Last November, Seattle-area voters gave a resounding shout-out to mass transit. Building on that support, a new bill in Washington state focuses on sustainable development near transit stations. This "Creating Transit Communities" legislation calls for dense, walkable communities in transit hot-spots.
It would provide local jurisdictions with resources and incentives for sustainable growth and strengthen existing provisions about making low-income housing available near transit centers.
Think those are unrelated issues? No way, say bill supporters from Futurewise, Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, and Transportation Choices Coalition. "Our state may face no challenge greater than the threat of global warming and the lack of sufficient affordable housing," they argue in a recent Seattle P-I editorial, "and we can’t solve either unless we solve both."
They go on to illuminate the connections:
The lack of affordable housing pushes people to live farther from
jobs and community services, creating longer commutes. More time spent
in cars increases vehicle miles traveled, which leads to greater
greenhouse gas emissions. Development at the urban fringe converts
working farms and forests to urban uses, resulting in less
carbon-sequestering open space and tree canopy.
If that isn’t enough for you, the loss of rural and resource land
threatens local food security, eliminates wildlife habitat and has been
linked to the degradation of Puget Sound. Lack of housing affordable to
low- and moderate-income earners exacerbates poverty issues, adding
pricey transportation costs to household expenses.
To top it off, the increased infrastructure costs to expand roads
and build sewer lines to urban fringe development is an enormous
economic burden on all taxpayers ...
A complicated series of cause-and-effect, no doubt. But it’s all solvable, they say, with some careful planning ... and the transit-oriented communities bill.
In related news, mass transit ridership is in an upswing trend across the country just as agencies are having to cut services due to dwindling funds. Maybe that’s why Seattle bus rides will cost you another quarter starting on Sunday.
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Comments
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Jon Rynn Posted 11:39 pm
28 Jan 2009
I would also note that it would be nice if someone was as passionate about the ecosystem loss resulting from sprawl as commenter stopgreenpath is about ecosystems lost from building transmission lines and wind and solar farms.
It's also important to note the social justice issues involved, that owning and operating an automobile can be a large drain on personal finances.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:54 pm
28 Jan 2009
Just the release of nitrous oxide (296x the GHG effect of CO2) from chemical fertilizer is equal to 2/3 the CO2 uptake of the crop being fertilized.
On the other hand, with organically fertilized ag, carbon sequestration of cropland could even exceed the level of natural carbon sinks like conservation land.
Adding soil ammendment/fertilizer derived from biodigestor recycling of waste stream components added with dead wood and extra cellulose like weed and algae overgrowth removed from polluted lakes and rivers, could build soil carbon sinks right onto cropland.
Cropland that has been stripped of carbon during the industrial chemical ag revolution. I still think Branson owes me 25 million for this concept, hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:01 am
29 Jan 2009
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amazingdrx Posted 1:21 am
29 Jan 2009
Concrete and buildings definitely stop sequestration, but could they make up for that as solar collector space, in the case of concrete over parking lots? I think so.
For extra fuel production from algae for Branson's jets and a nice carbon offset to make air travel green, huge algae farms could be built on the ocean. Extract the oil from the filtered algae with pyrolisis in a solar comcentrating furnace, then the remaing cellulose can be recycled as soil ammendment.
Building soil around the world back up to the 20 to 30 foot level of american prairies before the advent of chemical ag, that burned all that soil up, releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere over the last century or so. The added GHG benefit is the increased growth rate of plants feeding on this healthy soil, that means more CO2 removed and stored in the soil by crops, lawmns, and restored conservation land.
Not to mention the biogas produced could backup wind, wave, and solar powered grids.
Sprawl could be greened with the appropriate energy/ag GHG fixes. Mass electric transit and plugin hybrids would have to be part of it too.
But imagine mega-cities in the US, Europe, India and China, for instance, sprawling out without green energy/ag re-evolution?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 2:33 am
29 Jan 2009
From 1982-2001, about 14.5 million acres of forest were were newly developed. If development continued at the 1997-2001 rate, an additional 7.3 million acres of forest were developed through 2008. That adds up to 21.8 million acres of forest consumed by development since 1982. That's 5.4 percent of all U.S. forest, more than the area of Maine.
However, many borderline agricultural areas have been returning to forested status over the same time period, so that there was a small increase in forest land from 1982-1997. The WRI says that deforestation is an insignificant source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., even though deforestation is responsible for 18 percent of emissions worldwide.
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