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Attention all muggles

Planning on buying the new Harry Potter book? Buy Canadian.

A park for Ground Zero

Andy's post last week touched on the latest designs for the "Freedom Tower" at the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. I thought today I'd follow up from my perspective as a green-minded local. The terrible news of the bombings in London is an upsetting backdrop, but it reinforces my belief that we need to meet this kind of violence with positive visions for the future and the social and political will to realize them.

Right now, the process and designs for the new World Trade Center don't cut it.

The rebuilding effort long ago devolved into being more about the agendas of a few elites than what's best for the life and health (physical, economic, and emotional) of the city. It looks to the past -- the hokey insistence on a height of 1,776 feet, re-creation of office space the city almost definitely doesn't need (and would you want to work on the upper floors of a rebuilt WTC?), and the loss of clean energy generation on the site, even as the daily news is full of changing economics, peak oil, global warming, and war in the Middle East.

The "Freedom Tower" as originally designed by Daniel Liebeskind was an airy, glass-walled structure that combined transparency with scale, encapsulating the endurance and openness of America's democratic society. In succeeding iterations, the tower has become a military fortress, unconnected to life at a human scale in a civilian environment. I don't suppose I need to hammer home the symbolism of that. (It's also James Howard Kunstler's July 2005 Eyesore of the Month.) Check out this entry on Curbed (a New York real estate blog -- yes, we have real estate blogs here) to get an idea of how suffocating the "almost impermeable and impregnable 200-foot base" will be in real life.

More on London and the G8

Aargh. For the first time in five godforsaken years, issues of large-scale humanitarianism were topping the headlines, instead of war, anger, and intolerance. A genuine effort was underway to coordinate the world's largest and most powerful governments around two vital issues of our time: lifting Africa out of poverty and addressing global warming.

And now this. More violence, which will beget, as it always does, violence, anger, and territorialism in response.

We were struggling to find the higher angels of our nature, and now we're back to the reptile brain.

So goddamn frustrating.

As is becoming standard, Wikipedia is the place to keep up with developing news and links around the London tragedy. For coverage of how the Gleneagles participants are struggling to stay focused on the tasks at hand, check out Sciencegate, which has already become indispensable.

And for a reminder of how vital the G8 agenda remains, check out the SciDevNet feature on the connection between global warming and African misery.

Explosions in London linked to G8

A series of explosions during rush hour this morning in Central London at underground tube stations and on double-decker buses has claimed the lives of several commuters and injured more than 100. The city's transport system is now completely shut down as rescue teams and investigators clear the scene.

Although it's not yet known who is responsible for the explosions, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has called the incident a terrorist attack and suggested it was aimed at disrupting the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, this week.

"It is particularly barbaric that this has happened on a day when people are meeting to try to help the problems of poverty in Africa, and the long term problems of climate change and the environment," Blair said. "Just as it is reasonably clear that this is a terrorist attack, or a series of terrorist attacks, it is also reasonably clear that it is designed and aimed to coincide with the opening of the G8."

Blair has returned to London to deal with the incident, but said in a statement from Gleneagles at 1 p.m. BST: "We will not allow violence to change our societies or our values nor will we allow it to stop the work of this summit. We will continue our deliberations in the interest of a better world."

Interestingly, oil prices -- which reached $62 per barrel yesterday for the first time -- have plunged following news of the explosions.

PIPA poll: The impotence of mere belief

A big new poll from the Program on International Policy Attitudes shows widespread public belief in the phenomenon of global warming and broad support for action to fight it, even if that action hurts the economy (via Mooney on Scienceg8.)

I'll put some excerpts from the poll summary below the fold, but first a few caveats.

• Heed the wise words of Roger Pielke Jr., who points out that majorities have believed in global warming for years:
  

  ...the battle over public opinion about the existence of global warming has been won. Efforts made trying to convince the public that global warming is "real" are pretty much wasted on the convinced. The public overwhelmingly believes global warming to be real and consequential.

• Politically informed people tend to project their habits on others. The fact the the public says it believes in global warming, or that it supports a cap-and-trade system, doesn't mean that people have individually sat down, surveyed the science, assessed the policy possibilities, and come to considered conclusions. People more or less parrot conventional wisdom.
• Because they are parroting conventional wisdom, it doesn't matter much to them, and they don't follow it very closely. Polls are always finding widespread support for progressive policies, but conservatives keep winning elections because elections aren't fought over policies.
• One hesitates to sound cynical, but nevertheless: Never underestimate the ignorance of the American public. As you will read below the fold, almost half the respondents believe that Bush supports Kyoto. People just by and large know very little about what politicians support, and even less about what politicians are actually doing. Talk about global warming floats about the media and culture, and Average Joe and Jane assume that somebody somewhere is doing something about it.

What greens should get from this poll is not a thrill of hope that the tipping point has finally arrived. It was always a pipe dream that some magical study would come along to finally-once-and-for-all prove that global warming exists, and voi la, the world would change.

The public is already convinced, and has been for some time. What we need now are local activism, fresh stories to tell, innovative policies, dramatic representations, success stories, unflagging political engagement ... all that stuff. It's still going to be a long, hard slog to get where we need to go. But if nothing else, this poll shows that the raw materials are there to work with.

Now, some excerpts:

Jammin’ on traffic

From Gordon Price's most recent Price Tags newsletter -- a computer simulation of traffic congestion that will run on any java-enabled web browser.

It's mesmerizing to watch "phantom" traffic jams form -- temporary slowdowns in traffic caused just by congestion, without any obstacle in the road.

And the especially nifty thing (or big time-waster) for me is that you can tweak the settings -- traffic volume, driver politeness, road setup -- to see what kinds of things lead to more congestion. For example, traffic that flows along smoothly when the speed limit is set at 80 km per hour (about 50 miles per hour) might completely jam up when the speed limit is bumped to 100 kph (or 60 miles per hour). And the same road can jam up when speed limits are decreased to 40 km per hour. This may seem either counterintuitive or completely obvious, depending on your perspective. In both cases, though, it's pretty easy to identify with the little dots stuck in traffic -- the congestion patterns are all too familiar.

As drivers, we tend to think that we exercise conscious control over what happens on the road-- which makes it easy to blame other drivers' "mistakes" when traffic slows down for no apparent reason, as in a "phantom" traffic jam. So it's instructive to see that little computer rectangles following simple rules show the exact same kinds of complex traffic patterns that humans create. Which is a reminder, perhaps, that the rules of the road can have more of an effect on real-world outcomes (traffic or otherwise) than our conscious choices -- which really is something to chew on while you're stuck in traffic.

Portland and vanity

Re: the previous post, another quote from the Portland guy caught my eye:

Mr. Sten added that Portland's officials were able to curb carbon emissions only because the steps they took were intrinsically popular and cheap, serving other purposes like reducing traffic congestion or saving on electrical costs. "I haven't seen that much willingness even among our environmentalists," he said, "to do huge masochistic things to save the planet."

Two things to note here, related to my post on hypocrisy from yesterday:

• Sten hasn't seen much "willingness even among environmentalists to do masochistic things to save the planet." Me neither. There are people who will sacrifice amenities and conveniences to live a life of environmental virtue, but they are now, and will always be, in the small minority. Welcome to homo sapiens.
• But that's okay. The people of Portland are leading lives of increasing environmental virtue just by living in Portland. Thanks to some savvy organizing and good government, Portland has made structural changes -- new traffic lights, more transit routes, more bike trails, etc. -- that make extraordinary individual sacrifice unnecessary. They are making environmental virtue the path of least resistance.

What's the lesson?

Get involved in your community. Organize. Write letters to the editor. Run for city council. Join a campaign. Inform others. Get informed. Vote.

Change the structure of our collective life. All else is vanity.

Portland, emissions cuts, and the economy

I've had words with Nicholas Kristof before, but I suppose it's to his credit that he's finally discovered -- and publicized, in a way a lil' rag like Grist never could -- the fact that reducing greenhouse emissions is a profitable enterprise (via Gil Friend). It does not hurt the economy. It helps. Cities that do it save money and make themselves more desirable places to live and work. See: Portland.

"Portland's efforts refute the thesis that you can't make progress without huge economic harm," says Erik Sten, a city commissioner. "It actually goes all the other way - to the extent Portland has been successful, the things that we were doing that happened to reduce emissions were the things that made our city livable and hence desirable."

Putting caps on CO2 emissions would help the overall economy and the public, but it would hurt a few select industries. That's what Bush means when he says Kyoto would "destroy the economy" -- he means, "hurt my campaign contributors." Serving favored business interests is the driving principle of this administration, and Bush is willing to do anything -- even publicly snub Tony Blair, his closest and staunchest ally -- to serve that principle.

See also Matt Yglesias on the same subject.

Still more Kelo

My opinion on SCOTUS' Kelo decision has softened somewhat since my initial outrage, but it still strikes me as, on balance, a Bad Thing.

Once recent strain of argument I find pretty convincing is that Kelo will not, in fact, enable good urban planning (one of the purported reasons many liberals defend it). Andy alluded to this argument here. See also this Planetizen piece from Samuel Staley:

To illustrate Kelo's potential damage, recall that its precedent, Berman v. Parker, substantially relaxed constraints on takings of private property in 1954, unleashing a wave of urban renewal that cleared large swaths of America's cities in the late 20th century. The results, even many planners now believe, were devastating for communities. Many areas cleared for urban renewal were never redeveloped, but affordable housing and many potentially vibrant neighborhoods were bulldozed. Not surprisingly, critics now refer to urban renewal as "slum removal" and cynics refer to this period as "negro removal". The Court's reasoning in Kelo grants cities and public officials even broader powers to clear neighborhoods and force families from homes and businesses than those current existing from Berman.

On his blog, City Comforts, David Sucher argues at some length that eminent design is not required for good urban planning -- he prefers many small development projects to a few large, bloated ones -- and that Dems are missing the a great political opportunity (I'd offer specific links, but there are too many).

Kelo's a fascinating issue -- it cuts across our established political divisions and produces very strange bedfellows (for instance, Sucher finds himself agreeing with conservative John Tierney). Much to ponder.

Density Star

From the New Urban News comes this nugget:

Researchers presented findings at the Congress for the New Urbanism annual conference that show substantial energy savings from higher-density urbanism -- greater savings than can be achieved from the US government Energy Star program.

As the chart on the left shows (if you can read it -- sorry it's so small), even small increases in density can yield substantial energy savings; increasing residential density from 3 housing units per acre to 6 units per acre actually saves more energy than the average efficiency boost provided by Energy Star appliances.

Now, this shouldn't be much of a surprise, since it's been well established for decades that people who live in compact neighborhoods drive much less than people who live in more sparsely populated suburbs. Still, it's an important reminder: Neighborhood design is a powerful determinant of how much energy we use.

But for some reason, when people talk about making our transportation system more fuel efficient, they typically talk about improving the efficiency of vehicles, rather than of neighborhoods. Efficient vehicles have a high-tech cachet, I guess. But if anything, efficient neighborhoods are even more important than efficient vehicles. Hybrids and biodiesel vehicles do save fossil fuels and reduce pollution, obviously; but by reducing how much people need to drive, efficent neighborhoods not only save fuel, but also reduce other costly externalities, ranging from highway spending to car crashes.