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A little Europhilia

I keep meaning to link to Jay Walljasper's E Magazine piece on hometown pride, European style. There's not a lot new there for people who follow urban planning and such, but it's both a nice travelogue and a heartfelt argument for making cities more livable. Through a series of examples, he illustrates one basic point: The fact that European cities are more livable, walkable, and generally enjoyable than big American cities is not some fluke of history or geography. It's the result of conscious community planning, and it could be done here.

My honeymoon took me through London, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Paris. I wish every U.S. citizen could take that same trip -- it's hard to imagine just what a livable city looks and feels like until you've been in one. Riding a bike around Amsterdam, in particular, is something everyone should do before they die. It's amazing to see a whole system of transit where cars are marginalized, just one relatively small and dismissively treated segment. Men in suits, fashionably attired women in heels, parents with babies -- everybody rides a bike. It's just phenomenal.

How about where you live? What's being done to make it more livable? What do you wish was being done?

I’ve got my eye on Yue

As longtime readers know, we here at Grist are fascinated/horrified/baffled/whatevered by the environmental implications of China's explosive economic growth. On that score, two reading recommendations.

First, Lester Brown at the Earth Policy Institute writes that China simply can't develop the same way the U.S. did. Not a moral can't, but a brute physical can't -- there just aren't enough resources. On oil, coal, steel, and paper, the story is the same: If China consumed at U.S. per capita levels, it would consume more than the world currently produces. That takes a while to sink in, but it's pretty incredible to contemplate. If, when China's median wage reaches U.S. levels (projected to happen between 2030-2040), China's per capita consumption of oil also reaches U.S. levels, China alone will be consuming more oil than the entire world produces today. With oil, that's probably just not possible -- oil production has either already peaked or will soon. With something like paper, it might be physically possible, but it would be ugly indeed. No more forests. Same with meat, or cars, or whatever. It's just brute math.

And this is just putting it in terms of raw resources. If China actually travels down that road, they'll hit an environmental wall before the resources themselves run out.

The good news is, apparently some folks in China realize this. Or at least one folk. Read this Spiegel interview with Pan Yue, Deputy Director of China's State Environmental Protection Agency. It is, as Jamais notes, remarkably candid for an official of any country, but particularly China. Yue makes no bones about the fact that something has got to change in China's development, and he's not afraid to go to bat against powerful people in business and government to make it happen. He's also startlingly frank about the fact that political reform is necessary to prevent eco-catastrophe. Seriously, it's pretty short, so just go read it. But here's one tasty excerpt:

This [economic] miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace. Acid rain is falling on one third of the Chinese territory, half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless, while one fourth of our citizens does not have access to clean drinking water. One third of the urban population is breathing polluted air, and less than 20 percent of the trash in cities is treated and processed in an environmentally sustainable manner. Finally, five of the ten most polluted cities worldwide are in China.

As Jamais also says, it's worth tracking Yue's political fortunes. If he is successful in government, it's a good sign. If not, well ...

Finally, please see this disclaimer.

Disclaimer for all future China posts

When we write about China's massive growth and the apocalyptic environmental consequences thereof, we are:

1. not saying that China should refrain from developing, or that the Chinese should stay poor;
2. not excusing the extravagant per capita level of consumption and waste in the U.S.

Instead, we are advocating that China move quickly and decisively to develop sustainable technologies, industries, and sources of power, and that the U.S. green movement support China in that quest however it can.

Thanks for listening.

The coast is unclear

Last week, an AP story reported that half the people in the U.S. live along the coast, even though that's just 17 percent of the country's land area. So what, you say? So, in light of concerns about increasingly severe coastal weather due to you-know-what (starts with a G, rhymes with noble forming), all that crowding makes evacuations a lot more complicated. One solution suggested by weather gods NOAA: vertical evacuations. That's right, shove everyone into a highrise and tell 'em to climb. (Hey, look how MSNBC calls the agency "Noah"! That's so cute.)

This week, as officials continued to gear up for the unknown, NOAA commended Lincoln City, Ore., for being the nation's first "TsunamiReady" community and listed 15 others in Alaska, Hawaii, California, Oregon, and Washington that have also qualified -- by establishing emergency operations centers, figuring out how to warn people, and mapping out hazard plans.

Far be it from me to panic. But the Farm Belt is looking mighty appealing. (I know, I know, tornados. That'll be my next post.)

Conservatives and Clear Skies

Conservatives say that environmentalists only oppose Clear Skies because they hate Bush. My impression is that they only support Clear Skies because they hate environmentalists.

But of course I would think that.

If you want to hear what conservative bloggers have to say about Clear Skies -- much of which draws on a recent Washington Monthly article -- you can start here and then try here, here (good discussion in comments), and here. Feel free to leave additional links in comments, if you have them.

The fact is that Clear Skies is classic Bush. There's plenty of perfectly sensible stuff in it that is long overdue. It's also poisoned with several measures -- among them the loathsome mercury cap-and-trade program -- that no environmentalist or Democrat with a conscience could support. It's designed, like all Bush's initiatives, to gain just enough support to pass, while being as divisive as possible in the process. Rove doesn't want big majorities. He doesn't want bipartisan consensus. He wants open partisan warfare and narrow victories.

Marburger

Presidential science advisor John Marburger has been making some unusually strong and unambiguous statements lately about global warming. Here are my three theories about what could be going on:

1. He's off the reservation, sick of being bashed by the scientific community, and we're soon going to see the phrase "more time with his family" near his name.
2. It's pure greenwashing, an attempt to demonstrate that, despite appearances, the Bush administration takes global warming seriously.
3. Bush has decided that intransigence on warming is becoming a political liability, he's going to make some splashy policy moves soon, and this is an attempt to soften the ground and prepare his supporters.

Which do you think it is?

Just Looking

Forest Service considers sustainability certification In an attempt to stem criticism of its logging and forest-management practices from both timber companies and conservationists, the U.S. Forest Service is assessing a handful of forests to determine if they meet management requirements outlined by two very different sustainable forestry organizations, with an eye toward possible certification of […]

Metals Gone Wild

Mercury seriously mucking with wildlife, study finds Mercury contamination of wildlife may be more prevalent than previously thought and influencing ecosystems in unexpected ways, suggests a study released yesterday. Researchers in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada found higher-than-expected levels of mercury in the region’s birds and other animals, supporting the hypothesis that mercury from […]

Elevate Good Times, Come on!

Last chance to enter the Gristmill Environmental Elevator-Pitch Contest The time has come to close out the Gristmill Environmental Elevator-Pitch Contest. We’ll accept entries until Friday, March 11. On Monday, the finalists will be announced, and readers will be able to vote on their favorite (creator of said favorite will — get this — win […]

PS: We’re all going to die

The latest science news, nicely coinciding with the belching of Mount St. Helens: some time, not sure when, an extra-giganto-huge volcano is going to erupt and kill a buncha people. Might be in Yellowstone, which is 40,000 years overdue for a super explosion and has inspired a BBC docudrama (check out the still of a pick-up truck fleeing the scene). Or might be somewhere else around the world. Might be tomorrow. Or might be thousands of years from now. But whenever it happens, it's going to be ugly. And, scientists say, there ain't nothin' we can do about it.

Is it any wonder people (and when I say "people," I mean me) bury their heads? The planet is scary, the experts who talk about it are scary, and we are helpless.

OK, well, got to get back to writing silly headlines.