Articles by David Roberts

New American dream towns

Outside magazine has a list of 10 "New American Dream Towns."

When we combed the country for the sweetest innovations and the freshest ideas for making neighborhoods better places to live, work, and play -- with tons of green space, easy access to the outdoors, and big-think visions for smarter, more sustainable everyday living -- we hit the jackpot. ...

To spotlight the new American dream towns, we started with a wish list of criteria: commitment to open space, smart solutions to sprawl and gridlock, can-do community spirit, and an active embrace of the adventurous life. We looked for green design and green-thinking mayors, thriving farmers' markets and healthy job markets. We found it all -- and then some: ten towns that might tempt you to box up your belongings, plus nine more whose bright ideas are well worth stealing. Check out these shining prototypes for what a 21st-century town -- what your hometown, perhaps -- can be: cleaner, greener, smarter. Better.

Some of the choices are expected (Chicago, Portland, Ore.), but some may surprise you. (They surprised me anyway, particularly given my lifelong hostility toward Salt Lake City.) And don't miss the short pieces at the end of the package: Smart Urban Ideas parts one, two, and three.

(via Treehugger)

What’s the real reason the feds are spying on enviros?

LA Weekly's Judith Lewis has written a short but incisive piece on a subject dear to my heart:

When the American Civil Liberties Union this week released a new batch of documents obtained from the FBI verifying that the federal agency has been monitoring domestic environmental- and animal-rights groups, it was only the latest evidence of government working on behalf of the anti-environmentalist industry and property-rights advocates to, as one of those advocates put it in 1992, "destroy the environmental movement." It's an effort that's been under way since the 1980s, using various tactics from intimidation to slander. Only recently have the anti-environmentalists hit upon their most promising idea yet: Linking environmentalism to terrorism.

Lewis goes on to question whether the ELF (Earth Liberation Front) actually exists as an organization at all. Its alleged website is little more than a hook for a bunch of advertising; its alleged spokesmen are self-promoting cranks; the criminals allegedly connected to it deny any such connections.

Indeed, the people who seem to have the most to gain from the ELF existing are Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the leaders of the wise-use movement, and certain industries whose excesses are threatened by environmental activism.

Zealots need enemies, and if those enemies don't exist, zealots will create them.

The documents the FBI has released so far, most of them heavily edited accounts of monitoring activities directed at Greenpeace and PETA, may be just the tip of the surveillance iceberg. "The reason we have the documents on PETA and Greenpeace is because we asked for them," says Ben Wizner, an attorney with the ACLU. "There have also been requests by local environmental groups around the country. They're trickling out. And I expect that because of these revelations there will be more groups that want to see their FBI files," he said.

You could call the FBI surveillance a colossal waste of public resources, but Wizner thinks it's worse than that: Also in the documents obtained by the ACLU is a memo about a source planted within Greenpeace informing the agency that recent law-enforcement efforts have already damaged morale.

As I've said before, the goal here is not just to hurt morale, not just to slander, but more specifically to question the tax-exempt status of certain powerful environmental organizations.

I think it's far past time for the mainstream green movement to speak out about this publicly. They're letting their enemies define the terrain.

Monitor your electricity use

In the making-the-invisible-visible department, I give you the Kill-a-Watt, a $30 widget that plugs in between an electrical device and an outlet to tell you exactly how much electricity the device is using.

I could plug one of these up between my power strip (computer/external hard drives/printer/scanner/monitor/speakers) and the outlet, but frankly I'm too scared.

(via BB)

Make your own ecosystem

Choose dry-land or marine-aquatic!

(via Digg)