Cross-Posted from Streetsblog.

Early this week, I noticed a number of my favorite bloggers linking to this Elisabeth Rosenthal essay at Environment 360, on the mysterious greenness of European nations. The average American, as it happens, produces about twice as much carbon dioxide each year as your typical resident of Western Europe.

Rosenthal attributes much of this difference to behavioral factors relating, it seems, to Europeans’ unique tolerance of inconvenience. She writes:

But even as an American, if you go live in a nice apartment in Rome, as I did a few years back, your carbon footprint effortlessly plummets. It’s not that the Italians care more about the environment; I’d say they don’t. But the normal Italian poshy apartment in Rome doesn’t have a clothes dryer or an air conditioner or microwave or limitless hot water. The heat doesn’t turn on each fall until you’ve spent a couple of chilly weeks living in sweaters. The fridge is tiny. The average car is small. The Fiat 500 gets twice as much gas mileage as any hybrid SUV. And it’s not considered suffering. It’s living the dolce vita.

She later adds:

Also, in Europe, the construction of most cities preceded the invention of cars. The centuries-old streets in London or Barcelona or Rome simply can’t accommodate much traffic—it’s really a pain, but you learn to live with it. In contrast, most American cities, think Atlanta and Dallas, were designed for people with wheels.

What makes this particularly remarkable is that she opens the essay by discussing an experience she has in Stockholm, in which she insists on taking a taxi from the airport, which ends up being much slower and more expensive than the train.

Brad Plumer frames the piece as a fascinating read in light of the “lifestyle taboo,” writing:

It’s not considered the height of political savvy here in the United States to point out that European lifestyles are greener than our own. Don’t expect that line in an Obama speech anytime soon. Too many facets of European life—the cramped apartments, the clotheslines for drying laundry—would likely strike suburbanites as inconvenient, burdensome, or even downright primitive…

Rosenthal wonders whether similar measures could fly in the United States: “I believe most people are pretty adaptable and that some of the necessary shifts in lifestyle are about changing habits, not giving up comfort or convenience.” Maybe so, but this sort of talk still tends to be taboo in mainstream U.S. green circles. Josh Patashnik wrote a terrific piece for TNR last year on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s brand of “pain-free environmentalism” in California—it’s all just peachy to talk about swapping out coal-fired plants for solar-thermal stations, but ixnay on trying to rein in suburban growth or coax people into smaller homes.

I see several problems with Rosenthal’s essay and with Brad’s framing of it. One is that it’s not really correct to attribute the huge gap in per capita emissions between America and Western Europe to the charming European habit of drying their clothes on clotheslines.

As Brad notes, power sources play a major role, whether one is talking about greater use of natural gas, the French nuclear industry, or Iceland’s geothermal capacity.

Climate is extremely important. Western Europe is fairly temperate relative to much of America (and especially compared to the dirtiest parts of the country). In the same way, Californians are much greener than Texans, thanks to the moderate conditions along the heavily populated Pacific coast, which reduce the number of days on which home heating or cooling is needed.

But there are lifestyle issues involved, particularly where transportation and land use are concerned.  And contrary to Rosenthal, it isn’t that Europeans have opted for inconvenience. Rather, they have chosen different conveniences, as her Stockholm air train anecdote makes clear.

It is incorrect to say that an overabundance of land drove America to sprawl, and to drive. The Netherlands is dense of necessity, of course, but in Britain and France and Germany there is ample countryside, which might easily be home to sprawling subdivisions.

But Western Europeans have largely chosen not to encourage such growth, opting instead to tax gas at high rates, invest in transit, and protect center cities from the threat of urban freeways.

I think it is very difficult, objectively, to demonstrate that their choices have produced ways of life that are clearly less convenient than American lives. It is clear that Europeans tend to have better health outcomes than us, and they die in car accidents at much lower rates, and of course they’re enjoying levels of wealth similar to our own while producing half as much carbon.

The obvious retort to this line of thinking is that perhaps that’s all true, but like it or not America is now sprawling, and any effort to make the country greener by pursuing European land use and transportation options would be very difficult. In a similar vein, it is argued that attempts to push Americans into such a life via gas taxes or carbon prices would wind up being very painful.

But this is not quite right. As I have pointed out before, America will more or less need to build itself all over again by 2050 in order to accommodate population growth. Just because most of America is currently sprawling doesn’t mean that most of the America built between now and mid-century has to look the same.

It’s also not clear that increasing the push factor on households has to be especially painful. Taxes on drivers can be levied in a progressive fashion, if some revenues are used to fund transit options while others are refunded to lower and middle income households to help offset the added cost of driving.

Congestion tolling would mean higher government revenues and reduced driving, but it would benefit rich and poor alike. As with tax revenues, tolls could be used to provide a cushion against the increased cost for lower income families and increased investment in transit. Higher income households (which will tend to place a greater value on work hours lost to congestion) would enjoy a speedy ride into the office.

If the federal government worked to address limits on urban growth in green cities like New York and San Francisco—limits which also serve to make housing in such places extremely expensive—then America could grow denser and greener by improving access for middle-income households to some of the most dynamic metropolitan economies in the country.

Perhaps not all of the policy changes needed to reduce America’s carbon footprint will be a walk in the park, but efforts to improve land use and transportation decisions are likely to be some of the most benefit-rich aspects of the climate change fight (as you’d think most people would realize, given the obvious pain of congestion, high gas prices, driving fatalities, and isolation among those unable to drive, among other things).

This storyline—that changing lifestyles to enhance walkability will be painful—makes it harder to pass good metropolitan policies and easier for politicans to fall back on the lame argument that Americans simply won’t tolerate anything other than the sprawling suburban patterns which have dominated new development in recent decades.

And by reinforcing the idea that some of the most promising and least painful policy changes that can be made are unlikely to “work” here in America, writers and politicians alike ensure that more of the hard job of cutting emissions will fall to the parts of the economy where there are no good alternative options, and where change will be painful for households.

Rosenthal’s essay is odd yet revealing. She instinctually attributes European greenness to practices Americans would dub backward, while pretending that the very convenient and green transport options she finds are built, and presumably used, by Europeans based on some peculiarity in their culture that we lack.

But we could build trains! In any given legislative sessions bills are introduced that would move the country toward the level of convenience Rosenthal enjoyed in her train ride to the Stockholm airport. It’s just that they don’t pass, because “it’s not considered the height of political savvy” to embrace those policies, because Americans seem to think that their American-ness will render such conveniences inconvenient.

“Trains won’t work here,” because “Americans love their cars,” and so high quality rail lines aren’t built, and so Americans continue to drive. And then we sit around wondering what it is about the European character that makes them enjoy using clotheslines so much.

Related Links:

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success

Copenhagen panic is premature

Alexander unveiled his nuclear plan in July.One of the few Congressional Republicans who talks about the need to address climate change, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, made an interesting argument against wind and solar energy this week. He’s concerned about the amount of land required to produce energy from wind and solar, writing in the Wall Street Journal, “I fear we are going to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment.”

He draws on a recent study by Nature Conservancy scientists who detail how much land is required to produce energy from different sources, an issue they dub “energy sprawl.” Alexander focuses on a small part of their findings—that wind and solar plants require a good deal more physical space than nuclear plants:

It’s a disingenuous argument, because the problem with nuclear power has never been land use. (See Radioactive Waste Disposal, Cost, and Security for more on the very difficult nuclear question.) I’m not arguing here that Alexander’s dead wrong in his long-standing love for nuclear energy, just that this is a thin argument for nuclear.

Oh, and Alexander says he won't support a cap-and-trade climate bill unless it includes his personal wish for 100 new nuke plants.

Bonus second point: If you’re an environmentalist who cares about endangered species and wild places, you shouldn’t be concerned about wind farms or solar plants. You should worry about biofuels.

At least, I’m having a hard time avoiding that conclusion after looking at a key graphic from the energy sprawl report:

Courtesy PLoS ONE

The chart measures the land required per unit (terawatt-hour) of electricity from different sources. Note that the top five sources are all for biofuels, derived from different crops. Note how much less land wind, solar voltaic and solar thermal energy require in comparison.

I won’t rehash the economic and ecological problems with biofuels here, but this should cool off the notion that wind and solar won’t fly for land-use reasons. Of course some places are more sensitive than others, but if there’s room for mountaintop removal coal mining, we have room for wind and solar plants.

There’s a certain man-bites-dog appeal in stories about environmentalists who oppose clean energy projects because they disrupt wild places and endangered species. Take the conflict over solar panels and transmission lines in the Mojave Desert. Or the quarrel over the Cape Wind project at Nantucket Sound. Or the fight over wind turbines in the Flint Hills of Kansas.

These conflicts are intriguing, sure. But the sprawl study, which appeared in PLoS ONE, the online journal of the Public Library of Science, suggests that biofuels such as ethanol pose a far greater threat to open lands.

Related Links:

Two senators push to ramp up nuclear energy

The Wind Kids: How high school students helped bring a wind farm to Milford, Utah

Nuclear companies face reactor design problems, ethics questions

A re-consecration ceremony was held this past weekend at a damaged Indian mound in Oxford, Ala. As we reported last month, the 1,500-year-old sacred and archaeologically significant site was partially demolished during a taxpayer-funded economic development project, with the excavated dirt to be used as fill for construction of a Sam's Club, a retail warehouse store owned by Wal-Mart.

Following protests, the city appears to be backing away from the destruction, with a local landowner reporting that his property would be the source for the fill instead.

But it turns out the incident in Oxford is not the first time Arkansas-based Wal-Mart has been involved in the controversial destruction of sacred and/or archaeologically significant Native American sites.

Reader Marlin Mackley brought to our attention a similar incident in Fenton, Mo., a picturesque historic town along the Meramec River in the eastern part of the state. Inhabited for over 1,000 years, the area was home to the Fenton Mounds, two earthen burial structures dated between 600 and 1400 A.D. But in 2001, the Fenton Mounds were leveled for a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Mackley wrote on the website he created to document what happened:

As a 15 year resident of Old Town Fenton I watched in tears as the Former Fenton Indian Burial Mounds Mesa as I call it was excavated. Over and above the crimes against human history perpetrated by these preditory developers we in my city have to look at the back of a plain block building set on top of a pile of rocks.

The St. Louis Riverfront Times newspaper reported how workers with SCI, the engineering firm hired to determine whether there were remains at the site, grew short on time so began digging less carefully -- and soon struck human bone. Recalled Debra Magruder, a member of the crew who later filed a complaint with the state:

"The story I heard was that the guy working in that area thought it was a tree root and used some root clippers and snapped it in half. Then, when they figured out it was a femur, they just covered it and left it, half sticking out, and a looter came and ripped it out of the mound." The femur was indeed protruding from within a stone box chamber. On Feb. 17, a survey crew lifted the tarp and found that someone had dug horizontally into the vault and stolen the bone.

Doing a little digging of our own, Facing South discovered that what happened in Oxford and Fenton were not isolated instances. There have been numerous cases involving destruction of Native American burial grounds and other culturally significant sites by Wal-Mart:

* An Indian burial site in Nashville, Tenn. was demolished to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter on Charlotte Pike in the late 1990s. The company behind the project was JDN Realty of Atlanta, a developer for Wal-Mart stores since purchased by Developers Diversified Realty Corp. of Ohio. By the time excavations were completed in August 1998, the remains of 154 people including children had been taken from their graves, according to the Alliance for Native American Rights.

* In the mid-'90s, Wal-Mart developer JDN was involved in the relocation of numerous native graves while building a store in Canton, Ga., Wal-Mart Watch reports. The store set up a permanent display of unearthed Indian artifacts next to its layaway counter.

* When an Indian burial ground was discovered during construction of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the northern California community of Anderson, the company proceeded with the project anyway, opening the store in 2007. In June of this year, to make up for the site's desecration, the store erected a bronze statue of a native Wintu feather dancer that was vandalized before the dedication ceremony.

* In 2004, Wal-Mart opened a store in Mexico within view of the 2,000-year-old pyramids of Teotihuacan despite months of protests by local residents as well as prominent Mexican artists and intellectuals. In an interview with the Associated Press, novelist and poet Homero Aridjis compared the store's opening to "nailing globalization's stake in the heart of old Mexico."

* About five years ago, while building a Sam's Club and Wal-Mart Supercenter in Hawaii, workers unearthed 64 native Hawaiian graves, reports Wal-Mart Watch [pdf]. For at least three years afterward, the bones remained locked in a trailer, awaiting reburial.

"What if they built a Wal-Mart at Arlington? How would people feel?" Hawaiian activist William Aila told the AP at the time. "Those individuals were buried there with the thought that they would be undisturbed for the rest of the eternity."

There were other cases where Wal-Mart would have disturbed sacred sites but was dissuaded by protest:

* In 2001, Wal-Mart relocated a planned store in Morgantown, W.V. because it would have destroyed a Native American burial site, according to the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility [pdf]. The decision came after company shareholders and indigenous leaders wrote letters to Wal-Mart and West Virginia state leaders protesting the chosen location.

* Five years before that, Wal-Mart scrapped a plan to build a store in the Hudson Valley community of Leeds Flat, N.Y. after Mohican remains were found, according to a website about the Stockbridge Munsee Tribe of Mohican Indians. For more on the case, read the account by Mohican historian and educator Debra Winchell.

* In the early 1990s, Wal-Mart canceled plans to bulldoze a large Indian mound in Paso Robles, Calif. after leaders of the Chumash and Salinan Indian nations protested, Wal-Mart Watch reports [pdf]. The company complained the mound was blocking motorists' view of the store.

And it's not only Wal-Mart who's destroying native cultural sites. Others who've been involved in damaging or threatening sacred lands:

* An Indian burial site along the Cumberland River in Nashville, Tenn. was disturbed in the late 1990s by construction of a stadium for the Tennessee Titans, the National Football League team that was formerly the Houston Oilers. Though the project drew protests from local Indian rights advocates, then-Mayor, now Gov. Phil Bredesen defended it on the grounds that part of the site had already been disturbed by previous construction.

* When Whole Foods broke ground for its first store in the state of Hawaii, it discovered the remains of more than 20 indigenous people, according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. But the Texas-based company continued with the construction anyway, storing the bones in a trailer to rebury at the site later.

* WMAC radio reports that Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue is using federal economic stimulus funds to build a four-lane highway near the Ocmulgee National Monument, a site of great significance to the Muscogee (Creek) people where human occupation has been recorded for 12,000 years. The road would divide the monument from surrounding traditional cultural property, leading the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association to place the monument among America's most endangered national parks.

Why would the U.S. allow so much of its cultural heritage to be destroyed by development? After all, there's no shortage of federal laws designed to protect sacred and archaeologically significant sites. They include the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, President Clinton's Executive Order on Indian Sacred Sites, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.

But a fact sheet on sacred sites [pdf] prepared by the Morning Star Institute for the Coalition to Protect Native American Sacred Places during 2002 hearings by the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs points out there are no existing legal protections for certain sacred places -- and "none that provide a specific cause of action to defend sacred places against desecration or destruction."

Unfortunately, until those protections are strengthened, America's ancient sacred places will continue to fall to the bulldozer.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

Grist Exclusive: Will Whole Foods’ new mobile slaughterhouses squeeze small farmers?

Where the Sahara meets the Atlantic

Following local protests and international outcry, the city of Oxford, Ala. appears to be backing away from plans to destroy an ancient and archaeologically significant Indian mound in order to use the dirt as fill for a new Sam's Club, a retail warehouse store operated by Wal-Mart.

A local landowner says his property will now serve as the source for construction fill dirt, according to the Anniston Star:

Landowner Charlie Williams confirmed to The Star Wednesday that Oxford-based Taylor Corp. is negotiating with him for dirt for the Sam's site. The company has the contract to do site prep work for Sam's Club. He said the dirt would come from his property on McIntosh Road in Oxford. He said he has not received money for the dirt but expects to eventually.

The paper also reports that a sinkhole has been discovered at the Sam's Club construction site. The city's Commercial Development Authority -- the force behind the controversial construction project -- has authorized setting aside $350,000 to reimburse Sam's Club for the cost of fixing the hole.

As Facing South reported earlier this month, the demolition of the 1,500-year-old structure drew protests from Native Americans and others concerned about the site, which a University of Alabama report found to be historically important as the largest of several ancient stone and earthen mounds throughout the Choccolocco Valley. Preservation advocates have called such structures "prayer in stone."

However, city leaders have disputed the site's archaeological significance, with Mayor Leon Smith insisting it was not man-made and was used only to "send smoke signals." An Anniston Star investigation documented financial ties between the CDA, firms it does business with, and Smith's political campaign.

In the meantime, a protest and reconsecration ceremony are planned for this Sunday, Aug. 30 from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Oxford mound, according to the Alabama-based blog Deep Fried Kudzu.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

NASCAR and the high-octane American dream

The assumption of inconvenience

Dwell magazine and Inhabitat have teamed up to sponsor a “Reburbia” competition in which designers re-envision suburbia in ways that make environmentalists seem as scary and dingbatty as possible.

The finalists include a lot of inspiring ideas, but my favorite by far is the proposal to have menacing 3,000-foot-tall robots stomp into suburban villages, rip the homes out of the ground, and install them in bleak, Matrix-like hives.

“By radically retrofitting suburbs, the old methodology of horizontal sprawl is supplanted with a scheme of vertical-core sprawl freeing the suburbanite from the demands of automotive travel.” Unless, of course, the suburbanite feels like traveling from his prison tower to one of the neighboring prison towers. The project is green because the robots will drill into the earth to tap geothermal power, which is a great idea for suburban villages that happen to sited on top of active volcanoes.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention Vehiforce: “Generate Energy With Your Parked Car!” This isn’t some pie-eyed scheme to tap into the battery pack on futuristic electric vehicles. No, this is a straightforward idea to put plain old gravity to work by capturing the energy embodied in the weight of your parked car.

I know what you may be thinking: there is no useful energy embodied in the weight of a parked car. And you’re right, but so what! Perpetual motion machines may violate the laws of nature, but they don’t violate the rules of the Reburbia design competition. As one far-sighted commenter says, “I wonder what credentials those ‘physics professors’ possess?” Indeed.

Most of the rest of the entries are variations on the twin themes of slapping lots of windmills all over suburbia and slapping lots of cornfields all over suburbia. (I really like the vision of suburbia as a wine bar/greenhouse in which chefs, small dogs, and young professionals meet to admire fresh produce.)

I gather that the purpose of such exercises is to stretch the imagination a bit, not to put forth strictly practical proposals. The problem here is that entries in the Reburbia competition aren’t imaginative. They’re either totally loopy (turn your parked car into a power plant), totally trivial (put median strips to better use), or totally reductive (replace the local Wal-Mart with a biofuel factory).

Fact is, solutions to climate change are mostly boring and don’t require much imagination. That’s a good thing. For example, making more extensive use of our existing natural gas-fired power plants would do a lot to lower carbon emissions. Waste heat capture is proven technology that could greatly reduce fossil fuel use. Both of these really boring solutions to climate change can be deployed at low cost and massive scale in the near term.

Ending deforestation could solve 20% or more of our emissions problem. Forests aren’t exactly boring, but neither are they a hotbed of radical innovation. Maybe we should send the giant robot towers into the Amazon.

Cement manufacture is a huge source of emissions, one that hasn’t been adequately addressed despite lots of exciting research. And by “exciting,” I mean excruciatingly dull to anyone who’s not a material scientist.

Energy efficiency! Building codes! Who wants to talk appliance standards? Anyone? Hello?

The steady progress in electric vehicles and renewable energy sources is pretty interesting, at least if your tastes run that way. Ironically, though, these cleaner versions of existing technologies may help to perpetuate suburbia, not eradicate it. After all, if your car runs on electricity, and your electricity comes from the sun, and your McMansion is built to the Passive House standard, then your suburban lifestyle is suddenly looking a bit less malign.

Fixing our energy problem presents a deep and long-term challenge, one that requires a steady and fundamental transformation of our infrastructure. Fortunately, we already have many or even most of the tools we need to effect such a change.

Related Links:

The assumption of inconvenience

Lamar Alexander loves the earth too much to support solar and wind

Wal-Mart’s history of destroying sacred sites

City leaders in Oxford, Ala. have approved the destruction of a 1,500-year-old Native American ceremonial mound and are using the dirt as fill for a new Sam's Club, a retail warehouse store operated by Wal-Mart.

A University of Alabama archaeology report commissioned by the city found that the site was historically significant as the largest of several ancient stone and earthen mounds throughout the Choccolocco Valley. But Oxford Mayor Leon Smith -- whose campaign has financial connections to firms involved in the $2.6 million no-bid project -- insists the mound is not man-made and was used only to "send smoke signals."

"The City of Oxford and its archaeological advisers have completed a review and evaluation of a stone mound that was identified near Boiling Springs, Calhoun County, Alabama, and have concluded that the mound is the result of natural phenomena and does not meet the eligibility criteria for the Natural [sic] Register of Historic Places," according to a news release Smith issued last week.

In fact, the report does not conclude the mound is a result of "natural phenomena" but says very clearly it is of "cultural origin." And while the University's Office of Archaeological Research does not believe the site qualifies for the National Register of Historic Places, the Alabama Historical Commission disagrees, noting that the structure meets at least three criteria for inclusion: its "association with a broad pattern of history," architecture "embodying distinctive characteristics," and for the information it might yield to scholars.

The site is also significant to Native Americans. The Woodland and Mississippian cultures that inhabited the Southeast and Midwest before Europeans arrived constructed and used these mounds for various rituals, which may have included funerals. There are concerns that human remains may be present at the site, though none have been found yet.

United South and Eastern Tribes, a nonprofit coalition of 25 federally recognized tribes from Maine to Texas, passed a resolution in 2007 calling for the preservation of such structures, which it calls "prayer in stone." Native Americans have held protests against the mound's demolition, and last week someone altered a sign for the Leon Smith Parkway that runs past the development to read "Indian Mound Pkwy."

A local resident named Johnny Rollins told the Anniston Star how his Native American grandmother taught him that when she died he could "go to that mountain" to talk to her:

"It seems like it's taking part of you away," he said of the demolition. "I always felt I had ties to that there."

Since the media began reporting on the site's demolition, city officials have revised their story and are now claiming that dirt from the mound is not being used as fill, despite earlier statements to the contrary. But eyewitnesses say they have seen workers hauling dirt from the mound to the Sam's Club development.

"I mean really, I went there, saw the giant trucks deliver the earth straight from the mound to the construction site, and I still can't believe what they are doing," writes the seventh-generation Alabamian behind the blog Deep Fried Kudzu, where she shares photos from her visit to the site.

'More prettier' than an Indian mound

Deepening the development's controversy is how the contracting has been handled. The force behind the project is Oxford's Commercial Development Authority, a public board that uses taxpayer money to lure businesses to the area. The CDA owns the land where the mound is located.

Alabama law exempts CDAs from bid requirements, which means contracts can go to whomever the board chooses. A recent Anniston Star investigative series about the CDA  revealed among other things that the group has awarded nearly $9 million in contracts since 1994 but has taken bids for none of them.

The newspaper also detailed the financial ties between the CDA, firms it does business with, and Mayor Smith's political campaign.

For example, the $2.6 million contract for preparing the Sam's Club site went to Oxford-based Taylor Corp., with the money for that coming in part from the sale of city property to Georgia-based developers Abernathy and Timberlake. Taylor Corp. owner Tommy Taylor, who has received thousands of dollars in city contracts for non-CDA work, donated $1,000 to Smith in 2004 and $1,000 in 2008, while Abernathy and Timberlake donated $1,000 to Smith's re-election campaign in 2004, the paper reports.

The Anniston Star also found that the CDA paid engineering firm Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood of Montgomery, Ala. $45,000 in engineering contracts for the Sam's Club project, with part of that money paying for the archaeological study. The firm contributed $500 to Smith in 2004.

An Alabama Ethics Commission official said the relationships could violate state law "depending on facts," but the mayor said he's done nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, the controversy over the damaged mound's fate rages on. After getting an earful from alarmed preservationists, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R) forwarded their concerns to the state Historical Commission -- but said his office has no intention of getting involved. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Tommy Taylor contributed $1,000 to Riley's 2006 gubernatorial campaign, while Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood contributed $1,500.

For now, it appears Oxford officials are pressing ahead with the project. As Mayor Smith said in its defense, "What it's going to be is more prettier than it is today."

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

NASCAR and the high-octane American dream

The assumption of inconvenience

Umbra’s top ten Climate Week moments

A plastic 55-gallon barrell is seen amongst piles of driftwood and mud along the Potomac River in Cropley, MD. The main culprits for the river's deteriorating health are agricultural runoff and suburban sprawl due to a booming local population.  This CAP post looks at some useful responses.

Global warming is on the national and global agenda, but we could very well be on the brink of a global water crisis. Water scarcity has received some attention from the media, but water pollution problems remain. And not just in China: Washington, D.C. residents are currently banned from swimming in the Potomac, the river that cradles the nation's capital and feeds into the Chesapeake Bay.

The main culprit for the river's deteriorating health is suburban sprawl due to a booming local population. More sprawl means less forest and more concrete, asphalt, and turf grass. These "impervious" surfaces, which today cover 25 percent of the Potomac watershed, disrupt the water cycle: rather than being filtered by soil and plant roots, rainwater rushes into storm drains. The runoff, loaded with road grease, trash, and silt, empties out into the Potomac and its tributaries. On the way there, it warms, accelerates, and often mingles with raw sewage spilling over from the area's combined rainwater sewer systems.

What does this hot, fast, dirty runoff do to the river? Impacts range from unsafe quantities of toxins and increased bacterial concentrations to eroded streams, deteriorating ecosystems, and fish kills from dark, oxygen-starved water.

But it's not just the suburbs that are to blame. Agricultural byproducts such as fertilizer and chicken manure are also finding their way into the Potomac. The resulting cocktail of nutrients, hormones, and fecal bacteria feeds algae blooms and dead zones downstream in the Chesapeake Bay. And although nutrient levels have been declining for the past three decades, they remain far above their mandated caps.

If the pollution wasn't bad enough, Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times recently profiled the "intersex" fish that now grace the Potomac. According to a recent survey, over 80 percent of male smallmouth bass in the river now have eggs growing in their testes. The precise cause of this deformity remains unknown, but scientists suspect endocrine disruptors from chicken (remember that manure) or human hormones (which result from birth-control pills and flow right through waste treatment plants). In humans, endocrine disruptors have been linked to early puberty, obesity, diabetes, and both breast and prostate cancer. Keep in mind that these hermaphrodite fish are swimming around in D.C.'s tap water.

What is to be done? As with many environmental problems the solution is smart policy. Local governments should protect existing forests and replant strategic areas along the watershed. They should also mandate the use of low-impact development practices. LID seeks to minimize the suburb's footprint on rivers by preserving a site's natural offset-absorbing features -- such as existing vegetation and drainage courses -- and treating the remaining stormwater onsite using green roofs, porous pavements, and highway medians full of water-absorbing plants.

To incentivize this shift, the EPA should update the federal Clear Water Act by including stormwater permits with numeric limits, which are lacking in the current ineffective regulations that govern new development. These new rules will in turn require local governments to build the capacity necessary to review community stormwater plans and enforce runoff limits.

Research on the intersex fish and on endocrine disruptors is ongoing. The EPA is currently moving to test the compounds. It should accelerate this testing and regulate if necessary.

Remember: Rivers throughout the country are being polluted by agriculture and suburbanization. But change rarely happens without individuals pressuring the political process. Improving our nation's health and environment is not a spectator sport, so call on your representatives to act on this issue and inquire about greening your roof.

Related Links:

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Water, conflict, and security on the banks of the Hudson

Growing up green: Breathing for two

Related Links:

More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar

For public transportation to survive, we all need to ... drive more?

The assumption of inconvenience

These images are from a series of drawings titled “Unnaturalism” by artist Don Simon. His work examines the impact of industrialization and sprawl on ecosystems. From his artist statement:

“Throughout history, particularly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, mankind has been less than kind to our cohabitants on the planet. We build, produce, and consume with little or no regard to the impact it has on the environment. It is the nature of nature to adapt and evolve in order to survive, and we are forcing other species to deal with compromised, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems.

“This series of triptychs depicts scenes resulting from our tragic indifference. They are rendered in a beautiful and natural way, highlighting the idea that we find this acceptable. We are numb to the damage—and so, the unnatural becomes natural to us. This may be the saddest commentary of all.”

Simon, who walked away from a career in advertising to pursue art full-time five years ago, has shown his work in galleries and museums across the U.S. and in Europe. He lives and works in Medford, N.J., just outside of Philadelphia.

Related Links:

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Tweet for the bees

This Halloween, cut flesh for the climate

Related Links:

More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar

Water, conflict, and security on the banks of the Hudson

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Related Links:

More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar

Water, conflict, and security on the banks of the Hudson

Tackling population rise would fight climate change

Related Links:

Climate Denial Crock of the Week: The big mist take

Learning how to count to 350

Global boiling declares war on Thanksgiving

Related Links:

General Motors to start repaying government loans

Maryland county draws a “car-free blueprint for growth”

Would You Like Carbon Insurance With That Latte?

Related Links:

More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar

Home Economics of the JP Green House, Part 1

Slideshow: Reinventing the JP Green House

Related Links:

The assumption of inconvenience

Lamar Alexander loves the earth too much to support solar and wind

Wal-Mart’s history of destroying sacred sites

A brand new law in California, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) Tuesday night, aims to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in the state by discouraging sprawl. The influential California Air Resources Board will develop GHG-reduction goals for different regions in the state within the next two years and then regional planning agencies will compete for billions of dollars in state transportation funds, with priority given to communities that are denser, closer to employment centers, and along public-transportation routes. To sweeten the deal for builders, housing projects that comply with the smarter growth plans will be largely exempt from the state's strict environmental reviews. "What this will mean is more environmentally friendly communities, more sustainable developments, less time people spend in their cars, more alternative transportation options, and neighborhoods we can safely and proudly pass on to future generations," Schwarzenegger said. Another bill that was vetoed by the governor Tuesday would have imposed a $60-per-container fee on goods coming into the busy ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Oakland to fund pollution- and traffic-reduction measures.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

General Motors to start repaying government loans

Maryland county draws a “car-free blueprint for growth”

Related Links:

More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar

The assumption of inconvenience

Stockton Williams on urban retrofits, Obama, and the sexiness of caulking guns

Hopes are high that a bill aimed at curbing California sprawl will pass the state legislature and be signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill, SB 375, would channel transportation funding toward projects that encourage smart growth. Each of California's 17 metropolitan regions would create a "sustainable community strategy" to encourage compact development; projects included in the strategy would get first dibs on transportation funds. In order to meet California's goal to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 25 percent by 2020, "our communities must change the way they grow," says bill sponsor Darrell Steinberg (D). He adds, "You can't meet our goal just with alternative fuels. You have to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled. If people are going to drive -- and they are going to drive -- we need to plan in ways to get them out of their cars faster." The bill, the first of its kind in the nation, has been endorsed by builders, environmentalists, and local officials.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar

Related Links:

When will we stop paying the hidden fossil fuel tax?

The hidden cost of coal

Power Trip: A rollicking tour of America’s energy landscape