Glass Houses

From the once esteemed Wall Street Journal, we learn that many homeowners are simply shocked to find that their newly minted, west facing, high rise apartments, with full walls of glass, actually require window shades.

 

The air conditioning could barely keep the temperature tolerable as sun baked the $1.5 million apartment on summer afternoons. And the sun bleached her pair of brightly colored European sectional sofas, which cost $20,000.

 

In June, Ms. Antani gave in, spending $12,000 on motorized shades that she keeps lowered during the day. “I love being able to see everything,” says Ms. Antani, a 23-year-old graduate student. But “the sun’s just in your eyes; you can’t focus. Everything is so bright.” [Emphasis mine].

 

She “gave in”? Spending .8% of the condo cost on an essential furnishing is a sacrifice? C’mon folks, better journalism please.

 

And setting aside the socio-economic implications of a 23 year old grad student affording a $1.5 million condo, glazing technology is simply much better than is being described here. It sounds like our heroine (and her prized “European sectional sofas”) might have bought into an over-priced and cheaply made building.

 

The problem, which the article barely acknowledges, is that glass residential towers are de rigueur in urban real estate these days, yet only a small fraction are built with the budgets and design integrity required to responsibly integrate all that glass. The annoyances expressed by miss sun-in-her-eyes and others in the article suggest cheaply made glass towers are surely energy hogs of the highest order.

 

Buildings account for roughly 40% of all energy use in the U.S.(residential buildings account for 54% of that). We need better policies at all levels of government to raise the quality of our built environment and reduce energy use by buildings, especially as it relates to irresponsible developers out to make a quick buck on a high-end fad. I’d like to see stories focusing on that rather than the banal hardships of un-savvy luxury condo buyers.

 

And by the way, the issue of dead birds is very real.

 

Democratic Design Discipline

You know, I was wondering about the slightly odd “O8” graphic at the DNC… Now it all makes sense:

 

If you’ve been watching the Democratic National Convention this past week, you probably noticed the bold blue-and-white graphics, and especially the speaker’s podium, with its modern-looking wood trim and “O8″ logo: that’s the letter “O” and the number 8, as in “Obama in 2008.”

 

It hit my eye funny at first, but I kinda stopped noticing after a while. The campaign’s branding overall though has been outstanding. The link above also links to the team responsible for the Obama 08 website and logo.

 

Transportation We Can Believe In

 

Brookings has a side by side comparison of the presidential candidates’ transportation policies [pdf]. The differences are quite stark actually, and one candidate seems far more serious than the other on the issue. Guess which.

 

From the section entitled Increased Federal Financing for Transportation:

 

Barack Obama: “Obama will address the infrastructure challenge by creating a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to expand and enhance, not supplant, existing federal transportation investments. This independent entity will be directed to invest in our nation’s most challenging transportation infrastructure needs. The Bank will receive an infusion of federal money, $60 billion over 10 years, to provide financing to transportation infrastructure projects across the nation.”

 

John McCain: The August 2008 edition of Governing (Governing.com) explicitly states that McCain supports cutting ‘pork from transportation spending’ and does not support a larger federal role in the transportation sector.

 

A casual analysis of the major issues facing America – the climate crisis, alternative energy, crumbling infrastructure, economic recession, Iraq war – would seem to suggest that all are at least indirectly related to transportation. This does not seem like an issue best passed off to state and local governments.

 

Another section, this one with direct implications to the economy: Transportation Investments as a Job Creator

 

Barack Obama: “… a robust federal infrastructure investment program today will help strengthen the U.S. economy and provide at least one million more U.S. jobs at a time when the housing and construction industries are slowing … [the Infrastructure Bank] will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs per year and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity.”

 

John McCain: McCain has not made any public comments on this issue during the campaign.

 

Crickets?

 

Better Country

What an extraordinary speech.

 

All this hope is confusing my knee-jerk cynicism.

 

America’s Pastime

Who can possibly afford to go see a baseball game these days? Don’t even bother trying to answer that, because now, even those who can are complaining:

 

Fans are now calculating how expensive it will be for many of them to attend games at the new stadiums. Tickets for the best seats at the 85-year-old Yankee Stadium, which sold for $1,000 a seat this season, will jump at the new ballpark to $2,500; in other areas of the stadium, they will range from $135 to $500 for season tickets. Prices for single-game tickets, which ranged from $14 to $400 this season, will be released later.

 

The current business model for baseball is seriously out of whack, especially as casual fans are concerned (I among them). Players’ salaries are incomprehensibly high, requiring teams to generate enormous revenue. Shiny new stadiums (and all teams must have one to “compete”) are economically extravagant affairs, built often at great expense to taxpayers and not always with local communities’ interest in mind. And ticket prices are out of reach of most everyone but the very wealthy, while scalping has been legalized and encouraged. All of which has repositioned baseball as a market, rather than a game – hometown team as international commodity.

 

Baseball is a historically populist game. Any kid can play with just a stick and a ball. It’s simple and poetic, that’s its charm: “mom and apple pie”, and all that. I remember as a kid going with my grandpa to watch the pathetic Cleveland Indians (ugh, Indians, can we please change the name already?) at old, drafty, peeling, Cleveland Municipal Stadium. They were a terrible team, and the stadium was a nightmare, but being at the game was magical. A day at the ballpark for a 9 year old kid had the sanctity of an epic and rhythmic benediction.

 

Phillip Roth wrote this in a Times op-ed on opening day 1973:

 

…baseball was a kind of secular church that reached into every class and region of the nation and bound millions upon millions of us together in common concerns, loyalties, rituals, enthusiasms, and antagonisms. Baseball made me understand what patriotism was about, at its best.

…

It seems to me that through baseball I was put in touch with a more humane and tender brand of patriotism, lyrical rather than martial or righteous in spirit, and without the reek of saintly zeal, a patriotism that could not so easily be sloganized, or contained in a high-sounding formula to which you had to pledge something vague but all-encompassing called your “allegiance.”

 

That’s baseball at its best – America at its best. But at a time when the President asks citizens to sacrifice for their country by shopping, I suppose it’s fitting that the patriotism described above has been replaced by a pseudo-patriotic-capitalist-fandom. Show allegiance to your team (to your country): Buy season tickets! Buy merchandise! Shopping is the new American pastime.

 

Later in the op-ed, Roth adds this:

 

…baseball – with its lore and legends, its cultural power, its seasonal associations, its native authenticity, its simple rules and transparent strategies, its longueurs and thrills, its spaciousness, its suspensefullness, its heroics, its nuances, its lingo, its “characters,” its peculiarly hypnotic tedium, its mythic transformation of the immediate – was the literature of my boyhood.

 

That’s a lyrical and poignant sentiment, written more than a quarter century ago. And it begs the question: does anyone even read literature anymore?

 

Summer Snow and Ice

Who knew we even had a National Snow and Ice Data Center? Well, it’s a good thing we do, because they have some bad news about the state of arctic sea ice:

 

The National Snow and Ice Data Center has reported that sea ice in the Arctic now covers about 2.03 million square miles. The lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1979 was 1.65 million square miles, last September.

 

With about three weeks left in the Arctic summer, this year could wind up breaking that record, scientists said.

 

A record, how exciting!  Well, not exactly:

 

Arctic ice always melts in summer and refreezes in winter. But over the years, more of the ice is lost to the sea with less of it recovered in winter. While ice reflects the sun’s heat, the open ocean absorbs more heat, and the melting accelerates warming in other parts of the world.

 

What about the locals, what do they think about all this?

 

Sea ice also serves as primary habitat for threatened polar bears.

…

Federal observers flying for a whale survey on Aug. 16 spotted nine polar bears swimming in open ocean in the Chukchi. The bears were 15 to 65 miles off the Alaska shore. Some were swimming north, apparently trying to reach the polar ice edge, which on that day was 400 miles away.

 

Polar bears are powerful swimmers and have been recorded on swims of 100 miles, but the ordeal can leave them exhausted and susceptible to drowning.

 

Polar bears swimming in the open ocean looking for an ice flow that’s 400 miles away from where it should be? Jesus, can we please get serious about this stuff? I use canvas bags, recycle and walk a lot, but somehow I don’t think that’s going to be quite enough to help out our disoriented friends up north. And from the sounds of things, it’s getting awful far along:

 

Five climate scientists, four of them specialists on the Arctic, told The Associated Press that it was fair to call what was happening in the Arctic a “tipping point.”

 

Maybe this guy can get something done, if it’s not already too late.

 

Update: More on this from NPR, focusing on the very real tragedy of polar bears with little to no sea ice.

 

 

Let Them Ride Bikes

In an exciting, if relatively modest, move, the City of New York is increasing bike parking for municipal employees.

 

On Wednesday, city officials said they would expand secure bicycle parking for employees at five municipal buildings in Lower Manhattan in the fall. Three existing bike parking facilities will be enlarged, going to 110 spaces from 46, and two others will be added, creating 24 new parking spaces.

 

“Bike commuting in New York has grown more than 75 percent since 2000, but one of the most frequent complaints we hear is that there’s nowhere to put your bike once you get to work,” said the city’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan. “As our bike network expands and more New Yorkers make their commutes in this sustainable way, we need to do more to provide City employees a safe, secure place to lock their bikes.”

 

Big Sky Energy

 

 

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer is quite the entertaining speaker, and his speech last night at the Democratic National Convention was pretty great. He made some potent points regarding the state of America’s energy system and did it with a good bit of humor.

 

Some gems:

 

“We need a new energy system that is clean, green, and American made.”

…

“Barack Obama understands that the most important barrel of oil is the one that you don’t use.”

…

“We simply can’t drill our way to energy independence, even if you drilled in all of John McCain’s backyards, including the ones he can’t even remember.”

 

Update: Nice ad-lib apparently. And here’s a bonus quote:  

“The petro-dictators will never own American wind and sunshine.”

It’s the Infrastructure, Stupid

 

 

Wind and solar power sure sound great – too bad we can’t use any of it, because our transmission lines suck:

 

The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

 

The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads. [Emphasis mine]

Are we at all serious about this stuff? I mean jeesh.

 

Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid’s limitations but have made scant headway in solving them. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid and have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.

 

…

 

Energy Department leaders say that, however understandable the local concerns, they are getting in the way. “Modernizing the electric infrastructure is an urgent national problem, and one we all share,” said Kevin M. Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, in a speech last year.

 

…

 

Without a clear way of recovering the costs and earning a profit, and with little leadership on the issue from the federal government, no company or organization has offered to fight the political battles necessary to get such a transmission backbone built. [Emphasis mine]

 

OK, c’mon folks, how about some of that leadership at the federal level? You know, some guidelines, some incentives, some serious investment? Anyone out there even trying?:

 

A handful of states like California that have set aggressive goals for renewable energy are being forced to deal with the issue, since the goals cannot be met without additional power lines.

 

But Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and a former energy secretary under President Bill Clinton, contends that these piecemeal efforts are not enough to tap the nation’s potential for renewable energy.

…

 

“We still have a third-world grid,” Mr. Richardson said, repeating a comment he has made several times. “With the federal government not investing, not setting good regulatory mechanisms, and basically taking a back seat on everything except drilling and fossil fuels, the grid has not been modernized, especially for wind energy.” [Emphasis mine]

 

Oh mon dieu.

 

People Power

Literally:

 

Boesel recently showed off the Human Dynamo prototype, an exercise machine consisting of four spin bikes attached to a small generator. As he pedaled one of the human-powered bikes, a digital readout showed the amount of watts, a measure of power, that he was producing by pedaling and turning an arm crank that strengthens the upper body, he said. As many as four riders can propel the prototype system, which can produce 200 watts to 600 watts of energy an hour.

 

…

 

Most gyms are energy hogs, with sweeping floor space, high heating costs and hot showers always steaming in the locker rooms. Boesel doesn’t know how much energy the solar arrays and human-powered equipment will produce, but he expects his fitness center to use about half the energy of most gyms its size by providing as much as 40% of its energy needs. His goal is to have the gym run solely on the energy it generates.

 

There’s something undeniably poetic about using the pedestrian bits of our lives to keep the lights on. But these kinds of things remain on the fringe, more in the realm of novel, high-end gadgetry than viable technology. And they have yet to be transferred to a larger scale where they could actually have some impact and influence. This is where government comes in, or should. As Matt Yglesias says:

 

… But the trouble is that at the moment the incentives exist primarily as a means of doing marketing to a niche market of upscale consumers. That’s nice, and it’s produced some clever notions, but what’s really needed is smart policies that drive incentives in a bigger and broader manner. [Emphasis mine]

 

Second that.

 

Spend More on Infrastructure

 

 

Pulling one nugget from yesterday’s Times Magazine story on “Obamanomics”:

 

From there, Obama moved the conversation toward a discussion of how the government could improve the nation’s infrastructure — its backbone of bridges, roads, tunnels, airports and the like, much of which has seen better days. Since the dawn of the Age of Reagan, the idea that government spending can be a good thing for the economy has been out of favor, even among Democrats. But it’s now making something of a comeback, particularly within Obama’s camp. His agenda calls for about $50 billion in new annual spending on various investments, including infrastructure, alternative energy and scientific research…

 

These investments might pay off in all sorts of ways. They are a classic form of stimulus that could help the economy emerge from the housing hangover. They would provide jobs for former factory workers and others without college degrees, many of whom have struggled over the past generation, and for whom the current home-building slump has been yet another blow. Above all, the investments would have the potential to pay big long-term dividends, in the form of a national economy that operated more smoothly. [Emphasis mine]

 

Now, economics is far from my area of expertise, but it’s hard to see why investment in our national infrastructure would be anything but a win-win-win situation, especially as it concerns renewable energy. Of the figure sited above, Obama proposes to spend $15 billion annually on alternative & renewable energies. That strikes me as both quite a bit and not all that much. (It amounts to about one month in Iraq, just saying).

 

But, government need not and cannot be the sole investor in the effort. Equally important, government should be in the business of inspiring private industry with a clear and ambitious vision; (memo to government: off-shore drilling – not ambitious). This vision will also help build a broad, popular narrative that will (and must) inspire and invest ordinary citizens in the cause. In other words, government should lead on the issue.

 

To this end, I’d like to hear a bit more from Obama, as he obviously supports infrastructure investment as an economic engine and his renewable energy policy points have substance. But we still haven’t heard a truly inspiring call to action the likes of which is really required. Even so, there are already remarkable grass-roots efforts underway to create this new economy around renewable energy, with all its attendant benefits. All we need now is a government and a president truly willing to lead the way. Stay tuned…

 

Amtrak Veep

 

 

Word.

 

Especially in this moment when rising gas prices have set Amtrak ridership records, having one of the rail service’s supporters handed a bigger soapbox creates a real moment of potential. This country needs more public transit — more miles of service, funding to repair and upgrade equipment, … and, as Atrios tirelessly points out, we need public transit to become an organizing principle of new development of residential and commercial areas. This is one of the most important components of improved energy policy.

 

 

Trouble the Water

This important film about Hurricane Katrina is now playing in New York and LA. From the Times review:

 

Ms. Roberts didn’t wait out the storm from her home in the Lower Ninth Ward; she chased it. Roaming her neighborhood on foot and bicycle, she videotaped the gathering dark clouds and her stranded neighbors with a newly bought camera, watching with mounting concern as the drizzle grew into a deluge. Her rough, untutored camerawork has an ugliness and urgency that only add to the escalating sense of chaos and unease. As her sightlines roughly shift from one fugitive image to the next — wary adults, giggly children, nervous dogs, a stop sign that will soon be almost entirely under water — you can feel the pressure of the moment. Excitement courses through her free-ranging chatter and the palsied, swerving visuals.

 

As someone in the film says, “Katrina is still goin’ on”. Indeed it is. Let’s hope this film receives a wide release, which may help this conversation gather the urgency it desperately deserves. See it if you can and better yet, get involved.

 

 

Radioactive Spinach

 

 

 

 

It’s a remarkable circumstance of our knee-jerk reliance on technology that this kind of thing seems like a solution.

 

The government will allow food producers to zap fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce with enough radiation to kill micro-organisms like E. coli and salmonella that for decades have caused widespread illness among consumers.

 

Obviously, the problem isn’t an advancing army of E. coli, but rather a food industry that is beyond broken.

 

“It’s a total cop-out,” said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch. “They don’t have the resources, the authority or the political will to really protect consumers from unsafe food.”

 

But even given the self-inflicted “problem”, is irradiation a viable short term fix?

 

Critics say that not only does radiation make food less nutritious and potentially toxic but that the process also does not eliminate the risks of food-borne illnesses…. 

 

“The agency is choosing to have a high-tech expensive solution to a problem that needs a more thorough approach and one that really starts on the farm,” Ms. Smith DeWaal of the science center said. [Emphasis mine]

 

Farms, how quaint - do we still have those?

 

Street Bacchanal

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow is this summer’s final installment of the inaugural and very cool NYC Summer Streets program.

 

This event takes a valuable public space – our City’s streets – and opens them up to people to play, walk, bike, and breathe. Summer Streets provides more space for healthy recreation and is a part of NYC’s greening initiative by encouraging New Yorkers to use more sustainable forms of transportation.

 

Get out there and take back the streets, as it were. Here’s some video for inspiration.

 

Update: Image above replaced with documentary evidence of car-less streets.

 

Not So Green Grass

 

 

 

Further to the post below, Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece in The New Yorker last month examines American’s long and entrenched addiction to lawns. Did you know lawns aren’t actually “natural”?:

 

…the lawn today is nearly ubiquitous. Its spread has given rise to an entire industry, or, really, complex of industries—Americans spend an estimated forty billion dollars each year on grass—and to the academic discipline of turf management…. The lawn has become so much a part of the suburban landscape that it is difficult to see it as something that had to be invented.

  

And this:

 

Mowing turfgrass quite literally cuts off the option of sexual reproduction. From the gardener’s perspective, the result is a denser, thicker mat of green. From the grasses’ point of view, the result is a perpetual state of vegetable adolescence. With every successive trim, the plants are forcibly rejuvenated. In his anti-lawn essay “Why Mow?,” Michael Pollan puts it this way: “Lawns are nature purged of sex and death. No wonder Americans like them so much.”  [Emphasis mine.]

 

Snap.