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Are people smart enough to abandon the ‘burbs?

A fairly speculative piece on MSN yesterday asks the question, "Could rising gas prices kill the suburbs?" Its talk of infill and vertical cities may be the stuff of urban planners' dreams, but how will it resonate with real people?

Someone I know read the piece and took away this message: Housing prices in the suburbs are about to drop because everyone's going to leave! Sweet!

And if last night's House Hunters -- in which a couple with a baby upgraded from a 2,800-foot house in the 'burbs to an even bigger one because there "wasn't enough room" -- is any indication, it's gonna take a lot more than $3 gas to move us forward.

Oxygen-deprived area kills crabs and fish

In 2002, scientists discovered a large "dead zone" -- a marine area that has virtually no oxygen and thus can't support life -- off the coast of Oregon. Dead zones are occurring with increasing frequency all over the world. Scientists believe that changes in weather -- sound familiar? -- are contributing to the ever increasing size of the Oregon dead zone. This summer's dead zone is one of the worst. Thousands of dead Dungeness crab, sea stars, and other marine life carpet the ocean floor. Check out this video that made Al Pazar, chairman of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission and a crab fisherman himself, "weak in the knees."

IMBY

Residential wind systems gain popularity It’s somewhat ironic, considering all the NIMBY opposition to wind farms, that more and more consumers are seeking out wind power for, well, their back yards. Three-bladed turbines are popping up at personal abodes across the country, with the potential to save consumers 30 to 90 percent on their electric […]

The Grass is Always Meaner on the Other Side

Genetically modified grass found in the wild In what could be the first confirmed instance of a genetically modified plant growing outside a farm in the U.S., EPA ecologists have found an unapproved type of GM grass in the wild in central Oregon. The EPA said the creeping bentgrass (could it sound more evil?), being […]

From Bad to Thirst

Water crisis doesn’t care if countries are rich or poor Water crisis: not just for poor countries anymore. Industrialized nations must make drastic policy changes if they wish to maintain water supplies, warns the World Wildlife Fund today. In cities from Seville to Sydney to Sacramento, water has become a hot political issue as supply […]

Umbra on dropping out of society

Dear Umbra, Although I have always been one to conserve, recycle, etc., it is only in the last year that I have realized the extent of the catastrophe coming upon us in terms of climate change. I am 40-something, live in a city, own an older home with a sizeable mortgage that requires my husband […]

Why “the market” alone can’t save local agriculture

The local-food movement has reached an interesting juncture. Through one lens, things are looking better than ever. According to a USDA report (PDF), the number of farmers’ markets leapt 79 percent to 3,100 between 1994 and 2002. Community-supported agriculture programs — wherein consumers buy a share of a farm’s output before the season starts, sharing […]

Talking point: The environmentalist yes

Advocates of nuclear energy, coal gasification, and other hold-your-nose-and-take-your-medicine energy alternatives frequently bully opponents by saying that there's no other way to fight global warming.

If you really cared about global warming, the rhetoric goes, you'd put your effete, nitpicky objections aside for the greater good. After all, global warming is an urgent problem, and these are the only solutions we have!

This is more or less the pro-nuke line taken by James Lovelock and Stewart Brand, and the pro-gasification line taken by Montana governor Brian Schweitzer. There are plenty of other examples.

Problem is, it's not true.

Bicycling highs

You know what kills me? We have perfected a transportation technology that could make a huge dent in CO2 emissions and in liquid-fuel consumption -- and it's barely utilized. I know it gets tiresome hearing bike enthusiasts harp about their passion, but if you could eliminate most of the reasons people don't ride bikes, you would have an awful lot of bike riders.

Walking tall tale

Looking for something else, I came across a web page that makes this rather startling claim:

[W]alking actually uses more fossil energy than driving, if the calories burned from walking come from a typical American diet.

The crux of the claim is that the North American food system uses so much fossil fuel -- for manufacturing fertilizer and pesticides, running farm machinery, transporting food from farm fields to stores and homes, powering refrigerators and stoves, etc. -- that producing the food calories to power a one mile walk uses up more fossil fuel energy than a typical car burns in a one-mile drive.

That seemed counterintuitive, to be sure -- but not completely ridiculous. So I spent some time looking at the issues.

As far as I can tell, the web page is probably wrong: walking is more energy-efficient than driving.

However, they're closer than I might have thought.