Ecoman
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Stowe refutes Cameron’s bicycle-on-trains assertions
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., MAY 1, 2008 7A
Eco Man
Now is the time for bikes on trains
By Richard M. Stowe
In his Talking Transportation column Fit people on trains before bikes, Mr. Cameron rages against the “pro-bike lobby,” which he describes as “well organized, very vocal and relentless.” “Fit people” revolves around a string of assertions and four alleged facts. Regarding fact No. 4, Mr. Cameron admits confusion; he’s not sure if its fact, or opinion.
Cameron: “What is it about “bikers” that they feel their rights trump those of other commuters?”
Stowe: Cyclists didn’t create the crowding on the New Haven Line, nor are we seeking to prevent anyone from boarding Metro-North trains, whether with a set of golf clubs, or a baby stroller at any hour, or on any day.
Cyclists aren’t out to squelch the rights of other commuters, what we’re seeking are equal rights, a very pro-American notion.
It’s the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council that Mr. Cameron leads, which took an injudicious position at its March 19th meeting by striking all, but 13 words of a resolution primarily written to encourage Metro-North Railroad “to safely and securely accommodate bicycles on New Haven Line train cars.”
Cameron: Bikers have no more “right” to bring bicycles on crowded rush-hour trains than I have to haul aboard a steamer trunk.
Stowe: This statement implies that steamer trunks, or their modern variants – suitcases with rollers, are prohibited at peak hours, but they’re not, nor should they be, but bicycles are!
Deconstructing Mr. Cameron’s facts:
Cameron: (No. 1) There’s no room for bikes at rush hours.
Stowe: Not all rush hour trains are equally crowded at all stations; the extent of crowding is time and location dependent. When a peak hour train is less crowded, the revenue of a cyclist’s fare benefits Metro-North.
Cameron: Heck, we don’t have seats for paying passengers, let alone bicycles.
Stowe: In his column Saving the Bar Cars, Mr. Cameron, a self-confessed teetotaler, sings praises about efforts spearheaded by alcoholic-drinks-on-trains advocate Terri Cronin and her commuter council posse to lobby for bar cars, which he describes as analogous to Metro-North’s holy grail. But Mr. Cameron fails to inform his readers of the trade-off: a loss of a minimum of 72 seats per M-8 bar car.
According to C-DOT officials, ten M-8 bar cars are on order; that’s a loss of 720 seats. Mr. Cameron’s thinking: a seat sacrificed for alcoholic beverage consumption is good, but a seat lost for a bicycle, a vehicle for invigorating exercise to and from train stations, is unconscionable?
With seats already removed, perhaps peak-hour bike parking can be integrated into bar cars. Drinks aren’t served in the a.m. peak.
Cameron: And the M-8 cars that are coming won’t change that crowding for many, many years given annual ridership increases averaging five percent.
Stowe: 380 M-8 cars plus 132 M-2 cars rehabbed in a “critical-systems-replacement” program, equals a forty percent increase in train cars and at least a thirty percent increase in seats.
Cameron: (No. 2) Bikes are already allowed on non-rush hour trains. And they’re carried for free. So quit your whining.
Stowe: We’re not whining. Section 66 of New York State Railroad Law, to quote the New York Times, mandates “free transportation of bicycles as baggage.” Section 66 states “no such passenger shall be required to crate, cover, or otherwise protect any such bicycle,” nor does it permit peak hour restrictions.
Cameron: (No. 3) if you’re heading for New York City, you don’t need a bike. Mass transit is plentiful, so leave your Cannondale in Cannondale.
Stowe: For intrastate travel in Connecticut, where mass transit is infrequent and doesn’t deliver the “last mile,” bicycle travel in tandem with trains is essential.
Cameron: (No. 4) I don’t think there’s any demand for bikes among city-bound commuters.
Stowe: Caltrain officials said the same thing before instituting its 24-7 bikes-on-trains program, but in the San Jose to San Francisco corridor cyclists travel to and from all stations.
In 2007 a record breaking 2300 bikes-on-trains customers boarded Caltrain daily. That accounts for 6.2 percent of Caltrain riders. What’s good for California in this case is good for Connecticut.
With price of oil cresting 120 dollars per barrel never has there been a better time for Metro-North to accommodate bicycles during peak hours.
Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group, an environmental education organization, and founder and director of Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting sustainable modes of transportation.
Editor’s Note: Mr. Cameron’s Fit people on trains before bikes ran in the New Canaan Advertiser on April 24. The same day the commentary also appeared in print in the Darien Times (The facts about bikes on trains) and Greenwich Post (Keep bikes off trains). The commentary appeared on April 21 as “Bicycle on Trains?” in Talking Transportation (http://talkingtransportation.blogspot.com) - Mr. Cameron’s blog.
bicycling, trains, renewable energy & climate change
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, APRIL, 17, 2008 PAGE 7A
Eco Man
Spring brings green efforts
Easter Sunday, March 23, was the first holiday to fall at the outset of spring 2008. I celebrated that brisk, sunny day with a bicycle ride from New Canaan to an unnamed neighborhood south of Chinatown, south of the Williamsburg Bridge. Easter Sunday – the unofficial start of the cycling season.
My destination was Broadway East, where I would feast on what turned out to be an unquestionably un-Easter Sunday-like dinner.
After bicycling down Old Stamford Road I traversed a subdued U.S. 1 to New Rochelle. There I turned left on Echo Road and right on Pelham Road. That allowed me to ride through Pelham Bay Park and down Westchester Avenue. I entered Manhattan on the Third Avenue Bridge, which led me on a fast ride down Second Avenue.
Broadway East is a bright, new, upscale eatery (it opened April 7) with a palate that is decidedly low on the food chain. Our server, Annabelle, was 20-something who sheepishly revealed she was from Fairfield County (Greenwich, Darien and Wilton) and had boarded at Westminster School in Simsbury. Annabelle, who traveled in Africa and beyond, while pursuing pre-med at University of Edinburgh, shared with us the restaurant’s philosophy and her favorite dishes on the menu.
After dinner I bicycled back to Grand Central Terminal and with my bicycle boarded the train back to New Canaan. Fortunately, Easter Sunday isn’t one of the ten holidays each year in which Metro-North policies dictate that bicycles are prohibited on its trains.
The downside of those arbitrary restrictions (especially prohibiting boarding bicycles at peak hours) came to the attention of outgoing Metro-North President Peter Cannito on March 26 at the annual President’s Forum. That evening nearly a dozen cyclists expressed their outrage at Metro-North’s recent announcement to continue its current restrictive policies toward bicycles and not include bicycle parking on 300 new M-8 cars even though cyclists had been repeatedly assured that parking would be provided. A forty percent increase in the New Haven Line fleet (380 MNR M-8 cars plus critical systems replacement rehab of 132 M-2 cars), cyclists argue, is the perfect time to integrate bikes on to trains. Add climate change and potential future fuel shortages into the mix and agency-sanctioned bikes-on-trains-at-peak-hours certainly makes sense.
Of course, other issues arise when it comes to climate change.
New Canaan resident and longtime Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp posits solutions in “Earth: the Sequel – the Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming,” which he co-authored with Miriam Horn. Consider it to be a 21st Century update to “Energy Future: Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School Project,” the 1979 energy strategy primer edited by Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin (Mr. Yergin’s 1991 tome “The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power” is a great read.) “Earth: The Sequel” opens with an easy-to-bite read into the research, resource and production challenges facing Silicon Valley entrepreneurs transitioning a solar future into the solar decade.
The 2008 Conference of Governors on Climate Change (http://research.yale.edu/envirocenter/) will take place at Yale University on. On Friday April 18th, Governors M. Jodi Rell. Jon Corzine, Kathleen Sebelius (Kansas), Eduardo Bours (Sonora, Mexico), Martin Bursick (Czech Republic) and Premier Jean Charest (Quebec) will convene in a 10:30 a.m. plenary session open to the public at Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street. At 1:30 p.m. a signing will take place and at 2:00 p.m. Nobel Laureate Dr. R.K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will give a public address.
The 2008 conferences serves as a centennial anniversary of President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 Conference of Governors, which is credited as launching the modern conservation movement.
Theodore Roosevelt, IV will pay tribute to his great-great grandfather’s legacy in a private ceremony on Thursday evening
Gifford Pinchot, who in 1900 founded the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (the centennial event host) and later himself served as Governor of Pennsylvania, organized the 1908 conference.
Thirty years have passed since Fred Krupp founded New Haven-based Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE.) On Sunday April 20th one of his protégés, Don Strait, CFE’s current executive director will address a Earth Ministries gathering at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The talk – a primer on past, present and future Connecticut Fund for the Environment initiatives – will take place in the church’s Library Room at 11:30 a.m. That will be preceded by an organic coffee, organic cookies hour in Morrill Hall at 11:00 a.m. Everyone, regardless of religious affiliation is welcome and encouraged to attend.
Keep it green.
Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group, an environmental education organization, and founder and director of Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting sustainable modes of transportation.
unconstitutional acts compromise environmental policy
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2008
Eco Man
By Richard M. Stowe
Orchestrated Deception
The Center for Public Integrity recently released Iraq – The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, a project (publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Default.aspx?src=home&context=overview&id=945), which documents 935 false statements made by President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and six other top administration officials in an easily accessible database.
A crescendo of false statements commenced circa August 26, 2002 when Vice-President Cheney falsely declared: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”
Elizabeth de la Vega referenced that false statement in her book United States v. George W. Bush, et al. She asserts that those false statements conjointly constitute a “conspiracy to defraud” Congress and Americans. She argues that committing fraud is a crime and President Bush has committed fraud. Article II Section 4 of the United States Constitution states that “The President, Vice President” and administration officials are subject to “Impeachment” when they commit “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler’s online petition (wexlerwantshearings.com) calls for commencing impeachment hearings for Vice President Cheney. On that site Congressman Wexler joins fellow House Judiciary Committee members Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois) as co-authors of an opinion piece outlining reasons for holding impeachment hearings.
Joining the call for impeachment hearings is 60-year old college professor John Nirenberg (marchinmyname.org/) who recently completed a six-week 485-mile walk from Faneuil Hall in Boston, Mass. to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in the Capitol.
I learned of those impeachment efforts when I attended a theatric performance entitled “A Question of Impeachment: Trial by Theater – They Took It Off the Table So We Put It on the Stage” (a cheeky reference to Speaker Pelosi’s 2006 election year proclamation) at the Culture Project in So Ho. The highlights of the multi-part performance, which took place from November 18th to December 16th, are on the Culture Project’s website (cultureproject.org/). Ed. Note: currently accessed through this link: (http://cultureproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62)
The performance included many accomplished individuals representing a broad spectrum of American cultural and political interests.
New Canaan’s own Lewis H. Lapham, a great-grandson of the founder of Texaco, participated in the political theater. I spoke with Mr. Lapham during intermission. The Yale University graduate, author and editor of Harper’s magazine from 1976 to 2006, drew me out to Mercer Street where he lit up a cigarette while reminiscing about living at Waveny, then known as the Lapham estate.
Participants also included former New York State District 16 Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who at the age of 31 became the youngest woman to serve in the House of Representatives. She served on the House Judiciary Committee and participated in the impeachment hearings of Richard Nixon during the summer of 1974.
“A Question of Impeachment” concluded with a performance by Jackson Browne, a gifted folk-rock-singer-songwriter (his songs have been performed by the Byrds, the Eagles, Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt and others).
I was drawn into “A Question of Impeachment” by the opportunity to see Bruce Fein, a noted constitutional lawyer and 1972 graduate of Harvard Law School. A resident scholar at the Heritage Foundation, an adjunct professor at George Washington University, a columnist for The Washington Times and a former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Fein asserts, among other charges, that Vice President Cheney “summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper, President of Waterkeeper Alliance, senior attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council and a renowned environmental advocate, details Cheney’s role and actions in the Energy Task Force in Chapter 6: “Blueprint for Plunder” of his 2004 book “Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush & His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country & Hijacking Our Democracy.”
Mr. Fein penned a commentary entitled “Impeach Cheney: the Vice President has run amok and must be stopped” (slate.com/id/2169292/) on Slate on June 27, 2007. It may have been this opinion (plus his testimony about presidential signing statements in front of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, also on June 27) that likely led to a July 13, 2007 “Bill Moyers Journal” interview on PBS television. That show in turn became the inspiration for “A Question of Impeachment.”
In the Slate commentary, Mr. Fein opines that Vice President Cheney has overtly and willingly exercised an unconstitutional taking of power from the President. He contrasts the duties accorded the Office of Vice President by the 12th Amendment and the powers Vice President Cheney has taken beyond what is allowed by Section 3 of the 25th Amendment. Mr. Fein refers the reader to a four part series in The Washington Post titled “Angler: the Cheney Vice Presidency” (blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/). Of notable interest is the final installment “Leaving No Tracks” (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/index.html), which focuses on Vice President Cheney’s influence on environmental policy.
Keep it green.
Mr. Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group.
television pundits ignore climate change in presidential race
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY JANUARY 24, 2008 6A
Eco Man
By Richard M. Stowe
Warming warrant greater attention
Dateline: January 11, 2008
Location: New Canaan
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Temperature: 55
Average January High: 38
Average January Low: 19
Record January Low: -18
I know what you’re thinking: What is the record January high? Well, that was set last year (2007): 69.
Try to imagine a new record low being set this year.
The latest climate change research reveals that Greenland’s glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously thought.
60 minutes re-broadcast its hour-long “The Age of Warming” on Sunday evening. It’s well worth the time to read the transcript, or watch the video at the Age of Warming link, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/30/60minutes/main2631210.shtml.
Warmer winters is a growing concern among Olympic skiers and professional hockey players, such as Andrew Ference, the Boston Bruins defenseman, who is seeking a commitment from the entire National Hockey League to go carbon neutral.
Winter athletes have joined concerned citizens in requesting that “our leaders (to) freeze and reduce carbon emissions now” in an online petition (stopglobalwarming.org).
A national organizing effort called Focus the Nation (focusthenation.org/) is assembling a mass teach-in on global warming solutions for America at schools and churches in communities across the United States on January 31. Focus the Nation website lists New Canaan Country School and St Luke’s School as participants. At New Canaan Country School fourth graders will talk about global warming at their weekly assembly and at home will ask each one of their families to switch at least one fixture from incandescent to compact fluorescent. Upper school students (seventh through ninth grades) will screen “The 2% Solution” on January 30.
Another voice calling for greater focus on global warming is the League of Conservation Voters.
It asks: In 2007 how many times did Sunday talk show hosts – Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer and Chris Wallace – mention global warming?
Answer: 3 plus 24 global warming related questions (12 by Tim Russert, 5 by George Stephanopoulos, 4 by Chris Wallace, 3 by Wolf Blitzer).
Question: How many presidential campaign questions did these 5 hosts ask in 2007?
Answer: 2484
According to Gene Karpinski, President of the League of Conservation Voters these statistics were culled by reading the transcripts of every one of the five Sunday morning talk shows and every debate that one of the aforementioned journalists was associated with in 2007.
That was in 2007, the year the International Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize! And, let’s not forget that Vice-President Al Gore, a former presidential nominee, won the Nobel Peace Prize, too.
Question: Who asked those questions in which they mentioned global warming?
Answer: Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday asked two questions and Wolf Blitzer of CNN asked one question.
Question: Who didn’t mention global warming in any of their questions?
Answer: Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s Face the Nation, asked zero out of 238 questions; Clinton protégé and former Clinton senior advisor on policy and strategy, George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s “This Week,” asked zero out of the 726; Tim Russert, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” asked zero out of 755 questions.
The League of Conservation Voters believes global warming warrants more coverage by these Sunday talk show hosts.
If you agree that greater attention is warranted, the League of Conservation Voters has set up an online petition for you to register your support: whataretheywaitingfor.com/
This is how the remaining Presidential candidates, who serve, or have served in Congress, line up in terms of the League of Conservation Voters lifetime voting record rating on environmental issues.
Senator Barack Obama 96%
Representative Dennis Kuchinich 92%
Senator Hillary Clinton 90%
Senator John Edwards 59%
Representative Ron Paul 30%
Senator John McCain 26%
Senator Fred Thompson 12%
The candidate’s positions on energy and global warming are spelled out at lcv.org/voterguide/
Keep it green.
Mr. Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group
martin luther king, jr. and the apollo alliance
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 2008 3A
Eco Man
By Richard M. Stowe
King’s environmental legacy celebrated at Yale Sunday
Today as I write it is January 15, 2008. That would have been the 79th birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. if he were alive. At this time last year (2007), I briefly met his son Martin Luther King, III, a human rights advocate, at the Riverside Church in New York, where nearly thirty years earlier on April 4, 1967 Mr. King gave what was then characterized as a controversial speech – “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”
As we celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. this coming weekend I invite you to join me in attending the 7th Annual Arnold J. Alderman Lecture (http://www.peabody.yale.edu/events/mlkday.html#lecture) at the Yale Peabody Museum on Sunday January 20th at 2 p.m. This year’s speaker is Jerome Ringo, the President of the Apollo Alliance (http://www.apolloalliance.org/). His lecture is entitled “Environmental Injustice: The Other Inconvenient Truth.”
The lecture is the keynote during a two-day tribute at the Peabody Museum to the slain civil rights leader called “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy of Environmental and Social Justice.”
Keep it green.
aligning issues and candidates in presidential politics
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2008
Eco Man
By Richard M. Stowe
As December gives way to January, New Years Resolutions chatter has been upended by discussions about the leading presidential candidates, the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.
There’s the intrigue generated by Huma Abedin, Senator Hillary Clinton’s supernatural presidential campaign’s “traveling chief of staff,” who was featured in the August issue of Vogue.
Then there’s the cell phone calls taken on stage by Rudy Giuliani from his third wife Judith, whom he met in 1999 at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar.
If you plan to vote in the 23-state February 5th super primary and you would like to choose a presidential candidate whose views and values align most closely with your own, visit the site http://www.glassbooth.org/.
From a climate change perspective, keep in mind that only three candidates participated in the first ever-global warming debates in November: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich.
Thursday January 3rd (the same day as the Iowa Caucus) presents an opportunity for New Canaan drivers to learn about modern roundabout design as an alternative to traffic signals. Part I of an Interactive Web Seminar will take place from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Board Room of Town Hall (2nd floor).
And at 10 a.m. (after a 9:30 a.m. coffee) on January 8th (the same day as the New Hampshire primary) George Hawkins will give a must see presentation at Darien Community Association 274 Middlesex Road entitled Cowboys, Spacemen and a Theory of Almost Everything: How Responding to Global Warming Connects to Traffic Jams, Housing Prices, Property Taxes and the Flood in My Creek.
Mr. Hawkins is a 1983 summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Currently Mr. Hawkins is Director of the District (of Columbia) Department of Environment (http://ddoe.dc.gov/ddoe/site/default.asp?ddoeNav=|31003|)
When I met Mr. Hawkins a few years ago at a New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Miami, Florida he was serving as Executive Director of New Jersey Future (http://www.njfuture.org/), a smart growth non-profit advocacy organization.
Prior to that he was executive director of Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association. Since 1999, he has been a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he teaches environmental law and policy for the Princeton Environmental Institute.
Happy New Year! Let’s keep it green.
the machine produces greenhouse gases
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2007 OPINION_PAGE 5A
Eco Man
“Step it Up” to reduce greenhouse gases
By Richard M. Stowe
The machine’s coal, oil and gas suppliers are often located in Texas.
Dallas, Texas-based TXU, which serves over 2.4 million customers, boasts on http://www.txucorp.com, that “TXU Power owns and operates one of the nation’s largest lignite surface-mining operations, producing about 23 millions tons of lignite a year.”
In April 2006, TXU announced plans to build eleven new coal-fired plants in Texas.
By February 26, 2007, plans for eight of those plants were scrapped when Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Texas Pacific Group purchased TXU in a 45 billion dollar leveraged buyout.
The agreement doubles wind power investments and directs $400 million toward energy efficiency programs. TXU promises to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, endorse a mandatory federal cap on carbon emissions precludes and not expand coal operations outside of Texas.
In a first for a leveraged buy out, Environmental Defense and Natural Resources Defense Council, two opponents of those coal-fired power plants, were invited to take part in seventeen-hour negotiated agreement in San Francisco, California.
Former Environmental Protection Agency administrator William K Reilly, now vice-president of Texas Pacific Group, invited Environmental Defense participate in the negotiations.
Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp said “we shifted this from a local debate over generating electricity to a national debate over capping and reducing carbon emissions”
The increase carbon emissions, which is attributable to human beings burning coal, oil and natural gas, is a macro-environmental indicator.
The 2000 Democratic presidential candidate, Vice-President Al Gore is using his brand name recognition to focus the nation’s attention on global warming.
The 2006 Academy Award-winning documentary box office hit and accompanying book, An Inconvenient Truth, is part autobiography and part explanation of the documented and projected impacts to human health and ecosystems by climate change.
In it Vice-President Gore recounts his awe as a student in the 1960’s at Harvard University under the tutelage of Roger Revelle, the eminent Harvard scientist who, in 1957, the International Geophysical Year, became the first scientist to set up a research station (atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii) to measure greenhouse gases.
With the esteemed Dr. Revelle as his professor, no wonder that Vice-President Gore has displayed a passion for climate change.
In 2005, Australian scientist and conservationist Tim Flannery provided a more in-depth and scientific account of global warming in The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. After reading “The Weather Makers,” Richard Branson pledged three billion dollars toward developing sustainable energy.
On January 26th Mr. Flannery was the recipient of the 2007 Australian of the Year award.
For a more passionate and urgent reading of climate change scenarios we may face, tap the thoughts of Mike Tidwell in his 2006 non-fiction tale, The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities. In 2002, Mr. Tidwell founded Takoma Park, Maryland-based Chesapeake Climate Action Network (http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/), a regional grassroots climate change advocacy group. Mr. Tidwell may be the nation’s pre-eminent regional climate change proselytizer.
In 1989, then-28-year old Bill McKibben penned “The End of Nature,” an environmental epic, chronicling the coming travails of climate change. Mr. McKibben became an instant ecological icon. Today, the prolific and lanky Mr. McKibben, who serves as a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, has set alight a grassroots brushfire for “Step It Up 2007: A National Day of Climate Action (http://www.stepitup07.org).” Scheduled to take place on Saturday April 14, 2007, Mr. McKibben hopes to inspire a heartfelt movement to act against climate change. The decidedly philosophic Mr. McKibben is taking on a Herculean challenge to garner media attention through a strategy to move the discussion of global warming from blog suites to America’s streets.
“Step It Up” organizers hope to mobilize Congress to pass legislation to cut carbon by 80 percent by 2050.
Richard M. Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group. Prior to that he served six years as a board member for the Environmental Council of Stamford, and advocates for improving conditions for commuter rail and bicycling via Rail Transportation Excellence Coalition. He received a bachelor of science degree in environmental science from Marlboro College in 1980.
inaugural ecoman column
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2007 PAGE 5A
Opinion
Eco Man
By Richard M. Stowe
Addicted to oil?
OK, but what we’re really addicted to is the machine.
The machine invariably runs on carbonaceous fuels – coal, oil, or natural gas – or those so-called atoms for peace.
To witness the overwhelming power of the machine in New Canaan, take a look at the formerly pastoral fields at Irwin Park (according to one count, 47 trees were felled at the end of January and nearly two-thirds – 64 percent – of those trees were determined to be healthy) or further down Weed Street, to the now disfigured wetlands and woodlands, formerly known as the White property.
The 20-acre woodland property had been virtually undisturbed for years when Town Council turned down an offer to buy it as a park preserve only five years ago.
If local is micro-environmental, then regional or global is macro-environmental.
It’s the macro-environment where we measure the aggregate impact of all of our activities.
What about our health? On Thursday February 1, The New England Journal of Medicine reported and The Wall Street Journal summarized the results of a seven-year Women’s Health Initiative observational study, which measured the added cardiovascular health risk of breathing increased levels of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) by 58,600 postmenopausal women in cities across the United States. Fine particulates are produced when burning fossil fuels.
The conclusions were, to quote C. Arden Pope, professor at Brigham Young University, “stunning.” Professor Pope was involved in two previous soot studies where risk assessment was considerably lower.
The study concluded that the risk was 150 percent greater for women living in nation’s most polluted metropolitan areas versus the nation’s least polluted city, Honolulu. That risk differential is equivalent to the difference between an active smoker and non-smoker.
Of the 203 cities surveyed Pittsburg, PA and smog-belt sprawlopolis Riverside-San Bernardino, CA topped the list as sootiest cities with at least 21.O micrograms of fine particulates per cubic meter of air. Honolulu placed 203rd with 5.0 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
New York City (17.0 micrograms per cubic meter of air) placed number 24 in the top tier of cities with the highest level of fine particulates though neighboring Nassau-Suffolk counties (12.4 – #141) places much lower.
Metropolitan areas in Connecticut such as Bridgeport (14.4 – #83), Waterbury (14.0 – #97), New Haven-Meriden (13.9 – #99), Danbury (13.4 – #112), Stamford-Norwalk (13.2 – #118) fall in the midrange, whereas New London-Norwich (11.7 – #158) and Hartford (11.5 – #161) have fewer fine particulates.
In 1997, the Environmental Protection Agency set a limit for exposure to fine particles at 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
In a February 1 editorial, The New England Journal of Medicine reports, “The findings of the WHI study strongly support the recommendation for tighter standards for long-term fine particulate air pollution.”
Last year a panel of scientists outside the Environmental Protection Agency, recommended by a 20-2 vote to lower the limit for fine particulates to 13 to 14 micrograms. In October 2006, however, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen L. Johnson rejected the recommendation based on what he believed to be a lack of definitive science.
The WHI study may erase that doubt.
That’s it for this inaugural column. The column will look at impacts of the built environment on human health and nature and offer suggestions how to improve the built environment.
Keep it green.
Richard M. Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group. Prior to that he served six years as a board member for the Environmental Council of Stamford, and advocates for commuter rail and bicycling via Rail Transportation Excellence Coalition. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in environmental science from Marlboro College in 1980.
welcome to the machine
“Addicted to oil?
OK, but what we’re really addicted to is the machine.
The machine invariably runs on carbonaceous fuels – coal, oil, or natural gas – or those so-called atoms for peace.”
That’s the opening crescendo in my inaugural Eco Man column. That first column was edited and the lines that followed in that column have yet to be published.
For the first time ever I share those lines with the public:
Ironically, the machine is most visible at night.
Ninety-nine percent of Americans and European Union Europeans and two-thirds of the world’s population live under light polluted skies.
Eighty percent of Americans, two-thirds of the European Union Europeans and twenty-five percent of the world’s population live in under night skies superimposed with manmade light equivalent in scale to that of the light output of a full moon.
According to the National Park Service Night Sky Team, just one percent of landmass in America’s National Parks is light pollution free.
Those measurements indicate how widespread the machine’s imprint is on our planet.
This blog catalogs Eco Man columns that have already been published.
New columns will be posted on the blog as they are published.
I encourage readers to interactively express their own views on ideas conveyed in this blog’s posts.
