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Years of public policy on urban design have made very little driving ‘non-essential’

A few weeks ago, President Bush encouraged Americans to conserve fuel by cutting back on non-essential driving. Unlike some, I think it's actually helpful to use the bully pulpit this way. I just don't think it's terribly meaningful: People respond far more to prices than to jawboning. And as Brookings Institution scholars Robert Puentes and Bruce Katz point out, the sprawling layout of American cities makes an awful lot of our driving "essential," for all practical purposes:

[W]hat the President doesn't get when he asks Americans to curtail their "non-essential travel" is that a half-century of government policies have fueled and subsidized the growth of sprawling, haphazard metropolitan communities and have dramatically increased the amount of "essential travel" required for people to live their daily lives. Driving may not be the best option, but it is often the only option for Americans to get around.

Americans venture out in their cars to find housing they can afford because housing opportunities closer-in are thwarted, while new developments on the suburban fringe are subsidized. Taking transit, biking, or walking to the corner market or to jobs located off the highway exit is neither safe nor feasible because of policies that segregate uses and cater to the car rather than the pedestrian. Federal and state policies make highways easy to build and relegate transit and other alternatives to second-class status.

These policies come with a huge hidden price tag for families, in the form of higher local taxes (to pay for needed infrastructure) and the ever-rising costs of buying, driving and maintaining cars.

Neil Pierce has similar thoughts in today's Seattle Times.

Society still subsidizes the cost of driving

An interesting article from the Washington Post finds that taking Metro -- DC's light rail system -- into downtown may not save suburban commuters all that much money. Even with gas at $3 per gallon, the savings on fuel, plus wear and tear on vehicles, are offset by increased spending on transit fares. Commuters really only start to save if they use transit often enough to ditch one of their cars; otherwise, it's a bit of a wash.

It's a useful piece of analysis, as far as it goes. But the most important part is what's left out:

Arctic Refuge bears driven by global warming to eat people — really

The tragic story of two kayakers killed this summer by a hungry grizzly in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the focus of a captivating cautionary tale about global warming's effects on wildlife in the latest issue of National Geographic's Adventure Magazine -- like unto Grizzly Man, but without the intentional disregard for sensible caution. Scarce food's been getting scarcer for caribou in the refuge and making already-hungry tundra grizzlies more and more aggressive, sometimes fatally so.

According to a 2002 U.S. Geological Survey report, increased spring snow and ice [in the Arctic Refuge] -- a paradoxical result of global warming trends -- is burying the coastal plain plants essential to caribou and grizzly diets. The caribou are decreasing in number or seeking grazing land elsewhere, and the barren ground grizzlies, bereft of this supplemental protein, have been stalking the tundra for alternatives.

And in June, one bear found an alternative in the two seasoned backcountry travelers as they slept in their tent. "The freaky thing," says area police officer Richard Holschen, "is that they did most everything right" in terms of bear-related precautions, and were killed anyway.

National Geographic also touches on the possibility of more such incidents as the Arctic Refuge has gained increasing exposure in the news. As the refuge has come closer and closer to being drilled, more and more people have been inspired to visit.

Each time the specter of Alaska oil drilling is raised in Washington, D.C., the number of visitors goes up: from 679 prior to 2000 to an annual average of 1,010 in 2004, not counting frequent trips by local indigenous people.

But the bears aren't the only ones upset by all this. Apparently, a growing number of people think the end is more or less nigh.  

So it looks like you're not alone thinking the world's ills get overwhelming at times. Sort of makes one want to escape to a remote wilderness somewhere ...

Umbra on freezing local foods

Dear Umbra, I am lucky enough to live across the street from a farmers’ market, and I shop there all summer. But when summer’s done, the market closes and I am left to buy produce from California. Would it be better for me to buy a small freezer and freeze farmers’ market veggies for winter, […]

Aspen Backwards

Colorado’s ski industry says global warming won’t stop the shredding Colorado’s lucrative ski industry claims it’s got no worries about global warming, saying the state’s high altitudes and remarkably cold winters will keep things white and wonderful. Others think the sector’s got its collective head stuck up its snowpack. “Heavens, I think that’s shortsighted,” said […]

The Trash Money Crew

New Orleans garbage will fill at least 3.5 million truckloads We’d hate to be the ones tasked with separating out the recycling: Cleaning up New Orleans will involve hauling 22 million tons of garbage and waste that have been moldering in the heat and damp since late August’s Hurricane Katrina, including rotting food, ruined furniture, […]

Trunk’d

As USFS suspends many activity permits, enviros say it’s playing games The U.S. Forest Service has suspended permits for 1,436 activities in national forests nationwide, from cutting the U.S. Capitol’s Christmas tree to guiding hunting and fishing trips. It claims it’s just complying with a court order, but eco-advocates say the agency is intentionally stirring […]

And the Land Played On

Judge rules Oregon’s Measure 37 unconstitutional Oregon’s voter-approved Measure 37, which would mandate that private landowners be compensated for changes in their property value brought about by state land-use decisions, has been ruled unconstitutional by Marion County Circuit Judge Mary James. Oregon was widely seen as a national model in land-use planning, pushing new development […]

Phil Brick, environmental politics professor, answers questions

Phil Brick. What work do you do? I am professor of politics and codirector of environmental studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. I am also the founder and director of an environmental-studies field program, Whitman College Semester in the West, a three-month field tour focusing on the political, ecological, and human dimensions of […]

Big ag is energy intensive and has no plans to change

Big Ag is nervous about energy costs. The hand-wringing reveals much about the energy-intensive nature of industrial agriculture -- and its lack of imagination regarding alternatives.

Even before the latest big runup in oil prices -- incidentally, oil had reached $60 per barrel before Hurricane Katrina trashed the Gulf of Mexico -- farmers were feeling the pinch. Here's an Associated Press article from May laying out the energy story in terms dictated by the American Farm Bureau Federation, which not inaccurately calls itself "the voice of agriculture." It has only forgotten to add a few compound modifiers: vast-scale, heavily subsidized, export-minded energy-intensive.