Traffic is infuriating. I have 14 traffic lights between home and work, in the space of only 3 miles. That's around 5
lights per mile. It's so wasteful, pure stop and go driving. Most of the roads are many lanes wide, which was a knee-jerk reaction to traffic that wastes vast amounts of space and in the end makes everything worse. As an added bonus, those giant roads become impassible to pedestrians and totally unpleasant for bicyclists. A three mile walk would be fine, a three mile bike ride should be a piece of cake, and a three mile drive would be nothing under normal circumstances, but not here. Here, all those options suck.
Then there's our public transportation. It's expensive, slow, and doesn't run often enough or late enough. The coverage isn't very good (except in San Francisco, but that's an exception). In order to get anywhere you usually have to make changes between multiple, totally unintegrated networks and pay for another ticket each time.
So under those circumstances, everybody has a car and drives. In recent years, people bought tons of hybrids, which are stupid in their own ways and don't help congestion at all. But with traffic being so bad, the big tech companies added shuttle service as a perk. Which is great for you if you have a great job working for one of them. If not, you don't get this. The shuttles are probably "greener" than those employees all driving their own cars to work, but the reality is that we've created multiple, redundant, overlapping, privatized transportation systems while letting public transportation languish.
If I were in charge, I'd:
- drop all surface streets back to one lane in each direction, no medians
- remove all traffic lights and stop signs, placing a roundabout at every intersection
- make public transportation 100% free with no passes or tickets
- invest hugely in new routes/stops and extend hours of operation for public transportation
So that's transportation. But the people here find other novel ways to squander energy resources. This is from an email conversation back in fall 2008:
"""
Last night was one of the first crisp, fall-like days of the season.
It felt good outside, a nice change of pace from the monotony. As I
walk past that main strip of Castro street, sure enough the sidewalk
heaters are out and people are outside under them.
It's dark and cool outside, so you use lights to make it bright and
gas to make it warm. So what's the point of being outside?
"""
People from the rest of the country are plenty
wasteful and produce lots of trash, but nowhere else have I ever seen
people systematically heat the outdoors, water the pavement, and wash
the sidewalks with a hose.
I'd ban those outdoor heaters as well.
2010/06/02
Mountain View doesn't understand water
Every dry season when the reservoirs start to get low, Mountain View (and probably other area cities) send out glossy, professional-looking brochures about ways you can save water around the house. They're pitiful suggestions like taking shorter showers, watering the lawn at night, and not leaving the water running while brushing your teeth.
I find these mailings insulting because while I'm being reasonable and water conscious anyways, the city is completely covered with automated sprinkler systems. Also, the brochures probably took more water and energy to make and mail than their recipients can possibly make up in savings.
It's bad enough that we maintain a golf course and a ton of green lawns and even irrigate the grassy highway/road medians, but those sprinkler systems water as much concrete as they do grass. Their latest effort was to run a whole bunch of new plumbing for "recycled water" to use in those sprinklers, and put up signs in English and Spanish saying that it's not safe to drink. There's a lot wrong with that, obviously. Why has it not been treated well enough for it to be drinkable? If it's not fit for us, the water treatment plant is failing at their job. And if we've got that much wastewater available, why not use it for something better than watering grass?
I am a huge proponent of getting rid of green lawns and all
the waste that goes with them. This area is especially bad because we
went from being a major fruit producing region, to using the precious water we're bringing in from distant reservoirs to water lawns with automated
sprinklers, then mow them with gas powered equipment operated by
Mexicans*, then they gather up all the clippings and other biomass and
bury them in a landfill. It's inexcusable.
*I have nothing against Mexicans and their strong work ethic, but many of the people complaining about immigrants are paying them for landscaping.
If we're going to be using treated wastewater for irrigation, we may as well be irrigating food crops that we can then consume ourselves. People here are more likely to put solar panels on their roof than to
grow a garden, but I suspect that at the end of the day, the
importation of food costs more energy per household than those solar
cells could ever hope to offset.
One of the big problems is that even though the net area taken up by
green lawns is large, they're mostly tiny islands surrounded by
pavement, not well suited to any community agriculture projects. You'd
be hard pressed to find a contiguous half acre of dirt in Mountain
View, except in the public parks. Converting parks to gardens sounds
ok to me, but to really get meaningful local food production, we'd
have to do what [my father] suggests and replace one story houses with tall
apartment buildings surrounded by commons.
Funny thing is, we plowed under all the orchards to build a bunch of sprawl not that long ago.
California is the fruit and vegetable basket of the US, but you
wouldn't know it if you were visiting silicon valley. They used to grow
huge quantities of citrus here, mustard plants up in the
drier parts, strawberries on the west side of the Santa Cruz mountains
(they still do grow those, at least), etc. What they did to this place
in the 20th century is just criminal. Mountain View was home to a
giant garbage dump and a number of superfund sites
(we have the most concentrated superfund sites in any one area! go us!),
and the nasty stuff leaking out of
Moffet Field and the nearby Air Force base, and probably gasoline
loaded with MTBE (now outlawed) leaking from all the gas stations, and
all the horrible things that go with having such a crazy high density
of cars on the road, and topped off with countless miles of what can
only be called the textbook definition of sprawl.
I think that things here are actually near a turning point, or will be
soon, because we trashed the place about as much as we could while
still living here, and a large and growing number of people are
feeling at least SOME remorse. At the very least, the rate at which it
will be further trashed will probably slow down in the coming years. If interest in local food grows, we'll probably be hearing a lot more about the contaminated soil and people will all be blaming each other for that...
If I were in charge, I'd:
- Tear out all the publicly owned sprinkler systems. Let whatever can grow do so without the aid of irrigation.
- Either make the golf course grassless, or if that's not possible, just shut it down. Scotland can support golf because it rains a lot there. Mountain View (and Las Vegas, and Death Valley...) just shouldn't have these things.
- Encourage people to replace their inedible lawns with gardens.
- Provide huge subsidies for waterless urinals and composting toilets.
- Treat the wastewater so well that we can just put it back into the supply.
I find these mailings insulting because while I'm being reasonable and water conscious anyways, the city is completely covered with automated sprinkler systems. Also, the brochures probably took more water and energy to make and mail than their recipients can possibly make up in savings.
It's bad enough that we maintain a golf course and a ton of green lawns and even irrigate the grassy highway/road medians, but those sprinkler systems water as much concrete as they do grass. Their latest effort was to run a whole bunch of new plumbing for "recycled water" to use in those sprinklers, and put up signs in English and Spanish saying that it's not safe to drink. There's a lot wrong with that, obviously. Why has it not been treated well enough for it to be drinkable? If it's not fit for us, the water treatment plant is failing at their job. And if we've got that much wastewater available, why not use it for something better than watering grass?
I am a huge proponent of getting rid of green lawns and all
the waste that goes with them. This area is especially bad because we
went from being a major fruit producing region, to using the precious water we're bringing in from distant reservoirs to water lawns with automated
sprinklers, then mow them with gas powered equipment operated by
Mexicans*, then they gather up all the clippings and other biomass and
bury them in a landfill. It's inexcusable.
*I have nothing against Mexicans and their strong work ethic, but many of the people complaining about immigrants are paying them for landscaping.
If we're going to be using treated wastewater for irrigation, we may as well be irrigating food crops that we can then consume ourselves. People here are more likely to put solar panels on their roof than to
grow a garden, but I suspect that at the end of the day, the
importation of food costs more energy per household than those solar
cells could ever hope to offset.
One of the big problems is that even though the net area taken up by
green lawns is large, they're mostly tiny islands surrounded by
pavement, not well suited to any community agriculture projects. You'd
be hard pressed to find a contiguous half acre of dirt in Mountain
View, except in the public parks. Converting parks to gardens sounds
ok to me, but to really get meaningful local food production, we'd
have to do what [my father] suggests and replace one story houses with tall
apartment buildings surrounded by commons.
Funny thing is, we plowed under all the orchards to build a bunch of sprawl not that long ago.
California is the fruit and vegetable basket of the US, but you
wouldn't know it if you were visiting silicon valley. They used to grow
huge quantities of citrus here, mustard plants up in the
drier parts, strawberries on the west side of the Santa Cruz mountains
(they still do grow those, at least), etc. What they did to this place
in the 20th century is just criminal. Mountain View was home to a
giant garbage dump and a number of superfund sites
(we have the most concentrated superfund sites in any one area! go us!),
and the nasty stuff leaking out of
Moffet Field and the nearby Air Force base, and probably gasoline
loaded with MTBE (now outlawed) leaking from all the gas stations, and
all the horrible things that go with having such a crazy high density
of cars on the road, and topped off with countless miles of what can
only be called the textbook definition of sprawl.
I think that things here are actually near a turning point, or will be
soon, because we trashed the place about as much as we could while
still living here, and a large and growing number of people are
feeling at least SOME remorse. At the very least, the rate at which it
will be further trashed will probably slow down in the coming years. If interest in local food grows, we'll probably be hearing a lot more about the contaminated soil and people will all be blaming each other for that...
If I were in charge, I'd:
- Tear out all the publicly owned sprinkler systems. Let whatever can grow do so without the aid of irrigation.
- Either make the golf course grassless, or if that's not possible, just shut it down. Scotland can support golf because it rains a lot there. Mountain View (and Las Vegas, and Death Valley...) just shouldn't have these things.
- Encourage people to replace their inedible lawns with gardens.
- Provide huge subsidies for waterless urinals and composting toilets.
- Treat the wastewater so well that we can just put it back into the supply.
The throw away culture
(Originally an email, 2008-01-04. Slightly edited for clarity.)
I'm sure you've already heard lots on the pacific garbage patch. It has even been featured on the local TV news, meaning it has penetrated to the deepest levels of the otherwise uninformed. Still, here are some articles and pictures that lend details to the story.
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Pacific-Garbage-Patch27oct02.htm
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Moore-Trashed-PacificNov03.htm
http://www.conservationinstitute.org/images/rubbish_in_river.jpg
The most spectacular part of all this is that these plastics only came into widespread use during the 20th century. The habits are less than 100 years old, and already the garbage may cover 1/4 of the ocean surface.
The problem arose quickly and while it can't be easily reversed, the root cause can be stopped almost entirely. And it can be done virtually overnight if everyone took the problem seriously. The rapid emergence of the throw-away culture has provided us disposable grocery bags, disposable flatware, cups, plates, bowls and napkins. It has caused us to wrap everything in low density polyethylene, pack everything in styrofoam, and design everything to break and be thrown away. San Francisco and New York have taken a crucial step in raising awareness of the problem by banning plastic grocery bags, but their ban is woefully inadequate; it doesn't even cover all the stores, just the major grocery chains. Now that people have taken notice, though, it's important to take the next step. This isn't just a plastic problem, it's a garbage problem.
First, ban all plastic bags. All grocery bags, shopping bags, produce bags, ziploc bags, trash bags, leaf bags, literally everything, no exceptions. Then phase out paper bags. Eventually, ban all disposable bags entirely. What will we carry our groceries in? Baskets, boxes, cloth bags, backpacks, whatever. Until well into the 20th century, we never knew we needed disposable bags. We'll forget about them in no time. In the meantime, I've vowed to never use a disposable bag again.
Second, ban plastic and styrofoam tableware, including at take out and fast food restaurants. This one is obvious but entrenched. For starters, they can migrate to biodegradable paper and starch products rather than styrofoam and plastic. Then they can ween their customers back to real, washable dishes and silverware like we always used to have.
What will we get our coffee in at Starbucks? If we're going to drink it there, a real coffee cup. If we're going to take it out, then either a coffee cup we brought from home, or one the store will sell to us if we don't yet have our own.
What will our burgers and fries and coke come in at Burger King? Your burger and fries will come on a plate, and they'll give you a tumbler instead of a paper cup (hardly any difference here, you already fill your own soda at most fast food joints).
What about if we want to eat in our cars? Have a seat and eat your meal in the restaurant. If your schedule is so busy that you can't find time to eat even fast food, you need to slow down and relax.
Third, gradually raise taxes on bottled water and canned/bottled soda, while also getting out the message to drink more tap water. When bottled water becomes prohibitively expensive, poor and middle class people will go back to drinking the free tap water they always used to. They'll also trade their Coke and Gatorade for tap water, which will not only help with the garbage problem but the obesity problem as well. Rich people will go on drinking Perrier and so on, but by the numbers they're a tiny fraction of the market, they're less likely to litter, and they're more likely to recycle. The fancy stuff is also generally sold in glass bottles, which take more energy to make but are overall less of a garbage problem.
Fourth, ban unnecessary packaging material. Here is a self-adjusting wrench, with and without packaging. Does a wrench need a package? Apply this question to every product on the shelves until only the bare essentials remain, such as food and medical packaging. Then convert to using more bulk bins and less individual packaging, while converting the remaining packaging to biodegradable or recyclable material.
http://www.toolspotting.net/images/blackanddecker_autowrench.jpg
http://images.craigslist.org/01010001020201040020080103c45592f29e2366cbe200cfce.jpg
Fifth, make recycling free where it isn't already, increase container deposits steeply and set up many more exchange locations, help communities set up composting, and rather than fine litter offenders, make them serve their community service by picking up litter, working at a landfill, recycling center, or incinerator. A less punitive, more educational approach is better for a lot of reasons. Also, there should be much more automatic (and paid manual) sorting of garbage for metal, plastic, food waste, paper, and everything else that doesn't necessarily need to be thrown away. The state or trash company can sell the reclaimed waste for scrap, generate methane from it, or divert it to a recycling center as appropriate. Really, there is no excuse for burying anything, and landfill growth should approach zero. I'd be tempted to charge for remaining garbage by the pound, but that would just tempt people to dump illegally. Instead, garbage should be centrally sorted exhaustively by whatever methods make the most sense and 0% of it should end up buried in the ground. Once we slow and finally stop the growth of landfills, and once garbage processing techniques have become highly efficient and safe, we can begin excavating existing ones. Recycling all our old trash fixes the environmental problems old landfills continuously cause, like toxic seepage, and drastically slows the rate at which new mineral resources would have to be extracted by re-introducing vast quantities of recycled material that had been previously buried. I'd be willing to bet that a ton of old garbage is richer in recoverable metals than a ton of the ore it originally came from.
There are probably loads of other things that can be done, but the common theme here is each suggestion would actually save money and make life easier for people (or at least not make it any harder). We can all keep being lazy, live ridiculously comfortable lives, and keep more money in our pockets, all without generating the waste we currently do. It's just a matter of convincing everyone of these realities. Once more people realize it, we can go on to tackle other, tougher problems like energy and transportation. But those are for another day.
The biggest roadblocks to these changes are the companies that make disposable crap. All the bottled water makers would balk, as would the dixie cup people and the glad bag people and the ziploc people... lobbyists, what a pain. It's a vicious circle that as long as their products are on the shelf, people will keep buying them, and as long as they want to buy them, they'll stay on the shelf. I guess we'll have to try chipping away at the problem from all sides until there's a breakthrough.
(Don't discount the government. They're a large element and have incredible power to screw things up. See Vietnam, Iraq, etc. If you don't harness that power for good, it's going to either be wasted on pointless crap or be used to make things worse.)
I'm sure you've already heard lots on the pacific garbage patch. It has even been featured on the local TV news, meaning it has penetrated to the deepest levels of the otherwise uninformed. Still, here are some articles and pictures that lend details to the story.
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Pacific-Garbage-Patch27oct02.htm
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Moore-Trashed-PacificNov03.htm
http://www.conservationinstitute.org/images/rubbish_in_river.jpg
The most spectacular part of all this is that these plastics only came into widespread use during the 20th century. The habits are less than 100 years old, and already the garbage may cover 1/4 of the ocean surface.
The problem arose quickly and while it can't be easily reversed, the root cause can be stopped almost entirely. And it can be done virtually overnight if everyone took the problem seriously. The rapid emergence of the throw-away culture has provided us disposable grocery bags, disposable flatware, cups, plates, bowls and napkins. It has caused us to wrap everything in low density polyethylene, pack everything in styrofoam, and design everything to break and be thrown away. San Francisco and New York have taken a crucial step in raising awareness of the problem by banning plastic grocery bags, but their ban is woefully inadequate; it doesn't even cover all the stores, just the major grocery chains. Now that people have taken notice, though, it's important to take the next step. This isn't just a plastic problem, it's a garbage problem.
First, ban all plastic bags. All grocery bags, shopping bags, produce bags, ziploc bags, trash bags, leaf bags, literally everything, no exceptions. Then phase out paper bags. Eventually, ban all disposable bags entirely. What will we carry our groceries in? Baskets, boxes, cloth bags, backpacks, whatever. Until well into the 20th century, we never knew we needed disposable bags. We'll forget about them in no time. In the meantime, I've vowed to never use a disposable bag again.
Second, ban plastic and styrofoam tableware, including at take out and fast food restaurants. This one is obvious but entrenched. For starters, they can migrate to biodegradable paper and starch products rather than styrofoam and plastic. Then they can ween their customers back to real, washable dishes and silverware like we always used to have.
What will we get our coffee in at Starbucks? If we're going to drink it there, a real coffee cup. If we're going to take it out, then either a coffee cup we brought from home, or one the store will sell to us if we don't yet have our own.
What will our burgers and fries and coke come in at Burger King? Your burger and fries will come on a plate, and they'll give you a tumbler instead of a paper cup (hardly any difference here, you already fill your own soda at most fast food joints).
What about if we want to eat in our cars? Have a seat and eat your meal in the restaurant. If your schedule is so busy that you can't find time to eat even fast food, you need to slow down and relax.
Third, gradually raise taxes on bottled water and canned/bottled soda, while also getting out the message to drink more tap water. When bottled water becomes prohibitively expensive, poor and middle class people will go back to drinking the free tap water they always used to. They'll also trade their Coke and Gatorade for tap water, which will not only help with the garbage problem but the obesity problem as well. Rich people will go on drinking Perrier and so on, but by the numbers they're a tiny fraction of the market, they're less likely to litter, and they're more likely to recycle. The fancy stuff is also generally sold in glass bottles, which take more energy to make but are overall less of a garbage problem.
Fourth, ban unnecessary packaging material. Here is a self-adjusting wrench, with and without packaging. Does a wrench need a package? Apply this question to every product on the shelves until only the bare essentials remain, such as food and medical packaging. Then convert to using more bulk bins and less individual packaging, while converting the remaining packaging to biodegradable or recyclable material.
http://www.toolspotting.net/images/blackanddecker_autowrench.jpg
http://images.craigslist.org/01010001020201040020080103c45592f29e2366cbe200cfce.jpg
Fifth, make recycling free where it isn't already, increase container deposits steeply and set up many more exchange locations, help communities set up composting, and rather than fine litter offenders, make them serve their community service by picking up litter, working at a landfill, recycling center, or incinerator. A less punitive, more educational approach is better for a lot of reasons. Also, there should be much more automatic (and paid manual) sorting of garbage for metal, plastic, food waste, paper, and everything else that doesn't necessarily need to be thrown away. The state or trash company can sell the reclaimed waste for scrap, generate methane from it, or divert it to a recycling center as appropriate. Really, there is no excuse for burying anything, and landfill growth should approach zero. I'd be tempted to charge for remaining garbage by the pound, but that would just tempt people to dump illegally. Instead, garbage should be centrally sorted exhaustively by whatever methods make the most sense and 0% of it should end up buried in the ground. Once we slow and finally stop the growth of landfills, and once garbage processing techniques have become highly efficient and safe, we can begin excavating existing ones. Recycling all our old trash fixes the environmental problems old landfills continuously cause, like toxic seepage, and drastically slows the rate at which new mineral resources would have to be extracted by re-introducing vast quantities of recycled material that had been previously buried. I'd be willing to bet that a ton of old garbage is richer in recoverable metals than a ton of the ore it originally came from.
There are probably loads of other things that can be done, but the common theme here is each suggestion would actually save money and make life easier for people (or at least not make it any harder). We can all keep being lazy, live ridiculously comfortable lives, and keep more money in our pockets, all without generating the waste we currently do. It's just a matter of convincing everyone of these realities. Once more people realize it, we can go on to tackle other, tougher problems like energy and transportation. But those are for another day.
The biggest roadblocks to these changes are the companies that make disposable crap. All the bottled water makers would balk, as would the dixie cup people and the glad bag people and the ziploc people... lobbyists, what a pain. It's a vicious circle that as long as their products are on the shelf, people will keep buying them, and as long as they want to buy them, they'll stay on the shelf. I guess we'll have to try chipping away at the problem from all sides until there's a breakthrough.
(Don't discount the government. They're a large element and have incredible power to screw things up. See Vietnam, Iraq, etc. If you don't harness that power for good, it's going to either be wasted on pointless crap or be used to make things worse.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)