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The Most (and Least) Eco-Friendly US Cities

by TeodoroCoulombe Posted on April 20, 2019

You might try to live an eco-friendly lifestyle at home. But how green is your community?

According to a Pew Research Center survey, roughly 59 percent of U.S. adults say climate change is affecting their community in some way ? through weather, temperature changes, etc. And that point of view is even stronger in those who live near a coastline. Plus, according to another Pew survey, the majority of respondents think the U.S. government isn’t doing enough to protect the environment, including preventing water pollution, ensuring safe air quality and protecting animals and their habitats.

But not all communities are equal when it comes to being environmentally friendly. WalletHub recently released a study of the 100 largest U.S. cities, comparing 26 “green indicators” ? i.e., factors that made the city more or less eco-friendly. It broke these factors into four main categories: environment, transportation, energy sources and lifestyle/policy. And each city received an overall green score based on points applied to the green indicators.

These are the 10 cities WalletHub found to be the most environmentally friendly, the 10 that could use some green improvements and some tips to make your own community a little more eco-friendly.

The Most Environmentally-Friendly Cities

Here are the top 10 greenest cities in the U.S., according to WalletHub.

10. Portland, Oregon

Credit: RyanJLane/Getty Images

Portland cracked the top 10 with a solid performance in some categories and a mediocre showing in others. It ranked 18th in energy sources and 59th in the environment category ? which measured factors, such as air quality, green space, water quality and light pollution. But Portland boosted its overall green score with an eighth-place finish in the transportation category ? in which it received the fourth highest bike score. And it took third in lifestyle/policy, in which it also came in third for the most farmers markets per capita.

9. Sacramento, California

Sacramento fared a little better than Portland in the environment category, coming in 38th place. It also took 19th for energy sources and ninth for lifestyle/policy. But its best showing was its fourth-place finish in the transportation category. That category included factors, such as the share of commuters who drive alone, the average commute time, the city’s walk and bike scores and the accessibility of jobs by public transit.

8. Seattle, Washington

Seattle just edged out Sacramento’s green score for eighth place overall. The city ranked 25th in the environment category, 21st in energy sources and 12th in transportation. And it was near the top of the pack for lifestyle/policy, finishing fourth. Metrics in that category included farmers markets and community-supported agriculture per capita, community garden plots per capita, green job opportunities and the number of local programs that promote green energy.

7. Fremont, California

Fremont was fairly average in two of the categories and stellar in the other two. It came in 52nd for transportation and 32nd for lifestyle/policy. But it took second place for environment ? and within that category it came in first for the highest percentage of green space. Plus, it was No. 1 in the energy sources category ? which included metrics, such as electricity from renewable sources, solar installations per capita and amount of smart-energy initiatives.

6. Honolulu, Hawaii

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Who doesn’t love the environment of a Hawaiian island? Honolulu’s worst category rank was its 24th-place finish in energy sources. But it made up for that by taking fifth in environment, fifth in lifestyle/police and second in transportation. Within the categories, the city had the fifth lowest greenhouse gas emissions per capita. Plus, it tied for first (with Fremont and Alaska) for the highest percentage of green space. And it also tied for first for the most farmers markets per capita.

5. San Jose, California

San Jose’s overall green score just barely put it in front of Honolulu for its fifth-place finish. The city did fairly well in the transportation and lifestyle/policy categories, coming in 24th and 21st respectively. It took 13th for energy sources. And San Jose’s best category rank was its 10th-place finish in environment.

4. Irvine, California

Continuing California’s domination of the top 10 greenest cities, Irvine’s overall score was just a few tenths of a point better than San Jose’s ? landing it in fourth place. The city’s only category rank out of the top 10 was its 27th-place finish in transportation. It took seventh in both the environment and lifestyle/policy categories. And it came in at No. 1 for energy sources.

3. Washington, D.C.

Even though many people wish the government would do more to combat climate change (or even admit it exists), the nation’s capital still is one of the greenest cities in the U.S. Washington, D.C., ranked 35th for environment and 17th for energy sources. It took sixth in the transportation category, in which it had the third lowest percentage of commuters who drive. (Not everyone gets a motorcade to stop D.C. traffic.) And, somewhat ironically, D.C. took No. 1 for lifestyle/policy ? despite the ongoing political arguments on policies that would help the environment.

2. San Francisco, California

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We head back to the West Coast for the top two greenest cities. San Francisco took 20th for energy sources, ninth for transportation and sixth for environment. Within the transportation category, the city had the fourth lowest percentage of commuters who drive, and it received the second highest bike score, only behind Minneapolis. Plus, San Francisco ranked second for lifestyle/policy ? tying for first (with Honolulu) for the most farmers markets per capita.

1. San Diego, California

San Diego took home the title for 2019′s greenest city in the United States ? and underscored California’s dominance on the list. It ranked 19th in both the transportation and lifestyle/policy categories. And within lifestyle/policy, it came in fourth for the most farmers markets per capita. Plus, San Diego’s best category rank was its fourth-place finish in environment.

The Least Environmentally-Friendly Cities

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These 10 cities ranked at the bottom of WalletHub’s list.

10. Gilbert, Arizona
9. Cleveland, Ohio
8. Mesa, Arizona
7. Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky
6. Detroit, Michigan
5. Memphis, Tennessee
4. Toledo, Ohio
3. St. Louis, Missouri
2. Corpus Christi, Texas
1. Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Of those cities, Corpus Christi ? along with Houston; Denver; Oklahoma City; Louisville, Kentucky; and Tulsa, Oklahoma ? had some of the highest greenhouse gas emissions per capita.

Plus, Baton Rouge and Lexington ? along with Fresno, California; Laredo, Texas; and Hialeah, Florida ? had very little green space compared to the other cities.

How to Be a Greener Member of Your Community

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Regardless of where your city falls on this list (or whether it’s even on here at all), there are still several ways you can help to make your home a more eco-friendly place. Here are some tips to go green in your community.

Support local establishments

Instead of shopping at big box stores, support your community’s establishments that sell products made from local materials. A prime example of this: Eat at restaurants that source food from the area, and shop at farmers markets whenever possible.

Carpool

You know carpooling (and using public transit) is eco-friendly, but do you practice what you preach? Start a carpool group for school, work or even trips to the store. Even better, choose more sustainable methods of transportation whenever possible, such as walking and biking. Lobby your city for bike lanes and walking paths if you don’t already have them.

Organize Recycling Drives

Some communities have very accessible recycling and donation drives. But others make it difficult to sustainably get rid of items you no longer want. If your community falls into the latter camp, step up as an organizer. Learn what’s necessary to hold donation drives ? as well as recycling events for items, such as toxic waste and electronics. Your community will thank you.

Connect with Community Members

A strong team can get things done more efficiently than a lone person. Find other members of your community who also care about building a more eco-friendly environment. Learn from each other, and band together to organize events, such as area cleanups, a community garden or even a Food Not Lawns initiative.

Bring issues to Local Government

You and your other eco-friendly community members will likely have to work with local government on many green initiatives. Do your homework, so you’re prepared to lobby for your causes. Ask your government about issues, such as reducing pesticide use, enacting greener building practices, expanding the recycling program or implementing a community solar project. Progress might be slow, but don’t let that discourage you from putting your voice out there.

Main image credit: Ron_Thomas/Getty Images

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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The Most (and Least) Eco-Friendly US Cities

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What Washington and Oregon taught us about climate action on the ballot

by YongHouser2 Posted on November 9, 2018

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Two climate-friendly taxes, two different results.

Washingtonians turned down another shot at having the country’s first “carbon fee” this week. Initiative 1631 was rejected by 56 percent of voters, faring only slightly better than the revenue-neutral carbon tax that met a similar fate two years ago.

Across the border in Portland, Oregon, the climate had better luck. Voters in the city backed the Portland Clean Energy Initiative, which aims to raise $30 million a year for renewables and clean-energy job training through a tax on big retailers.

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What can we learn from comparing these two grassroots measures in one of the country’s blue strongholds, the Northwest? They have some key differences: Washington’s promised a whole-scale, state-level climate policy; Portland’s concerned a single step for climate action at the city level.

But the parallels are striking. They were both clean-energy campaigns that faced misleading tactics and an outpouring of money from corporate opposition. And they both showed that it’s possible to build a broad, diverse coalition of labor, environmental, and justice organizations behind climate policy — something activists have said needs to happen for years.

Their respective fates can’t be waved away as politics as usual. In King County, home to the progressive bastion of Seattle, 57 percent of voters supported I-1631, not enough backing to overcome opposition from conservative parts of the state. In hyper-progressive Portland, 64 percent went for the clean energy initiative. How do you explain that?

Money talks

Here’s one explanation: money. That’s certainly part of it. The campaign against Washington’s carbon fee raised $31 million, with 99 percent of that coming from oil and gas companies. That’s the most that’s been raised for a ballot initiative in state history. Supporters of the fee raised slightly less than half of that — around $15 million — with big donations from Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg.

“We have just got to figure out a way for big corporations to not be able to buy elections,” said Nick Abraham, spokesperson for Yes on 1631.

In Portland, the spending was more evenly matched. The opposition campaign raised $1.4 million, with big donations from Amazon, Walmart, and other companies, according to the Oregon Secretary of State. Portland Clean Energy Initiative backers raised almost as much: $1.2 million.

What’s in a name?

Almost 70 percent of Washington voters, including a majority of the state’s Republicans, say they would support a measure to regulate carbon pollution — at least in the abstract, surveys show. But it’s still pretty hard to get people to vote for an actual tax, even if you call it something else.

Washington’s measure was technically a fee because its revenue would have gone straight to a designated purpose, as opposed to a general tax that raises revenue the legislature might spend on whatever it wants. The hope was that the “fee” language would be less off-putting for voters.

But you can’t run away from the t-word. “As soon as the opponents start organizing, they’re going to call it a tax,” Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, told me in an interview earlier this year.

Boy, was he right. The No on 1631 campaign made sure that everyone in Washington saw the words “unfair energy tax” in the television ads and mailers that blanketed the state.

Lost in the details

I-1631 was a complex policy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it likely made countering the opposition’s message much harder. It gave the No campaign plenty of lines of attack. It pointed out that gas prices would rise under the tax, that some big polluters would be exempted, and that the money would be handled by an unelected board. Yes on 1631 had responses to all of these points, but the No message resonated, even among some Democrats.

Portland’s measure was simpler. The opposition campaign similarly said the tax on big retailers would be passed to consumers and businesses. But that was pretty much it. Advocates had only one argument to refute, said Coalition of Communities of Color Advocacy Director Jenny Lee, making it less confusing for voters and easier to communicate their rebuttal (no, this will be paid by big corporations!).

“It’s hard to fight multiple fires,” Lee said. “It’s no comment on how the [Yes on 1631] campaign did, but there are challenges of putting complex policy before the voter.”

Back to the legislature

Would a complex climate policy have a better chance in front of elected officials? We may find out next year. The good news in the Northwest is that more climate champions are headed to office.

“Stepping back, I am truly more hopeful at any point than I have been since 2008 or 2009,” said Gregg Small, executive director of the Climate Solutions, a Pacific Northwest-based clean energy nonprofit. Small said support for action in both states looks stronger than it did before.

Some races are still shaking out as absentee ballots roll in, but it’s clear that Oregon will have a supermajority of Democrats in the Senate next year. Oregon legislators had already made passing a cap-and-trade bill a priority for 2019. And in Washington, there’s already talk of taking another carbon pricing bill to the state legislature. (A carbon tax failed in the state legislature this year by a single vote.)

Governor Jay Inslee assured me in an interview back in May that if I-1631 failed, there’d be another big push to enact a carbon tax, fee, price, or whatever you want to call it. “One way or another,” he explained, “we’re going to get this job done.”

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What Washington and Oregon taught us about climate action on the ballot

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The West Coast is fired up for a coal battle with Zinke

by NigelVail786 Posted on October 17, 2018

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Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recently proposed using military bases to export fossil fuels to Asia. The move could circumvent and undermine the decade-long struggle to stop coal exports on the West Coast.

So far, Zinke has just proposed using an Alaska base, but Northwest activists and state authorities say they won’t back down if the Trump administration tries to bring fossil fuels through their states.

“The people of Oregon and Washington have rejected coal export and our government leaders have made really clear decisions that it’s too dangerous for our communities and our climate,” said Brett VandenHeuvel, the executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper.

In Washington state, leaders have worked on several fronts to successfully block coal export terminals, such as the Millennium Bulk Terminals Project in Longview, along the Columbia River.

The State of Washington’s Department of Ecology denied permits to the Longview terminal after determining that the risks it posed were too great. The project would have dredged 41.5 acres of the Columbia riverbed and increased dangerous diesel pollution in a neighborhood along the rail line in Longview.

“At some point enough has to be enough,” said Dave Bennett, a spokesperson for the department. “We will not back down from our legal responsibility to protect Washington’s people and environment, including the Columbia River.”

In Oregon, activists worked to pass the first law prohibiting fossil fuel infrastructure in Portland. The year-long battle began with protests over a Shell drilling vessel. Activists delayed its departure while chanting “Coal, oil, gas, none shall pass!”

“[Zinke’s proposal] completely flies in the face of local and state action all up and down the West Coast,” said Mia Reback, the former organizer of a Portland climate group involved in the efforts. “This is really a matter of life and death — for our local communities and for the biosphere,” she said.

Jan Hasselman, a lawyer with EarthJustice who has litigated against the Longview terminal, does not see this proposal as having much legal ground. Even with military projects, he says that states have a say when it comes to protecting water quality. Under the Clean Water Act, any federal permit also requires a state water quality certification, which was denied in the Millenium Bulk Terminals Project.

What Hasselman finds particularly alarming is the use of the military to corporate ends. “We have a military whose purpose is to protect the national interests,” he said. “It’s not there to benefit private corporate interests. Let the military be the military and do their jobs and don’t saddle them with propping up a dying industry.”

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The West Coast is fired up for a coal battle with Zinke

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Should big corporations pay for clean energy? Portland voters will decide.

by FilomenRosa Posted on July 30, 2018

A new ballot initiative in Portland would raise $30 million a year for clean energy through a tax on giant retailers. Sound unusual? It is.

The campaign for the Portland Clean Energy Fund is led by groups representing communities of color and grassroots environmental organizations. The local branches of the Sierra Club, 350.org, and the NAACP are all involved, too.

“It’s groundbreaking,” says Jenny Lee, advocacy director at the Coalition of Communities of Color, another organization spearheading the measure. “It’s the first environmental or climate initiative, as far as we know, that’s been led by organizations of color in Oregon.”

The campaign officially qualified for the November ballot on Friday after gathering 60,000 signatures from Portland voters (it only needed 34,000.) Lee says the volume of signatures speaks to the public enthusiasm for the measure, which would place a 1 percent charge on mega-retailers on revenue from Portland sales, excluding groceries and medicine.

So who would be paying up? We’re talking Wells Fargo, Apple, Comcast, and Banana Republic — companies that make over $1 billion in revenue a year and over $500,000 in Portland alone.

Between 40 and 60 percent of the money in the fund would be directed toward renewable energy and energy efficiency projects — half of which must be specifically intended to benefit low-income residents and communities of color. The fund devotes 20-25 percent to clean-energy jobs training that prioritizes women, people of color, and people with disabilities; 10-15 percent to greenhouse gas sequestration programs; and 5 percent to a flexible “future innovation” fund.

It’s the latest instance of social justice advocates and grassroots organizers calling for climate action in the Northwest. In Washington state, a wide coalition introduced a “carbon fee” that’s almost certainly headed to the ballot this November. If passed, it would become the first state law that looks anything like a carbon tax.

This recent wave of ballot initiatives followed some legislative letdowns in the region. Right after a carbon-tax proposal fizzled out in the Washington Senate in March, Oregon lawmakers set aside their plans for a cap-and-trade program. “Maybe Blue States Won’t Take Serious Action on Climate Change,” ran a headline in The Atlantic at the time. The article called into question the narrative we keep hearing — you know, the one about progressive cities and states fighting for climate action when the federal government refuses to.

While elected officials are one way to change policy, ballot initiatives are another — and they’re beginning to look like a hallmark of the Northwest’s climate justice movement.

“We knew that we couldn’t count on our legislators, both at the state and city level,” says Khanh Pham, manager of immigrant organizing at the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, who served on the steering committee for the Portland Clean Energy Fund.

Initially, Pham says, her group wanted to take the measure to city council — an easier, more familiar way to pass city legislation. But without strong support from their local elected officials, they decided to try and put something on the ballot instead.

She says the Portland Clean Energy Fund would be complementary to other climate policies, such as a statewide carbon price. It’s meant to address the hidden carbon emissions in the products we buy.

“When I buy clothing that comes from China or Vietnam, or food from Peru, there’s a lot of carbon emissions that are baked into those supply chains from these global retailers that are unaccounted for,” Pham says.

Reverend E.D. Mondainé, president of the NAACP Portland Branch and chief petitioner of the Portland Clean Energy Fund.Rick Rappaport / Portland Clean Energy Fund

It’s challenging to raise revenue in Oregon, especially to meet the needs of vulnerable communities, says Tony DeFalco, Verde executive director and one of the initiative’s organizers.

In 2016, Oregon voters shot down Measure 97, an attempt to place a 2.5 percent tax on corporations with more than $25 million a year in Oregon sales. DeFalco says the new initiative wasn’t inspired by that attempt. Measure 97 did, however, suggest that Portland has some appetite for a tax on corporations: 60 percent of the city voted for the measure, which would have spent the money on education, health care, and senior services.

Still, the groups behind the measure know they’re up against a challenge. There’s already a PAC, Keep Portland Affordable, that’s fighting the new initiative.

“We knew that we needed to be organizing in communities beyond our own to win this,” Pham says. “It’s been really eye-opening to see the power that a coalition like ours can build — a green-brown coalition.”

Portland is 78 percent white, making it the whitest big city in America. But communities of color have always been in Portland, says Lee, and her group is seeking to make them more visible. This ballot initiative is one such effort, she says:

“It’s a very clear statement that we are here, we are leading on policy, and we are also building political power.”

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Should big corporations pay for clean energy? Portland voters will decide.

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The Depressing Truth About Hipster Food Towns

by PenneyBarge4101 Posted on April 5, 2017

Mother Jones

Hallie Bateman

Deborah Gilfillan lives between Brooklyn’s first Trader Joe’s and its flagship Whole Foods. She’s also walking distance from Union Market, a local grocery chain where flank steak sells for $15.99 per pound. But these stores are too expensive and don’t have the right ingredients for the 62-year-old contract administrator, a native Brooklynite who lives in a brownstone she bought for a song back in the 1960s. Nowadays, she usually walks or takes the bus almost a mile to shop.

In the past, if a city dweller had to journey a mile to a grocery store, it probably meant she lived in a “food desert.” The term was coined by social scientists in the 1990s to describe places bereft of ingredients needed to make a healthy meal.

In recent years, the US government has spent at least $169 million in grants and helped raise $1 billion more to try to end food deserts, by funding things like new stores and farmers markets. But as urban neighborhoods gentrify, a new kind of disparity has emerged. Many experts, including some federal researchers, stress that high local grocery prices—not simply distance—prevent lower-income households from eating well. Gilfillan finds herself not in a food desert, but rather in what some soci­ologists are now calling a food mirage. Her home is surrounded by fancy markets and restaurants, yet cheap staples are hard to come by. “You can go in there and buy 10 different lettuces,” she says. But “we grew up on pork. A lot of them don’t have it.”

In cities across America, specialty stores flock to newly hip districts while cheap supermarkets are pushed out. Since 2000, the median sale price for a home in Gilfillan’s neighborhood of Boerum Hill has increased nearly fivefold, from $250,000 in January 2000 to $1.15 million in the fall of 2016, pulling up commercial real estate with it. Met Foods, the grocery store she used to frequent, was sold in 2014 as the land under it became valuable.

The conventional approach to addressing food access is blind to these mirages. In 2010, the White House announced the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, which provides loans, grants, and tax breaks to food sellers mostly in neighborhoods that qualify as food deserts. To help identify needy areas, the government looks at whether the median income of a census tract is less than 81 percent of the median income of the greater area. But this metric doesn’t work well in gentrifying neighborhoods, where rich and poor people live crammed together.

Take Boise, an up-and-coming district in Portland, Oregon. In 2014, 15 percent of its residents lived below the federal poverty line of $11,670 for individuals or $23,850 for a family of four. But thanks to upscale stores like New Seasons (a West Coast chain similar to Whole Foods) and the district’s high median family income, it’s hard to call Boise a true food desert, even though people there have few options besides pricey retailers and corner stores stuffed with junk food. While “conventionally defined food deserts are rare in Portland,” a pair of researchers concluded in a 2013 paper, “food mirages, by contrast, cover much of the city.”

Nonprofit grocery stores might help close this gap. For example, Fare & Square, a nonprofit in Chester, Pennsylvania, relies partly on government funding to keep its prices low. But the Obama administration’s initiative mostly targeted nonprofit grocery stores in neighborhoods already deemed food deserts. Places like Boise and Boerum Hill tend to fall through the cracks.

The Department of Agriculture doesn’t seem sure what to tell people living in food mirages. Even benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly called food stamps) aren’t a great solution: They’re based on nationwide average costs, so they don’t go as far in places where specialty and niche food stores dominate the market and charge upward of $4 a gallon for milk. When I asked a SNAP spokeswoman about the problem of ignoring local food prices, she referred me to a webpage called “Healthy Eating on a Budget.” “Create a grocery game plan,” it suggests. “Rethink your food choices and pick healthier options.”

Gilfillan has a grocery game plan. She treks to Stop & Shop, a chain supermarket where she finds plenty of bargains. On her way home, she passes modern condos and farm-to-table restaurants. Although she can’t bring herself to move out of her house, her advice for her son, Dashawn, is different. “Sell it for whatever you can get,” she recalls telling him. “So long as you got the memories, you don’t need this damn house.”

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The Depressing Truth About Hipster Food Towns

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We’ve got all the debate questions on humanity’s most urgent crisis in one scorching video.

by ESGMarie Posted on October 22, 2016

In a report out Thursday, the United Nations Environment Programme says pedestrians, motorcyclists, and cyclists make up nearly half of the 1.3 million people killed worldwide in traffic accidents each year. Even more alarming, it says that about “140 people will die in road accidents while you read this report.”

The fix? The UNEP calls for countries to use at least 20 percent of their transit budgets for bike lanes and safe sidewalks to encourage walking and biking over driving.

Life is especially dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists in countries with weaker economies. Governments in Malawi, Kenya, and South Africa (the most dangerous countries, according to the report) simply have less money to spend on the type of shiny, protected bike lanes you see popping up in Portland, Washington, D.C., and in bike-friendly cities across Europe.

All this suggests some topics for conversation at the upcoming COP22 in Morocco, such as adaptation and how to pay for it. While rich countries like the United States pull out the stops with flashy bike corrals, countries most at risk from climate change don’t necessarily have enough funds to adapt to a warming world.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s 2017 budget is $98.1 billion. Malawi’s total 2016/2017 budget? About $1.65 billion.

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We’ve got all the debate questions on humanity’s most urgent crisis in one scorching video.

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Donald Trump Says Mitt Romney "Would Have Dropped To His Knees" For Him

by MagaretNazario3 Posted on March 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump addressed a frenzied crowd in Portland, Maine, on Thursday afternoon during a campaign press conference.

The GOP front-runner hit all his usual marks—calls for building a border wall and deporting undocumented immigrants, reading polls from pieces of paper he pulls from his inside jacket pocket—but devoted a fair chunk of his time to lashing back against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who publicly criticized Trump and questioned whether he was fit to be president.

“Mitt is a failed candidate. He failed. He failed horribly,” Trump said. “That was a race—I have to say, folks—that should have been won. That was a race that absolutely should have been won. He disappeared, and I wasn’t happy about it, to be honest, because I am not a fan of Barack Obama.”

Romney had begged for his support, Trump claimed, during Romney’s bid to unseat President Obama in 2012: “You can see how loyal he was, he was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, ‘Drop to your knees!’ and he would have dropped to his knees.”

Trump also claimed he intimidated Romney, who “choked” and “chickened out” of running for president in 2016.

Romney responded to Trump’s comments in a tweet posted on 2:13 p.m. Eastern.

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Donald Trump Says Mitt Romney "Would Have Dropped To His Knees" For Him

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Of course Portland wants you to bike to the airport

by LashondFairclot Posted on December 1, 2014

Planes, bikes, and pedestrians

Of course Portland wants you to bike to the airport

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Have you ever tried to get to the airport without a motor vehicle? In most cities, it’s nearly impossible. Unsurprisingly, however, bike-besotted Portland is leading the way toward empowering travelers and terminal workers to cycle or saunter to the airport, rather than driving.

Michael Anderson of Bike Portland quips that “Portland International Airport’s new bike-pedestrian plan is probably thicker than the average city’s.” It’s 50 pages. He dishes the deets on the new Bicycle & Pedestrian Master Plan in a recent blog post: 

Fifteen years after a rising bike-commute rate among airport workers led PDX to begin a strategic focus on its biking and walking connections, links to the airport keep getting better. Now, the airport is preparing to double outdoor bike parking, and, in the longer term, help the City of Portland pay for a multi-use path looping the entire airport plus three bike lanes that’ll greatly improve airport access from the city.

Port of Portland

Portland International scored best in a 2013 survey of bicycle access at eight U.S. airports, in large part because the seven others didn’t have detailed plans. Most airports don’t invest much in people-powered transportation options because parking, ground transportation, and rental cars together make up over a quarter of their total revenue.

But lest Portlanders think that they can get off the hook for all that jet fuel they’ll burn on their next flight to New York, consider this: A round-trip ticket between Stump Town and the Big Apple puts a traveler on the hook for just over a metric ton of CO2 emissions, or 2,310 pounds of climate-cooking carbon dioxide. I got that number by averaging the results from online carbon calculators provided by Carbon Footprint Ltd, TerraPass, and ClimateCare, three companies that sell climate-conscious flyers (dubious) carbon offsets to assuage their green guilt.

To offset that by biking to your flight departure and back home instead of driving alone in your 2010 Ford Fusion, you’d better live over 1,000 miles from the airport, according to those same three emissions-counting tools.

Of course, there are other ways to make up for traveling’s carbon footprint. Just ask Grist’s Greenie Pig, who vowed to even out the impact of her trip to a friend’s wedding by going on a strict carbon diet, which proved much more difficult than foregoing flying in the first place.

All this is to say: Good on you Bikelandia for giving kombucha-powered pedalers some paths and bike parking. Now folks who work at the airport can bike to the office!

But for plane passengers who cycle to the airport for environmental reasons, remember that you’re about to partake in what is probably the most climate-damaging activity possible that doesn’t involve breaking the law.

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Of course Portland wants you to bike to the airport

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Why Californians Will Soon Be Drinking Their Own Pee

by JerrellRosas Posted on June 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

California has a lot of coastline. So why all the fuss about the drought? Desalination to the rescue, right?

Not quite. The largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere is currently under construction in Carlsbad in San Diego County at great expense. The price tag: $1 billion.

Right now, San Diego is almost totally dependent on imported water from Sierra snowmelt and the Colorado River. When the desalination plant comes online in 2016, it will produce 50 million gallons per day, enough to offset just 7 percent of the county’s water usage. That’s a huge bill for not very much additional water.

Desalination is not a new technology, but it’s still expensive. Despite the cost, its uptake is growing as dry places look to secure drought-proof sources of water. A new desalination plant built on reverse-osmosis microfiltering (the same method as the Carlsbad plant) will supply one-third of Beijing’s water by 2019. Desalination is already a major source of water for Australia, Chile, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other drought-prone coastal regions. Smaller solar desalination plants are also gaining appeal in California.

When regional water agencies first considered a Bay Area desalination plant more than a decade ago, they briefly considered making it more than double the size of the plant currently under construction in San Diego County. Since then, the idea for the Bay Area plant has been scaled back to about 10 percent of the original size based on the maximum intake capacity of the local water district. A tentative location has also been chosen: Mallard Slough, near where the Sacramento River meets the Bay. The plant is now on indefinite hold pending local demand, though studies have proven it’s technically feasible.

“We’re nowhere near done doing all the environmental impact reporting,” said Abby Figueroa of East Bay Municipal Utility District, one of the partners of the would-be Bay Area desalination plant. “There are other options that are more likely for us to use in the short term. We’re counting on conservation as one of those supplies.”

Still, the drought may force a decision sooner rather than later. “This is year one of the drought for us. Other parts of California are in year three or four. The real pressure for us is going to come next year if it doesn’t rain.”

Which brings us to the pee-drinking.

This year’s drought has motivated California to invest $1 billion in new money on water recycling efforts statewide, a much more cost-efficient way of increasing potable water supplies. But reusing purified sewer water for brushing your teeth is not without its own set of issues. National Journal describes the biggest holdup:

The problem with recycled water is purely psychological. Despite the fact the water is safe and sterile, the “yuck factor” is hard to get over, even if a person understands that the water poses no harm. In one often-cited experiment, researchers poured clean apple juice into a clean bedpan, and asked participants if they’d be comfortable drinking the apple juice afterwards. Very few of the participants agreed, even though there was nothing wrong with it. It’s forever associated with being “dirty,” just like recycled wastewater.

While it’s not quite correct that every glass of water contains dinosaur pee, it is true that every source of fresh water on Earth (rainfall, lakes, rivers, and aquifers) is part of a planetary-scale water cycle that passes through every living thing at one point or another. In a very real way, each and every day we are already drinking one another’s urine.

Earlier this year, the city of Portland, Oregon (in one of the most Portland-y moments in recent memory) nearly drained a local 38-million-gallon reservoir after a teen was caught urinating in it. Slate‘s Laura Helmuth made a brilliant calculation that the poor lad would have had to pee for 40 days straight to raise the reservoir’s nitrate levels above EPA-allowable limits and make the water unsafe to drink.

The good news is that this hurdle isn’t permanent. Psychologists have found that when cities reintroduce purified municipal wastewater into natural aquifers, streams, or lakes for later withdrawal, public acceptance of the fact that yes-it-was-once-pee improves. Since 2008, Orange County has recharged a local aquifer with billions of gallons of recycled sewage via the largest potable water reuse facility in the world.

They’ve also had a large public awareness campaign. This clip from Last Call at the Oasis, a 2012 documentary on global water issues that mentions Orange County’s water recycling efforts, features Jack Black in a spoof ad for “Porcelain Springs: Water from the most peaceful place on Earth”:

Thanks to public support, Orange County will add another 30 million gallons of drinking-quality recycled water per day via a new $142 million expansion due to come online in 2015. Factoring in the costs of the current plant, Orange County will soon produce twice as much water for less than one-third of the average cost of San Diego’s new desalination plant. Reusing water that’s already been pumped to Orange County over mountain ranges also uses half the energy as importing new water.

The conclusion here is easy: If drinking purified pee weirds you out, don’t live in a desert.

California had a water problem long before climate change came around. Now, with growing demand from both cities and agriculture along with dwindling supplies, something’s gotta give. Conservation and common-sense measures like municipal water recycling can happen immediately. Grass on golf courses and lawns can be severely restricted, immediately. Agriculture can get smarter, immediately. Groundwater pumping can be regulated, immediately. All of these improvements can be had for very little change in quality of life. California’s water problems could diminish practically overnight.

New dams? Over the next 10–30 years you’d need to double the capacity of reservoirs that currently exist, just to replace the snowpack that will be lost due to climate change.

Barring a miracle, desalination is among the least desirable options. There are significant economic, environmental, energy, and political barriers. Desalination is the Alberta tar sands of water resources. When you look closely at the choices, it’s clear the future of Western water supplies is toilet water.

For all its issues, here’s another thing Tucson, Arizona, is doing right: Since 1984 the city has been offsetting drinking water imported across hundreds of miles of desert with recycled water for grass lawns and golf courses. Why there are still grass lawns in Tucson is anyone’s guess. (In fairness, Tucson gets about three times the average annual rainfall as Las Vegas, a far worse offender in the desert-lawn-growing category, even though it also recently started using recycled water.)

If the West wants to get serious about water, there are many things they can start doing right away, like drinking their own pee.

In the finale to the Thirsty West series, I’ll head north to Oregon to see how one small-scale farmer is fighting generations of precedent to try to build a new model for profitable and environmentally friendly agriculture.

Originally posted here:  

Why Californians Will Soon Be Drinking Their Own Pee

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Maine guv freaks out after local media report on his corrupt environment chief

by irj972ys Posted on June 20, 2013

Maine guv freaks out after local media report on his corrupt environment chief

By Claire Thompson

Maine Department of Education

Foreground: Maine Gov. Paul R. LePage.

It’s almost surprising that Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) has never run for national office. In the realm of GOP presidential aspirants, he could give Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann a run for their money when it comes to political ineptitude and pure crazy. He’s told the NAACP to “kiss my butt,” and he recently used a violent sodomy analogy to describe a state lawmaker at a public rally.

But alas, we could be hearing less from LePage in the future: His spokesperson announced on Tuesday that the governor’s office will no longer communicate with three leading Maine newspapers, because their parent company, MaineToday Media, “made it clear that it opposed this administration.”

Evidence of this alleged opposition came in the form of a seven-month investigation of Patricia Aho, commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection and a former corporate lobbyist, the results of which were published in the Portland Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal, and the Morning Sentinel. The papers reported that Aho “has scuttled programs and fought against laws that were opposed by many of her former clients in the chemical, drug, oil, and real estate development industries.” The commissioner stalled a 2008 law to keep dangerous chemicals out of children’s products, weakened enforcement of real-estate and development laws, rolled back recycling programs, and oversaw a purge of information from the DEP’s website and a restriction of its employees’ ability to communicate with lawmakers, the public, and each other.

Aho’s performance lines up with LePage’s well-established allegiance to corporations before citizens. Elected in a low-turnout, four-way 2010 contest with only 38 percent of the vote (a whopping 216,000 people), LePage started his term off with a bang by issuing a list of environmental safeguards he hoped to weaken or destroy, including a phaseout of BPA in children’s products (“the worst case is some women may have little beards,” he declared of the chemical’s safety risk). He went on to ban the use of LEED green-building standards for state buildings to keep Maine’s timber industry happy.

Cliff Schechtman, executive editor of the Portland Press Herald, said the newspaper wouldn’t be doing anything differently as a result of the governor’s new edict (aside, I assume, from not calling LePage or his spokesperson for a quote) and offered the Associated Press a simple assessment of the situation:

This is about probing journalism that examines how powerful forces affect the lives of ordinary citizens. That makes the powerful uncomfortable. That’s what this is about.

Indeed, LePage has never had what one would call a comfortable relationship with the press. Last month, he kicked reporters out of the ceremonial signing of a unanimously supported suicide-prevention bill — after complaining that the press wouldn’t want to cover the event. Even before this week’s gag order, the governor refused comment on a myriad of issues and funneled most media requests through his spokesperson, Adrienne Bennett. This is not atypical for a governor, but as the Press Herald reports, LePage’s mistrust of the media verges on the paranoid:

LePage has had a rocky relationship with the press since the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, storming out of a news conference amid questions about his paying property taxes in Maine.

LePage also said that he would like to punch a reporter from the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, during a taped interview with the network. …

In 2012, during a presentation at Waterville Junior High School, LePage told 150 eighth-graders that reading newspapers in Maine is “like paying somebody to tell you lies.”

In February, during a reading with schoolchildren at St. John Catholic School in Winslow, LePage said: “My greatest fear in the state of Maine: newspapers. I’m not a fan of newspapers.”

Bennett pointed out that the MaineToday newspapers can still use the state’s Freedom of Access Act to obtain information about the administration. (The best way to do research on a deadline, as any reporter knows.)

How ironic that the same camp accusing a media outlet of biased reporting has decided to make balanced newsgathering impossible by refusing to offer their point of view. It’s a back-asswards stubbornness that journalists run into frustratingly often, and that sources don’t seem to realize will backfire. When does “no comment” ever make you look good? (At a public hearing on proposed coal terminals in Washington state, for example, some of the few terminal supporters in attendance only talked to me after I pointed out that their refusal to be quoted would force me to write a more one-sided story.)

From the AP:

Kelly McBride, a media ethics specialist from the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism think tank, said such storms between politicians and the media tend to blow over. But in the meantime, she said, the governor’s posture will serve only to make him appear petty and to increase readership of the newspaper series.

“Publishers and editors face belligerent sources all the time. As long as they continue to be loyal to their audience, rather than their sources,” she said, “it usually works out for the journalist.”

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Maine guv freaks out after local media report on his corrupt environment chief

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