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Broadacre City: Wright’s Utopia Turned Nightmare David J. Cieslewicz
David Cieslewicz is cofounder and executive director of 1000 Friends of Wisconsin. He has worked as the government relations director for the Wisconsin chapter of The Nature Conservancy and served on the board of directors of Wisconsin’s Environmental Decade, the state’s largest environmental group. He specializes in environmental and land use issues. This selection about some environmental impacts of sprawl is from a chapter in Urban Sprawl edited by Gregory D. Squires (Washington, D.C. Urban Institute Press, 2002): 23-27; 35-36.
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright argued that land consumption was not a problem because there was so much of it.
In the early 1930s Frank Lloyd Wright predicted—and heartily endorsed—almost every major change in the American landscape that would take place over the next six decades. He understood how cars, which he loved with unbridled passion, would change our sense of space. He predicted—and applauded—the decline of cities, the advent of rural subdivisions and super highways, and even the coming of ”Stop ‘n Go.“ (Wright actually designed a convenience store-gas station in Minnesota.) His mistake was to believe that all of this would be wonderful, healthful, aesthetically pleasing, and morally and culturally uplifting. Wright’s idea of Utopia was ”Broadacre City,“ where every family would have at least one acre of property (Wright 1932). Unfortunately, Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of the future was all too clear and his prescriptions were followed all too carefully. The most ubiquitous form of modern American congestion is the suburban freeway. This congestion exists because we faithfully applied Wright’s prescription for what to do about congestion in the city. We built Wright’s dream of broad highways and broad-acre cities and his dream became our nightmare. Certainly, we should expect that with a growing population some land will be consumed for development. The problem is that we are consuming far more land than simple population growth would predict. For example, between 1970 and 1990, the population of the Milwaukee metropolitan area increased by 3 percent while the amount of land it consumed for development went up 38 percent. That pattern is repeated in every major metropolitan area in America whether it is rapidly growing or shrinking. Over that same period in Los Angeles, the population expanded by 45 percent while land area growth increased by 300 percent. Cleveland lost 11 percent of its population, but picked up 33 percent in land consumed for development (Benfield et al, 1999, 7; Diamond and Noonan 1996). It is sometimes argued that land consumption is not a problem, simply because there is so much of it. Frank Lloyd Wright himself made this argument, claiming that there were 57 acres for every person in America. That was in 1932, however, when there were 130 million Americans. In 1999, with 275 million Americans, there were 26 acres per person in the continental United States. That figure counts every acre of prime farmland as well as Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks, deserts and mountains, and every acre of protected park, habitat area, and green space in the nation. [According to the Population Reference Bureau, in 2007 with 302.2 million Americans, there were 24 acres per person. The predicted population by 2050 is 438 million.] The view that the American landscape is so vast that it does not demand any constraint on development does not take into account the need for agricultural and recreational land and the need for open space in order to maintain natural systems, biological diversity, and even the American myth of ”wilderness.“ Ironically, one of the key tenets of American folklore—the room to roam and to be independent—is being obliterated by that same desire to live apart. As more of us move out into the ”wide open spaces,“ they become less wide open. The simple consumption of more land is not the only problem. The way in which land is developed is also an issue. Virtually every new development since World War II has been designed for ease of auto travel. By strictly dividing land into vast large-lot single-family-home subdivisions connected to ever larger shopping malls and business ”parks“ by wide highways and streets, we have made driving mandatory in virtually every new development built in America.
REFERENCES Benfield, F.Kaid, Matthew D. Raimi, and Donald D.T. Chen. 1999. Once There Were Greenfields. Washington, D.C: Natural Resources Defense Council and Surface Transportation Policy Project.
Diamond, Henry, and Patrick Noonan. 1996. Land Use in America. Washington, D.C: Island Press.
Wright, Frank Lloyd. 1932. The Vanishing City. New York: Stratford Press.
The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck Introduction, Suburban Nation: ix-xii NY: North Point Press, 2000
You’re stuck in traffic again. As you creep along a highway that was widened just three years ago, you pass that awful new billboard: COMING SOON: NEW HOMES! Already the bulldozers are plowing down pine trees, and a thin layer of mud is oozing onto the roadway. How could this be happening? Over the years, you’ve seen a lot of forest and farmland replaced by rooftops, but these one hundred acres had been left unscathed, at the whim of a wealthy owner. Now, it is said, the owner has passed on, the children have cashed out, and the property has fallen victim to the incessant pressures of growth. These one hundred acres, where you hiked and sledded as a child, are now zoned for single-family housing. They have been bought and sold on that premise, and there is a strong demand for new houses. The developer is not about to go away. The anticipated buyers of these new homes, your future neighbors, are respectable professionals, families much like yours, people who could easily be your friends, relatives, or colleagues. These people are welcome to settle this land, to share your suburban dream—over your dead body. Why, in this country in which growth is considered tantamount to well-being, in which economic health is measured in ”housing starts,“ is the prospect of these particular houses starting near yours so threatening? What has happened to our manner of growth, such that the thought of new growth makes your stomach turn? It is not just sentimental attachment to an old sledding hill that has you upset. It is the expectation, based upon decades of experience, that what will be built here you will detest. It will be sprawl: cookie-cutter houses, wide, treeless, sidewalk-free roadways, mindlessly curving cul-de-sacs, a streetscape of garage doors—a beige vinyl parody of Leave It to Beaver. Or, worse yet, a pretentious slew of McMansions, complete with the obligatory gatehouse. You will not be welcome there, not that you would ever have reason to visit its monotonous moonscape. Meanwhile, more cars will worsen your congested commute. The future residents will come in search of their American Dream, and in so doing will compromise yours. You are against growth, because you believe that it will make your life worse. And you are correct in that belief, because, for the past fifty years, we Americans have been building a national landscape that is largely devoid of places worth caring about. Soulless subdivisions, residential ”communities“ utterly lacking in communal life; strip shopping centers, ”big box“ chain stores, and artificially festive malls set within barren seas of parking; antiseptic office parks, ghost towns after 6 p.m.; and mile upon mile of clogged collector roads, the only fabric tying our disassociated lives back together—this is growth, and you can find little reason to support it. In fact, so far as your hectic daily schedule allows, you fight it. Once a citizen, you have now become a Nimby (Not in My BackYard), or what professional planners dismissively term a Banana (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). As such, you are hardly expected to be reasonable, or even polite. Still, it would be nice if there were a more constructive role to play—if only there were some higher standard of performance from their developers. Encouraged by the success of a few pioneering projects, homebuilders have begun to experiment with a form of development that grows its cities and towns in the traditional manner of the country’s most successful older neighborhoods. The question is not whether or not such growth is possible but whether it will come in time to spare our countryside, small town, and older cities from the march of suburbia.
Copyright © 2000 Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. All rights reserved. ____________________________________________________________________
Climate Connections: What to Do Life in the 'Burbs: Heavy Costs for Families, Climate Elizabeth Shogren National Public Radio April 1, 2008
Barry Williams A file photo shows traffic crawling through downtown Atlanta, Ga., along Interstate 75/85 during rush hour. Getty Images
Morning Edition, March 31, 2008 · Millions of Americans have moved to the suburbs in the past 60 years, drawn by the lure of larger houses and cheaper prices. But until recently, few were aware of the impact those choices had on the environment. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89231809
The Challenge for Metropolitan AtlantaThe region's water systems, trees and green space, and air quality are severely affected by its rapid expansion. Recent anxieties about sprawl, traffic congestion, and environmental degradation in the Atlanta region have resulted in increased public demand for information about the area's growth trends and for responses to some of the negative consequences of the region's growth. Urban Forest in the South (UFS) http://www.urbanforestrysouth.org/resources Moving Beyond Sprawl
Robert Digiacomo Grist Environmental News & Commentary May 14, 2008 http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/05/14/atlanta/
Robert DiGiacomo is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia, the nation's original "Green Country Town."
The City in the Forest hopes to get back to its roots.
Despite its reputation as a city of wall-to-wall subdivisions, office complexes, and shopping centers, Atlanta's not a complete stranger to matters of green. At the time of its mid-19th century founding, in the woods at the end of a railroad line, it was called the "City in the Forest." And in the early 20th century, the city created the 185-acre Piedmont Park in Midtown (currently ballooning to add another 50 acres). Since then, of course, the Atlanta of urban planning lore has descended: traffic-choked, overdeveloped, polluted, with a major water crisis and few public transportation options, in a state where 100 acres of open space are gobbled up every day. And while the city has certainly earned that reputation -- Atlanta was ranked the fourth-most-sprawling of 83 metro areas by Smart Growth America -- a greener Atlanta, one that jibes with its bucolic roots, is peeking from behind the veil of smog, giving the city both an environmental makeover and an economic boost. "Atlanta has gotten so much recognition about being the poster child for sprawl and its legendary love affair with the car," says Will Herbig, director of urban design at Midtown Alliance, which has spearheaded the revitalization of one of the city's core neighborhoods. "We've all realized the status quo cannot continue. There's got to be another way." The city's new way includes public transportation, with a 22-mile BeltLine project in the works that combines light rail with new pedestrian and bike links; a heavy investment in green building, with the LEED-heavy Emory University campus and the Southface Energy Institute setting new standards for sustainable construction; walkable neighborhoods and mixed-use development; and green-friendly policy, courtesy of Mayor Shirley Franklin. "It's a market advantage for Atlanta to be green when competing with other cities in the region," Herbig says.
Photo: atlantaga.gov Backers of the BeltLine hope the transit project will "boost economic vitality."
But for the legions of drivers stuck in rush hour traffic every day -- Atlanta ranks fifth on the list of most congested U.S. cities, with peak driving times 46 percent longer than during off-hours -- or for the millions watching their lawns wither due to the severe water shortage -- the city and its suburbs continue to enforce various restrictions on outdoor water use -- Atlanta's shade of green needs to get a whole lot deeper. _____________________________________________________________________________Read More: http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/05/14/atlanta/index.html
Grist Magazine: Environmental News and Commentary ©2007. Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. Gloom and doom with a sense of humor®.
Analyze
1. In the early 1930s, architect Frank Lloyd Wright argued that land consumption was not a problem because there was so much of it. What assumptions did he make? What problem do the following statistics reveal? What factors do these statistics not take into account? Re-read ”Broadacre City: Wright’s Utopia Turned Nightmare“ (p. 0-00). Year U.S. Population Acres Per Person 1932 130 million 57 1999 275 million 26 2007 302.2 24 The predicted U.S. population by 2050 is 438 million. Using the same way of accounting, how many acres per person would this increase in population leave? 2. Create an analytical framework for some environmental effects of sprawl. Include some examples as well. You can add to this framework as you learn more.
Reflect Reflect on your experience with sprawl. QuickWrite for 5 minutes.
Discuss Join a small group to share your experiences with sprawl and observations. Discuss as a group how sprawl is in one sense a result of the American dream. To what extent do you think sprawl is also a result of overpopulation? Talk about other factors that influence the rise of sprawl.
Learn More
What is the fastest-growing community in the nation today? What three cities have the most expanded population (urban sprawl) today? One critic of sprawl (”Sharing Blame for Sprawl,“ Paul B. Paulson, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 8, 2000, A11) said about Atlanta,“…sooner or later, the land is sure to run out, unless the water goes first.“ Learn about the water shortage problem in Atlanta (2007). What is Bakersfield, California’s population today? How much has it expanded since 2005 when it had 312,000 residents? Check out sprawl in Cleveland, Phoenix, and other cities. Learn more about how development affects climate change. Learn about tension between the drive for development and the growing urge to protect endangered historic or sacred places. How has sprawl affected plants and wildlife habitats? How has replacing green space with asphalt affected the environment? What are some ”smart-growth“ solutions? Options: You can work individually or collaboratively in a small group. You can follow up with a presentation and discussion of your findings. Presentations and discussion can be oral, written, or electronic or a combination.
Write
1. Based on your research, write a question related to environmental effects of sub/urban sprawl, make a claim and support it using information and testimonies you learned from 2-3 credible sources. For example, you might explore the question of how the dramatic population expansion of a city (Atlanta, Cleveland, Phoenix, Bakersfield, CA., for example) has affected the environment in some way (climate change, water supply, plants and wildlife habitats, for example). You could also argue how ”smart-growth“ solutions could address sprawl problems or describe how the drive for development has come into conflict with the growing urge to protect endangered historic or sacred places.“ (See ”Kinds of Evidence“ and ”Introducing and Incorporating Sources,“ Resources.)
2. Write a response to a sprawl-related development proposal.
(a) Learn about a housing development proposal (or invent one) in a particular community that is beginning to get overdeveloped or is already overdeveloped. Summarize (or write) a brief proposal for development and name the project. Do some research about sprawl problems in the region and argue why this proposal for land development should not be granted. Focus on environmental issues. Your writing can take the form of a commentary that could be included on the editorial page in the community or and educational blog. Perhaps an announcement of the proposal has appeared in a local newspaper and there even has been some discussion (articles, letters to the editor, forums) to which you can refer. Join the conversation and offer your informed response.
(b) Instead of a housing development proposal, you could respond to a proposal for building a strip mall or a ”big box“ store (Wal-Mart, for example). Learn how a particular community has responded and possibly respond as a member of the community. Pay attention to your line of reasoning. Provide source information for references and perhaps links, attachments, or printed copies.
Don’t make dirty energy more expensive, instead make clean energy cheaper. Michael Shellenberger, co-author of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, Speaking at UC Berkeley, November 2007
Whither Wind? Frank Morris, NPR Charles Komanoff
Mother Earth News A journey through the heated debate over wind farms February/March 2007 Charles Komanoff is director of Komanoff Energy Associates. He has written extensively about energy, economics and the environment, as well as pedestrian and bicyclist rights in New York City. His website is www.komanoff.net. It was a place I had often visited in memory but feared might no longer exist. Orange slabs of calcified sandstone teetered overhead, while before me, purple buttes and burnt mesas stretched over the desert floor. In the distance I could make out southeast Utah’s three snowcapped ranges — the Henrys, the Abajos, and 80 miles to the east, the La Sals, shimmering in the blue horizon. No cars, no roads, no buildings. Two crows floating on the late-winter thermals. Otherwise, stillness. Edward Abbey’s country. But my country, too. Almost 40 years after Abbey wrote Desert Solitaire, 35 since I first came to love this Colorado River plateau, I was back with my two sons, who were 11 and 8. We had spent four sun-filled days clambering across slickrock in Arches National Park and crawling through the slot canyons of the San Rafael Reef. Now, perched on a precipice above Goblin Valley, stoked on endorphins and elated by the beauty before me, I had what might seem a strange, irrelevant thought: I didn’t want windmills here. Not that any windmills are planned for this Connecticut-sized expanse — the winds are too fickle. But wind energy is never far from my mind these days. As Earth’s climate begins to warp under the accumulating effluent from fossil fuels, the increasing viability of commercial-scale wind power is one of the few encouraging developments. Encouraging to me, at least. As it turns out, there is much disagreement over where big windmills belong, and whether they belong at all.
Why Wind Farms?Fighting fossil fuels, and machines powered by them, has been my life’s work. As an energy analyst, I can tell you that the science on global warming is terrifyingly clear: To have even a shot at fending off climate catastrophe, the world must reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by at least 50 percent within the next few decades. If poor countries are to have any room to develop, the United States — the biggest emitter by far — needs to cut back by 75 percent. Although automobiles, with their appetite for petroleum, may seem like the main culprit, the No. 1 climate change agent in the United States is actually electricity. The most recent inventory of U.S. greenhouse gases found that power generation was responsible for a whopping 38 percent of CO2 emissions. Yet the electricity sector may also be the least complicated to make carbon free. Approximately three-fourths of U.S. electricity is generated by burning coal, oil or natural gas. Accordingly, switching that same portion of U.S. electricity generation to nonpolluting sources such as wind turbines, while simultaneously ensuring that our ever-expanding arrays of lights, computers and appliances are increasingly energy efficient, would eliminate 38 percent of the country’s CO2 emissions and bring us halfway to the goal of cutting emissions by 75 percent. To achieve that power switch entirely through wind power would require 400,000 windmills rated at 2.5 megawatts each, by my calculations. To be sure, this is a hypothetical figure, since it ignores such real-world issues as limits on power transmission and the intermittence of wind, but it’s a useful benchmark just the same.
What would WIND FARMS entail?To begin, I want to be clear that the turbines I’m talking about are huge, with blades up to 165 feet long mounted on towers rising several hundred feet. Household wind machines such as the 100-foot-high Bergey 10-kilowatt BWC Excel with 11-foot blades, the mainstay of the residential and small business wind turbine market, may embody democratic self-reliance and other ”small is beautiful“ virtues, but we can’t look to them to make a real dent in the big energy picture. What dictates the supersizing of windmills are two basic laws of wind physics: A wind turbine’s energy potential is proportional to the square of the length of the blades, and to the cube of the speed at which the blades spin. I’ll spare you the math, but the difference in blade lengths, the greater wind speeds higher off the ground, and the sophisticated controls available on industrial-scale turbines all add up to a market-clinching 500-fold advantage in electricity output for a giant General Electric or Vestas wind machine. How much land do these industrial turbines require? The answer turns on what ”require“ means. An industry guideline is that to maintain adequate exposure to the wind, each big turbine needs space around it of about 60 acres. Since 640 acres make a square mile, those 400,000 turbines would need 37,500 square miles, or roughly all the land in Indiana or Maine. On the other hand, the land actually occupied by the turbines — their ”footprint“ — would be far, far smaller. For example, each 3.6-megawatt Cape Wind turbine proposed for Nantucket Sound will rest on a platform roughly 22 feet in diameter, implying a surface area of 380 square feet — the size of a typical one-bedroom apartment in New York City. Scaling that up by 400,000 suggests that just six square miles of land — less than the area of a single big Wyoming strip mine — could house the bases for all of the windmills needed to banish coal, oil and gas from the U.S. electricity sector. Of course, erecting and maintaining wind turbines also can necessitate clearing land: Ridgeline installations often require a fair amount of deforestation, and then there’s the associated clearing for access roads, maintenance facilities, and the like. But there are also now a great many turbines situated on farmland, where the fields around their bases are still actively farmed. Depending, then, on both the particular terrain and how the question is understood, the land area said to be needed for wind power can vary across almost four orders of magnitude.
WIND POWER: A Fractious DebateSimilar divergences of opinion are heard about every aspect of wind power. Big wind farms kill thousands of birds and bats ... or hardly any, in comparison to avian mortality from other tall structures such as skyscrapers. Industrial wind machines are soft as a whisper from a thousand feet away, and even up close their sound level would rate as ”quiet“ on standard noise charts ... or they can sound like ”the shrieking sound of a wild animal,“ according to one unhappy neighbor of an upstate New York wind farm. Some of the bad press is warranted. The first giant wind farm, comprising 6,000 small, fast-spinning turbines placed directly in Northern California’s principal raptor flyway, Altamont Pass, in the early 1980s rightly inspired the epithet ”Cuisinarts for birds.“ The longer blades on newer turbines rotate more slowly and thus kill far fewer birds, but bat kills are being reported at wind farms in the Appalachian Mountains; as many as 2,000 bats were hacked to death at one 44-turbine installation in West Virginia. And as with any machine, some of the nearly 10,000 industrial-grade windmills now operating in the United States may groan or shriek when something goes wrong. At the same time, however, there is an apocalyptic quality to much anti-wind advocacy that seems wildly disproportionate to the actual harm, particularly in the overall context of not just other sources of energy but modern industry in general. New York state opponents of wind farms call their Web site ”Save Upstate New York.“ In Massachusetts, a group called Green Berkshires argues that wind turbines ”are enormously destructive to the environment,“ but does not perform the obvious comparison to the destructiveness of fossil fuel-based power. Although the intensely controversial Cape Wind project ”poses an imminent threat to navigation and raises many serious maritime safety issues,“ according to the anti-wind Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the alliance was strangely silent when an oil barge bound for the region’s electric power plant spilled 98,000 gallons of its deadly, gluey cargo into Buzzards Bay in 2003. Of course rhetoric is standard fare in advocacy, particularly the environmental variety with its salvationist mentality — environmentalists always like to feel they are ”saving“ this valley or that species. You can spend hours sifting through the anti-wind Web sites and find no mention at all of the climate crisis, let alone wind power’s potential to help avert it. In fact, many wind power opponents deny that wind power displaces much, if any, fossil fuel burning. This notion is mistaken. It is true that since wind is variable, individual wind turbines can’t be counted on to produce on demand, so the power grid can’t necessarily retire fossil fuel generators at the same rate as it takes on windmills. The coal- and oil-fired generators will still need to be there, waiting for a windless day. But when the wind blows, those generators can spin down. That’s how the grid works; it allocates electrons. What about the need to keep a few power stations burning fuel so they can instantaneously ramp up and counterbalance fluctuations in wind energy output? The grid requires this ballast, known as spinning reserve, in any event both because demand is always changing and because power plants of any type are subject to unforeseen breakdowns. The additional variability due to wind generation is slight — wind speeds don’t suddenly drop from strong to calm, at least not for every turbine in a wind farm and certainly not for every wind farm on the grid. With very few exceptions, then, wind output can be counted on to displace fossil fuel burning one for one. No less than other nonpolluting technologies such as bicycles or photovoltaics, wind power is truly an anti-fossil fuel.
. . . .
A New Ethic for WIND POWER SitingPart of the problem with wind power, I suspect, is that it’s hard to weigh the effects of any one wind farm against the greater problem of climate change. It’s much easier to comprehend the immediate impact of wind farm development than the less tangible losses from a warming Earth. Intruding the unmistakable human hand on any landscape for wind power is, of course, a loss in local terms, and no small one. The inevitable access roads for erecting and serving the turbines can be damaging ecologically as well as symbolically. In contrast, you will feel few benefits of the wind farm in a tangible way. If the thousands of tons of coal a year that your wind farm will replace were being mined a mile from your house, it might be a little easier to take. If Congress enacted an energy policy that harnessed the spectrum of cost-effective energy efficiency together with renewable energy, thereby ensuring that fossil fuel use shrank starting today, a windmill’s contribution to climate protection might actually register, providing psychic reparation for an altered viewshed. If carbon fuels were taxed for their damage to the climate, wind power’s profit margins would widen. And surrounding communities could extract bigger tax revenues from wind farms, which could go to a new high school, or land acquired for a nature preserve. It’s very human to ask, ”Why me? Why my ridgeline, my seascape, my viewshed?“ …. Throughout his illustrious career, wilderness champion David Brower called upon Americans to ”determine that an untrammeled wildness shall remain here to testify that this generation had love for the next.“ Now that all wild things and all places are threatened by global warming, that task is more complex. Could a windmill’s ability to ”derive maximum benefit out of the site-specific gift nature is providing — wind and open space,“ in the words of aesthetician Yuriko Saito, help Americans bridge the divide between pristine landscapes and sustainable ones? Could windmills help Americans subscribe to the ”higher order of beauty“ that environmental educator David Orr defines as something that ”causes no ugliness somewhere else or at some later time“? Could acceptance of wind farms be our generation’s way of avowing our love for the next? I believe so. Or want to. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Alternative-Energy/2007-02-01/Whither-wind.aspx --Adapted from a longer article of the same name, which originally appeared in Orion Magazine. _________________________________________________________________
Solar is the SolutionSteve Heckeroth Mother Earth News December 2007/January 2008
Steve Heckeroth is Chair of the Renewable Fuels and Sustainable Transportation Division of the American Solar Energy Society (ASES), a member of the Board of Directors for the Solar Living Institute, and the director of Building-Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) Products (www.renewables.com). He has built more than two dozen electric vehicles and designed and built over 30 passive solar homes. His writing on solar energy has been published in numerous national and regional magazines. ______________________________________________________________________________________
It’s time to harness the world’s virtually inexhaustible supply of solar energy and start building a brighter future. We know that relying on coal, oil and natural gas threatens our future with toxic pollution, global climate change and social unrest caused by diminishing fuel supplies. Instead of relying on unsustainable fossil fuels, we must transform our economy and learn to thrive on the planet’s abundant supply of renewable energy. I have been studying our energy options for more than 30 years, and I am absolutely convinced that our best and easiest option is solar energy, which is virtually inexhaustable. Most importantly, if we choose solar we don’t have to wait for a new technology to save us. We already have the technology and energy resources we need to build a sustainable, solar-electric economy that can cure our addiction to oil, stabilize the climate and maintain our standard of living, all at the same time. It is well past time to start seriously harnessing solar energy.
Fossil-fueled Problems…[T]he potential of solar energy dwarfs all other options, renewable or otherwise. To understand why a solar-electric economy is our best option, let’s look at the energy resources we currently depend on and compare them with the solar energy available to us. Coal is burned mainly to produce electricity, and coal-fired power plants produce more than half the electricity used in the United States. But burning coal has serious drawbacks. One is that it releases carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. It also releases heavy metals, such as mercury and sulfur. These toxins that were locked in the Earth’s crust over billions of years are suddenly spewed into the atmosphere and thus degrade our air, water and soil. The exhaust from burning coal contains more pollutants and global warming emissions per unit of energy produced than any other fossil fuel. In addition, the methods used to mine coal are destructive to the land and dangerous for the miners. Now consider that coal is enormously inefficient from a total energy perspective. It took billions of years of solar energy to form the coal we have today. And while coal is the most abundant fossil resource, the total amount of energy produced by burning all the coal on the planet would only be equivalent to the solar energy that strikes the Earth every six days. Natural gas supplies more than half the fuel used to heat buildings and about 15 percent of the electricity in the United States. Natural-gas-fired power plants only emit about half the pollutants produced by coal plants, as long as the fuel is extracted close to where it is burned. However, U.S. natural gas extraction can no longer keep up with demand, so expensive and hazardous methods to liquefy and ship foreign natural gas are being devised. In the future, natural gas for the United States would have to be imported from countries such as Russia, Kazakhstan, Qatar and Iran, which together have 60 percent of the world’s reserves. When all the externalities, such as the cost and pollution caused by liquefying and transporting this fuel, are included, liquefied natural gas (LNG) is much more expensive than coal, and almost as dirty. Natural gas is the second most abundant fossil fuel, but its total potential energy is equivalent to only about 1 1/2 days of sunshine striking the Earth. Nuclear power plants fueled by radioactive isotopes of uranium produce 20 percent of the electricity used in the United States. When radioactive materials were sequestered and dispersed deep under the Earth’s surface, they presented very little threat to life. But we’ve made those materials far more dangerous by mining and concentrating them, and the byproducts left over after a nuclear reaction are even more dangerous than the original isotopes. Nuclear power plants create hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive waste that will continue to be a threat to life for longer than humans will walk the Earth. Even if the problem of radioactive waste could be solved, the recoverable world reserve of fissionable uranium is equivalent to less than 1 1/2 days of the energy striking the Earth from the nuclear reaction of the sun. Oil-fired power plants have all but disappeared in the United States, but oil (mostly diesel fuel and gasoline) powers nearly all our transportation. More than 60 percent of the oil consumed in the United States is now imported. Demand for petroleum will soon exceed world production capacity and at that point the price of fuel will start to rise dramatically. We should be asking ourselves how we will cope with gas prices as they rise from $2.50 to $5 to $10 per gallon and keep rising. It’s hard to imagine the hardship that will be faced by countries that remain addicted to oil, and even harder to imagine the suffering in countries that have oil, but do not have the strength to protect their resources or themselves. Now consider that the entire recoverable world oil reserve is equivalent to the solar energy that strikes the Earth in one day.
Biofuels and HydrogenBefore we explore the solar-electric future let’s discuss biofuels and hydrogen as other possible alternatives. Although both have received a lot of good press, I believe neither are viable solutions for our future energy needs. Waste oil and biomass can make good transition fuels but unless human population growth slows, we will need all existing agricultural land to grow food. There are already many examples of food crop land that is being used to create ethanol to power SUVs and other flex-fuel vehicles. The cost of tortillas has quadrupled in Mexico in the last year because of rising demand for corn to make ethanol. If we let demand for biofuels increase, the impact on the world’s poor will be much more severe. According to some studies, it takes 1,000 gallons of water and more than a gallon equivalent of fossil fuel to produce 1 gallon of corn ethanol. Finally, consider that biofuels just aren’t very efficient. When you do the math, the overall efficiency of biomass used as transportation fuel, from sun to wheel, is about 0.01 percent to 0.05 percent. In contrast, the overall efficiency of using solar panels to charge electric vehicles from sun to wheel is 3 percent to 20 percent. This means that solar-charged electric vehicles are from 60 to 2,000 times more efficient than vehicles burning ethanol or biodiesel. Which solution makes more sense? Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are no more efficient than biofuels. Hydrogen is much lighter than air, and it must be contained in order to keep it from escaping the Earth’s atmosphere, unless it is bound up in water or hydrocarbon molecules. The strong bonds that hold these molecules together take a significant amount of energy to break apart to extract hydrogen. Once the hydrogen is extracted, more energy is needed to compress it into a container that is small enough to store on a vehicle. In order for a fuel cell vehicle to go 200 or 300 miles on a tank, the hydrogen must be stored in metal hydrates or at 10,000 psi in heavy containers. Even after more than 20 years of development, fuel cell vehicles still cost more than a million dollars each and don’t last very long or go very far. Finally, it takes about four times more renewable energy to drive a fuel cell vehicle than it does to charge the batteries in an electric vehicle to go the same distance. This is like the difference in fuel economy between a Hummer and a Prius. If you are wondering why hydrogen fuel cell vehicles continue to receive billions of dollars in funding given all these barriers, the fact that 96 percent of all hydrogen is currently extracted from fossil fuels may have something to do with it. There are powerful vested interests controlling our energy policy. Only informed citizens acting together can steer the best course.
A Bright Solar-electric FutureA solar-electric economy is well within our reach. We’re already generating solar electricity at the utility scale using powerful concentrating solar power technology. We’re also generating electricity through wind energy, which many experts consider an indirect form of solar energy because it’s driven by temperature differences. But also consider that simply incorporating passive solar design strategies, energy efficiency, conservation and other active solar heating strategies in the construction of buildings can save up to 95 percent of the energy used in conventional buildings. With the addition of building-integrated photovoltaics, buildings can be turned into net energy producers. Energy from the sun can be used to power our vehicles, and that includes not only our cars, but also heavy vehicles such as tractors. Electric Vehicles & Plug-in Hybrids. Electric vehicle drivetrains are inherently five to 10 times more efficient than internal combustion engines and they produce no greenhouse gases at the tailpipe. Even if powered by fossil-fuel electricity, emissions at the power plant are much lower per mile traveled than with internal combustion engines. In addition, electric vehicles can be charged directly from renewable sources, thereby eliminating emissions altogether. One of the main excuses the auto industry offers for the lack of electric vehicles is that ”the batteries are not developed yet.“ But consider how quickly cell phone batteries developed, transforming mobile phones from heavy, bulky, short-lived nuisances to amazingly light, small and long-lasting necessities. The oil companies are doing a good job of protecting the American consumer from ”dangerous“ batteries, but in parts of the world where oil companies have less control, large format battery development is progressing at rapid speeds. Electric Tractors and Agriculture. Experts have estimated that it takes eight to 10 units of fossil energy to put one unit of food energy on American tables, and that it takes the equivalent of 10 barrels of oil to feed each person in the country. Hearing those figures, it’s frightening to imagine what will happen as oil prices rise. To begin with, how would we fuel our farm machinery? The good news is that not only can tractors run on electricity, they run even better on electricity than passenger vehicles do because of their greater weight and slower speeds. An electric tractor can quietly accomplish all the tasks necessary to maintain productivity on a small farm. Dealing with the rising cost of mobility and energy are huge challenges, and the biggest challenge facing humanity may be maintaining an affordable and nourishing food supply. But we can have fresher and more nourishing food without fossil fuels. What it will take is public support for a switch to local food production on small organic farms using solar irrigation pumps and solar-charged electric tractors. We Have the PowerIt’s easy to feel confused, cynical and even hopeless about the state of the planet these days. But I am excited and optimistic because I know we have the technology now that will allow us to wean ourselves from fossil fuels and move to a renewable solar-electric energy system. Yes, I know — solar panels are still too expensive for many of us. But 10 years ago, nobody gave hybrid cars a chance of succeeding. Today, the Toyota Prius is the hottest thing going. Plug-in hybrids and all-electric options should be available soon. If we all work together and demand that our government set a wise energy policy and use taxes to support the right renewable energy options, I predict we can put the brakes on climate change and enjoy clean, true-green energy. http://www.motherearthnews.com/print-article.aspx?id=118784
Oded Balilty/Associated Press Beijing residents in Tiananmen Square, used to pea-soup smog, ignored a citywide stay-indoors warning. One man flew a kite. (December 29, 2007)
http://johnibii.wordpress.com/2007/12/29/as-china-olympics-nears-pollution-fears/
China and India: Rapidly Growing Economies
China and India are going to grow and they want to grow rapidly and my guess is that they will use their coal reserves. Kent Hughes, Woodrow Wilson Center, Wired Science, http://blog.wired.com
China and India are not going to move from this fuel in the future. They are not going to turn off the lights. Jeremy Carl, research fellow, Energy & Sustainable Development program, Stanford University December 3, 2007 http://www.news.com
China’s rapidly growing economy is pushing energy consumption to new highs as the increasingly affluent populous plugs in and turns on more appliances than ever, adding to the high-voltage factory hum that has long characterized the country’s modernization efforts. –Gordon Feller, CEO, Urban Age magazine, has written extensively about sustainable development.
This is the message the anti-CO2 crowd doesn’t get. Even if the billion people in the developed world stopped emitting all their CO2 tomorrow (and they won’t), there are over a billion people in China, and another billion people in India, and another few billion elsewhere in the world, who are going to burn quantities of CO2 in the coming decades that easily surpass what the global north burns today. -Ed ”Redwood“ Ring, Editor, EcoWorld, January 31, 2007 http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=413
Can the World Afford A Middle Class? Yes, but it will be awfully expensive. Moisés Naím Foreign Policy March/April 2008
Moisés Naím is editor in chief of Foreign Policy. The middle class in poor countries is the fastest-growing segment of the world’s population. While the total population of the planet will increase by about 1 billion people in the next 12 years, the ranks of the middle class will swell by as many as 1.8 billion. Of these new members of the middle class, 600 million will be in China. Homi Kharas, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, estimates that by 2020 the world’s middle class will grow to include a staggering 52 percent of the global population, up from 30 percent now. The middle class will almost double in the poor countries where sustained economic growth is lifting people above the poverty line fast. For example, by 2025, China will have the world’s largest middle class, while India’s will be 10 times larger than it is today. While this is, of course, good news, it also means humanity will have to adjust to unprecedented pressures. The rise of a new global middle class is already having repercussions. Last January, 10,000 people took to the streets in Jakarta to protest skyrocketing soybean prices. And Indonesians were not the only people angry about the rising cost of food. In 2007, higher pasta prices sparked street protests in Milan. Mexicans marched against the price of tortillas. Senegalese protested the price of rice, and Indians took up banners against the price of onions. Many governments, including those in Argentina, China, Egypt, and Russia, have imposed controls on food prices in an attempt to contain a public backlash. These protesters are the most vociferous manifestations of a global trend: We are all paying more for bread, milk, and chocolate, to name just a few items. The new consumers of the emerging global middle class are driving up food prices everywhere. The food-price index compiled by The Economist since 1845 is now at an all-time high; it increased 30 percent in 2007 alone. Milk prices were up more than 29 percent last year, while wheat and soybeans increased by almost 80 and 90 percent, respectively. Many other grains, like rice and maize, reached record highs. Prices are soaring not because there is less food (in 2007, the world produced more grains than ever before), but because some grains are now being used as fuel and because more people can afford to eat more. The average consumption of meat in China, for example, has more than doubled since the mid-1980s. The impact of a fast-growing middle class will soon be felt in the price of other resources. After all, members of the middle class not only consume more meat and grains, but they also buy more clothes, refrigerators, toys, medicines, and, eventually, cars and homes. China and India, with 40 percent of the world’s population, most of it still very poor, already consume more than half of the global supply of coal, iron ore, and steel. Thanks to their growing prosperity and that of other countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, and Vietnam, the demand for these products is booming. Not surprisingly, in the past two years, the world price of tin, nickel, and zinc have roughly doubled, while aluminum is up 39 percent and plywood is now 27 percent more expensive. Moreover, a middle-class lifestyle in these developing countries, even if more frugal than what is common in rich nations, is more energy intensive. In 2005, China added as much electricity generation as Britain produces in a year. In 2006, it added as much as France’s total supply. Yet, millions in China still lack reliable access to electricity; in India, more than 400 million don’t have power. The demand in India will grow fivefold in the next 25 years. And you know what happened to oil prices. Again, oil reached its all-time high of $100 per barrel not because of supply constraints but because of unprecedented growth in consumption in poor countries with rising middle classes. China alone accounts for one third of the growth in the world’s oil consumption in recent years. The middle class also likes to travel: The World Tourism Organization estimates that outbound tourists will grow from today’s 846 million a year to 1.6 billion in 2020. Venice and Paris will be even more expensive—and crowded—to visit. The public debate about the consequences of this global consumption boom has focused on what it means for the environment. Yet, its economic and political effects will be significant, too. The lifestyle of the existing middle class will probably have to change as the new middle class emerges. The consumption patterns that an American, French, or Swedish family took for granted will inevitably become more expensive. Some, like driving your car anywhere at any time, may even become prohibitively so. That may not be all bad. It may mean that the price of some resources, like water or oil, may more accurately reflect its true costs. But other dislocations will be more painful and difficult to predict. Changes in migration, urbanization, and income distribution will be widespread. And expect growing demands for better housing, healthcare, education, and, inevitably, political participation. The unanticipated effects of the new global middle class will become part of our daily news. The debate about the Earth’s ”limits to growth“ is as old as Thomas Malthus’s alarm about a world where the population outstrips its ability to feed itself. In the past, pessimists have been proven wrong. Higher prices and new technologies, like the green revolution, always came to the rescue, boosting supplies and allowing the world to continue to grow. That may happen again. But the adjustment to a middle class greater than what the world has ever known is just beginning. As the Indonesian and Mexican protesters can attest, it won’t be cheap. And it won’t be quiet. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4166
Analyze Based on the reading you have done so far, create an analytical framework that includes both unsustainable fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power) and sustainable energy (wind, solar, and biofuels): supply (limited, plentiful, inexhaustible); drawbacks, advantages. Take notes. You can return to this framework as you learn more. Reflect QuickWrite (5 minutes) your intial response to this quotation from an interview with Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, co-authors of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (2007): Energy independence, getting off oil, getting out of the Middle East, and creating jobs and economic development in the new clean energy industries of the future are much higher priorities for most voters than capping carbon emissions or taxing dirty energy sources. We can still cap carbon, but that needn’t be at the top of the agenda that we communicate to voters. Making big investments to get off oil, making clean energy alternatives widely available and cheap, and creating millions of new jobs in clean energy industries is a winner with American voters and can carry the whole suite of policies that we need to address global warming. http://www.amazon.de/Break-Through-Environmentalism-Politics-Possibility/dp/0618658254
Discuss When they traveled around the country after the publication of Break Through (2007), authors Shellenberger and Nordhaus found that ”younger generations were excited to get to work creating a post environmental movement…. [They] were committed to building a movement and a politics that not only saves us from global warming apocalypse but is also equitable, free, and prosperous.“ In a talk at UC-Berkeley (November 2007), they called ”investment“ the third wave of environmentalism, ”conservation,“ the first wave and ”regulation,“ the second. ”The problem,“ as they see it, ”is many environmentalists are trying to ride this second wave all the way in“ (Craig Rubens, posted Nov. 7, 2007, http://earth2tech.com). Join a small group to discuss what you wrote and the potential of renewable energy. Do you think that renewable energy has the potential to make a difference for your generation and generations to come?
Learn More In 2007, coal supplied 40% of the world’s electricity. What percentage does coal supply of electricity today? How have the developing economies of China and India affected the use of coal worldwide? How dependent is China on coal today? Is Beijing still exceeding pollution levels set by the World Health Organization? To what extent is China investing in renewable energy? What about India? Learn more about solar and wind power development (potential and problems). Figures released in January 2008 by the Earth Policy Institute showed solar energy electricity generation as the fastest-growing electricity source with Germany leading the way, followed by Japan and the U.S. Are Germany and Japan still in the lead? Solar guru Professor Vivian Alberts, a physicist at the University of Johannesburg, has developed a solar panel design believed to be the most advanced in the world. Will South Africa lead the solar energy revolution? Are most South African households using these solar panels now? Are they affordable? Learn about the Upington project, the first major solar energy initiative in South Africa. Learn more about solar power for residential use in the U.S. Check out California’s aggressive initiative to push the use of photovoltaic cells in energy generation. Are other states following California’s lead? What are the top 3 countries using wind power today? Learn about some specific existing or proposed wind projects or farms in the world (Denmark, for example) as well as in the U.S. Learn about one of the largest wind farms, in terms of turbines, in Altamont Pass, California, southeast of San Francisco. Most of these turbines are the smaller type. Learn about modern wind turbines that stand twenty stories tall with blades the length of a football field (in Hawaii, for example). Learn about the controversial Cape Wind (Nantucket Sound) project. Read ”An Ill Wind Off Cape Cod,“ an Op-Ed piece by environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (New York Times, Dec. 16, 2005) and a critique ”The Prejudice of Place“ by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in their book BreakThrough (NY: Houghton-Mifflin, 2007) 89-95. See also ”Cape Decision Ignores Climate Change,“ Op-Ed by Barbara J. Hill (Cape Cod Times, Dec. 30, 2007). Visit websites of anti-wind advocacy groups. Learn more about the disagreements over where big windmills belong, and whether they belong at all. Learn about how Greensburg, Kansas became an ”eco-town“ after a tornado nearly destroyed it in May 2007. (The ”greening“ of Greensburg was featured on the Discovery Channel.) To what extent has Greensburg actually gone ”green“? Has the nearby wind farm in Spearville been able to supply all its electricity? Are houses “green“ or just public buildings? An energy company announced plans to build a biodiesel plant in Greensburg. Did the plans materialize? Learn more about biofuels. In November 2007, Google announced a new strategic initiative, known as RE<C, to develop renewable energy sources that would be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. What is the current status of this initiative? What is the status of renewables today, and how might they reasonably be expected to evolve in the years to come? Learn about green-collar proponent Van Jones, cited by Shellenberger and Nordhaus in their talk at UC Berkeley. What are the top ten green colleges or universities in the U.S.? See Princeton Review’s ”2009 Green Rating Honor Roll.“ Is your school making some eco-friendly efforts? Options: You can select to learn more on your own or work collaboratively with a small research team and share your findings with your classroom community. While there are many options for writing, you may develop another option based on what you learn.
Write
Option 1 – Respond to a Claim (a) ”One of the main excuses the auto industry offers for the lack of electric vehicles,“ writes Steve Heckeroth (”Solar is the Solution,“ 2007/2008) ”is that ‘the batteries are not developed yet.’“ What is his response? What is the state of large format battery development today? Are solar-electric cars becoming more feasible? Do some research and respond in the form of an Op-Ed (750 words), in this case ”Opposite“ Steve Heckeroth’s article, or an educational blog that could appear after the article online. (b) Write (750 words) about one or two specific examples that support Steve Heckeroth’s claim that ”a solar-electric economy is well within our reach.“ (c) In a debate with Michael Brune, author of Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal, Joe Lucas of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, made this claim: ”Meeting America’s growing demand for electricity or the world’s growing demand for electricity, for that matter, is going to require us to use all of our available energy resources: coal, wind, solar and others.“ Support or argue this claim. You can read a transcript of the debate by accessing the archives at democracynow.org (”Can Coal be Clean?“ October 7, 2008). Research other sources as well.
Option 2 – Use an Example to Illustrate a Controversy Study a wind farm or proposed wind project (Cape Wind, Nantucket, for example) and write an essay or Op-Ed piece or semi-formal, educational blog (750 words) that is both informative and reflective and prompts readers to respond. If you learn about different views of a wind farm or project, either second-hand (through reading) or first-hand (through actual interviews), you can include those viewpoints and perhaps some direct quotations. Once you learn more, then share your viewpoint for readers to consider. Perhaps respond to the questions Charles Komanoff poses at the end of his article ”Whither Wind?“ Use 3 sources, including Komanoff’s article about the heated debate over wind farms. (See ”Introducing & Incorporating Sources,“ Selected Resources).
Option 3 – Use an Example to Support a Generalization
(a) Some communities have made a great effort to ”go green.“ Do some research and write about one exemplary community. How has the notion of ”green“ expanded from recycling and environmental protection efforts? End with some critical reflections that will invite response. (b) Moses Naim (”Can the World Afford a Middle Class?“) claims that by 2020 the world’s population will increase by about 1 billion people, but the middle-class population will increase to as many as 1.8 billion (a little over 50%) and 600 million will be in China. He goes on to point out some repercussions from the rise of a new global middle class. Toward the end, Naim states: ”The public debate about the consequences of this global consumption boom has focused on what it means for the environment.“ He does not focus on environmental consequences in this piece. Write specifically about one or two environmental consequences that could support this generalizatioin. Use three credible sources. End by circling back to the question Naim raises in his title and offer your critical reflections.
Option 4 – Creative Writing Learn more about problems of living with pollution in Beijing. Then try writing a short-short story (flash fiction), using the photo (p. ) as a writing prompt. You could, for example, write from the point of view of the man in the photo who did not heed the ”stay-indoors warning“ and went to Tiananmen Square to fly a kite in ”pea-soup smog.“
Environmental Justice and Activism
The Crisis, July/August 2007 http://online.qmags.com/TCR0707/
The Crisis magazine, founded in 1910, is the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Environmentalism and Social Justice: An Introduction Robert D. Bullard
Robert Bullard, an environmental sociologist and a leading authority on toxic discrimination, directs the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. His most recent book is entitled Growing Smarter: Achieving Livable Communities, Environmental Justice, and Regional Equity (MIT Press, 2007). The following selection is from the Introduction of Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000): 1-2.
The environmental movement in the United States emerged with agendas that focused on such areas as wilderness and wildlife preservation, resource conservation, pollution abatement, and population control. It was supported mainly by middle- and upper-middle-class whites. Although concern about the environment cut across racial and class lines, environmental activism has been most pronounced among individuals who have upper class education, greater access to economic sources, and a greater sense of personal efficacy. Mainstream environmental organizations were late in broadening their base of support to include blacks and other minorities, the poor and working-class persons. The ”energy crisis“ in the 1970s provided a major impetus for the many environmentalists to embrace equity issues confronting the poor in the country and in the countries of the Third World. Over the years, environmentalism has shifted from a ”participatory“ to a ”power,“ where ”the core of environmental movement is focused on litigation, political lobbying, and technical evaluation rather than on mass mobilization for protest marches. An abundance of documentation shows that blacks, lower-income groups, and working-class persons are subjected to a disproportionately large amount of pollution and other environmental stressors in their neighborhoods as well as in their workplaces. However, these groups have only marginally been involved in the nation’s environmental movement. . . . . Research on environmental quality in black communities has been minimal. Attention has been focused on such problems as crimes, drugs, poverty, unemployment, and family crisis. Nevertheless, pollution is exacting a heavy toll (in environment and health costs) on black communities across the nation. There are few studies that document, for example, the way blacks cope with environmental stressors such as municipal solid waste facilities, hazardous-waste landfills, toxic-waste dumps, chemical emissions from industrial plants, and on-the-job hazards that pose extreme risks to their health. _____________________________________________________________________________________
Black Mayors Take on Environmental Justice
Shannon Gibney The Crisis (Special Issue) Jul/Aug2007 Vol. 114, Issue 4: 9
Abstract: An interview with East Orange, New Jersey Mayor Robert Bowser and former president of the National Conference of Black Mayors (NCBM) is presented. When asked about the organization's stand on the issue concerning toxic dumping in the area, he says that they are trying to get some of the sites cleaned up and make people aware of the problems that landfills contribute to. He adds that they are advocating building treatment plants to take care of waste management. He says that student participation in such crisis would be useful and they can contribute by conducting research about the issue.
It's no secret that communities of color bear the brunt of toxic dumping in this country. A report issued eartier this year by the United Church of Christ found that 1.8 million African Americans and 2.5 million Latinos reside in areas with at least one toxic waste plant. The problem is so pervasive, in fact, that the National Conference of Black Mayors (NCBM) recently instituted a new program to help curb it. The 33-year-old organization will partner with Historically Black Colleges and Universities in order to study the impact of toxic dumping on Black communities. The Crisis spoke to Robert Bowser, mayor of East Orange, N.J., and former president of the NCBM, about how the partnership came about, how it will function and what the NCBM hopes to achieve through it.
Why is this such an important issue for the NCBM? We were shocked to find out about the high percentage of landfills that were in minority communities. There are a lot of environmental problems that come from that - not only in air but in the water as well. We're trying to get some of these sites cleaned up and make people aware of the problems that these landfills contribute to.
What is the connection between environmental justice and the NCBM? Most of our membership is in the South. A lot of them are very small, agricultural communities. A lot of times, where the landfills are put are primarily what is considered "open space." However, there are a lot of problems that come from that [especially] when those landfills infiltrate the water systems in those smaller communities. We are advocating building treatment plants to take care of waste management. Small communities can do this on a more regional basis. This way, these communities cannot only clean up some of the landfills, they can make sure that the waste is managed in order to harness some of the energy from it.
Why a partnership with Black colleges and universities? We felt that if we could use some students who are working with more up-to-date technology, we could benefit. Students would primarily be going out and doing research. Most of these communities don't have planners or engineering staff - they are not equipped to do an analysis of the problems. The HBCUs have testing labs that will help to fortify information that we will be gathering. For instance, they have mapping systems, which can show how a landfill could potentially affect a geographical location.
What do you hope to accomplish through this initiative? To improve the environmental conditions and eliminate one of the hazards that face our community's well-being. African American and minority communities have all kinds of disparities when it comes to health issues. This is one that is very physical that can be removed or reduced, so that it doesn't contribute to these. In addition, if the partnership works out well, some of the smaller communities can benefit from recycling, generating energy and hopefully, income.
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