Archive for the 'Sustainability' Category

Density, Congestion, and Car Culture

Published
by
Taylor
on June 2, 2008
in Environment, Infrastructure and Sustainability
. 1 Comment

One of my new favorite blogs is Ryan Avent’s site The Bellows. In a post about biking and mass transit in DC, Avent makes a striking statement about density:

Imagine [...] a world where the city established dedicated bus and bike lanes, free from automobile traffic. Imagine that drivers who did want to come into the city had to pay a daily toll, and that the proceeds of that toll went toward increased bus, streetcar, and rail capacity in the city and out into the burbs. Does it not seem that everyone, drivers included, would get where they were going a lot faster? That those without cars would enjoy greater mobility, and that the metro area as a whole would spend a lot less on gas?

Automobiles just weren’t made for the kind of urban density one finds in the District, and it’s incredibly inefficient to just give the streets over to them. At some point, a city reaches a threshold at which it needs to say that cars are welcome, but they’re going to defer to people using other modes of transportation, because we simply can’t afford to accommodate the parking and road space occupied by thousands of single-passenger motor vehicles.

I would love to bike to work, though doing so would necessitate some sort of showers at my office and–in the relatively small city where I live–a death wish as I combat obscene amounts of traffic, no bike lanes, etc.

This is of course an issue of city planning priorities and resources, an unchecked car culture (where 15 minutes waiting in traffic still, for many folks, beats a city bus or a bike ride up a hill), and a host of other factors (like pre-existing narrow streets with scant room for a bike lane). But it’s also, fundamentally, an issue of density.

I have no real wisdom to offer on this subject, but I wanted to highlight Avent’s comments and pose a few questions: What’s the solution for small or mid-size cities that lack the requisite density for these measures to really work? Is that density threshold lower than I imagine? Instead of transportation alternatives, should we be equally concerned with expanding incentives for tele-commuting and satellite work locations?

Image used under a Creative Commons License courtesy of Flickr user bfick.

More Than Greenwashing: The Advantages of LEED

Published
by
Taylor
on May 15, 2008
in Design, Environment and Sustainability
. 2 Comments

I’ve been fortunate enough to tour two LEED-certified facilities (one Gold Certified, the other Platinum) in the past two weeks. Being in these spaces has helped solidify in my mind that green building–done well–creates living and working environments with advantages that are obvious and attractive to even the biggest green skeptics.

First I visited Warren Wilson College. This small liberal arts school in the rural mountain outskirts of Asheville, NC merits its own post (or several) on the sustainability efforts on campus. The tight-knit community at the college is committed to sustainable practices for all the right reasons and everyone really lives out that commitment, whether by working on the campus farm, recycling and reusing to admirable extremes, or helping to build (as a group of students did) a Gold LEED-Certified campus building.

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=rhrVYPV7cnA">http://youtube.com/watch?v=rhrVYPV7cnA</a>

When I was shown around the Orr Cottage (video tour above), what stuck out most was the simple elegance of many of the green building techniques embodied in the construction. These are, for the most part, not incredibly new ideas, particularly technological, or even all that complicated. But together they create a work and study environment that’s impossible not to envy. Some highlights:

  • Green materials: carpeting that, as Stan (a professor at WWC) says in the video, is “100% recyclable and 100% recycled.” Material for desks–”wheat board”–that’s made from grain waste. Re-purposed wood and salvaged doors.
  • Refreshing air: incredible air quality, due to sincere diligence avoiding volatile organic compounds whenever possible in glues, paints, sealants, etc as well as the fact that fresh air is continuously cycled through the building
  • Passive solar: the building is oriented to maximize sun exposure (genius…and yet, why so rare?) to help heat the building with winter sun.
  • Bright sunlight: but what about summer? Shades over windows at just the right angle block out the high summer sun while allowing bright light to enter above employees’ heads and computer screens. Say goodbye to headache-inducing fluorescent lighting, except on particularly dreary days.
  • Natural landscaping: outside the cottage, beautiful native grasses and wildflowers in place of the typical collegiate lawn. The native grasses and flowers require once a year maintenance (a controlled burn), and no extra water (they act as a storm water run-off filter for the building
  • Character: recycled antique doors for each office inside, giving each bright, plant-filled (another benefit of great sunshine) office its own unique style

As luck would have it, the week after my trip to Warren Wilson, I was in Maryland to see the headquarters of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, just outside of Annapolis. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is a nonprofit group working to restore and protect the massive Chesapeake Bay watershed. Some highlights from the Merrill Center–at the time of its construction, the first Platinum LEED-certified building in the country–after the jump… Continue reading ‘More Than Greenwashing: The Advantages of LEED’

Monday Links: May 12, 2008

Published
by
Taylor
on May 11, 2008
in Apple, Energy, Environment, Facebook, Monday Links, Politics, Social Networks and Sustainability
. 0 Comments

Since I was so focused on philanthropy blogging last week, I have a backlog of environmental and web 2.0 news to share. This could be a long list of links, but it should keep you busy for a while.

Social networking? Despite all of the attention paid to it in (occasionally breathless) media coverage . . . Facebook, MySpace, et al have not proven to be terribly effective tools for campaigns. Does anyone really think that the fact that Obama has five times as many Facebook friends as Hillary Clinton has turned out to be significant? Demographically interesting and revealing, sure, but actually relevant to how the Democratic primary process has gone so far?

  • Treehugger highlights a really simple, useful, accurate biofuels comparison chart from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I don’t mean to be a constant cheerleader for algae but…geewillikers, Batman, switch grass and algae look like the best possibilities in that graphic.

[Obama's] response to Clinton’s gas tax proposal was to reject it as a Washington gimmick that would . . . do nothing to address long-term energy issues. That rejection was coupled with a principled energy platform that would address those issues.

Why not try the same thing in WV and KY? Start by telling the truth: as president, he would stop the expansion of dirty coal. [...]

Of course, it’s crucial to couple this with a positive message . . . that means “green jobs,” but more than just that. It means stimulating the development of other industries and revenue sources by spending on infrastructure, education, public works programs, and a decent social safety net. An Obama administration will try to pay these areas back for the sacrifices they’ve made in the name of providing the country with cheap electricity.

It probably wouldn’t help him win WV or KY . . . [but] [m]aybe he could defy conventional wisdom by treating rural white voters like adults, helping them plan a real path to economic health and sustainability rather than telling them fairy tales about the continuing viability of earth’s dirtiest fuel.

  • The Library of Congress has a Flickr account. From what I can tell, there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to the photos (relatively modest in number) that they post. Case in point, “Auto Polo.” Like polo only using early automobiles in place of horses…Jesus.

    • auto polo

After the auto polo photo, I don’t really have anything else to say. Happy Monday.

Pay As You Drive

Published
by
Taylor
on May 2, 2008
in Consumer Behavior, Environment and Sustainability
. 7 Comments

[Note: sorry for my recent posting hiatus (thanks to Jarred for keeping things humming).  Welcome to new readers! -T]commute

I’m pretty happy with my auto insurance rates through [insert large insurance provider with articulate reptilian spokesman here]. But with my driving patterns (less than a 3 mile commute to work; occasional road trips and errands around town), I’m definitely paying more than necessary and subsidizing the insurance of riskier drivers.  From the authors of Freakonomics, writing in the NY Times Magazine:

Imagine that Arthur and Zelda live in the same city and occupy the same insurance risk pool but that Arthur drives 30,000 miles a year while Zelda drives just 3,000. Under the current system, Zelda probably pays the same amount for insurance as Arthur.

While some insurance companies do offer a small discount for driving less — usually based on self-reporting, which has an obvious shortcoming — U.S. auto insurance is generally an all-you-can-eat affair. Which means that the 27,000 more miles than Zelda that Arthur drives don’t cost him a penny, even as each mile produces externalities for everyone. It also means that low-mileage drivers like Zelda subsidize high-mileage drivers like Arthur.

First of all, you’re correct in assuming that I’ve quoted this example because the person representing my predicament is named Zelda.  But far more importantly, the idea of “Pay As You Drive” (PAYD) insurance is gaining traction.  The article references Progressive Insurance’s willingness to test a PAYD system in a few states.  PAYD involves GPS locators that track a car’s movement; privacy advocates will no doubt bristle at the thought of an insurance company maintaining those types of records.  Yet the cautious momentum behind PAYD is a far more sensible response to high gas prices and the environmental consequences of our national car obsession than an utterly moronic “gas tax holiday” (Tom Friedman takes down that idea nicely here).

Congestion pricing–another attempt, albeit imperfect, to incentive good behavior like carpooling and public transit–is stalled politically in New York City.  Nevertheless, I’m heartened by the buzz surrounding ideas (like PAYD and Congestion Pricing) driven by a simple, effective equation: place a true cost on behavior that stresses infrastructure and the environment alike while rewarding individuals with incentives to improve their impact.  Think there’s any chance that this trend will gain real traction?

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user Peter Kaminski.

Monday Links: April 28th, 2008

Published
by
Taylor
on April 27, 2008
in Art, Business, Computing, Monday Links, Politics, Random, Social Networks and Sustainability
. 2 Comments

Hey folks–I’ve been a bit out of the loop lately, and I’ll be traveling almost non-stop for the next few weeks. While Jarred will be taking one (a few?) for the team and blogging in my absence, I hope to chime in when I can from the road. Here are a few links, albeit a little abbreviated this week:

  • The Bush-Cheney 2004 e-Campaign Director offers ideas for how the McCain campaign could have moved past traditional press-release blasts to create momentum around Obama’s “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” comment. As I think is pretty clear by now, Jarred and I are Obama fans…and, for the record, I think we both ate waffles almost exclusively one summer. But regardless of your politics, this piece is really striking in the creativity available to campaigns online, IF they’re willing to push the envelope a tad and move away from their old habits (NO MORE PRESS RELEASES).
  • I never thought I would subscribe to–much less link to–a Wal-Mart blog, but this post written by the company’s sustainability director is worth a look. He describes new packaging options (some as simple as milk in a bag instead of a carton) and weighs the merits of biodegradable plastics.
  • Lifehacker offers ten tools to maximize your Amazon shopping experience. These range from discount finders and gift list managers to a site that tracks prices of a recent purchase in order to cash in on the “if you find a cheaper price in 30 days we’ll give you the difference” offer. Pretty impressive, though some of these things might take more time than the $3 you’ll save is worth.

“The sculpture consists of 100 cast iron figures which face out to sea, spread over a 3.2 km stretch of the beach. [...] As the tides ebb and flow, the figures are revealed and submerged by the sea.”

  • This is a few weeks old but worth sharing: PaleoFuture points to a 1995 Newsweek article that basically…well…calls the “internet” a passing fad and a huge crock:

“[N]o online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”

Well, that’s all for now. Keep checking back all week for new posts.