One Less Car = One Less Parking Spot
At the risk of making this blog too Seattle-centric, I thought I'd point out this nifty article in today's Post-Intelligencer about the city's efforts to promote alternatives to the car -- everything from walking to biking to transit to ride sharing to van pools. And there's ample reason to be concerned about rising car traffic, particularly downtown--not just on environmental grounds, but on financial ones. Cars, you see, take up lots of space in a crowded city; and storing them all is expensive, and takes up real estate that could be put to far better uses. From the article:
In the next 19 years, the city expects 22,000 new housing units and 50,000 new jobs.
Assuming the same percentage of people continued driving alone to work, the city estimates it would have to build 20 city blocks of 10-story parking garages downtown.
That's a lot of parking.
Also note the upside-down state of transportation finances. Funding for the bus system is nowhere near where it needs to be to accomodate all the new riders the city is hoping for. And meanwhile, city officials still seem hell-bent on spending billions for roads, some of which will just make downtown's car problems worse. Obviously, the city deserves a lot of credit for its low-cost efforts to promote alternatives to the car; but in the bigger picture, you have to wonder if they've got their priorities straight.
Futility Vehicles
Oy. I used to think that the introduction of hybrid SUVs was generally a good thing -- with even greater potential for saving fuel than hybrid cars. But this New York Times article brings up a point I simply hadn't considered: buying a fuel-efficient SUV makes it possible for car companies to sell big gas guzzlers without incurring any penalties under federal CAFE (i.e., corporate average fuel economy) standards. From the article:
[E]very Toyota Highlander hybrid S.U.V. begets a hulking Lexus S.U.V., and every Ford Escape -- the hybrid S.U.V. that Kermit the Frog hawked during the Super Bowl -- makes room for a Lincoln Navigator, which gets all of 12 miles a gallon. Instead of simply saving gas when you buy a hybrid, you're giving somebody else the right to use it.
This is vexing, to say the least. And it underscores a point that's hard to overstress: when it comes to saving energy, a broken system can trump individual virtue. That is, any time a conscientious and enlightened consumer decides to do something selfless, our energy system pushes back a bit. Use a little less gas, and the oil market responds by letting someone else tank up a little more cheaply. Buy an efficient vehicle, and you make room under CAFE standards for someone else to buy a wheeled behemoth. And so it goes.
Of course, I don't mean to suggest that it's completely futile to make efficient buys -- not by a long shot. But particularly when it comes to energy, the collective good done by environmentally conscious consumers is typically less than one might hope. To me, this underscores a simple point: changing your own behavior is a good idea, but changing the system is far, far more important.
The Church, Sweden, and Tom Friedman
In the US, January 2006 was the warmest January on record--and the records extend back to 1895. So it's apropos that today also heralded an unusual alignment of actors, all striving to address climate change (and accomplish some other things too).
Sweden vows to one-up President Bush's pledge to break America's addiction to oil. The Scandinavian country of 9 million pledged to end its dependency on oil by 2020, for economic as well as environmental reasons. Ambitious, to say the least.
NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman argues strongly for a high federal gas tax--as a matter of national security. [Pay subscription required.] Friedman quotes a foreign policy expert saying, "We have a Marshall Plan. It's our energy policy. It's a Marshall plan for terrorists and dictators."
And perhaps most importantly, a group of 86 major US evangelical leaders signs onto an initiative to combat global warming. Among the supporters are such influential leaders as Rick Warren (megachurch pastor and author of The Purpose-Driven Life), Ted Haggard, (pastor of New Life Church and president of the National Association of Evangelicals), and Duane Litfin (president of Wheaton College).
The group's statement is worth reading. It argues that, "Love of God, love of neighbor, and the demands of stewardship are more than enough reason for evangelical Christians to respond to the climate change problem with moral passion and concrete action."
The Cascadian leaders joining the pledge are...
- Dr. Jay A. Barber, Jr., President, Warner Pacific College, Portland, OR
- H. David Brandt, Ph.D., President, George Fox University, Newberg, OR
- Brent Hample, Executive Director, India Partners, Eugene OR
- Jennifer Jukanovich, Founder, The Vine, Seattle, WA
- Brian O'Connell, President, REACT Services; Founder and Former Executive Director, Religious Liberty Commission, World Evangelical Alliance; Mill Creek, WA
- William P. Robinson, Ph.D., President, Whitworth College, Spokane, WA
- Richard Stearns, President, World Vision, Federal Way, WA
- John Warton, President, Business Professional Network, Portland, OR
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Canada's Great Bear Park? Not Exactly.
The world is celebrating an announcement in Vancouver on Tuesday that the government of British Columbia finally signed on to a new vision for a region of the province nicknamed the Great Bear Rainforest--a vast, nearly roadless forest of cedar and hemlock stretching along the coast from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to Alaska.
A Google News search that night turned up 137 stories published around the world about the announcement, including a front-page piece in the Washington Post (Huge Canadian Park Is Born of Compromise), and an AP story (Canada Unveils Park to Protect Grizzlies), which was reprinted nearly everywhere from Seattle to Fort Worth.
This new phase of land-use planning is about a lot more than a big park for bears. The media who reported it as such should be corrected.
The agreement announced by B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell -- and built by First Nations who live in this area, environmentalists and logging company representatives,--is being called "A New Vision for Coastal B.C." That's not just P.R.--it really is a vision, a new way of thinking about and creating conservation that was a decade in the making.
