New American Paradigm

Global Warming Costs Illustrated

If there is one thing I hope to accomplish one day with this blog, it's convincing a few people that their simplest choices can have devastating consequences for someone somewhere else in the world.

For example, the mining practices used in Africa to power our laptops and cell phones probably resulted in someone's death.  Either the minerals are used to fund wars the way West Africa diamonds once did, or the environmental protections are so lax that people are poisoned or simply driven from their homes.  If consumers agreed to pay just a little more, computer makers could pay more for the material and therefore afford more environmentally sound practices.

The Global Warming "Debate"

Over the last 20 years or so a trend in journalism has begun to drive me really crazy. It's the confusion over objectivism and perpetuating a lie.

Journalists, not to be confused with the nitwits on cable tv, are supposed to present the facts... not their own bias. It's a difficult task but something the pros strive to do their entire career. Usually that means presenting the various sides of a debate as equally valid opinions so that their viewers and readers can make an informed decision of their own.

Unfortunately, when one side is favored by the facts, they still feel the need to present the alternative viewpoint. It's a bit like doing a story about life as an African American and feeling the need to interview the KKK to represent the "other side".  Sometimes there is no justifiable opposition... why pretend there is?

Streetcar Architecture

A funny thing happens when you change transportation infrastructure like Portland, Oregon has; building design adapts to it.

Portland's future and its past intersect at 28th Avenue and East Burnside.

A hundred feet or so from an old red brick trolley barn -- long since converted to offices -- workers are constructing an eye-catching, four-story condo with ground-floor retail.

Stunning as it is with its protruding, stucco-boxed balconies, the Sunrose Condominiums traces its pedigree right back to the trolley barn era. A century ago, many buildings on commercial streets served by streetcars were built with storefronts flush to the sidewalks and with one or two stories of apartments or offices above.

The interesting thing about this is that many cities, my own included, are trying to force development into these old standards.  But what we're finding is that the market naturally heads in that direction when you bring back the old transportation techniques.

In addition to being more aesthetically pleasing and environmentally sensitive, this type of development is also inherently more sustainable.  The retailers on the bottom floors have built in customers, and also nighttime residents with a vested interest in keeping an eye on criminal activity in the area.

Separating uses not only forces us into cars, but it creates a system unfairly gamed in favor of big business over small.

Sprawl Repair

Even if the age of sprawl is behind us, the effects of development into exurban and rural areas is with us for a long time.  But what do we do to make what's already done better?

We've talked previously about the perils of sprawl here, here, and here.  Galina Tahchieva, a planner with Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., gave a presentation on the subject at the Congress for the New Urbanism convention in Denver.  Ruth Walker has the highlights:

1. Improve connectivity of the streets by imposing a grid on them and looking for ways to connect the dots, and the cul-de-sacs.

This is perhaps the most obvious.  Cul-de-sacs have come to define sprawl in the same way gridded streets define urban areas.  I actually grew up on a cul-de-sac which might make a person think I'm sympathetic; but in fact it made their absurdity more obvious.  In order to get to the library and shopping area 50 meters from my house, I had to walk a mile eventually ending up on a busy arterial with no sidewalk.  Small wonder people drove everywhere.

National Debt Growing Too Large to Ignore

Yesterday we played "whose to blame" on our current deficit problems.  Not to get all partisan, but the correct answer is Bush and Congressional Republicans.  Congratulations, collect your free cookie at participating Subway's (note, none are actually participating to my knowledge.)

Today I just wanted to point out how dire the situation is.

To keep the debt from wrecking the economy, the U.S. would need to raise annual federal income taxes an average of $11,000 in 2019 for all families that pay them, an increase of about 55%. "The revenues needed are far too big to raise from high earners," says Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "The government will have to go where the money is, to the middle class." The most likely levy: a European-style value-added tax (VAT) that would substantially raise the price of everything from autos to restaurant meals.

The Day All Fish Are Gone

Imagine if I told you that you've eaten your last fish save for whatever they make those triangle fish wedges out of.  Sounds crazy right?  Well actually that day may come within our lifetime.

A documentary released last week, The End of the Line, describes the plight we are in and what will happen if our practices do not change dramatically and soon.

It's really not hard to imagine.  We've seen huge quantities of marine biomass disappear over the last 100 years, hitting warp speed with the advent of industrial fishing practices.  When Lewis and Clark showed up to my little part of the world in the Pacific Northwest, they saw the Columbia River so full of salmon that it appeared they could walk across it.  It's estimated that annual return was in the neighborhood of 30 million.  Today that number, brought low by a series of hydroelectric dams, development of the riverbanks and its tributaries, and overfishing, is closer to 300,000.

Light Rail Of the Future - ULTra

Ever wonder what the future would will look like if we grow brains and actually thought about what sensible transportation solutions would look like?  I know this looks like it's some futuristic utopian system that you might see at a World's Fair or Epcot Center... but this has actually been built at Heathrow Airport and opening this fall.

Peter Calthorpe, author of The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl, said of the project:

"All the advantages of New Urbanism - its compact land saving density, its walkable mix of uses, and its integrated range of housing opportunities - would be supported and amplified by a circulation system that offers fundamentally different choices in mobility and access. Smart Growth and new Urbanism have begun the work of redefining America's twenty-first century development paradigms. Now it is time to redefine the circulation armature that supports them. It is short sighted to think that significant changes in land-use and regional structure can be realized without fundamentally reordering our circulation system."

Prosperity Without Growth Money Quotes

It's rare that you see a government agency in this country or any speak the truth when "conventional wisdom" is so diametrically opposed to what needs to be said.  In this case, the "conventional wisdom" is that we can continue to seek constant economic growth in a sustainable way.  It's a myth all of us repeat to each other almost as though our existence depended on it, because the signs are all around us that this simply is not possible.  I guess constant reinforcement is necessary to maintain mass hallucinations.

Despite all that, our cousins in the United Kingdom have had a commission reporting directly to the Prime Minister that is attempting to do just that.  You can read the whole report here, but I'm going to share some of the money quotes.

Prosperity Without Growth

This is a big meaty report done by the UK's Sustainable Development Commission called Prosperity Without Growth that I plan on diving into over the next week and will offer some thoughts along the way.  It's interesting to me in that it attempts to answer an emerging and difficult question.  How do you reconcile capitalism and sustainability?

Along the way I think there's a dilemma that Americans in particular, but Western societies in general, will need to ask themselves.  Where is the line between capitalism and consumerism?  We almost intuitively understand that the latter is dangerous and perhaps even immoral but are also deeply suspicious of it as foreign or perhaps vaguely communist.  Ironically it also leads us to embrace anti-capitalist systems like China and become dependent on slave labor to pay for cheap goods.

Americans Saving More, Investing Less

We've mentioned before the marked increase in personal savings before.  This is, of course, a very good thing.  Low personal savings are unhealthy in the long term, so it's only natural that this trend reverse.  Usually though, there are opportunities for investment and that's eventually what brings economies out from under recession.  People start businesses, buy equipment, or otherwise develop the infrastructure necessary for making money.  Otherwise they supply capital in the form of stocks or bonds so that others can do so on their behalf.

Unfortunately, that does not appear to be happening now.  Paul Krugman notes:

That saving ought to be translated into investment, but the investment demand is not there. Housing is flat on its back because it was overbuilt; housing bubbles collapsed not only in the United States, but across much of Europe. Many businesses cannot get access to capital because of the breakdown of the financial system. But even those that do have access to capital don't want to invest because consumer demand is not there. Between the housing bust and the sudden decision of consumers to save, after all, we have a world with lots of excess capacity. The GDP report that just came out says that business-fixed investment, non-residential fixed investment, essentially business investment, is falling at a 40 percent annual rate.