Opportunities in the crisis

We don’t use carbon-producing transportation during the No Impact project, so we have to find ways to make a little bit of summer vacation right here in New York City. Today, we went with Isabella, my two-year-old daughter, and played in the Washington Square fountain.

“That was so funny, daddy,” by which she meant that was so much fun. And it was fun for us, too. A couple of friends happened to be walking by and they stopped and chatted and we all laughed and cooled by the spouting water.

Meanwhile, tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of New Yorkers climbed in their cars this weekend to get to the Hamptons or have flown further afield to find other water to play in. Who can blame them? In our emphasis on having a robust economy, we have turned New York City into a cesspool.

Cars crowd our streets making them too noisy, dangerous and filled with exhaust fumes for families to hang out. Raw sewage and chemicals surging into our rivers make them too filthy to swim. Plowing under air-cooling green spaces—to construct more buildings—makes the whole place too hot.

And we do all of those things, supposedly, for the sake of financial efficiency. The city infrastructure is designed so we can all work a little harder and put a little more money in our pockets, which we then have to spend to get away from--you guessed it--the efficient yet unpleasant city infrastructure.

What if we were to emphasize making the place wonderful to live in instead? What if we made New York (and the other cities) the kind of place that we all didn’t feel we needed to get away from? What if we turned the whole city into one massive vacation?

We would just need to make the streets safe to walk, play, hang out, ride bikes and breathe in; clean up the rivers so we could windsurf and swim; grow more trees and less buildings to give us shade and cool air; and build a few more parks and fountains to splash around in.

Imagine a place like that. Not only would that save the hundreds of thousands of cars and airplanes leaving the city and pumping clouds of CO2 into the atmosphere, but it would make where we live a much nicer place. We could use global warming as a reason, not to deprive ourselves of things we want, but to figure out how to live better. That is one of the opportunities I see in our crisis.

Photo of Washington Square Fountain courtesy of TrevorLittle.com

PS If you would like to read more about making http://www.transalt.org the streets of New York better for people, look at the website of Transportation Alternatives.

Comments

[Joe]

While I agree that it would be nice to have safer streets, less air pollution, and more public green spaces in NY... keep in mind that it is due to it's intense population density that residents of the city have one of the smallest ecological footprints in the industrial world. The more you spread things out and reduce the density, the more innefficient the city becomes both economically and ecologically.

Love your blog though!

[Barthox]

This sounds great ...

but what if the tens —if not hundreds — of thousands of New Yorkers climbed in their cars had been to the Washington Square fountain instead of driving to Hampton ...

Would it have been as much fun?

Don't take me wrong , I agree that we all have to make efforts to pollute less, but let's remain realistic ...

[Least Footprint]

Wow...that makes New York sound wonderful,

Cars crowd our streets making them too noisy, dangerous and filled with exhaust fumes for families to hang out. Raw sewage and chemicals surging into our rivers make them too filthy to swim. Plowing under air-cooling green spaces—to construct more buildings—makes the whole place too hot.

I guess my question is: "Why do people stay in the large cities? Is there not a better way?" "What if we abandoned the cities with their crumbling infrastructure and massive pollution and lived in self-sustaining small communities instead?

I mean if butcher, baker and candlestick maker all lived in a walkable community and everyone grew and raised food and shared or traded with their neighbor wouldn't that be better than the concrete jungle?

Oh, wait that would be like it was before and that wouldn't be "progress".

Read "Better Off" Link Here for Used at Powells.com

Eric Brende and his wife lived for twelve months on an energy-free farming community. They then adapted what they learned on a return to a small city. Excellent book.

[Sibylle]

If you live near Central Park and Riverside Park (like we do), New York City is great! No need for the Hamptons! (actually I happened to have been there once to play a concert: I didn't see what's so great about it anyway!). I was wondering where everybody was this weekend - we had our little play garden all to ourselves... Also, least footprint, why is it not possible to live green in a big city, but it is in a small city? NYC is totally walkable, every area has pretty much everything you need (butcher, baker, candlestick maker, and farmer's markets) and if you have to go a little farther, you can use the bike (that's what we do and we're enjoying the city - we just avoid midtown...).

[Sibylle]

oh, Joe, I think you can make streets a lot safer with the same amount of people living in the city with the same amount of density as now. What you need to reduce is the amount of cars! (-: (it just means that people have to walk and bike more instead of using cars - a recent study in NYC shows that a huge percentage of driving in the city is less than 5 miles and the traffic is not generated from the outside, it's NYC people driving!)

[katecontinued]

No Impact Man and Michelle, I found your blog this weekend and read from the beginning. All.Day.Long.

I have been downsizing for a decade or more. (Moved from NYC in '92 after a death). Your approach brings together the major aspects (behaviors, philosophies and meanings) of a life in a way not found in any of the approaches I have read.

In a very personal way I have now made a commitment to challenge myself to a year long experiment for 2008. It is time for me to rachet up my own approach to living. I like this model you provide. I will be 60 the last day of 2007. Time to make-a-plan TM (the name of my company).

I am blessed to be in a kinder climate, So. California farms and several blocks from the Pacific.

[gmpicket]

I find it a little odd that you can dis the city's subway, but play in the city's fountains. The fountains aren't so "green" as they lose 40,000 gallons of water per day due to leakage, spillage, and evaporation (source: http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_newsroom/daily_plants/daily_plant_main.php?id=15031) and my understanding is that the fountain in Washington Square park is one of the worst offenders.

[bman]

A place like that exists. We call it The Country. Preferably in the Midwest, but that's up for debate.

[Sarah]

I'm really hoping this doesn't turn into a city vs. country debate. Each has its merits and its drawbacks (plus not all cities are the same -- Houston or Atlanta certainly aren't New York or San Francisco.

I've lived in big cities almost my whole life and I adore city life, particularly in Brooklyn, which has been my home for the past 18 years. I love being able to walk, bike, or take public transportation pretty much anywhere; I love that I have access to wonderful parks, public beaches, zoos, museums, farmers markets, food coops, restaurants, shops etc etc etc. I love the simultaneous small-town feel of my hood and the cosmopolitanism and internationalism of the city. My kids love our local playground, with its fabulous sprinklers, the NY Aquarium, the Brooklyn Museum, our local Indian restaurant, and our neighborhood CSA.

Since we live in a brownstone, our house stays pretty cool in the summer, except for major heatwaves, so we run ceiling fans to keep the house cool. In the winter the 6 inches of brick and houses on either side of us insulate us from a lot of the cold, so we can keep the thermostat pretty low (when we lived in apartment buildings, we just turned off all the radiators and absorbed the heat from lower floors). We don't have a lawn that needs watering, and when we hang out on our stoop playing games, we can chat with our neighbors.

But it can get hot, stinky, crowded, and overwhelming, and then we jump in the car and visit my parents up in Columbia county. It's significantly cooler up there, and it's nice to be able to hike in the nearby State Park. We buy produce from farmstands along the road or pick it in my parents' garden or at local pick-your-own places, and the kids have a lot of space to run around. It's quiet and relaxing. You're necessarily more self-sufficient: no getting pizza when it's dinner time, for example.

When we're out of milk, though, we have to drive to the nearest shop, rather than walk around the corner. In fact, everyone has to drive everywhere -- unless you have a horse and buggy, there's no other form of transportation. Rural areas are mostly homogenous racially and ethnically, which I suppose you could see as a plus or a minus, depending on your perspective (for me it's a major drawback).

Ultimately, my choice to live in a big city had nothing to do with my environmental outlook, although the reasons that I don't want to live in the suburbs -- the tyranny of the automobile, the atomization of human relationships, the consumerism etc -- have significant environmental components. I don't think of NY as a "concrete jungle"; considering how many parks and trees there are (and a wildlife preserve in the middle of Queens!), that's a pretty hidebound way of imagining it. Rather, to me, New York is a vibrant, heterogeneous, cosmopolitan, less-than-perfect place in which we can live amazingly full lives with surprisingly low environmental impact. It's not for everyone, but it doesn't have to be -- there are plenty of people who want to live here!

[katecontinued]

Sarah, When I lived in NYC I was delighted there were so many people who detested the idea of living in the city. Otherwise, it would be more overwhelmed than it already was. I enjoyed your comments on diversity and freedom from a vehicle. I miss those things dearly.

[Bob Uva]

No Impact Man,

I commend you for seeking ways to have fun "in" the city. I moved from the Boston suburbs to Portland, Oregon eleven years ago and I couldn't be happier with this city. There is so much mindshare and activity about sustaining a livable city. Check out Portland's Office of Sustainable Development for ideas.

[Rebecca]

That would be nice for every city. I for one am rather sick of the "good idea" to put black top on the roads. It just seems to make things hotter than they already are. It would be nice if there were fewer cars, more green spaces, more trees for shade. Here they seem to cut down trees that shed their leaves because the trees are trying to conserve water to stay alive. Guess people here in KY dont understand that is what a tree does to stay alive. DUH! Granted sometimes they are sick or diseased but they could at least wait until next spring to figure that out.

[James Chen]

Last week, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies -- whose temperature records are a key component of the global-warming claim (and whose director, James Hansen, is a sort of godfather of global-warming alarmism) -- quietly corrected an error in its data set that had made recent temperatures seem warmer than they really were.

A little less than a decade ago, the U.S. government changed the way it recorded temperatures. No one thought to correlate the new temperatures with the old ones, though -- no one until Canadian researcher Steve McIntyre, that is.

McIntyre has become the bane of many warmers' religious-like belief in climate catastrophe. In 2003, along with economist Ross McKitrick, McIntyre demolished the Mann "hockey stick" --a graph that showed stable temperatures for 1,000 years, then shooting up dangerously in the last half of the 20th Century.

The graph was used prominently by the UN and nearly every major eco lobby. But McIntyre and McKitrick demonstrated it was based on incomplete and inaccurate data. To NASA's credit, when McIntyre pointed out their temperature errors they quickly made corrections.

Still, the pro-warmers who dominate the Goddard Institute almost certainly recognized the impacts these changes would have on the global-warming debate, because they made no formal announcement of their recalculations.

In many cases, the changes are statistically minor, but their potential impact on the rhetoric surrounding global warming is huge. The hottest year since 1880 becomes 1934 instead of 1998, which is now just second; 1921 is third.

Four of the 10 hottest years were in the 1930s, only three in the past decade. Claiming that man-made carbon dioxide has caused the natural disasters of recent years makes as much sense as claiming fossil-fuel burning caused the Great Depression. The 15 hottest years since 1880 are spread over seven decades. Eight occurred before atmospheric carbon dioxide began its recent rise; seven occurred afterwards.

In other words, there is no discernible trend, no obvious warming of late.

Read it, and weep here: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.html?id=61b0590f-c5e6-4772-8cd1-2fefe0905363

[Jeff]

Richard Register and the Ecocity Builders have worked towards implementing sustainable urban development in small parts of California. Register has written a book, Ecocities (Amazon.com), that is about re-building cities and towns based on ecological principles for the long term sustainability, cultural vitality and health of the Earth's biosphere. A VERY interesting book.

[Least Footprint]

Sibylle: Also, least footprint, why is it not possible to live green in a big city, but it is in a small city?

I suppose it is possible to personally live green in a big city or a small city. However, it is not possible to live collectively green in a very large city like NYC because they become so dense that, as a necessity, they are built high into the sky and deep into the earth.

I don't doubt there are many living personally green in NYC, and most other large cities, but the large city concept does not lean toward conservation and living green. The focus is instead on conquest of resources, the elements and the sky. Build it bigger, taller, shinier, the list goes on. The focus of pride is not on efficiency but rather on how big and sparkling the city can be. The truth is, using NYC as an example, the city would not be big and sparkling if it were not for the coal from Kentucky to generate electricity, the Natural Gas from Texas to power the steam plants, the oil from the middle east to run the cabs and buses, water from the Catskills to quench your thirst, garbage dumps in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia to accept your garbage, food from across the globe to feed all eight million residents etc. All of these services must be in place and working flawlessly in order to keep a city as large as NYC alive. Large cities are not dependent on each other and their local community, they are dependent on the entire world.

I live near Portland OR and have chosen a small suburb to the west because there are plenty of bike lanes and transit. Traffic is horrendous though so it is still not ideal. I recently positioned myself within this suburb so I am walking distance to nearly everything I need. That is a big step toward green for me.

Cities continue to build high into the sky and push deep into the earth. There is a great sell-off of arable land to large corporations for factory farms, big box stores and more suburbs dependent on the large cities. Self-sufficient small town America has nearly disappeared and with it our sense of community as well.

We also take it for granted that the creaky infrastructure in our big cities will continue to sustain them. We, in the suburbs assume the city will always be there to sustain us. Without the massive hidden infrastructure though our current mode of living does not work. Infrastructure crumbles quickly and there never seems to be the dollars to properly maintain it, thus, we live very fragile lives. Only time will tell if we have made good decisions as a society or not.

[Isle Dance]

Exactly. This is why I live "on vacation." It's such a delightful way to go. :)

[Sibylle]

I'm not only interested in living greener because of global warming so denying its existence doesn't really change my outlook all that much although man made global warming as a possibility gives the outlook a bit more urgency. What makes me wonder though, James, is this: it's very possible that the global warming numbers are wrong or fudged, but how come so many regular people with no numbers are noticing things that indicate a possible problem? Ice is melting in Greenland (very clearly for the natives to see - whole villages have been swallowed by water already), and glaciers are melting and retreating everywhere. In the country where I come from, Switzerland, every single glacier is retreating at unprecedented rates. I heard it's the same here (certainly in Glacier National Park...). How do you square that with your numbers? Did that happen around 1880, 1921, and 1934 as well? It's possible that those years were hotter than the ones of this decade, but they might not have had the same impact if they were isolated occurrences. But if this decade as a whole was warmer than the other decades then that could explain the bigger impact, no?

Sarah, thanks for your lovely post about the city! That's exactly why I love it here!

Isn't the problem, least footprint, also: where do you put those 8 million people (we can't just kill all of us off, right?). And I think, wherever you put 8 million people, they will use up resources, whether it's in 16 half a million towns or in 8 1 million cities, or each in his or her own house in the country side, etc. It's true that there is a "bigger is better" mentality in big cities, but I also see it in "the country": I've never seen box stores or single family houses for that matter as big as outside of the city, for example. And as other people have mentioned, the tyranny of the car takes up a lot of resources as well (it's great you are escaping that tyranny!). So, my solution is: let's convince, cajole the 8 million people to be more green, wherever they are. For that matter, let's convince 330 million people! (-:

[Meghan]

I was in NYC this past weekend and hung out at the Columbus Circle fountains with my one year old. It was a nice reprieve from the hustle and bustle but overall, it was loud, hot, stinky and I was sick and tired of getting pushed around so rudely and having doors slammed shut on my daughter's stroller. I wore her on my back for a while, but so many people slammed into her, she was crying and miserable so I thought at least the stroller would protect her a little. I am from Upstate NY and after many, many trips to NYC, I am always glad to leave. I am a strong believer though that some people have it in their blood to live there and some don't.

As for greening it up so less people have to leave. I couldn't agree more. But this crazy wheel of consumerism has to stop. Soon. Greening the outside will only help if people have a massive paradigm shift - along the lines of the NIM project. Just consume LESS! But we are not even close to that yet. So many people rushing into any one of a gazillion corner Starbucks for their overpriced lattes in plastic cups with domed lids oozing whipped cream - rushing around, consuming, wasting, trashing the city. It's sad to see. And it's sad to see all the industrial trashing too. I rode in from Long Island on the LIRR and NYC is surrounded by piles of old industrial junk.

The day i was in town there was a 'tornado' in Brooklyn and tons of flooding all over and subways were shut down. I couldn't help think that this is soon to be a very common experience with global warming. I hate to say it, but the opportunity you speak of may be too late, for coastal cities like NYC and Boston at least. But hopefully we will learn from the dreadful mistakes of making messes that we need to run from for our 'vacations.' (And then of course we just trash someplace else while on 'vacation' but hey, that's not our problem.)

Sorry for the cynicism, it's just sad that my daughter is inheriting this very dirty and abused planet. I am ashamed of my parent's generation and my generation.

[Least Footprint]

Sibylle: Perhaps all my years as a government desk rat have swayed my opinion on large buildings. {-: I hate them! But I certainly wouldn't advocate wiping out all eight million of you. Just don't all move to Oregon. (-:

I really do love the country but if it means commuting and wasting a lot of gas, time and money I'll stick closer to the action for now.

As to vacation, since I think that is what this post was really all about and I got sidetracked a bit, we didn't stay in our fair city this year but we did stay within 150 miles from home and had a great time riding bikes, hiking and rafting. We didn't even eat out at all. No jetting off to faraway places like past years.

James Chen: I'm with Sybille on this one. Living in the Northwest and being a hiker I have seen the glaciers here melt and wipe out the trails and roads on the mountains firsthand. Especially Rainier. It altered my plans for summer big time. I have also traveled through Glacier and have seen with my own eyes the depleted glaciers there as well.

I don't know about the skewed numbers but Twain once send there are three types of lies. "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics" That might solve the numbers problem, but other evidence is readily apparent.

[James Chen]

Personal anecdotes about warmer weather aren't proof of anything. Just because I've been through two "Blizzards of the Century" doesn't mean the planet is undergoing a deep freeze. What really matters is accurate temperature data taken at appropriate intervals in relevant locations. And that's why the Goddard Institute's latest temperature adjustments are significant. If they are accurate, they blow the Global Warming argument out of the water by showing the cyclical nature of the earth's temperature.

Like our own earth's rotation around the sun, global temperature data is cyclical. Our weather never stays consistent over time. For example, Greenland was named "Greenland" because it used to be much warmer when Vikings first settled there 1000 years ago. Then came the "Little Ice Age" around the 13th century which lasted several hundred years and led to localized weather conditions such as the freezing of the Thames and glacierization throughout Europe, North America and even Africa. The key point is that our earth used to be much warmer, well before industrialization but within our recorded history.

Now most of us have no memory dating back to the time of the Vikings or of the great cooling of the earth that occurred when the Krakatoa volcano exploded in 1883. But if you did, you would notice a cycle of warming and cooling that often lasts hundreds or even thousands of years.

Keep in mind, too, that the earth's weather has been positively correlated with phenomena such as sunspot activity and the "wobble" in the earth's orbit around the sun. Does it surprise people to hear that our orbit around the sun isn't a perfect ellipse, and is affected by everything from comets to the cooling of the earth's core (Global Cooling!)?

Also keep in mind that Russia just lay claim to the vast oil deposits that exists beneath the North Pole, How did this oil get there? It turns our that today's Arctic wasteland to be a lush habitat rich in animal and plant life millions of years ago, well before we humans came onto the scene.

Think out of the box, people. You're all acting like lemmings with global warming. You should consume less because your life and bank account will became richer as a result, not because Al Gore (he got a "D" in geology/natural sciences at Harvard) tells you so.

[Simply Authentic]

http://emcglass.blogspot.com/2007/08/frugal-subversive-award.html

Just wanted you to know that I am in awe of everything you are doing this year and am so impressed by the awareness that you are creating, not only within yourself but for plenty of us "outsiders" as well. I enjoy your insights and opinions. I'm not sure that you participate in "blog awards" but wanted you to know that I have awarded you with the Frugal Subversives Award and have advertised your blog on that posting. Good luck with the rest of your project!

[Sibylle]

You should consume less because your life and bank account will became richer as a result, not because Al Gore (he got a "D" in geology/natural sciences at Harvard) tells you so.

Well, James, that's exactly what I'm saying! I was interested in ecology and green ideas way before there was so much talk of global warming. And there are even many more reasons for living a peaceful green life: beauty (I happen to find real nature beautiful), inner peace and fulfillment by slowing down the pace and not participating in the rat race and consumerism, health, I want to keep the animals around (I love them!), less reasons for wars for resources, more harmony within society (well, more socialism would help too and I'm sure you don't agree on that one!) and yes, also my personal bank account.
I don't understand why you think we care so much about Al Gore, I haven't even seen the movie and I don't intend to see it in the near future!

[Dee Lightly]

I'm 24 now, and I'm starting to think that playing in the Washington Square fountain will never not be fun. If you maintain the same sense of play that your 2 year old daughter has, New York is already like a vacation spot.

I used to think I could never live outside a metropolitan area. Recently, though, I've found that going to the country (even if for a little while) can be refreshing in a way you wouldn't imagine. I love New York, but the spots of the US barely touched by human hands are really beautiful. I hope to see as much as possible before it's gone, or I'm gone, whichever comes first.

[James]

How exactly does NYC have a small ecological footprint when you consider the power lines being run with eminent domain abuse in not only uprooting families from their homes, but trees and natural habitat all the way from lake Ontario to the city?

[Michael S]

Thanks for mentioning the book "Better Off" by Eric Brende.

I believe I found Brende's Thesis Statement on page 10

... not to rid the world of technology but to ascertain more carefully how much - or how little - technology was needed. Was there some baseline of minimal machinery needed for human convenience, comfort, and sociability - a line below which physical effort was too demanding and above which machines began to create their own demands? Or if there was no such absolute mid-point, was there perhaps a rule of thumb or a formula for arriving at practical compromise in varied circumstances?