Parking Space

It’s quite possible you missed it, but yesterday was Park(ing) Day here in New York City. That’s “Park”, as in public green space.

 

The concept is simple: find an empty parking spot on your local street and feed the meter, but rather than steer your ride into the spot, roll out some sod, unfold a lawn chair, open a book and…relax. Voila, instant park!

 

Part activism, part installation and part good use of space, this gesture cleverly illustrates just how much of the public urban fabric is dominated by the automobile, to the detriment of various constituencies.

 

To be fair, New York City has made some promising moves in this regard by requisitioning a few lanes of traffic here and there for use by pedestrians and bicycles, as well as actively promoting the occasional closing of streets for better public use; all of which is hopefully part of a broader civic trend in recognizing that cities exist, first and foremost, for the convenience, pleasure and welfare of citizens, and policies favoring automobiles often run counter to those needs.

 

Barn Razing

What does it mean that barns are disappearing from the rural American landscape?

 

On the one hand, it’s likely a reflection of the rapid urbanization found not just in the U.S., but globally. But perhaps more insidiously, it’s a predictable result of the economics of the global, industrialized food chain.

 

The Hundlings watch, they say, as the biggest farmers secure more and more land, the youngest ones, like themselves, fail to afford any, and the locals go on fretting that everyone has moved away.

 

“They sit and complain there’s nobody in the small towns anymore, there’s nobody in our schools,” Mr. Hundling said. “And then they go and rent it to the guy that’s already farming 10,000 acres and lives 30 miles away, 40 miles away, 100 miles away.”

 

Those distant farmers, Mr. Hundling said, are unlikely to pack the local restaurant. Nor will they likely fill the school bus near Mrs. Fort’s house. Or slow the disappearance of Mr. Scott’s prized barns.

 

Save the barns. Eat local.

 

VP Environmental Cage Match

 

As I become more familiar with Joe Biden’s policy positions, he seems increasingly to be an eminently reasonable and credible fellow. Evidence his environmental stance:

 

I’m… in the best position to make it clear to the United States Congress that this is not merely an environmental issue, it is a security issue. I held hearings this year pointing out that if we do not do something of consequence about global warming, drastically and soon, we literally are going to find ourselves reconfiguring our entire military to deal with occasions for new wars, which are going to be about territory and arable land.

…

To deal with global warming, you have to change the attitude of the world, particularly China and India, the two largest developing nations. But in order to do that, to have any credibility, you have to begin here in the United States by capping emissions, increasing renewable fuels, establishing a national renewable portfolio standard, requiring better fuel economy for automobiles.

…

These measures would put us in a position to be able to actually attempt to lead the world. But we have no credibility right now.

 

OK, that’s fairly solid, pragmatic reasoning – certainly headed in the right direction given the gravity of the problem. As Daily Kos frontpager Plutonium Page puts it:

 

His ideas are not perfect, but they are more than a good start, and will be a sound way to kick off the next four years.

 

Enter moose hunting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

 

“I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem or that more supply won’t ultimately affect prices. Of course it will affect prices.”

…

“Alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop.”

…

“When I look every day, the big oil company’s building is right out there next to me, and it’s quite a reminder that we should have mutually beneficial relationships with the oil industry.”

…

“A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location,”… But, she added, “I’m not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made.”

 

Ok then.

 

Game, set, match.

 

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.

 

 

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?

 

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.