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Jane Jacobs

The New York Times is running a long and fascinating appreciation of Jane Jacobs, who died yesterday. I like this:

She came to see prevalent planning notions, which involved bulldozing low-rise housing in poor neighborhoods and building tall apartment buildings surrounded by open space to replace them, as a superstition akin to early 19th-century physicians' belief in bloodletting.

"There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder," she wrote in "Death and Life," "and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served."

Removing impediments to the "real order that is struggling to exist and to be served" -- you could do worse.

Some hope from HOPES

A couple of folks on another post commented on how environmental activity is limited to progressive cities and campuses. Since I just got back from a green campus in a green city, I thought readers might want to hear about some good stuff going on in that small corner of the world.

The University of Oregon's annual HOPES Conference just wrapped up on the 16th. Now in it's 12th year, HOPES is a student-run environmental-design conference. If you are depressed by the level of environmental apathy around you, this was a place to recharge your faith and hope in humanity, especially the college-age segment of humanity.

Conference bleg

Over the past month or two, I've gotten approximately 426,088,131 emails and press releases about various conferences and summits and whatnot on the subject of energy and/or peak oil and/or global warming. For instance, I think there's one in New York City soon?

I honestly can't keep track, but I really do want to publicize them, so here's my solution: If you know of a cool conference (or whatnot) happening soon, let me know where and when in comments, and I'll promote it up here. It's called lazy-ass collaborative journalism!

Maximizing the MPGPP of your SUV with your HTS

Troubled by high gas prices? Not to worry, our fearless leader is on it. His staff has come up with a short, easy-to-articulate-and-memorize list of how he is going fix the problem:

1. Make sure consumers and taxpayers are treated fairly.
2. Promote greater fuel efficiency.
3. Boost U.S. gasoline supply.
4. Invest aggressively in gasoline alternatives.

Yawn ... whatever you say George.

The biggest environmental dilemma

I need this decided once and for all: is the prefix eco- pronounced "eh-ko" (rhymes with gecko, the lizard) or "ee-ko" (rhymes with Biko, the South African activist)?

Summer Rayne Oakes says "eh-ko." I've always said "ee-ko."

This is the most pressing environmental dilemma of our time! Please vote!

Those architects know their green architecture.

I am short on time and long on things to do today, so I will just direct you to eco-goings-on by the American Institute of Architects. No Fountainhead-esque architects these: the AIA's Committee on the Environment (COTE) ...

Jane Jacobs dies at 89

Jane Jacobs died today at the age of 89.

Just yesterday, while preparing my "Small is still beautiful" post, I found myself groping for her two masterpieces, The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities. I couldn't find them, because I had loaned them out -- I've been an ardent promoter of her works since I first discovered them more than ten years ago. My dog-eared copies of them have probably spent more time on the shelves of friends who I've foisted them on than my own.

May her death inspire a resurgence of interest in her work, particularly among greens. I hope over the next days to find time to write an appreciation of her.

Everyone who loves the chaos of a well-functioning city street -- and understands the vast environmental benefits of cities -- should bow east in the direction of her beloved Greenwich Village, and north toward her adopted home of Toronto.

How big money skews the energy debate

One of the most frustrating things about the renewed debate over nuclear power is that it has basically been forced into the public sphere by brute force of cash. The Nuclear Energy Institute can afford to hire high-profile shills; they can blitz the press until they get some prominent placement.

They get to set the terms of the debate. We're stuck arguing "nukes good" or "nukes bad." That makes public acceptance of nukes inevitable, since the "nukes bad" crowd can always be cast as obstructionists standing in the way of progress.

What's missing? A big-money push behind the positive green alternative: Energy efficiency standards, carbon taxes, incentives for clean energy, smarter land-use policy, smarter agricultural policy, etc.

Why is there no big-money push? Because no big, consolidated industry stands to make money off it. Certainly money could be made, but for the short- to mid-term it will be scattered, distributed, small-scale money.

These green strategies serve the public good, not the corporate good, and thus are at a heavy disadvantage in our corporate-dominated political and media system. They have no big-money backing, and thus have no effective advocates.

So the corporate "solutions" dominate the debate.

(The same is true, to some extent, for biofuels. How did ethanol come to serve as a stand-in for energy independence? Because Big Agribusiness and Big Oil both stand to profit, and congressfolk from agricultural states stand to benefit from the rush of subsidies.)

Tim’s big media moment

Our fellow green blogger Tim Haab, from Environmental Economics, was interviewed on NPR today about the dimwitted chain email going around proposing a boycott of Exxon gas. He sounded nervous, but made all the right points.

Don't miss his hilarious account of his Big Media Moment.

So there you have it.  20 years of schooling, 10 years of teaching, 3 pages of meticulous notes (which I never looked at) and my first national radio interview is going to consist of some incoherent rambling and me overenthusiastically yelling "DRIVE LESS." 

Thank God for tenure.  I'm going back to bed.

Don't worry, Tim -- the "drive less" moment redeemed you!

Think of It as Saran Wrap, to Keep the Ocean Fresh

An enormous patch of plastic trash swirls in the Pacific Ocean When it was a kid, the Pacific Ocean always wanted a Garbage Patch of its very own. Now it’s got one: a patch of trash, at least twice the size of Texas (!), floating midway between Hawaii and San Francisco. Held together by swirling […]