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Sobering Fact: All America’s Households Could Fit in California

the effects of suburban sprawlSobering Fact #2:

When it comes to American development over the past half century, suburban sprawl is the issue. Unlike the efficiency that comes with urban construction, suburban planning to date is an expansive practice that spreads habitation out across virgin, natural land to carve it up with fences, utilities and roads. It is easy to lose sight of how much land we occupy in the United States vs. how much there is vs. how much we really need. Suburban development has lead us to stretch across the country covering vastly more space than we need to.

There are an estimated 115 million households in the United States. Let us assume that we gave every person a detached single-family home on a full acre of land all to themselves–most people in America cannot make such a boast. Without any multi-family buildings, no apartment complexes, no project housing; all of the homes in America would take up 179,688 square miles. The state of California is 163,696 square miles, nearly able to fit all of them taking up less than 5% of the total 3.8 million square miles in the country.  While this does not include numerous amounts of other program and transportation, it also is granting most of the country more land than we have. After all, in New York City the average resident density is 42.8 people per acre and that is with one of the highest concentrations of commercial space in the world.

map of the state of california in AmericaPhoto Credit: Philly.com


Sobering Facts 
26

Can We Ditch Reality Shows and Focus on Reality?

reality televisionI have always been puzzled by the allure of reality television. In trying to decipher a method to the madness of Survivor, the Bachelor or Joe Millionaire, I can  imagine that viewers are partially intrigued by challenges that are presented and overcome. When seemingly “normal” folk accomplish this variety of tests, the viewers can better relate being there themselves. It’s why we watch game shows like Wheel of Fortune, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire or Double Dare. So if the challenge is what we like to see, why exactly can we not focus on the real challenges we have for ourselves, like the myriad of sustainable opportunities laid before us, and participate in something on the right side of the screen? Is it possible to blur the lines of tangible action and entertainment to promote involvement and produce better results for a movement like sustainability?

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Cultural 
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‘Can’ the Car or ‘Green’ the Car? The Future of Autos

Cars vs TransitMost major transit initiatives can currently be divided into two camps: those that want to make our transportation landscape greener by creating alternatives to car travel vs. those that want to create a greener generation of automobiles. Arguably, both pursuits can lead towards the same goal of reducing environmental impact but each option brings with it significant directional decisions as to the future of our culture and how we design the built environment. In the end there may not be one universal option that fits a country like the U.S., but different courses whose implementation should follow the demands between urban and suburban development.

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Urban Planning 
5

Sobering Fact: The Energy for America’s Gasoline Could Power 1/4 All American Homes

historic gasoline pumpsEvery so often we find a bit of knowledge that refocuses our perspective on reality; a sobering fact for the repercussions of our daily routines. I have decided to begin to share them here and the first one is how much energy we use not to drill for oil, not transport it and not burn it in cars, but refine it from barrels of crude into gallons of gasoline.

Sobering Fact #1

Gasoline is the centerpiece of our the American petroleum industry, comprising just over 46% of refinery output in the country. In 2008, Americans used a total of 137.8 billion gallons of gasoline, or around 380 million gallons per day, according to the Department of Energy. Gasoline accounts for 62% of all energy used for transportation. Naturally all of this product comes from oil with 18.5 gallons of gas refined from every 42-gallon U.S. barrel of crude, meaning that we need 7.5 billion barrels to satisfy our hunger for gas. Some estimates peg the energy required to refine a single gallon of gasoline at 9,317 BTUs or 2.73 kWh. This would earmark 376 billion kWh of electricity annually to turn oil into gas. Given that the average home uses roughly 12,000 kWh every year and that estimates for the number of households in the United States are as high as 115 million… this energy could power one quarter of all American homes.

Photo Credit: lcss.net

 

Sobering Facts 
3

Green Building Ebbs Slightly in Recession, But Sentiment Remains Strong

Tight economic times have a way of recalibrating priorities. According to a recent study, although the economic weight of the recession has caused a small retreat in sentiment for green building in design and construction professionals, the vast majority still promote building sustainably to their respective clients, helping to stoke a global green building industry worth $558 billion in 2009. Fewer, however, remained supportive of seeking LEED certification for buildings as a means for a more public display of green efforts.

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Economic 
11

An Answer to Jobs, Health, and Climate is a Recycling Bill

glass bottles and bagsWhile factions squabble over such big ticket political items as health care, climate change and job creation, there is an answer that could help all fronts without ramming into core partisan issues: recycling. A federal course to mandate recycling and the use of recycled content would provide benefit to numerous areas on the administration’s agenda.

Many view the recent past as not being the federal government’s finest hour. The traffic jam of partisan politics has forced numerous efforts on Capitol Hill to progress at a crawl. Congress members continue to suggest drastic, sweeping changes to different areas of the economy while the country emerges from a recession. After hours are spent pitching changes that make such a big splash the inevitable occurs and efforts at compromise are discarded in deference to a defiant standoff—which accomplishes nothing.

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Political 
104

Dubai: The Nemesis of Sustainability

shoreline of dubai with hotelThere are a number of encouraging examples of cities trying to slowly evolve themselves into a vision of urban sustainability. Implementing bike infrastructure, upgrading the ecology of alternative transit, increasing recycling and addressing the state of our energy production systems are all noteworthy efforts being tackled by numerous cities around the world. But despite the show of goodwill, there are other examples that force one to wonder if we are simply taking two steps back for each that we take forward. The city of Dubai, rising in defiance to the surrounding environment of coastal deserts in the United Arab Emirates, stands as the hallmark of a digressing trend taking us farther away from the goals of a new cultural reality. As a poster child of modern ingenuity driven by the perpetual desire of humanity for unbounded excess, the city of Dubai casts a long shadow over our path to a greener future.

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Urban Planning 
1

The Mistake of Nuclear Subsidies

birdseye nuclear facilityIn efforts to try and parley with conservatives, President Obama recently announced $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees for Southern Company to build two new nuclear power reactors. As the Democrats’ control of the Senate begins to unravel and the President’s term-long agenda follows a similar fall into uncertainty, the political footwork is not surprising. However, it may also not be not wise. Not only will it fail to produce any new Republican support on a trying to produce comprehensive climate legislation, but the President’s olive branch to nukes will do no more than set the taxpayers up for yet one more “loan” to corporate America–laced with risk.

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Infrastructural 
103

Recycling vs. Upcycling: What is the difference?

pile of plastic bottles for recycling Over the last decade the term “Upcycling” has been coined and worked into the discourse of sustainability efforts. It appeared in William McDonough’s book, Cradle to Cradle. It has yet to earn itself mainstream popularity, but its necessity as a goal for how we should be progressing makes its definition important. Like so many things in sustainability, I come across many enthusiasts who are trying to promote the practice but may be passing around an incorrect meaning.

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Infrastructural 
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Borrowing Less, Saving More: That’s Sustainability

four credit cardsSustainability is still young enough in the minds of Americans for most of us to think of it as only being associated with buying hybrids, using CFLs and recycling our bottles and cans. In reality, sustainability is an encompassing topic that affects every aspect of how we live in a perpetual search for balance. When it comes to sustainability, our economy has a long way to go, but having Americans revert from their incessant spending of money (that we often don’t have) and actually saving so that we can afford things that we want is a step in the right direction.

An article in the Wall Street Journal recently highlighted the fact that credit card borrowing in the U.S. decreased for an 11th month in a row—an unprecedented occurrence since the Federal Reserve Bank began keeping track of the figures in 1943. According to the Fed, borrowing in the fourth quarter decreased at an annual 4.75%. Not only were Americans borrowing less, but saving more to boot. The article reported that savings as a percentage of personal income had risen to 4.6% in 2009 from 2.7% in 2008.

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Economic