Latest Articles

Sweet and Blowdown

Wind-energy customers pay less than those buying fossil-fuel power Customers of Xcel Energy in Colorado who purchase wind power got a pleasant announcement last week: Not only would they not be paying a premium for their clean energy — they would be paying less than customers getting electricity from natural gas and coal-power sources. Xcel […]

Does a Bear Chapeau in the Woods?

British military still using real Canadian bear fur in funny hats Over the past 30 years, Britain’s Ministry of Defense has gradually replaced animal furs in ceremonial uniforms — e.g., leopard-skin hats for military drummers — with synthetics. But so far nothing has beaten real Canadian bear pelts for those goofy tall hats worn by […]

The Ballast’s in Your Court

Enviro-backed Great Lakes bill stalls, industry-backed bill advances Following this summer’s massive Detroit News series on threats to the Great Lakes, a key protection measure is … wait for it … stalled in Congress. Officials from Great Lakes states and conservationists back the National Aquatic Invasive Species Act, which would force shippers to use stronger […]

Noah Man’s Land

Major new study says severe weather is likely on the way Winter as we know it in the northeast U.S. will vanish. Summers across the country will be hotter, particularly in the parched Southwest. Rain will be less frequent but more torrential when it happens. Loss of property will be “catastrophic,” exotic diseases will spread, […]

Ford’s green guru discusses cars, climate, and time-warp activism

Last month, Ford Motor Co. CEO Bill Ford laid out a new vision to turn his company into a leader in technological innovation and, just perhaps, an environmental performance champion as well. His announcement, including the promise to produce 250,000 hybrids annually by 2010, comes during a time of trouble for the industry, and we […]

Oregon anti-land-use-planning measure ruled unconstitutional

This is big news: Last Friday, a judge in Oregon ruled that Measure 37 violates the state constitution.

To recap: Measure 37, which was approved overwhelmingly by Oregon voters last fall, required state or local governments either to compensate landowners, or to waive development restrictions, whenever land-use rules reduced the value of private property. The measure was strongly supported by timber interests, who faced limits on logging near streams and sensitive areas. And its passage wreaked havoc on the state's growth management system -- which had been largely successful at protecting farmland from suburban sprawl -- while creating an administrative nightmare for state and local governments who faced a deluge of complex Measure 37 cases.

As written, Measure 37 was supposed to apply only to people who bought their land before land use and zoning laws came into effect. People who bought after that, allegedly, understood what they were getting into, and weren't entitled to compensation. But the judge ruled that this violated the "equal privileges and immunities" clause of Oregon's constitution, because it created two separate classes of landowners: one with special rights and remedies for diminished land value, one without.

Last Friday's ruling invalidating the measure was definitive and sweeping. But it's not the end of the debate -- not by a long shot. Appeals are already planned, and Measure 37's supporters will undoubtedly be back soon with another -- perhaps even more insidious -- property rights proposal. And if I had to guess, the proponents of Measure 37 will be looking to open up the system to all landowners, not just recent purchasers. If that were to pass, of course, it would make the chaos engendered by Measure 37 look tame in comparison.

Rise Up Sweet Island

A recommendation from Jamais at WC sent me back to Rise Up Sweet Island (it drifted across my radar a while back but I never took a close look). I'm glad he flagged it, because it's pretty amazing.

It's part of a larger site called Notes from the Road, a travelogue/blog with superb original photography from amateur traveler Erik Gauger.

Sweet Island is a narrative about a tiny West Indian island called Guana Cay, the pristine coral reefs around it, a proposal for an "ecologically sensitive" golf course on it, and the corruption and absurdity that ensue. It's difficult to summarize but fascinating to read and sumptuously illustrated. Check it out.

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 ...