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A No Life on Lease

Court ruling blocks new oil drilling off California coast New oil and gas drilling off the California coast has been effectively thwarted, thanks to a federal court ruling last Friday. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ordered federal officials not to extend leases to energy companies on 36 central-coast tracts until environmental risks have been more […]

Sprawl is often thought to erode social capital, but the evidence is mixed

In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argues that the decline of social capital in the U.S. can be attributed partly to urban form. In other words, according to Putnam, sprawl is at least partly to blame for the present derth of bowling leagues. But is it really?

Putnam's arguments (summarized at the end of Chapter 12) are threefold.

1. "Sprawl takes time": more time alone in a car and less for civic engagement.
2. "Sprawl is associated with increasing social segregation," and that segregation has led to less community participation.
3. "Sprawl disrupts community 'boundedness'," and that physical fragmentation reduces social involvement.

Although Putnam's claim -- that sprawl erodes social capital -- is widely referenced, my survey of the evidence makes me suspicious. My objections are threefold.

Conservation easements and taxes

The Los Angeles Times reports today on the Bonnheim ranch, a recently minted conservation easement. There is some controversy over the ranch because its owners are permitting logging on the premises, which doesn't sound like conservation to many people in the area.

My high school English teacher had an expression: show, don't tell. The article is a powerful anecdote that reveals many of the issues surrounding land trusts and conservation easements, by giving just one example.

Whenever trusts or easements come up, my first thought is this: the agreement is forever, or at least it can be (if this is incorrect, someone please let me know). The up-front price of the land is the bargain of the century when you look at it that way. It surprises me that more land isn't bought and donated to easements or trusts, especially given the other financial incentives to do so, like tax deductions.

Why CAFTA sucks: Reason #82

Daphne Eviatar spells it out nicely in a Washington Post op-ed:

Science wars

Great column by Chris Mooney on the science wars of the 90s and the 00s, respectively.

Drunken forests and sinking houses

See climate change in action in a series of photos from the Anchorage Daily News (login: mehlman@mailinator.com, password: misteree). They accompany a lengthy article by Doug O'Harra about permafrost warming in Alaska and all heck breaking loose.

Earth frozen since woolly mammoths and bison wandered Interior steppes has been turning to mush. Lakes have been shrinking. Trees are stressed. Prehistoric ice has melted underground, leaving voids that collapse into sinkholes.

Largely concentrated where people have disturbed the surface, such damage can be expensive, even heartbreaking. It's happening now in Fairbanks: Toppled spruce, roller-coaster bike trails, rippled pavement, homes and buildings that sag into ruin. And the meltdown is spreading in wild areas: sinkholes, dying trees, eroding lakes.

These collapses bode ill: They are omens of what scientists fear will happen on a large scale across the Arctic if water and air continue to warm as fast as climate models predict.

And if O'Harra's article doesn't quench your thirst for news of drunken forests and sinking houses, read Elizabeth Kolbert's fascinating, in-depth New Yorker piece from May on climate chaos in Alaska and beyond.

Do hybrids have to get beefier and sacrifice mileage?

So I'm flipping through a magazine this morning and stumble on a glossy ad featuring a muscley sports car. The tag line:

THE CHARGER HYBRID -- IT BURNS GAS AND RUBBER

Sigh.

Anyway, speaking of hybrids, I have a question. As everyone's noticed, the hybrid market seems to be moving toward performance-based cars that boost power without doing much to boost gas mileage. Greens no doubt view this as a disaster. But lots of auto-geeks think that, as this Autoblog post puts it, the "honeymoon is over" for hybrids in terms of fuel economy, what with constant reports that their real-world mileage doesn't approach their advertised mileage.

So, are hybrids making a necessary shift to preserve their expanding market? Or are performance-based hybrids a reflection of the greed and perfidy of automakers and autobuyers alike?

Lakes and Pains

Great Lakes beset by myriad threats This weekend, The Detroit News published a massive series on the latest threats facing the Great Lakes — and we mean massive: close to 30 articles. The lakes, which hold a fifth of the world’s freshwater, were once emblematic of America’s environmental malaise, choked with algae and pollutants. While […]

That’s Some Commitment

Bush administration cuts protections for Pacific salmon habitat In a move it says reaffirms its “commitment to salmon recovery,” the Bush administration on Friday slashed critical habitat for Pacific salmon facing extinction. The National Marine Fisheries Service announced that federal protection for salmon habitat in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington would be cut from 167,700 […]

Same paper, same day, two claims

Saturday's LA Times features two articles about the effect of high gas prices on the choices that commuters make. One asserts that the recent run-up in gas prices is prompting more people to use public transportation. Another article, however, claims that changes to driving habits come in the form of choosing more efficient vehicles or just driving less.

In the interest of full disclosure, the first article is filed under the opinion section. And the claims of the two articles are not entirely opposed to one another. Both articles acknowledge that ridership is up; however, the second article notes that only half of the transit riders who considered trains a way to cut costs were still riding six months later. The convenience factor of cars, it seems, is just too great.

Also in the court of differing opinions: the second Times article's statement that "riding a Metrolink train also is more of a 'lifestyle choice' made by professional workers who have more flexibility with their schedules" v. Lisa Simpson, describing buses as "the ride of choice for the poor and very poor alike."