Climate Cities

Tailpipe Spin

NASCAR plans switch to unleaded racing fuel Mechanics, crews, and NASCAR dads will be able to wheeze a little easier beginning in 2008 — that’s when the racing body plans to switch its cars and trucks from leaded to unleaded fuel. Though it’s exempt from the Clean Air Act’s unleaded requirement, NASCAR’s nonetheless been looking […]

Why greens should join forces with gardeners to face down the bull dozers in LA.

Even though I abandoned Brooklyn for the Appalachians, I'm no sentimental pastoralist. I'm a long-term disciple of the great urban theorist (and champion of cities) Jane Jacobs. Human history since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago has been a history of cities. Cities are the future; as David Owen's superb article "Green Manhattan" (PDF) shows, they may be our only hope. The trick is to create agricultural systems within and just outside of cities, minimizing the ruinous effects of long-haul freight transit, slashing the fossil-fuel inputs embedded in food production, maximizing availability of fresh delicious food, and boosting local and even neighborhood economies.

Farmers' markets have been the most visible effort at creating sustainable urban food networks. Equally if not more important, although virtually invisible to well-heeled urban foodies who laudably support farmers' markets, inner-city gardening projects represent a vanguard in the effort to overthrow industrial food and reintroduce sustainably grown, delicious food to populations that were knocked off the land a generation or two ago.

There's been a lot of talk around here about whether or not humanity's future requires messing up Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s ocean view from "the Vineyard." (I say, the hell with him. Mess it up!) This story may be more important, though: An LA developer wants to bulldoze a 14-acre community garden, with 360 family plots, right in the middle of an industrial zone in South Central. The city should be paying these people to do what they're doing, for all the environmental and social benefits they're creating. At the very least, the city should buy the land back from the developer and make the garden permanent.

LA greens, and I know you're out there, get out and man the barricades with those brave gardeners.

Stockholm-ward Bound

Stockholm is second Euro capital to charge for driving into the city All the cool cities are doing it! (Wait, is Stockholm cool?) This week, Sweden’s capital began a trial run of a new system that will charge for the privilege of driving into the city, and officials have declared it a success so far. […]

Two new books on nature reveal three writers’ ways of seeing

“It was on Cape Cod during fall a few years back, after the century fell but before the towers did, that I began paying a series of visits to the writer John Hay.” With this opening line in The Prophet of Dry Hill, David Gessner sets the tone for a quest that is both personal […]

Enviros need to get social, says activist-turned-sociologist Marshall Ganz

Most of us can probably name a grandfather or great-aunt who was active in a chapter of a national association. My own uncle was a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Yet how many of us can say the same about ourselves? Marshall Ganz. Photo: Harvard University/Justin Ide. As voluntary associations fade […]

Small Wonder

Sales of some big SUVs drop by half It’s an early Christmahanukwanzakah present for the planet, and a chunk of coal in the stocking of Detroit’s Big Three automakers: The American love affair with huge SUVs seems finally to be on the wane. Really this time! Sales of once-hot vehicles like the Ford Explorer and […]

Character Building

Sierra Club celebrates eco-friendly building projects in new report The Sierra Club has often gone to court to stop bad development schemes, but now the venerable green group is trying the carrot instead of the stick. The group has released its first “Guide to America’s Best New Development Projects,” which gives kudos to builders putting […]

I Wish They All Could Be California Copycats

New York, Massachusetts to adopt tougher auto-emissions standards The New York State Environmental Board voted unanimously this month to adopt California’s toughest-in-the-nation rules for cutting automotive greenhouse-gassiness. The new rules, which will be phased in with 2009 model-year cars, aim to cut carbon dioxide emissions about 30 percent by 2016 — effectively improving auto fuel […]

Beep Beep, Beep Beep, Yeah!

Car mileage testing will catch up with reality, EPA declares After years of criticism from greens and independent testing groups, the U.S. EPA announced on Friday that its rules for testing automobile fuel economy will finally be updated and revised. New standards should be in place for testing 2008 model year cars. It’s a move […]

A Bottle of Red, a Gas Tank of White

France’s wine glut turned into biofuel It was the best of times for French drivers; it was the worst of times for French oenophiles. Beset by fierce international competition and flattened domestic sales, France’s vintners this year will distill about 133 million bottles’ worth of surplus wine into ethanol, which will be added to gasoline […]