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The wages of Kelo

We talked about Kelo v. New London quite a bit when it was first decided. Here's a little follow-up (via Tapped):

The U.S. Supreme Court recently found that the city's original seizure of private property was constitutional under the principal of eminent domain, and now New London is claiming that the affected homeowners were living on city land for the duration of the lawsuit and owe back rent. It's a new definition of chutzpah: Confiscate land and charge back rent for the years the owners fought confiscation.

Gas, oil, and electricity

NPR's Marketplace has on their homepage right now three stories that might be of interest, on gas prices, oil shock simulations, and zero-energy homes.

Timber industry turns to underwater crop

As the traditional logging industry deals with unsteady prices and the challenges of globalization, the value of a new crop is coming to light: trees hidden under reservoirs, long given […]

The proposed DC stadium

By 2008, there will be a new stadium for baseball on the banks of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. for the Nationals. The stadium and the associated development will "transform" the surrounding area. D.C. is unique in that the mantra of "grow up not out" faces some legal restrictions, namely height limits on buildings in the city.

In the spirit of hearing from the people, there's a transcript available of a live chat conducted by the Washington Post on Monday dealing with the stadium. The plans have very little detail at the moment, although you will be able to see the Capitol dome over the left field fence. (number of times the environment was mentioned: 1).

One of the participants was Jacqueline Dupree of the Post, who is running a blog-ish site about the project. The interactive map on the Post's main site is also pretty informative.

Our materialism disguises a deeper problem

I've been pondering religion a lot lately, what with all the kerfuffle over "Intelligent Design" (on that subject, you only need to read one thing: this).

Joel Makower's latest references an article by Worldwatch Institute Director of Research Gary Gardner called "Hungry for More: Re-Engaging Religious Teachings on Consumption." The idea, from what I can gather, is that all the world's major religions contain moral teachings against over-consumption and economic injustice -- and faith communities need to rediscover and embrace these teachings as they try to deal with a world in which "mass consumerism in wealthy countries has already broken the ecological bank."

To which I say: good luck.

I suppose there's no sense being coy about my distaste for religion (though I should stress that it's my own personal hangup, not representative of Grist or of the environmental community as a whole). But as far as I can see, religion in America -- ubiquitous though it may be -- is fairly toothless in terms of challenging people and getting them to change their behavior. The religion I see is either the "moderate" kind that's mainly devolved into a glorified self-help program or the "extreme" kind that mainly serves to offer its adherents objects of hate and derision (e.g., gays).

Gross oversimplification, yes. But still, the chances of religion in the developed world emerging as a genuine force in opposition to conspicuous overconsumption strike me as roughly nil.

But that's not my point.

What happens when the Polish and polar bears meet?

Did you hear the one about the three Polish scientists who almost got eaten by polar bears?

No, seriously. Three researchers were stranded for 15 hours on an island in Norway's Svalbard archipelago (I just really, really wanted to type that pair of words). Hungry polar bears were circling. Yesterday, shortly before Pole met polar, helicopters swooped in and picked them up.

Don't they know it only makes a good movie if you get et?

Call Me Fishmeal

Cape Cod’s namesake may not rebound unless fishing is further curtailed Cod off the Massachusetts coast have declined almost 25 percent since 2001, and some fear the once-abundant fish may […]

The Expiration Superhighway

Sales of endangered critters rampant on the web What do deviant porn and endangered elephants have in common? No, not that, you twisted perv! The answer: Both are easy to […]

David B. Williams sends dispatches from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

David B. Williams is a freelance natural-history writer based in Seattle. He is the author of The Street-Smart Naturalist: Field Notes from Seattle and has written for Smithsonian, Popular Mechanics, […]

Swimming out to the exurbs

What could be even more appalling to James Howard Kunstler and company than the suburbs? The exurbs.

If the extension of government services to the suburbs is a huge money sink, the extension of those services to the exurbs is a black hole. This is one issue mentioned in the three letters to the editor in response to the NYT article.

KB Home is the big, bad developer in this story, and the exurb in question is New River, Florida.

They know almost to the dollar how much buyers are willing to pay to exchange a longer commute for more space, a sense of higher status and the feeling of security.
...
The answer, the company decided, is that a house in New River must be $12,000 cheaper than the same house in the north Tampa suburbs, 15 minutes closer to downtown.

Suddenly, the situation described in last week's Washington Post article doesn't sound that bad -- many things are a five-minute drive, and everything is a fifteen-minute drive away.

The effects of three-dollar gas occur on different timetables in different sectors of the economy. The retail industry may be feeling the effects already. It takes longer for people to switch to more fuel efficient cars, and even longer for people to express that they value a shorter commute by increasing the demand for homes that aren't "in the middle of nowhere."

Might it be time to concede that people are unwilling to relinquish cars and instead promote communities where car use can be minimized?