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California enjoys and/or suffers from a historic baby bust

by trasze2aja Posted on January 14, 2013

California enjoys and/or suffers from a historic baby bust

By Susie Cagle

Despite what my Facebook friend feed may be implying lately, California as a whole is not bursting at the seams with cute drooly babies. In fact, the Golden State is having a population crisis, at least by American standards. According to a new report from the University of Southern California, the state is making a “historic transition”: California’s fertility rate has dropped to 1.94 children per woman, below the 2.1 rate that replaces and grows the population and the economy. The U.S. birthrate was 2.06 children last year. Demographers are calling the drop, which has affected all racial and ethnic groups, “unprecedented” (and “European”).

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“Kids are no longer overrunning us. Now they’re in short supply,” demographer Dowell Myers told the San Jose Mercury News. “It changes the priorities for the state.”

Post-baby-boom, California had no population worries. In 1970, kids accounted for a third of the state’s population. Now they’re projected to make up one-fifth by 2030.

The Wall Street Journal is particularly hysterical about what a lower population might mean for California’s economic growth.

“Unless the birthrate picks up, we are going to need more immigrants. If neither happens, we are going to have less growth,” said [Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy]. The report wasn’t optimistic, saying that “with migration greatly reduced…outsiders are much less likely to come to the rescue.”

Investments in the state’s education system will be vital to meet labor-force needs and prevent the economy from contracting, said Mr. Levy. With less migration to the state, the skills and human capital necessary to keep California’s economy afloat will need to be homegrown, both Mr. Levy and Mr. Myers said.

With more than 90% of the state’s children under age 10 born in the state, “the majority of the next generation of workers will have been shaped by California’s health and education systems,” Mr. Myers said. “It’s essential that we nurture our human capital.”

Yes, nurturing, let’s do that. But all these people are talking like California’s population is shrinking, which it’s not at all: Between 2010 and 2012, it grew by nearly 700,000 people, in large part due to immigration. That’s just a lot less growth than before.

It may be historic, but it’s hardly surprising. California suffered some of the worst fall-out from the housing boom and bust, has filled its jails well over capacity, and has cut services across the board, while many of its municipalities, as the Wall Street Journal put it, are slouching toward insolvency. At least a fifth of California’s kids grow up in poverty. Why should we be sad there aren’t more of them?

California’s kids will unfortunately face a heavier burden in taking care of the state’s booming elderly population. But with more kids, they’d also face a heavier burden in competing for dwindling resources. A smaller population is a more sustainable one in the long run. Immediate economic concerns aside, a goal of perpetual, endless growth isn’t good for anyone, the cute and drooly among us included.

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Pinnacles in California named nation’s 59th national park

by anjunonstennyao Posted on January 12, 2013

Pinnacles in California named nation’s 59th national park

By Susie Cagle

While California’s state parks are perpetually troubled, at least the Golden State can celebrate a new national park. On Thursday, President Obama signed into law a bill by Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) that makes Pinnacles National Monument in central California a protected national park, the 59th in the country and ninth in the state.

ericinsf

The San Jose Mercury News has more:

“The park’s sanctuary for the California condor and native wildlife, its red crags, caves, impressive displays of spring wildflowers, and opportunities for star-viewing under its noteworthy dark skies make Pinnacles a special place and worthy of its national park status for future generations to enjoy,” said Neal Desai, Pacific Region associate director for the National Parks Conservation Association.

Farr had tried to make the bill stronger, but was foiled by House Republicans:

[T]he last Congress, which ended Jan. 3, was the first Congress since 1966 not to designate a single new acre of public land in America as federally protected wilderness, where logging, mining and other development is prohibited.

Farr’s bill originally called for designating 3,000 acres inside Pinnacles boundaries as wilderness. The area is where biologists in recent years have been releasing California condors as part of a captive breeding program to bring the species back from the brink of extinction. But that provision was stripped out by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., chairman of the House Resources Committee.

Last month, Obama proposed adding 2,700 square miles off the coast of Northern California to the national marine sanctuary system, permanently protecting the area from oil and gas drilling.

That’s all well and good for the (adorable) sea otters and (unfortunate-looking) condors, Obama, but what about the rest of us? For all he might be doing, Obama is not measuring up to his predecessors when it comes to protecting public lands. According to the usually Obama-friendly Think Progress, under this president, the U.S. has protected less than 10 percent of the acreage protected under Bill Clinton, and less than 25 percent of what was protected under George W. Bush.

I know it’s cold out, but you’d best hustle outdoors this weekend if you’d like to see any of this country’s wild places before they’re turned into one giant drilling field. At least we’ll always have Pinnacles.

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Rum promoter won’t be allowed to hold shark-killing tournament

by olikellopas Posted on January 11, 2013

Rum promoter won’t be allowed to hold shark-killing tournament

By Philip Bump

A tame shark in the Dominican Republic.

From the Associated Press:

A popular rum promoter is drawing the ire of environmentalists for his plan to hold a shark-hunting tournament in the Dominican Republic similar to one he organized after the release of the movie “Jaws.” …

The newspaper Listin Diario recently quoted [promoter Newton] Rodriguez as saying that the country’s tourism industry suffered and people grew afraid of sharks after the blockbuster hit “Jaws” was released in 1975, leading him to organize a shark hunt a year later.

Well, idiot, first of all they already killed that shark in Jaws (via explosion) so you don’t need to worry about that. Second, a number of shark species are already endangered. Third, some 73 million sharks a year are slaughtered, many to fuel the sketchy trade in shark fins as phony medicinal treatment.

The Dominican Republic’s natural resources minister has happily kiboshed Rodriguez’s plan, though I’m not entirely certain that, in his wisdom, he’d even bother to apply for a permit.

As a public service, we figured we’d let you know the name of the rum Rodriguez promotes. It is: Barcelo. You’ll want to avoid it, given that aficionados clearly run the risk of damage to both the heart and the brain.

Source

Activists slam Dominican shark hunting tournament, Associated Press

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Happy 25th anniversary, San Jose’s useless light rail!

by donnajansen Posted on January 11, 2013

Happy 25th anniversary, San Jose’s useless light rail!

By Philip Bump

For part of the time that I lived in San Jose, Calif., my apartment was downtown, across the street from a light rail station. I used to take the train to work, which was great for the first 80 percent of the ride: The car was almost always near-empty as it chugged along down the middle of streets, passing dozens of automobiles at each stop light. When I reached the stop closest to my office, I’d get off — and start the 20-minute walk in, having to either walk well out of my way or, if I was in a hurry, dash across a busy highway with no crosswalk. It was an hour’s journey, easily, for a trip that took 10 minutes by car without traffic.

My friend Michael and I took to calling the light rail “the Buzz,” both because it sounded confusingly like “the bus,” which amused us, and because it implied a speedy, futuristic system, which the light rail very much is not. A guy I knew who worked with the union that represented bus and light rail operators called it the “ghost train,” since you’d often see it passing by at night, lit up and empty.

pbumpSprawl in Silicon Valley.

The Atlantic Cities’ Eric Jaffe has a good look at the light rail as it celebrates its 25th anniversary. From his article:

Less than 1 percent of Santa Clara County residents ride [Valley Transportation Authority] light rail; the per-passenger round-trip operating cost is $11.74 and taxpayers subsidize 85 percent of costs — third and second worst in the country, respectively. There are problems with measuring costs per passenger mile on light rail, but ouch. …

In November, [the Mercury News‘ Mike] Rosenberg reported that a VTA plan to extend a light rail line 1.6 miles to Los Gatos, home of Netflix, will cost $175 million while drawing only about 200 new riders. Back in May, a local news station found a culture of fare evasion on VTA that gives the system a rate of 7.2 percent — highest in the region.

Jaffe has a series of quotes from people nearly as dismissive of the light rail as I am above. But one word is curiously missing: density. The problem with the light rail is that it serves a county that is home to one of the least-dense cities in America; San Jose, the nation’s 10th largest city, is not in the top 125 in people per square mile. Offices and strip malls and housing complexes are scattered around the valley floor, the result of City Manager Dutch Hamann‘s ’50s-era small-town-incorporation spree. San Jose contains land extending far beyond what even its now 1 million residents have use for, making a skeletal light rail system like platform sidewalks in a massive bog — barely providing access to anything.

I tried to be a good resident. I tried to give the light rail my business in part because I liked the aesthetic of it. Step out of my apartment and hop the train to work. It’s what I’d do now in hyper-dense Manhattan, if I didn’t work from home. But in San Jose, it didn’t work.

So I did what everyone else does. I got a car.

Source

Silicon Valley Can’t Get Transit Right, The Atlantic Cities

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Climate change may ruin Lake Tahoe’s beautiful blueness

by hanhuogekennog Posted on January 4, 2013

Climate change may ruin Lake Tahoe’s beautiful blueness

By Philip Bump

Aaron Hiler

Lake Tahoe is pretty. The water is clear; the mountains surrounding it are beautiful. For half a century, the environmental group Keep Tahoe Blue has fought to preserve the region’s environmental sanctity, primarily by putting bumper stickers on Volvos, as far as I can tell.

Turns out that those Volvos are doing more harm than good. From the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

Climate change could profoundly affect the Tahoe area, scientists say, taking the snow out of the mountains and the blue out of the water. …

New climate models show that in a worst-case scenario average temperatures in the Tahoe area could rise as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That’s equivalent to moving Lake Tahoe from its current elevation of 6,200 feet above sea level to 3,700 feet, climate scientists report in a special January issue of the journal Climatic Change. That’s as high as the peak of Contra Costa County’s Mount Diablo, which gets only an inch of snow a year. …

It’s not just the mountains that would look different in a warmer climate, according to Climatic Change. The worst-case scenarios also predict a devastating ecological collapse of the lake and loss of its signature clarity and blue color.

Many lakes undergo a process every year, or every few years, that keeps the lake water well-mixed. As water temperature changes through the seasons, it creates circulation in the lake. The warm water on top of the lake in summer cools off in the fall and sinks, mixing with cold deep water. In a warmer climate, the surface water won’t cool off enough to mix with deeper water.

Without that mixture, oxygen doesn’t penetrate the lake, changing its chemistry. So long clarity. So long blue.

alishav

Sadly, there’s not a lot that can be done besides stemming climate change globally. The process is already underway; last season, Tahoe ski resorts didn’t see natural snow until January. Happily, this season started off better.

As we’ve noted before, the problem isn’t confined to Tahoe. Warming temperatures are threatening mountain climates across the country. But few have environmental legacies — and environmental success stories — as rich as Lake Tahoe’s.

A recommendation, then, for those who wish to help: Get a “Keep Tahoe Blue” bumper sticker and paste it over your car’s tailpipe.

A wintry scene from the mountains near Tahoe. Enjoy it while you can.

Source

Climate change threatens Tahoe’s snow levels, lake clarity, Santa Cruz Sentinel

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Did removing lead from gasoline cause crime rates to plummet?

by olikellopas Posted on January 3, 2013

Did removing lead from gasoline cause crime rates to plummet?

By Philip Bump

Researchers have proposed many theories to explain the huge drop in crime that started in the early 1990s. Some cite the legalization of abortion. Some think maybe it was cell phone use. Rudy Giuliani credits Rudy Giuliani.

At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum presents a strong case for another contender: lead.

stevendepolo

The biggest source of lead in the postwar era, it turns out, wasn’t paint. It was leaded gasoline. And if you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early ’40s through the early ’70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.

Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the ’60s through the ’80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early ’90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.

Mother Jones

Your first reaction to this may be similar to mine (and to Jess Zimmerman’s) — those graphs are a rough correlation, not a surefire link between lead and crime. Drum addresses that concern by citing research that isolated lead legislation and abatement, sometimes down to a city-block level.

Sure, maybe the real culprit [behind the crime drop] in the United States was something else happening at the exact same time, but what are the odds of that same something happening at several different times in several different countries?

[Economist Rick] Nevin collected lead data and crime data for Australia and found a close match. Ditto for Canada. And Great Britain and Finland and France and Italy and New Zealand and West Germany. Every time, the two curves fit each other astonishingly well. When I spoke to Nevin about this, I asked him if he had ever found a country that didn’t fit the theory. “No,” he replied. “Not one.”

Just this year, Tulane University researcher Howard Mielke published a paper with demographer Sammy Zahran on the correlation of lead and crime at the city level. They studied six US cities that had both good crime data and good lead data going back to the ’50s, and they found a good fit in every single one. In fact, Mielke has even studied lead concentrations at the neighborhood level in New Orleans and shared his maps with the local police. “When they overlay them with crime maps,” he told me, “they realize they match up.”

Drum then goes one step further, noting that the areas of the brain that lead affects are those that one might associate with criminal behavior: aggressiveness, impulsivity. With that, he rests his argument.

The argument isn’t a new one; we covered it in 2011. The argument presented by Drum is more robust, even if still not entirely persuasive.

The most important point comes last. Lead, in its various forms, is still a widely present pollutant, one that significantly impairs cognition and bone strength, particularly in pregnant women and young children. Regardless of how strong the link between crime and lead, there is a massive health benefit in reducing exposure. There’s an urgent need to curtail ongoing lead pollution.

A decade ago, I worked with a team that did lead abatement, repainting walls covered in lead paint and clearing the dust and chips that had flaked off. Even these small measures were considered to be crucial for the health of the often-low-income kids living in the homes.

Did cutting lead in gasoline spur a huge drop in crime? Possibly. Whether it did or not, there’s nonetheless huge value in removing lead from our environment.

Source

America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead, Mother Jones

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Fiscal-cliff deal ups tax benefit for transit riders

by johnsmithwindows Posted on January 3, 2013

Fiscal-cliff deal ups tax benefit for transit riders

By Susie Cagle

FISCAL CLIFF TRIGGER WARNING! Obviously there’s a lot to be annoyed about in this deal, but there are a few bright spots that aren’t getting much attention. Renewed tax credits for wind energy are cool, and even more people will benefit from a near-doubling of a tax benefit for transit riders.

The benefit is basically a tiny tax shelter for the dollars you’re spending on public transportation, available if your employer participates in a federal program. On Dec. 31, 2011, that shelter was shrunk from $230 a month to $125, while the benefit for people who drive to work and pay for parking was increased from $230 to $240 — meaning the government was incentivizing people to drive instead of take public transit. Now, thanks to the fiscal-cliff deal, tax benefits for transit takers and car parkers will be equalized — both will get a benefit of up to $240 a month.

From Transportation Nation:

Transit advocates hailed the legislation. “We’ve been pushing for transit equity for months,” said Rob Healy, vice president of the American Public Transportation Association. “From our perspective, we felt it was very, very important that the federal tax code not bias one mode versus another.” He added: “You shouldn’t be making your choices based on a tax code which treats parking better than it does transit.”

This should take a bit of the sting out of new fare hikes going into effect for transit systems (at least if you have a job …). That is, it’ll take the sting out for 2013. Because here’s the bad news, transportation lovers: This is only a one-year extension, set to expire on Dec. 31 unless it’s renewed.

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Avis buys Zipcar, delighting investors and unnerving customers

by Myrna Posted on January 2, 2013

Avis buys Zipcar, delighting investors and unnerving customers

By Susie Cagle

In 2011, Zipcar, the world’s largest car-sharing company, was valued at $1.2 billion, but it sold today to Avis for just shy of $500 million. If Zipcar’s shareholders approve the sale, it will likely become final in a few months.

“By combining with Zipcar, we will significantly increase our growth potential, both in the United States and internationally, and will position our company to better serve a greater variety of consumer and commercial transportation needs,” Avis Chair and CEO Ronald Nelson said in a statement.

Given the clear downward trend in American car owning and driving, it was only a matter of time until a big corporation got in the sharing game, and the easiest way to do that is always to eat one of the little guys and absorb its start-up life force. According to Nelson, the deal will mean more cars for Zipcar, especially on weekends when most of Avis’ fleet is sitting in parking lots. While Avis’ rivals Hertz and Enterprise started offering hourly rentals, Avis never did, so the acquisition presents a real expansion of services for the old-timey rental dealership.

It’s certainly got investors feeling good — Zipcar’s shares jumped more than 48 percent this morning on news of the deal.

But what about the people who actually use the car-sharing service? There are about 760,000 of them in the U.S. The Atlantic Cities considers other cases of corporations acquiring startups and wonders whether Avis will ruin Zipcar:

In some of these cases that means the end of a beloved service as we knew it. Other acquisitions have allowed the disruptor to flourish — under the thumb and bureaucracy of its new owner, but still. And sometimes even that part doesn’t go well, as we saw with HP’s acquisition of Autonomy, which not only wiped out HP’s profits but led to the unraveling of Autonomy, too. Even in that best case scenario, we have to consider all the possibilities that weren’t. What could the competition between the two companies have led to? We’ll never know. But we will have more than that sub-compact available for a weekend road trip.

So what if the sun does set on Zipcar? In recent years, car-on-demand services have become kind of standard — as mentioned above, Hertz and Enterprise are already offering hourly rentals. Most recently, Zipcar’s style of service has been eclipsed in excitement (if not yet in membership) by ride-on-demand services such as Sidecar and Lyft, which work more like taxis than car rentals, and by newer services like car2go, which don’t require reservations. And if Americans continue to lose interest not just in owning cars but in driving altogether, that would be good news for new ride-sharing services and the planet, but not so great for Avis and that $500 million.

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Traffic deaths are down, but pedestrian and cyclist deaths are up

by Myrna Posted on December 18, 2012

Traffic deaths are down, but pedestrian and cyclist deaths are up

By Susie Cagle

Fewer people are dying in car accidents in the U.S. (except in California, where it’s been raining lately and people have been very confused). Traffic deaths fell 1.9 percent in 2011, hitting their lowest level since 1949.

That’s great news for drivers, who haven’t been getting a lot of good news in their driver-lives lately. Here’s the bad news: Drivers are killing the rest of us. The Los Angeles Times reports on new federal transportation figures:

Federal officials highlighted the overall decrease in [traffic] deaths. But at least one traffic safety group said the figures were alarming, particularly a 3% increase in pedestrian deaths and an 8.7% increase in cyclist fatalities from 2010 to 2011.

“We are still concerned about the numbers of cyclists and pedestrians at risk on our roadways,” said Paul Oberhauser, co-chairman of the Chicago-based Traffic Safety Coalition, which is partly funded by the traffic safety camera industry. “This new report is a reminder we still need to be cautious and share the road.”

Rory Finneren

Speaking of sharing the road, today Bike Score, an offshoot of Walk Score, rolled out more city ratings for bikeability. It turns out even many of the towns we consider cycle-friendly — like New York and Portland, Ore. — are barely getting a passing grade.

So if you’re walking or biking around right now, and you haven’t died yet, congratulations! NOW STOP READING THIS.

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Crunching the numbers: Will you see a white Christmas?

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 18, 2012

Crunching the numbers: Will you see a white Christmas?

By Philip Bump

calliope

There are two questions that arise at the end of every year. The first is: Did I fulfill all of my resolutions this year? And the answer to that is always no, unless you are lying to yourself. The second is: Will we have a white Christmas? And, pretty soon, that one’s going to always be no, as well. Unless you move to, say, Canada.

This year is one of the bubble years, a year in which a white Christmas is still possible. Yes, it’s warmer than usual — in fact, it’s the warmest year in American history — but the worst long-term effects of warming haven’t yet made December snowfall an improbability. So let’s ask the question.

Spoiler: For most of the country, the answer is always no. If you live in Miami, it likely never occurs to you to even ask it, unless the query comes up as you’re singing a Christmas carol. Angelenos, the same; snowfall is something to be visited on mountaintops, not seen in drifts around a palm tree.

For those for whom it’s possible, a secondary question: What constitutes a white Christmas? There are three options.

  1. Snow falling on Christmas
  2. Any amount of snow visible on the ground on Christmas
  3. A blanket of snow on the ground on Christmas

These are three very different things, requiring different conditions, appearing in decreasing order of likelihood. As a purist, I’ll insist that the third choice is what really constitutes a white Christmas, an amount of snow that deters going outside for long — an amount of snow that encourages the coziness of a warm house and a fire. Well, not a fire, given the carbon dioxide and particulate emissions. But you get my point.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agrees with my vision of Christmas whiteness (so to speak). Here’s its map of the historic probability of an inch of snow on the holiday.

Click to embiggen.

I grew up in a bit of that dark purple stretch in western New York, hence my purism. If you find even a dusting of snow acceptable for your (lacking) standard, note that the odds of such snowfall are higher than the odds presented above. But also note that this is from data collected between 1981 and 2010, what I like to call “the old days.”

NOAA’s map doesn’t tell us anything about this year. So we turn to Weather.com’s white Christmas forecast.

Click to embiggen.

Weather.com, headquartered in Atlanta, uses the lowest standard for a white Christmas — any snowfall at all. And even under those conditions, it doesn’t look good for much of the country.

Being only a week out, we can get city-specific forecasts now. Such as for New York:

And Chicago:

And Denver:

Of those three, only Denver has a even shot at some snow, however little.

Incidentally, for those of you who took our comments at the beginning of this article to heart and had begun plans to move to our neighbor to the north, there’s no rush. Canada doesn’t look like it’s going to have a very white Christmas, either. From Smithsonian:

“We have this reputation. We are known as the Cold White North. But I don’t think we’re as cold and white as we once were,” said Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips to the [Canadian Press]. “Our reputation is being undermined. Winter is not … what it used to be. It was more of a done deal. It was more of a guarantee.”

During the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, says the CP, there was an 80% chance that it would be snowy on Christmas.

“Fast-forward to the last 20 years, and those odds on average have slipped to 65 per cent, according to Environment Canada.”

In short, then, there’s only one place on Earth where you can be guaranteed a white Christmas. No, not the Arctic circle (at least over the long term). Antarctica. That’s it. That’s your only option.

And if Antarctica stops offering a white Christmas, the holiday itself will probably have been abandoned in the transition to an ocean-based subsistence economy of nation-states constantly doing battle by outrigger canoe.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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