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Why aren’t conservationists fighting poverty?

It’s a shame. Conservationists are sitting on the sidelines while the Big Game unfolds before our eyes. A major campaign is under way to change the terms of development, alleviate crushing debt, and help poor people around the world live better lives. Successes are being racked up. And conservation and environmental groups are nowhere to […]

Gambling site gives odds for oil

As news hits of a historic rise in oil prices (to $66 a barrel), America's "largest online sports betting destination" tells us they've turned the world's fuelish issues into a new category. Yup! Right there on the non sports events page -- tucked between "Who will win Tommy Hilfiger's 'The Cut'?" and "Who will win the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards video of the year?" -- you can bet on whether the price will reach $70 by the end of 2005.

What do you think: lie down and weep, or lay money down and reap?

Permafrost melting, methane coming, humanity doomed: more

If you read about melting permafrost in today's Daily Grist and were worried, well ... uh, what can I tell you? Be worried.

As is his wont, Jamais has much, much more over on WC.

Hello Cleveland!

Ohio city is latest to hire sustainability manager Cleveland, Ohio, has joined Seattle, Chicago, Portland, Ore., and other American metropolises (metropoli?) in creating a city-government position focused on going green and saving energy — ideally stimulating job growth in the process. Cleveland’s new “sustainability programs manager,” Andrew Watterson, is getting started with relatively simple and […]

The Sum of Owl Fears

Feds to shoot barred owls to save spotted owls Would you kill an owl to save another owl? It’s not a thought experiment from your Intro to Ethics class: Northern spotted owls — the feathered poster children of last decade’s timber wars — are dwindling in the Pacific Northwest, and bigger, more aggressive barred owls, […]

The Peat Is Gone

Siberia’s fast thaw alarms scientists Siberia is melting. Meeelllting! Ahem. Of particular concern is a 386,000 square-mile expanse of western Siberian permafrost that’s been icy cold for about 11,000 years and sits atop billions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If the permafrost melts, the methane could […]

Dense and Densibility

Densest U.S. cities aren’t the ones you think Advocates of energy-saving urban density usually laud the towering buildings and subways of Manhattan, as contrasted with the car-heavy suburban sprawl of, say, Los Angeles. But the most dense city in the U.S., measured by people per square mile, is … Los Angeles. In fact, despite its […]

WaPo

Looks like that Washington Post story really captured the nation's imagination! If I'm not mistaken it will also be popping up in Daily Grist later today.

More on sprawl

Pop quiz: Where are the most densely populated cities in the U.S.?

If you conjured up visions of the artificial canyons of Manhattan or the rowhouses of most older Eastern cities, you would be wrong. As the Washington Post reports this morning, it turns out that only 3 of the top 15 most densely populated cities are east of (or on) the Mississippi River. Talk about myth-busting over the morning OJ!

LA tops the list, followed closely by San Fran. San Jose comes in third and New York shows up in the number four slot. New Orleans is fifth, but then you have to go all the way to 13 before you get another Eastern city -- Miami! California is home to 9 of the 15 most densely populated cities in America.

Update [2005-8-11 8:30:16 by Ana Unruh Cohen]: Kudos to Andy on his analysis on this morning's Washington Post story. But in our initial posts neither of us mentioned this dark side of LA's density, which is also worth pondering over your ice tea at lunch. From the story:

There is another kind of infill. It occurs -- without planning, rubbish removal or construction -- when poor people pack into old houses and apartments. This is the single most important reason Los Angeles has become the nation's densest urban area, housing experts say.

Density and walkability

Just below the fold on the front page of today's Washington Post lies a very interesting article on sprawl in the West, particularly in Los Angeles. Turns out it's much more dense than typically pictured in the public's mind.

Citing the US Census Bureau, the article notes that the metropolitan Los Angeles area has density 25 percent higher than New York's. Despite the "unforgiving restraints" the area is subject to (like, for instance, the fact that the whole place is a desert), residents just keep pouring in. It was necessity that led to the density.

The article is another lesson that "there's more to density than meets the eye."

There is also mention of a place made infamous by teens and their problems: the Newport Coast. Built at the high density of seven units per acre, the development leaves about 80 percent of its land as open space.

Some of the more traditional conceptions of suburbia return though.

A six-lane road feeds cars in and out of the development so efficiently, DeSantis said, that in the past nine years she has never seen it clogged with traffic....Distances here are measured by time in a car.

However, one gets the sense that even if gas were $15 a gallon, these suburbs would still have developed in more or less the same way. The median priced home in Orange County is $702,000.