Gristmill

Even more Verdopolis

The very bestest Verdopolis coverage in the whole galaxy is, of course, ours. However, should you want to sample what else the web has to offer, there's more over on Treehugger, covering a speech (delivered via DVD!?) by the justly legendary Bill McDonough.

Death commentary

Mark Schmitt, a brainy progressive policy analyst whose Decembrist blog is one of the best on the web, has a pair of posts up on the Death Stuff. The first is a fairly extensive analysis that ends by enthusiastically agreeing with the central point.

That's where I find the best argument for blowing up the whole "movement," along with the others. We can't possibly find ways to move society forward as long as everything is put neatly into boxes labeled "environment," "health care," "campaign finance reform," "low-income programs," "pro-choice," etc., and the coalitions that exist are made up of representatives from those movements. Trying to force environmentalists to think about health care doesn't solve the problem either. We need a whole new structure, built around a convincing narrative about society and the economy, and a new way to fit these pieces together.

Matt Yglesias chimes in, coming at the same conclusion from a different starting point (national security):

As Mark says, what's needed here is something beyond "meetings or traditional coalitions around particular shared interests," which we do already have. What's needed, in short, is a real ideology that, as such, has adherents. The adherents would, of course, specialize to some extent as people always do. But what we have right now is really a coalition of lots of micro-ideologies and micro-interests that happen to collaborate with one another from time to time on this or that.

I agree. What's needed is more than procedural coalitions, more than other mechanisms to interact and collaborate. What's needed is is a uniting vision of the kind of country and world we want.

Schmitt's second post is also interesting.

How green is their Red Hill Valley?

Canada -- that blissful, forward-looking, do-gooding land to the north -- has some problems of its own. In Hamilton, Ontario, a battle is raging over the construction of a multi-lane expressway through Red Hill Valley. The 1,600-acre urban park, which accounts for a third of the city's green space, extends from the Niagara Escarpment (a U.N. Biosphere Reserve) to the shores of Lake Ontario. A native burial site, it was protected in 1929, and is now home to the city's last remaining creek -- and critters including the rare southern flying squirrel.

So hey, why not build a road through it? Uproot 44,000 trees and reroute Red Hill Creek? The massive project, first proposed in the 1950s, is finally underway. But defenders of the valley are not going down without a fight. They are occupying the land, organizing petitions, and funding studies. Meanwhile, the city isn't pulling any punches; in December, it sued several federal environmental officials, accusing them of standing in the way.

But even with all the nastiness, it's still Canada, eh:

The Red Hill Valley Treesit ended on September 11, 2004 when the remaining treesitter, Clarence, decided it was time to come down ... The day was Clarence's 19th birthday and 105th day in a tree. Clarence descended to the cheer of supporters who had gathered to celebrate his birthday. He was then arrested by Hamilton Police and taken to the East Hamilton station. Over a dozen supporters overtook the station's waiting room while Clarence sat in a holding cell waiting for the police to complete his trespassing papers. About an hour after arrival, he was released. Most of the group then proceeded to take Clarence out for his first "legal" beer.

Shrinkage

A couple weeks ago, Chip worried about worries about shrinking populations. Specifically, he worried that countries with shrinking populations -- or in China's case, shrinking proportions of males to females -- will try to stimulate procreation (hey, get your mind out of the gutter), which makes an enviro's spidey-sense tingle. He wished that someone would make the argument that a declining population is not necessarily a bad thing, economically speaking. Today in the Christian Science Monitor, David R. Francis gives it a brief shot.

Some random thoughts on population below the break.

Mad about saffron

This weekend, after decades of planning, Christo opens a massive installation in Central Park. The Bulgarian-born "environmental artist," best known for wrapping Berlin's Reichstag in 1995, has draped 7,500 16-foot-tall structures in saffron-colored fabric to create The Gates. New York officials originally rejected the artist's plans in 1980 due in part to environmental concerns. So he modified the structures to sit on the pavement instead of in the soil, pledged to avoid paths with low-hanging branches, and shifted the two-week event from fall to comparatively quiet winter. Its materials -- including 5,290 tons of steel and more than 1 million square feet of fabric -- will be recycled, and proceeds from related merchandise will be donated to Nurture New York's Nature. Hundreds of thousands of tourists are expected, and everyone seems to be on the bandwagon now, with nearby hotels offering binoculars in every room and serving saffron soup.

But do I have to like it?

More Verdopolis

More Verdopolis coverage over at Treehugger. We'll have some of our own up later today.

Update [2005-2-10 16:45:41 by Dave Roberts]: Still more, from Will Duggan, who was excited that businesses are finding good reasons to go green, but ends with this:

Inspiring two hours, yes, but corrosively depressing that there was no American business leader to match the vision, passion, and humanity on display.

Wave power

There has been a flurry of stories about wave power recently, and I keep meaning to blog about some of them. Luckily, Jamais Cascio has provided a nice entrée, via discussion of a new report from the Electric Power Research Institute. Conclusion: wave power may yet sneak past wind and solar as the most promising renewable energy source.

Sustainable building in China?

Check out this article in Metropolis about sustainable building in China. The country's Ministry of Construction has announced breathtakingly ambitious plans to reduce all buildings' energy use by 50% by 2010 and to use PV and other renewable energy technologies to power 80 million square meters of building space.

The article notes that, if implemented, the building program would be the most ambitious in world history.

Verdopolis

Earth Pledge is a very cool organization -- they sponsor the Farm to Table initiative on local, organic food, the Greening Gotham project pushing green roofs, and Verdopolis, a project bringing together cultural, political, and business types to discuss and plan for the "future green city."

Verdopolis is throwing a massive bash in New York City, which kicked off yesterday -- here's the agenda. We've got someone there who will be sending us some coverage, and I'll point to coverage elsewhere as I see it. Yesterday was mostly composed of a fashion show, which you can read about on Treehugger. It sounds, frankly, disappointing, and the pictures verge on gross. Apparently the big-name fashion designers who contributed still think, even at an event explicitly devoted to demonstrating the opposite, that greens are frumpy hippies.

Anyway, I'm much more interested in the green building, green healthcare, and green energy portions of the event taking place today and tomorrow. Updates to come.