Climate Culture
All Stories
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Manufacturing a schism
Carbon offsets, which let you pay some money to help fund climate-friendly projects, got the love-hate treatment in Monday's New York Times.
At issue: are they for real, or just some sort of gimmick? By contributing money to an offset program, are you really expiating your climate sins, or are you just buying meaningless indulgences?
The article finds lots of quotes from people who are skeptical about offsets. But to me, this is mostly a manufactured controversy -- an attempt to find a green schism where none really exists.
As far as I can tell, there's a middle ground on the issue that most people already agree on: namely, that carbon offsets are simultaneously worthwhile and a gimmick. A worthwhile gimmick, if you will.
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Realizing that freeways are not free
Every once in a while there's a truth that everybody knows, but that no one will acknowledge. And when someone finally says it aloud, it sounds shocking. Like this:
... what we're doing now isn't working. Not for drivers, taxpayers or the environment. We can't tax and build our way out of this.
That's Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat in his column this week, talking about what most people in Seattle already know: the area's freeway system is flat broke and busted. Even the biggest package ever to go before voters -- this fall's $16 billion roads-and-transit measure -- won't pay for the toughest infrastructure problems, like rebuilding the 520 floating bridge, and is only a fraction of the estimated $40 billion needed over the next few decades. Moreover, even that full $40 billion isn't expected to reduce congestion much. So what can we do?
Enter the occasion for Westneat's column: King County executive Ron Sims, who has stepped up (big PDF), yet again, with a remarkably visionary plan: region-wide congestion pricing. Wow. Without getting into the details here, Sims is proposing what is perhaps the only thing that could simultaneously generate the money, reduce congestion, and ease environmental impacts -- all without raising taxes. (In fact, that's why Sightline Institute has been preaching congestion pricing for years.)
If it all sounds too good to be true, it is.
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Spitzer and Polish
New York governor’s mansion gets an eco-facelift You know, we’ve been thinking about eco-remodeling our 39-room mansion, and now New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his wife Silda Wall Spitzer are providing inspiration. The couple plans to green the governor’s residence in Albany, which was built in 1875 and has housed such luminaries as Franklin […]
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Cities find that people like not being killed by cars!
Good story in the Christian Science Monitor about places that are taking steps (albeit tiny, tiny baby steps) to take back some of the public space given over to cars and letting people use it:
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The KABMAN Game
Last week, David Roberts brought you the Keep America Beautiful Man videos. This week, I bring you ... KABMAN, THE GAME.
I came, I saw, and I collected 40 recyclable items on my second try. Top that, Gristiacs.
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John Travolta’s private plane fetish brings the noise to a small Maine community
Oh, John Travolta. When will you and your planes stop p$#@ing off the populace?
Apparently it's not enough for Mr. Saturday-Night-Give-the-Planet-a-Fever to wander the globe in his private planes, trailing an excess of carbon emissions in his wake. He's also got to land his plane near his Maine residence during the area's voluntary no-fly period between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Come on, John. It's bad enough that you're contributing to warming the planet. Now you're going to keep granny awake in the process? For shame, Vinnie Barbarino, for shame.
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Chait on the netroots
Jon Chait has an expansive new piece in The New Republic about the rise of the “netroots” — i.e., the partisan, activist liberal blogosphere. I have my quibbles with some parts, particularly in the second half, but overall it’s a far more comprehensive, fair, and respectful look at the netroots than you’ll find anywhere else […]
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Is the starfish story really just bunk?
The estimable biodiversivist wrote, in another thread, that "What we do as individuals is insignificant compared to changes in carbon neutral energy generation and transportation infrastructure."
Which is both true and not true, I think. It reminds me of the story about the little tyke throwing starfish stranded on the beach back into the water, and being told by the parent that it didn't matter, leading the child to say, "It does to this one."
Cute story, all chicken-soupy-for-the-environmentalist's soul and such -- but is it really just bunk?
