GreenGeezer

Will Rising Gas Prices Kill Suburban Sprawl?

When the award-winning film The End of Suburbia was released in 2004, it was considered an amusing but exaggerated view of what Peak Oil will do to the suburban way of life.  As gas prices approach $5/gallon, it doesn’t seem quite so shocking.

As a passionate enemy of suburban sprawl, I listened intently to an interview this morning on NPR with Brookings Institution demographer William Frey in which he notes that housing prices are falling faster in the areas outside cities.  Is this a permanent correction that is making "exurbs" less desirable overall?  And how are gas prices influencing this loss of home value? Mr. Frey was cautious in his answer, saying "the jury is still out" and that Americans have a history of moving outward from cities in order to buy more housing for less, seeing long commutes as an acceptable trade off.

However, it doesn’t take a genius to see that, when a commute costs more than one is saving on housing, while sucking up hours of one’s valuable time, (and as the saying goes, “They aren’t making more of that”) why would one buy a home in the far suburbs? 

Sperling's Best Places did a survey two years ago when gas prices were at $2.90 a gallon. The following were the most expensive cities in which to commute and listed the average annual commuting cost:

City                                    Annual Commuting Cost (2006)

1.  Atlanta                            $5,772
2.  Birmingham, Ala.             $5,464
3.  Orlando, Fla.                   $5,404
4.  Jacksonville, Fla.             $5,360
5.  Pensacola, Fla.                $5,173

So, if gas prices reach $6.00, Atlanta’s commuting cost would be over $10,000 per year.  Yikes.   

A posting on  Wall Street Journal’s online edition reports that even the conservative International Energy Agency is moving toward the Peak Oil Pessimists’ camp.  The conclusion is that it’s not speculators making oil go higher but simple capitalist principles like the law of supply and demand – developing countries are going to be driving up demand for many years to come. 

So will this result in an end to sprawl?  Will avoidance of driving cause the demise of the ugly, cookie-cutter mini-mall blight that has mushroomed around our cities like an invasive species?  Let's hope so.

The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff is a twenty-minute video that manages to be both entertaining and horrifying at the same time.  Did you know that 99% of the stuff we buy is trashed in six months?   

Reconstituting the World

"My heart is moved by all that I cannot save.  So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world."  ---Adrienne Rich

Blessed Unrest: Why Green Geezers are So Restless

We've lately heard a lot about how baby boomers aren't going to go placidly into old age, be herded into "retirement communities" or generally behave themselves.  In my last posting I shared Paul Hawken's new book Blessed Unrest, and I urge everyone to go read it.  It's a massively important and useful work that helps point the way out of the messes we're in, with seminal quotes from those who've gone before, and and impressive bibliography and appendix.  Not to mention that Hawken has launched a website to keep the momentum going.   Visit Wiser Earth and browse the directory of groups that are changing the world.

Where did Blessed Unrest get its name?  Here's the first quote in the book, and when I read it I got goose bumps:

"There is vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.....You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.  Keep the channel open....[There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time.  There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the other." --Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille, Dance to the Piper (NY: Da Capo Press, 1980)

Natural Burials Bring Back "Dust to Dust"

An article in Ecospace on natural burials brought to light something I've been thinking of for some time: the fact that cemeteries are unnecessarily polluting:

"Modern cemeteries separate the deceased from natural cycles by embalming them in toxic chemicals, boxing them in steel caskets and concrete burial vaults, and drenching the funeral grounds with pesticides."

Not to mention their cost.  A standard, non-luxurious burial ceremony today can cost $9500, whereas a plot in New York's Greensprings Natural Cemetery, for example, is only $500.

Can a Retirement Community Be Sustainable?

Top Retirements -- a great site packed with information on retirement locations, has posted a story I wrote for them about looking for green retirement communities. I had some trouble with the concept, since "retirement communities" -- at least the age-segregated kind, seem inherently unsustainable.  Just look at what happened to the Shakers.....however I think the article turned out fine.

  Shaker Barn Door 
  Originally uploaded by cgulyas2002

No Impact Man on Happiness

No Impact Man reports on his happiness level after ten months living the "no impact" life.

"Isn't that strange? You click off family's electricity and make them go to bed at nine every night because it's too dark to do anything else. You ban them from the elevator so they have to walk up and down nine flights of stairs. You take away their fridge so they can't keep more than a day or two of food around the house.  All this and then they turn around and say it's life as usual?

Probably it feels that way because people quickly get used to almost any set of conditions. Within a few years, lottery winners and people who become paralyzed tend to return to the same level of happiness they had before their change in circumstance.

What people can't get used to, though, is the loss of one of the main factors positive psychologists find does have a lasting affect on happiness: community."

Daniel Gilbert's excellent book "Stumbling On Happiness" addresses the problem of how what we imagine will make us happy seldom does.

William McDonough in Oak Park, IL

GreenSource has a short interview with William McDonough, the author of Cradle to Cradle and we (along with thirty other people) are going to have dinner with him tomorrow night right here in Oak Park, IL, where McDonough will keynote the Greentown Conference.   That's a lot of links for one sentence, and that's what will happen to you if you start reading McDonough and following his activities -- you'll start making links between how we consume things and how they are designed.   It seems fitting that McDonough, an architect, will be speaking here in Oak Park, the site of the first studio of that other architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.  And maybe it says that we are just a little over-immersed in this stuff when I confess that this dinner is my husband's 55th birthday present.

A good way to get an introduction to McDonough is through TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design.  This annual conference hosts the world's most fascinating people and charges them with using 18 minutes to give "the talk of their lives" -- then it shares the talks free on the web via the Creative Commons licensing agreement. 

    

   

Going Green: Just a Fashion?

Sunday's Chicago Tribune featured a story titled Green is the New Black lamenting the co-opting of green living.   

'"Here's one popular vision for saving the planet: Roll out from under the sumptuous hemp-fiber sheets on your bed in the morning and pull on a pair of $245 organic cotton Levi's and an Armani biodegradable knit shirt.

Stroll from the bedroom in your eco-McMansion, with its photovoltaic solar panels, into the kitchen remodeled with reclaimed lumber. Enter the three-car garage lighted by energy-sipping fluorescent bulbs and slip behind the wheel of your $104,000 Lexus hybrid.

Drive to the airport, where you settle in for an 8,000-mile flight -- careful to buy carbon offsets beforehand -- and spend a week driving golf balls made from compacted fish food at an eco-resort in the Maldives."

We agree that consuming less is the answer, and merely consuming "green" stuff will not get us out of this mess.  For example, according to the Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook televisions account for 4% of energy use in the United States (just let that sink in for a moment......FOUR PER CENT) and your old set uses a lot less energy than a plasma-screen energy hog. 

On the other hand, if someone is already having to buy something, it can be a great time to switch consumers over to green products.   

"After you buy the compact fluorescent bulbs," said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, "you can move on to greater goals like banding together politically to shut down coal-fired power plants."   John Passacantando, the executive director of Greenpeace USA, argued that green consumerism has been a way for Wal-Mart shoppers to get over the old stereotypes of environmentalists as "tree-hugging hippies" and contribute in their own way.

This is crucial, he said, given the widespread nature of the global warming challenge. "You need Wal-Mart and Joe Six-Pack and mayors and taxi drivers," he said. "You need participation on a wide front."

So go ahead and get your friends and relatives to shop for those CFLs...it can be just the start of changing an entire lifestyle.

Another Reason Not to Build on Farmland