News Roundup › Environment

A year after the introduction of the sturdy gray bicycles known as Velib’s, they are being used all over Paris. The bikes are cheap to rent because they are subsidized by advertising, and other major cities, including American ones, are exploring similar projects.

Source: The New York Times

Long before the recent spike in the price of energy, environmentalists decried suburban sprawl a waste of land, energy and tax dollars. Governments from Virginia to California have in recent decades lavished resources on building roads and schools for new subdivisions in the outer rings of development while skimping on maintaining facilities closer in. Many governments now focus on reviving their downtowns.

Source: The New York Times

Now that’s changing. Flaherty, a former grass-roots organizer for Ronald Reagan, argues that conservatives have been slow to recognize that today it’s corporations, not government, that drive many big social changes. That’s been true recently on issues like gay rights, health-care costs and the environment.

Source: NewsWeek

So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we’ll have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of American life. We’ll have to grow our food closer to home, in a manner that will require more human attention. In fact, agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We’ll have to restore local economic networks — the very networks that the big-box stores systematically destroyed — made of fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.

Source: Washington Post

FOLC said the Lafitte Greenway will encourage economic revitalization; create transportation alternatives, such as walking, biking and connections to transit; improve public health; and promote cultural tourism by connecting to neighborhood attractions.

Source: City Business

We help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.

Source: Walkscore.com

Cypress swamps are clear-cut and entire trees are ground up to make cypress garden mulch. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Lowe’s are driving destruction of the Gulf’s best natural storm protection by selling cypress mulch all over the country. It’s time they stopped.

Source: Gulf Restoration Network

Working from barges and tugboats off New York City’s Roosevelt Island, engineers are battling northeasters and this month’s heavy spring tides to install the first major tidal-power project in the United States. The project involves a set of six submerged turbines that are designed to capture energy from the East River’s tidal currents.

Source: Technology Review

Those of us who suffered through a year of painful planning meetings sensed that it was happening, but last week we got the final word. The money is gone.

Source: The New Orleans Agenda

The office of Farr Associates is no next-generation green-building prototype — it’s located in the historic 114-year-old Monadnock Building, Chicago’s tallest all-brick skyscraper. But inside, green spores of sustainability burst forth. The open studio spaces have walls that have been painted by a local artist who used milk-based, non-toxic paints. The desktops are made of natural linoleum, and a translucent divider embedded with leaves separates one desk from another. “Occupancy sensors” trigger energy-conserving lights in the kitchenette, conference room, and main studio. Large, operable First Chicago School windows gaze over nearby Printer’s Row, letting in eastern and southern light that is welcomed by the many living creatures in the space.

Source: Grist

Question: How did you go from neighborhood rallies to running a nationally renowned organization?

Answer: Well, the street protests were cute and motivating and all, but eventually I decided it was time to get serious. In 2001, I founded Sustainable South Bronx — not as a moral crusade, but as an economic-development group that was about planning our future, not just reacting to environmental blight. I wanted to play offense, not defense. I wanted to give our community permission to dream, to plan for healthy air, healthy jobs, healthy children, and safe streets.

Source: Grist Magazine

With world oil production approaching a plateau, energy demand soaring, growing talk of global warming, and fossil-fuel habits under scrutiny, you may be worried about the employment outlook for traditional energy industries like oil. But according to Kevin Doyle, author of The Complete Guide to Environmental Careers in the 21st Century , there is a bright side for job hunters: Renewable energy.

“In 2006, we’ve made a switch: Alternative energy is no longer alternative,” he says.

Source: Monster.com

The landfill lacks some of the safeguards that existing dumps do, like special clay liners. The government says they are not needed because demolition debris is cleaner than other rubbish.

Residents and environmentalists think otherwise, because after Hurricane
Katrina the state expanded the definition of construction and demolition
debris to include most of a house’s contents, down to the moldy mattresses and soggy sofas.

Source: The New York Times

Hurricanes have been kneading the Gulf Coast like putty for eons, carving out inlets and bays, creating beaches and altering plant and animal life — but up to now, the natural world has largely been able to rebound. Trees, marine life and shoreline features tourists and anglers enjoyed in recent years were largely the same types as those 17th century buccaneers and explorers encountered.

But scientists say the future could be different. Nature might not be able to rebound so quickly. The reason: the human factor.

Source: CNN

A Louisiana environmental group said Tuesday that the cake-like muck that Hurricane Katrina dumped in much of St. Bernard Parish is loaded with toxic substances in amounts exceeding federal and state recommended levels, and the group contends that federal and parish officials are not giving returning residents enough warning about potential health risks.

Source: The Times-Picayune