by Tina Grazier
One of the big issues for the sustainable crowd is URBAN SPRAWL. They hate it! Urban sprawl is said to create a blight on the landscape…the word is issued as if spit from the mouth. We are supposed to cringe at the very thought. Urban sprawl, they say, is responsible for the excessive use of cars…and cars, as we are told again and again, are responsible for THE deadly greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the entire planet to die. And there is only one thing to do…change everything and of course, do without!
Most who follow this line of thinking offer a twofold solution. First get folks to stop driving and take the bus or train. Next, in order to put a halt to the sprawl, we must give up our sprawling yards, sprawling houses and sprawling malls with their sprawling parkinglots. We must move into little boxes built one on top of the othersitting right next to another stack of boxesand another and on down the street. We wont mind, they say, because we’ll be able to walk or cycle to shopping, doctors, schools and jobs. (Rarely a mention of churches, but we wont nit pick.) Some of the people who push this agenda are so bold as to tell us that since this plan is for our own good we will be forced into adopting it whether we like it or notwe might as well just give in and take our medicinehmph!
Well! I found a great website, “newgeography.com,” where I discovered a fantastic article, “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Policy: From Rhetoric To Reason, by Wendell Cox. Anyone who is seriously interested in finding solutions that work, rather than merely being rabid about pushing the green agenda, will want to read this article and probably bookmark the site. Heres a taste:
There are at least two ways to comprehensively reduce GHG emissions — not surprisingly, a right way and a wrong way. *** The wrong way is typified by the conventional wisdom among many puritanical urban planners, These social engineers have been frustrated for decades, failing to herd automobile drivers into transit and new residents into pre-War densities. All the while, their demons — the expansion of home ownership that could only have occurred by building on cheap land on the urban fringe and the greater mobility provided by the automobile — have been major contributors to the democratization of prosperity. Throughout the first world, from the United States to Western Europe and Japan, poverty levels have fallen markedly as more households take part in the quality of life mainstream. Women have been liberated to become near-equal economic players and low income households, including many that are African-American or Hispanic, have entered the middle class and beyond. *** There is a better way. It involves careful examination of the potential, costs and benefits of competing strategies to reduce GHG emissions. This is the right way, because it allows using the least expensive strategies, while minimizing economic harm (read minimizing the expansion of poverty). *** The consulting firm, McKinsey and Company has set out an impressive blueprint that accomplishes just that (Reducing US Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much and at What Cost? Note 2). Taking the International Panel on Climate Change maximum standard of $50 per metric ton of carbon dioxide removed, McKinsey shows that the United States could reduce its GHG emissions by 28 percent by 2030, using strategies with marginal costs of less than $50 per ton. McKinsey notes that this can be accomplished while maintaining comparable levels of consumer utility. This means, according to McKinsey, no change in thermostat settings or appliance use, no downsizing of vehicles, home or commercial space and traveling the same mileage (though they do envision car mileage improvements more substantial than called for in the recent federal energy bill). In other words, no social engineering. Again, read no expansion of poverty and no need to set course toward an 18th century future. (red highlite is mine)
Read the article (and follow the links)you will definitely learn something!
(special note to Quentin: This article is one that I think represents those who seek solutions that “work for everyone”.)