The ever-encroaching wireless web

I think it was Tom Friedman who first referred to the web of communications technologies currently encircling the globe as the "Evernet." Always on and always growing, the net has many beneficial effects, especially in developing countries, as The Economist notes and Emergic and WorldChanging elaborate on.

Of course, some side effects advise caution. To paraphrase Friedman in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, the result looks more like millions of Little Brothers than one Big Brother.

While that may be slightly less scary, I think there's something to be said for leaving some parcels of land not only untouched by development, but untouched by the Evernet. The New York Times ran an editorial this morning about the "Frankenpine," a cell phone tower disguised as a white pine tree in the Adirondacks. Setting any visual blight (or attempts to disguise it) aside, however, the whole point of going into a wilderness area is to be "off the grid" and unable to immediately call someone, even in the case of emergency. A concerted effort needs to be made to prevent this Evernet from reaching into every corner of the world.

Even left unchecked, though, there are some places where the net probably just won't go. And there is always the option of choosing to leave whatever communication device you have at home when you go somewhere. But in the same way that it is exciting to think that you are 50 miles from the nearest passable road, it is exciting to think that it is physically impossible to immediately reach someone or be reached.

The Nature Conservancy and others already focus on the proximity of roads, but the proximity of the Evernet is looming just as large, if not larger, on many wilderness areas.

The healthcare costs of chemical pollution far outweigh any economic benefits.

Health care has become such an expensive endeavor -- consuming roughly an eighth of all the money our economy generates -- that even small improvements in health can save a lot of money. A recent study, mentioned here in the Seattle P-I, looks just at the health costs -- care for asthma, cancer, lead pollution, and the like -- resulting from exposure to manufactured chemicals. And according to Dr. Kate Davies, the study's author, the costs are pretty sizeable:

Davies said the environmental health costs associated with children's conditions is roughly .7 percent of the state gross national product, while environmental health costs for adults equates to 1 percent of the local annual GNP.

Which means that the health costs of a polluted environment rack up to about, oh, $4 billion a year or so in Washington State alone, at least by this estimate.

I'm not sure how much sway cost-benefit analyses should hold over environmental policy. Not only does the classic cost-benefit framework tend to sidestep fairness (why should I pay if someone else benefits?), but perhaps more importantly, cost-benefit analyses can overvalue short-term and concrete costs and benefits, while undervaluing the long-term and nebulous ones. Still, cost-benefit analysis can be an important tool if used wisely. And there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that if lead, for example, had been required to pass through a rigorous cost-benefit analysis before it was added to paint and gasoline, there's no way we'd still be paying the costs today.

Milenko Matanovic, community-based planner, answers questions

Milenko Matanovic. What work do you do? I run a nonprofit organization called Pomegranate Center. We specialize in involving people...

GAO to investigate whether Cooney’s editing was illegal

Chris Mooney has a good catch today: Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have asked the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, to determine whether recently-resigned Bush administration official Philip Cooney violated federal statutes against obstruction of Congress and false statements.

Cooney, as you may recall, is the former oil industry lobbyist, turned chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality who edited research reports to play up uncertainties about global warming. Turned, uh, oil industry lobbyist. (To everything turn, turn, turn, eh?)

Lautenberg and Reid are also asking the Climate Change Science Program to retract the redacted reports, writes Chris. "I don't know what kind of results this will achieve, but it's a new tactic, as well as a strong demonstration that Congress is getting serious about the science abuse issue."

Attempts to introduce new species to city ecosystems are often doomed to failure.

An article in Pacific Northwest Magazine discussing Seattle's recurrent Canada goose problems got me thinking. Cities are primarily for people, and they have their own microenvironments. Some animals and plants thrive inside these ecosystems, and some do not. Creatures that can live among us already do. Attempts to introduce other species to please our sensibilities will more often than not turn into expensive failures or chronic damage-control exercises.

Car-sharing starts to take off.

Here's a bit of interesting news on car sharing companies, which, according to The New York Times, are catching on a bit in Europe. The most salient bit:

Studies suggest that one shared car replaces 4 to 10 private cars, as people sell their old vehicles...The result is a 30 to 45 percent reduction in vehicle miles traveled for each new customer.

Now, 30 to 45 percent is a pretty sizeable decline in driving. But this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise; as any economist would predict, converting a fixed cost (e.g., the cost of buying the car) to a variable cost (e.g., the cost of renting a shared car, which for Seattle Flexcars costs up to $9 per hour) makes people far more selective about how much they drive. And that probably saves car-sharers money overall: Yes, they pay more for each trip, but they make fewer trips, and also avoid much of the expense of purchasing and maintaining a car for personal use.

Their dependence on gaz guzzlers makes them highly vulnerable, says a new study

Ah, now we're talking. Earlier this week I was a bit snarky about this article, which flung broad statements about with very little empirical support (understandable, I guess, for a breezy op-ed).

But a new study that just came across my desk puts some teeth in the argument that going green is smart business strategy for automakers.

Jointly published by the U. of Michigan and NRDC, the study analyzes what would happen to the Big Three U.S. automakers in the event of an oil-price spike.

As I've mentioned before, the possibility of such a spike is not remote. With supply and demand in such tight and tenuous balance, anything -- domestic politics, terrorist attacks, accidents, you name it -- could cause major disruptions in the oil market. How would American companies weather such a storm? From the NRDC press release:

Still more Kelo

My opinion on SCOTUS' Kelo decision has softened somewhat since my initial outrage, but it still strikes me as, on balance, a Bad Thing.

Once recent strain of argument I find pretty convincing is that Kelo will not, in fact, enable good urban planning (one of the purported reasons many liberals defend it). Andy alluded to this argument here. See also this Planetizen piece from Samuel Staley:

To illustrate Kelo's potential damage, recall that its precedent, Berman v. Parker, substantially relaxed constraints on takings of private property in 1954, unleashing a wave of urban renewal that cleared large swaths of America's cities in the late 20th century. The results, even many planners now believe, were devastating for communities. Many areas cleared for urban renewal were never redeveloped, but affordable housing and many potentially vibrant neighborhoods were bulldozed. Not surprisingly, critics now refer to urban renewal as "slum removal" and cynics refer to this period as "negro removal". The Court's reasoning in Kelo grants cities and public officials even broader powers to clear neighborhoods and force families from homes and businesses than those current existing from Berman.

On his blog, City Comforts, David Sucher argues at some length that eminent design is not required for good urban planning -- he prefers many small development projects to a few large, bloated ones -- and that Dems are missing the a great political opportunity (I'd offer specific links, but there are too many).

Kelo's a fascinating issue -- it cuts across our established political divisions and produces very strange bedfellows (for instance, Sucher finds himself agreeing with conservative John Tierney). Much to ponder.

White House to greens: We should totally do this again some time

Say anything. Uncle Sam wants you … to cooperate on conservation. Not only that, he’s willing to listen. At least...