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World Water Forum to get controversial kickoff this week in Mexico City If you’re going to be in Mexico City on Thursday, don’t drink the water. Oh, and you might want to swing by the World Water Council’s not-very-creatively-named World Water Forum — or a protest march timed to coincide with its opening. Dozens of […]

(Tell Me Why) I Don’t Like Tuesdays

Scientists report even less Arctic ice, even more greenhouse gas In the wake of unprecedented summer melts, Arctic sea ice has failed to grow to its typical winter reach for the second year running. Researchers fear this signals — stop us if this sounds familiar — an irreversible amplification of the effects of climate change […]

Umbra on politicians and the environment

Dear Umbra, I got into a long debate with a conservative friend recently about how President Bush has shown that he does not have environmental interests at heart. But I did not have any facts on hand about detrimental policies or budget cuts. On the other hand, my friend was able to go to the […]

They’re Just Not That Into You

U.S. oil execs defend record profits — again — in Senate testimony ExxonMobil, Chevron, and the gang took another turn at the Senate’s cotillion yesterday, flirting with the Judiciary Committee and making coquettish demurrals about record profits and price gouging. Unlike November’s fete with the Senate Commerce Committee, this time oil executives were sworn in […]

Poverty and environment redux

I commend Grist's editors for this landmark series. Their efforts, along with the many great writers who have contributed, have helped exemplify one of the central themes of environmental justice:

Environmentalism in the absence of people (as both political participants and right-endowed members of the Earth community) has led to worse social and ecological conditions by concentrating the negative impacts of industrial civilization on the disempowered, while not solving the core ecological issues it set out to fix.

If this is correct, then environmental justice offers a very serious and very useful critique of our environmentalist agenda.

If, as reformers, we can face up to this difficult reality, we can begin to re-form our own movement in ways that recognize our short-comings and work to avoid them in the future.

The critique implies a question: How do we be sure to "include people as both political participants and right-endowed members of the Earth community" in our environmentalist agenda?

I believe we must. I have offered some tentative suggestions for how to do so elsewhere (I would add make all landscape decisions local in character to that list), but I would love to hear from others who are wrestling with these issues.

Peace,
Kip

A plan to spruce up D.C.’s Anacostia River has some residents anxious

In the southeast corner of Washington, D.C., the capital of the most powerful nation in history, lies a polluted, neglected neighborhood known as Anacostia. Slated for a grand renewal project centered on the local river that gives it its name, the area stands at the juncture of poverty and opportunity. If plans move forward, it […]

Casinos and high-rises battle trolleys and bike lanes for the Gulf Coast future

The bossman draws my attention to a story in the NYT that rather tragically illustrates the struggle over new urbanism I mentioned in the post below. Really, really interesting stuff.

There's probably no place in the U.S. where new urbanism has a better shot at taking hold than the Gulf Coast. By getting wiped out, many of the towns and cities along the coast have a chance to start over -- to reimagine what their communities can be. Lots of people seem to have the right idea:

Gov. Haley Barbour's rebuilding commission and many small-town officials advocate a planning approach known as New Urbanism, which supports pedestrian friendly, historically themed developments where people of mixed incomes share the same neighborhoods and are closely linked by public transportation. Given a rare chance to redesign their landscapes, many residents and officials want to see towns designed around trolley cars, pedestrian walkways and open spaces.

And of course, lots of people seem to have the wrong idea:

But critics here mock New Urbanism as being impractical and ignorant of the preference of most Americans for privacy over community, and as creating towns that often look like film sets rather than real communities.

What do "real communities" look like?

"Biloxi is going to be high-rises and condos," said Duncan McKenzie, president of the Chamber of Commerce and a vice president of the Isle of Capri casino. "People refer to what happened here as a tragic opportunity." Even before the storm, casinos were Biloxi's second-largest industry after the military, employing 15,000 people and generating $19.2 million in taxes.

To boldly go where no man has gone before

This is a couple of weeks old. See those specks at the bottom of this picture? Those are helicopters. From LiveScience:

A cave so huge helicopters can fly into it has just been discovered deep in the hills of a South American jungle paradise.

Researchers found a new species of poison dart frog inside. I don't have a good feeling about this. Some scientists are starting to suspect that just maybe they are the ones responsible for spreading the fungus that is killing off the frogs of the world.

A little time in the lab could teach big business how to help the poor

Recent weeks have seen surprisingly effective demonstrations in support of animal testing in SustainAbility’s home city of London, under the catchy title of “Pro-Test.” Will support for the oft-reviled practice catch on? We aren’t sure, but it made us think. If we humans are animals, is there ever an argument for treating people as laboratory […]

Why isn’t there more new urbanism?

It is conventional wisdom in enviro circles that a big part of a green future is green cities, and a big part of green cities is dense, mixed-use development, wherein people interact with their neighbors, walk or bike to amenities, and generally have a much smaller environmental footprint than suburbanites. In other words: new urbanism.

Supporters of new urbanism face a daunting challenge, though: namely, the apparently overwhelming preference of Americans for sprawling, single-use suburbs. If dense, mixed-use urban communities are so great, how come there just aren't that many? How come nobody seems to want to live in them?

There are two basic schools of thought on this question.