Suburbs Archives - Achieving Sustainability

SustainabLINKS September 8, 2014

September 8, 2014September 8, 2014 by Aaron Redman

Food news: Christie Wilcox covers in more depth what I wrote about briefly, how concerned should we be about pesticide residue on food? “To date, there is no scientific evidence that eating an organic diet leads to better health.” Two interesting graphics-how the world wastes food and a fun set of glimpses of what a … Read more…

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SustainabLINKS August 18, 2014

August 23, 2014August 18, 2014 by Aaron Redman

Stimulus money spent on rail has gotten nearly as much scorn as Sloyndra but Michael Grunwald¹⁾Who wrote a whole book defending of the impact of the stimulus. that this is completely undeserved.
Buying bottled water from drought stricken California. Crazier than buying water from Fiji?
“For more Americans to choose healthier food they must have a basic sense of security about their future.”
A decade and a half after Bowling Alone (which I reviewed here), our un-neighborliness continues to increase–with consequences for our health and our politics.
If you have tried to walk anywhere on windy, overly wide suburban roads with no services for miles, you know the frustration that would make anyone give up walking-and active lifestyles overall.
The small minority of scientists who maintain contrarian views on climate change are asked far more frequently to pontificate to the media than their peers, which feeds the continuing unbalanced coverage in the media of climate change–see John Oliver for a more balanced approach.
Meanwhile, the worst case scenarios for climate change are looking worse as Antarctic ice has the potential to cause more sea rise and faster than previously thought.
Is air-conditioning Sustainable (in the multi-faceted capital-S sense)? Well we can certainly agree that it has remade us.
Title says it all: “Not a single person has died using bike share in the US.”

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SustainabLINKS August 4, 2014

August 3, 2014August 4, 2014 by Aaron Redman

Us tree huggers have had it right all along. Trees make us healthier!

A detailed look at why the natural gas boom may not be all that great for climate change after all.

There was some good news on the climate change front including rising sales of electric/hybrid cars and Daniel Gross over at Slate makes the assertion that we may be advancing from small energy efficiency improvements to full scale energy demand destruction.

Suburbia did not fair well this week with a Brookings report finding growing poverty in suburban neighborhoods and Time featuring in article on untenable financial structure of suburbs (generating more liabilities for municipalities than tax dollars over the long run).

Where does your city rank in mass transit? Impressively, Flagstaff is tops (per capita) in Arizona.

Bonus: An Astrobiologist and a Sci-Fi novelist chat about the possibility for a sustainable future.

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