Discussion on:

Why cities are on the 'cutting edge of environmentalism'

It is sad that as a community of scientists, engineers and other innovators we now need need to justify innovation, good design and efficiency at the alter of "climate change". Outside of catering to a small circle of political , intellectual and social elites, we need to realize we lose credibility with the vast majority of people who see through it.

Everything you talk about in this report could stand on its own as innovative, profitable, resourceful and efficient without artificially justifying it all on junk climate science.

Point good designers and engineers at a problem, with funding and a free market opportunity, and the results are amazing Point us at the same problem with regulations, bureaucrats and green political agendas, and you've wasted time, talent and money.

and, as usual, the naysayers on the truth of 'climate change' will try
to keep us on the same old track of "It's mine and I'll do what I want
to do and the hell with you." That's too bad.
One of the very big positives that comes from building down to a
more human scale is the amount of land that is left natural. Too
many life forms in the world are approaching extinction because we
continue to take their life-sustaining land away from them to place
on our altar of 'development.' (from KosmiKoyote)

...not "human scale". It doesn't matter how densely we think we can
pack our cities. At the rate of global population growth, it's not
possible to forever continue growing upwards any more than it's
possible to grow outwards.

What started as an interesting article was spoiled by introducing right wing versus left wing ideology references, and suggesting a consortium of big business tore up steet car tracks. Nonsense. People really liked the idea of not living cheek-by-jowl with many others, and the automobile gave them that choice. Developers and manufacturers just swept in to fill that demand. But indeed we need compact, hi-density living environments. Cities are where we keep all our surplus people. We need the rest of the space so they can get out a couple of weeks a year and live with nature. For myself, our trees sequester six-times our annual carbon emissions, our gardens easily produce half our food, and I walk about five kilometers a day without leaving my yard, if I stay home. We can cycle with minimum engagement with traffic, or on the park pathways for dozens of miles. We are lucky, and the difference is that there are too many of you others.

I have seen some great ideas on here, but I have to agree with cd3rd on this point.

Many ideas presented here are very expensive and require huge government subsidies to implement. Yet other worthy ideas that are far cheaper get sidelined because of politics.

Stick a green label on something expensive and there is public outrage from the green community because it is not implemented without question. Offer a cost effective alternative that does 90 percent of the performance for 80 percent of the cost and you are suddenly called a global warming naysayer.

It stinks when good, cost effective science that has a proven ROI losses credibility with the public when the cost effective benefits of cleaning up the environment are over shadowed by the jaw jacking of people pushing an agenda like global warming.

You may be surprised to hear that majorities of people support initiatives to cleanup the environment. Myself being one such person.

I would rather hear of solid science being used to address a long proven problem like pollution feeding high asthmas rates than tainting good scientific work by needlessly using a hot button topic to support it.

A great example is the growing use of coal in Chinas power plants. People franticly yell about cleaning up the CO2 from them to slow global warming while ignoring the proven science that those same plants pump out tons of mercury and lead emissions every day.

An easier and less controversial argument could get the Chinese to clean up the planets now with proven cost effective technology to address the mercury and coal emissions. Technology which, by the way, would slightly reduce the CO2 output at the same time.

But because they cannot get the CO2 they ignore the rest of the poison. An ignorant and shortsighted strategy all in the name of an agenda.

- - - But we had suburbs that were also walkable and transit oriented, they were called streetcar suburbs. There were massive streetcar systems all around the United States. They were torn up after WWII by a consortium of GM, Standard Oil, and Firestone, and they were all replaced with buses, which became less and less desirable as they got stuck in the same traffic as cars. We transitioned away from a pattern that was pretty healthy. - - -

There was a day when you could jump on a streetcar in Salem NH and go to Boston or even Cape Cod by changing cars just 3 or 4 times.