Articles by Clark Williams-Derry
Clark Williams-Derry is research director for the Seattle-based Sightline Institute, a nonprofit sustainability think tank working to promote smart solutions for the Pacific Northwest. He was formerly the webmaster for Grist.
All Articles
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Sinks a lot?
A quick vacation to Washington's Olympic Peninsula reminded me of two things. First -- dang, those trees are huge!
And second -- dang, there's a lot of clearcut coastal forestland that's still just basically sitting there: no trees, just scrub and piles of decaying stumps.
Which got me to thinking: How much CO2 could the clearcut land store if returned to its full rainforest glory? Enough to take a serious bite out of our climate-warming emissions?
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Stuck in neutral
According to The Washington Post, U.S. fuel economy is stuck in neutral: despite high gas prices, vehicle fuel economy hasn't improved a whit compared with the previous year.
But wait, it gets worse.
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Lessons from Bogotá
Very worth reading: an article in British Columbia webzine The Tyee about the former mayor of Bogotá, Columbia, who catalyzed sweeping reforms in the capital city:
Enrique Peñalosa presided over the transition of a city that the world--and many residents--had given up on. Bogota had lost itself in slums, chaos, violence, and traffic...He built more than a hundred nurseries for children. He built 50 new public schools and increased enrolment by 34 percent. He built a network of libraries. He created a highly-efficient, "bus highway" transit system. He built or reconstructed hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks, more than 300 kilometres of bicycle paths, pedestrian streets, and more than 1,200 parks.
And much of the mayor's success stemmed from a decision to reclaim urban spaces from private cars, by restricting parking (no more cars on sidewalks!), raising gas taxes to pay for rapid transit, and reprogramming money for roads to other, more pressing concerns.
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Berry, berry, quite contrary
I walked into my local grocery store over the weekend and was faced with the very dilemma -- organic or local? -- some of my colleagues have been wrestling with for a while.
On one table: fresh local strawberries, grown conventionally (i.e., with pesticides and artificial fertilizers). On an adjacent table: organic strawberries shipped all the way from California. I looked, but couldn't find any that were both local and organic.
The question: which to buy?
