have created rising poverty, racism, economic turmoil and an instability in culture and nature we never thought possible.

It also, says David, presumes that the Earth is not the living organism it most certainly is, and that we may be the only species will to deny it in order to conquer it, to extract all of its natural resources and convert to cash all that we can of the clean air and water we once inherited as members of that most stable, self-correcting world in which, thanks to the cycles of life and death and other natural phenomena, we’ve seen evolution and revolution.

The latest in David’s long series of treatises on the Two World theory – the old, timeful world vs. the new, timeless one we keep trying to create again and again to no avail – is titled Debating the End of History: The Marketplace, Utopia, and the Fragmentation of Intellectual Life (Critical American Studies). Just about all of David’s titles sound apocryphal - Death of a Nation: American Culture and the End of Exceptionalism (Critical American Studies) and End Of American History: Democracy, Capitalism, and the Metaphor of Two Worlds in Anglo-American Historical Writing, 1880-1980, Historians Against History and The End of History (University of Minnesota Press, 1965-2012), and some essays of similar bent. The reason, one can be assured, is that the man has never stopped exploring that theory since his conversion from it to a new view through his readings of how fiction and nonfiction writers view such worlds, and discovering that fiction-writers (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and others) allow the real world to have its way with us. A major discovery. That history as we perceive it is dead because it denies important realities.

This is how David taught his American History and American Studies classes – but with a wry smile and a jaundiced eye on the “American Way” even as he explored The Progressive Era from his Master’s Thesis on down to the present. David taught in costume. He taught lying on his back (simply because he couldn’t stand up from a bad back). He brought history and ideas to life and he force everyone to think – which is how the American Studies Department came into being in the first place. Now, at 87, with a household of family members resembling an agrarian settlement around him, the man still teaches, though retired officially, still studies others’ theories he maintains only reinforces his critiques of modern humanity.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL visits once again with his former American History instructor to talk about where western “civilization” may have gone off the rails and why we must the natural limits to growth we as the New World culture of capitalism absolutely believe is essential to its success.

GUEST:

DAVID W. NOBLE – Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota Department of American Studies; Author, Debating the End of History and nearly a dozen other books calling out the Two Worlds Theory

Call and join this conversation – 612-341-0980 – or Tweet us@TTTAndyDriscoll or post onTruthToTell’s Facebook page.

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Most of us can be forgiven if we come away from the word, “coaching” with some confusion or, at the very least, some predefined meaning of the term. Such is the what might be termed the laziness of the English language in that a single word can have so many applications that understanding any one or more of them often requires research and study.

Not a one of us misunderstands the term as it applies to sports. Coaching a sport is a revered position in any of those physical pursuits and very direct in terms of its hierarchical authority.

This hierarchy seems to disappear into a more nebulous realm – and controversy – when linked to the profession of so-called life coaching. Guidance seems a better word to describe this application of the term.

Here’s how the term appears in Wikipedia:

“Life coaching is a practice that helps people identify and achieve personal goals. Life coaches assist clients by using a variety of tools and techniques. Life coaching draws inspiration from disciplines such as sociology, psychology, positive adult development and career counseling. Specialty life coaches may have degrees in psychological counseling, hypnosis, dream analysis, marketing and other areas relevant to providing guidance. However, they are not necessarily therapists or consultants; psychological intervention and business analysis may be outside the scope of some coaches' work.”

The idea is relatively new, originating, it appears, in fact, in the sports arena in the late 1970’s/early 80s. That may be one of the reasons some distrust its purpose and motivation, not to mention its possible impingement on other counseling professions, including psychotherapy. Some states have risen to the challenge that this life coaching is a generally unregulated industry of mind-workers presents and have attempted to address its overall position in the mental health field as a behavioral practice even as other of the behavioral health professions – psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy and other counseling pursuits – are regulated to a fare-thee-well. Certificates credentialing life coaches are supplied those who see this as a both a needed and possibly lucrative addition to the behavioral field. The degree to which those certificates are recognized as qualifying documents for what is essentially a counseling practice may depend entirely on the schools and jurisdictions involved.

Coaching itself is a Topsy-like pursuit. A sample of the specialty areas where varying techniques apply include: attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); business coaching, especially as a human resource development tool; the self-explanatory executive coaching arena; career, financial, personal, conflict and health coaching. Mentioned in the list are the interesting specialties, victimization and dating – even “Christian” – coaching.

All of this to say that this rapidly burgeoning and increasingly popular field is touching huge numbers of people, companies, and specific constituencies. What do the practitioners have to say about all this? We’ll ask them.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with three of the many coaches who have zeroed in on what seems like a growing demand for a more collaborative form of self-realization and improvement without a prescription, per se.

GUESTS:

PAULA HEMMING, MA, PCC – Principal, Relationship Champions

DAVE WONDRA, PCC – ICF Professional Certified Coach; Founder, WondraGroup

ELIZABETH DICKINSON, B.Ed., M.A, CLC, MACP – Adler-certified coach