What's Greener — Flying or Driving?

What's Greener — Flying or Driving?

Morning Edition, October 11, 2007 ·

Many listeners ask about the effects of air travel on the environment. The questions come as part of our Climate Connections series with National Geographic.

Listeners want to know how much greenhouse gas is poured into the atmosphere by commercial flights.

Experts say that aircraft are a small but significant source of the warming gases created by humans, accounting for about 3 percent of the world's total emissions. A typical airliner flying across the United States produces close to three tons of carbon dioxide per passenger.

So would it be better to take that cross-country trip by car? Not according to the researchers at National Geographic's Green Guide. They say you will roughly double your emissions if you decide to drive.

Take the train, however, and you can cut your carbon footprint in half.

NEAL PEIRCE COLUMN
For Release Sunday, October 7, 2007
© 2007 Washington Post Writers Group

“GROWING COOLER” -- AN INESCAPABLE CHALLENGE

By Neal Peirce

WASHINGTON -- Increasing the fuel efficiency of the cars we drive -- the environmentalists’ perennial battle to get Detroit to improve vehicle gas mileage -- is a great cause.

But it’s not enough. We have to go a giant step farther with sharp cuts in how far, and how often, we drive. If we don’t, there’s virtually no chance we can reduce our cars’ massive greenhouse gas emissions -- now responsible for 45 percent of automobile carbon emissions worldwide.

(Click on image to enlarge).

The message and the math are incorporated in a just-released report -- “Growing Cooler” -- issued by the prestigious Urban Land Institute in collaboration with Smart Growth America and allied organizations.

The problem’s complex and fierce. There’s now broad agreement among scientists that to restrain an upward spiral in global warming -- with dangerously rising seas and spreading deserts -- global temperature rise must be limited to 2 degrees Celsius. And that to reach that goal, the U.S., up to now the world’s champion polluter, must cut its carbon dioxide emissions between 60 to 80 percent by 2050, relative to their 1990 levels.

The authors projected that even if stiffer new fuel economy standards currently now before Congress are approved, and even if there’s progress on hybrid cars and lower-carbon fuels, the nation’s transportation-related CO2 emissions in 2030 would be 12 percent above the 2005 level and 40 percent above the 1990 level, casting a deep shadow across the 2050 goal.

So is there any way out? Yes, they reply: cut back sharply on the miles we drive our vehicles. Since 1980, total miles driven by Americans has grown three times faster than the rise in our population, even twice as fast as vehicle registrations. The vast majority of new development is laid out assuming people will use cars for virtually all trips. Homes have been built ever-further from workplaces. Shopping malls, big retail boxes, office parks and new schools are routinely built without a thought to pedestrians or public transit. The net result: more and longer auto trips, most often driving alone.

But what if we switched to develop more compactly? Surveys show at least a third of us would now prefer more compact communities in which homes, town centers, shops, parks and schools are in walking or biking distance. It’s true that many young families feel obliged to “drive ‘til you qualify” -- ever-longer commutes for an affordable mortgage. But 88 percent of household growth from 2000 to 2025 is expected to be by elderly people or childless families. Aging baby boomers will be driving less and looking for walkable environments; one survey shows Gen Xers tend to value diverse, compact communities and show disillusionment with “bland vanilla suburbs.”

“Growing Cooler” offers a “smart growth” recipe of walkable, transit-served and “New Urbanist”-style developments, more compact new housing, shops and offices filling in vacant lots or sites of failing shopping centers rather than replacing forests or farmland. In such developments, people typically drive 20 to 40 percent less than on the suburban edge.

The chance for change could be great because there’ll likely be a massive two-thirds turnover of the nation’s building stock by 2050 -- close to 90 million new or replaced homes, 190 billion square feet of new offices, stores and institutions.

If only 60 percent of that development is clustered in compact, mixed-use areas, the “Growing Cooler” authors calculate vehicle miles traveled would be cut back enough to slash transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions by a significant 7 to 10 percent.

But declaring such a vision and achieving it won’t be easy. As Rick Cole, urban author and city manager of Ventura, Calif., observes, our predominant dream “remains a suburban one, enforced by rigid zoning codes and churned out by developers on autopilot.”

And changing it will churn the political waters. Cole cites the political firestorm set off when California Attorney General Jerry Brown sued rapidly-growing San Bernardino County and pressured other counties to show how their development plans will reduce greenhouse gases. Brown's San Bernardino suit spurred opposition from the building industry and the state Chamber of Commerce, as well as local officials and Republicans in the state’s legislature. But the county recently did agree to devise strategies to reduce CO2 emissions.

Beyond court suits, Cole suggests cities themselves must be more proactive by finding room for more people in their already developed footprint, and assuring prospective new residents the attractions Americans are sure to demand -- “far greener urban building, far better urban schools, far more attractive urban parks, far safer urban streets.”
















Plus, I’d add, develop the same kind of comprehensive, reliable rail and bus systems that Europe and Japan offer – real alternatives to the private car.

Carbon-saving communities may be a 21st century imperative. But the transition to them is likely to be one of the most challenging adjustments Americans have ever made.

Browser Tip

Do you have trouble reading this print? How about this? With either Firefox 2 or Internet Explorer 7 you can vary the size of the type on the screen by pressing the Control Key and then either the + or the - key. (I don't know if this works with the Mac.)

Here is part of the screen after pressing Control and the minus key:

Here is the same part of the screen after pressing Control and the plus key several times.















If you don't don't have either of these browsers, you can download them from :

Firefox 2

Internet Explorer 7

Art for Everyone 20x200

large editions + low prices × the internet = art for everyone

As we see it, there are a lot of people out there who want to sell their art and a lot of people who'd like to buy it. They just have a hard time finding each other. The internet is the perfect place to bring those people together, and we're exactly the right people to make it happen. We're passionate about art and the internet at 20x200. We're really excited about creating a place where almost any art lover can be an art collector.

We introduce two new pieces a week: one photo and one work on paper. Each image is available in three sizes.* The smallest size is reprinted in the largest batch – an edition of 200 – and sold at the lowest price – $20. Hence the name 20x200. (200x20 just didn't sound as good.) We also offer bigger prints for bolder collectors - medium-sized editions of 20 for $200, and large-sized editions of 2 generally for $2000 (some of the large sized editions will actually be original pieces of art and prices will vary a bit). Every single print is delivered with a certificate of authenticity numbered by the artist.

That's what we're all about. Read on for some background on how we got started.

20x200 is a big idea built of a lot of little pieces.

Jen Bekman opened her pocket-sized gallery on the Lower East Side nearly 5 years ago with the mission of supporting emerging artists and collectors, and she's made a name for herself doing just that. 20x200 takes the mission one step further, making art available for everyone.

On a Sunday night back in January, Jen came up with a formula:
large editions + low prices x the internet = art for everyone

It was the big idea, but she couldn't make it all add up on her own. All fired up, she managed to convince some of the greatest people ever to help complete the equation.

20x200 has received a lot of attention since Jen first mentioned it in GOOD Magazine back in April. There have been online write-ups and there's some good old traditional print press too: both STEP and Dwell Magazines have done features on us so far, and there's more to come.

Birds of the Rockies, by Laura Levine
archival pigment print

8.5x11
Edition of 200 each $20. 43 remain (10/9/07)
Small Size

17x22
Edition of 20 each $200. 20 remain (10/9/07)
Medium Size

24x30
Edition of 2 each $2000. 2 remain (10/9/07)
Large Size

The Vortex of 80,000 Nikes

The Vortex of 80,000 Nikes

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Contrary to popular belief, Fresh Kills in New York City's Staten Island doesn't contain the biggest collection of garbage in the world. What Wikipedia says “could be regarded as the largest man-made structure on Earth, with the site's volume [...] exceeding the Great Wall of China” and was once the temporary dump site for the remains of the WTC Towers isn't the largest landfill at all.

(The ruinous sweep of the new Synthetic Sea. Image by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.)

In fact, it isn't even on land, but rather it is trapped in an oceanic riverine system known as the North Pacific Gyre.

Wikipedia again: “The centre of the North Pacific Gyre is relatively stationary and the circular rotation around it draws waste material in. This has led to the accumulation of flotsam and other debris in huge floating 'clouds' of waste, leading to the informal name The Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Eastern Garbage Patch. While historically this debris has biodegraded, the gyre is now accumulating vast quantities of plastic and marine debris.”

It is so vast, in fact, that these floating clouds have a total area equal to that of 2 Texas.

Which begs the question, can you collect these patches to create a floating solid ground? A new Pacific island nation molded together out of “80,000 Nike sneakers and boots” and “tens of thousands of bathtub toys and hockey equipment” lost overboard from cargo ships.

Or a recycled ocean cruisers from where eco-terrorists hunt down holiday cruise ships in the high synthetic seas.

Garbage


















(If it weren't for the booms, this storm debris in the LA River would eventually have found its way to the gyre. Photo by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.)

Or better yet, dump it all on the Polynesian archipelago of Tuvalu, which Der Spiegel says is “currently only 10 centimeters above sea level” and “likely to become the first country to succumb entirely to climate change.” Paradise Lost it may certainly be, but it may yet be Arcadia Regained from the bottom of the ocean.

Tuvalu















(The atolls of Tuvalu. Photo AFP/Torsten Blackwood.)

And of course, the islanders have the option of not anchoring this new accumulated stratum of detritus to their former nation, and thus submitting it to the whims of the ocean currents and trade winds. Perhaps in their intraoceanic meanderings, they'll meet other climate change refugees on their own island nations made out of Barbie dolls. A new trade group could be formed, with the goal of developing self-sufficient economies and expanding territorial boundaries by mining the Pacific for consumer goods Made in China.

Is this the future site of the New Central Park of the Pacific, designed by James Corner?

Senior Safety 101

Senior Safety 101

Top tips for keeping senior citizens safe

Senior Pedestrian Safety

Daily walking is among the best ways for senior citizens to keep active. As simple as walking is, though, it can be very dangerous for seniors. There are many physical changes that occur making it difficult for them to be safe when walking. These include:

* The ability to move quickly, stop suddenly or just general maneuvering decreases because reflexes and reaction time get slower.
* Failing eyesight, including diminished peripheral vision, and hearing loss pose their own set of problems. These changes can make it difficult to see or hear cars and judge how fast they are going.
* Falls are more likely to occur, and getting up may require assistance.
* Medications may impact the ability to walk.To help ensure safety while walking, it is important to consider these basic factors:
* Walk on sidewalks if available, or walk facing traffic if they are not available.
* Cross only at street corners, preferably those with a traffic light, and within marked crosswalks.
* Wear bright-colored or reflective clothing, especially if walking at night.
* Avoid walking in the dark and in bad weather conditions such as snow, rain, ice, or fog.
* Look left, right, and left again before crossing the street. Beware of vehicles turning or backing up.
* Make eye contact with the driver before crossing in front of a vehicle. Stay out of the driver's blind spot.
* Pay attention to the "Walk/Don't Walk" signals. Walk and cross with other pedestrians whenever possible.
* Wear proper and well-maintained footwear with non-slip soles.

Home Safety - Protect Against Falls and Fires

Avoid Falls - Falls are not just the result of getting older. They are generally caused by a number of factors, most of which are avoidable. By changing some things, you can lower the risk of falling. Approximately 50% of all falls happen in the home. Here are some easy ways to make your home safer, particularly for older adults.

* Remove scatter rugs and use double-sided tape to keep remaining rugs from sliding. This is of particular importance in the bathroom. Use a non-slip bath mat with a rubberized bottom on the floor and in the bathtub or shower. Loose scatter rugs are the cause of many falls.
* Install grab bars next to toilets and in the tub or shower.
* Improve the lighting in your home. Aging mandates the need for brighter lights to augment vision. Bright lighting in kitchen work areas reduces the risk of burns and cuts. Use at least 60-watt bulbs in most rooms and at least 100-watt bulbs for reading. Place night lights through key pathways in the home. Lamp shades or frosted bulbs can reduce glare, which is especially important for people with glaucoma or cataracts.
* Make steps stand out. Put in sturdy handrails and lights on all staircases. Remove clutter and other common things that could cause someone to trip (such as shoes, newspapers, books, and clothes). Try to make steps easy to see. One idea is to use brightly colored electrical tape to mark the edge of each step. A sunlit window at the top or bottom of a staircase can cause glare, making it more difficult to see the steps. Close the window shade if possible and/or brighten the overhead lighting.
* Hide electrical cords by moving lamps and other appliances closer to the walls so that electrical cords don't extend into traffic areas. Cords may be difficult to see by older adults with low vision and could be a tripping hazard. If a cord must be extended across an area where seniors will walk, use tape to secure the cord to the floor and attract attention to it. Do not cover the cord with a rug.
* Move bedroom lamps closer to the bed. Lamps and lighting in the bedroom should be easily reached from the bed so that it is not necessary to walk from the light switch to the bed in the dark.
* Keep items in reach. Avoid the need of having to use a chair or step stool to access frequently-used items in cabinets and closets.

Avoid Fires

* Install smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms throughout the house. Test them periodically to make sure they work. Batteries should be changed at least once a year.
* Place fire extinguishers in the kitchen and other rooms, and be sure that you know how to use them.
* Keep flammable objects such as curtains, aprons and dishtowels away from stoves.
* Never wear loose clothing near a stovetop while cooking.
* Never leave cooking unattended; don’t cook if tired.
* When cooking, heat oil slowly. Heating oil too quickly can easily start a fire.
* If a pan catches fire, carefully place a lid over the pan and turn off the heat. Leave the lid on until completely cool.
* Always clean appliances and surfaces after cooking to prevent grease buildup. Make sure handles on cookware are secured and always turned toward the center of the stove when cooking.
* Turn off appliances when they are not in use.
* Run electrical cords along walls, not under rugs. Don't overload outlets and extension cords.
* Do not store flammable liquids like cleaning agents and paint supplies near heating units.
* Keep space heaters a safe distance from combustibles. Be sure to follow the manufacturer's guidelines when using them.

The Comfort Connection

The Comfort Connection

By Joanne Kenen, September & October 2007

Dr. Diane Meier is quietly leading a revolution to treat patients (and their families, too) as living, breathing, feeling individuals. And why is that so shocking?

When a loved one dies, the first thing you usually receive from a doctor is a bill. When a patient of Diane Meier, M.D., dies, the family receives a call or a note.

“She was with me when my wife died at home,” says Bert Gold, of New York City, still missing Sylvia, his wife of 57 years. “She took me into the living room and put her arms around me and started to cry. She thanked me for letting her take care of Sylvia. Imagine.”

Meier, 55, of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, is one of the leading exponents of a new and growing discipline known as palliative care. Palliative care means soothing the symptoms of a disease, regardless of whether a patient is seeking a cure. It’s a concept that’s totally transforming the way doctors and hospitals treat seriously ill patients. The idea of easing pain and improving the quality of a patient’s life may not seem radical, but classic medical training focuses on attacking the disease. Most doctors simply don’t have time to be supersensitive Marcus Welbys checking up on patients to see how they feel. Even if they do have the time, they lack the advanced training of palliative-care doctors and nurses to ease symptoms such as anxiety, pain, or severe nausea. Most are better equipped to deal with microorganisms than matters of comfort.

When people first hear about palliative care, they often confuse it with hospice care. It’s not. Hospice focuses on terminally ill patients: people who no longer seek treatments to cure them and expect to live about six months or less. Palliative-care teams—consisting of everyone from social workers to physical therapists—can follow patients for days, months, or years.

Thanks in large part to the training and outreach programs Meier runs as the head of the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) in New York City, the number of hospitals with palliative-care programs has nearly doubled, from 632 in 2000 to 1,240 in 2005. Palliative care has the potential to change the way doctors and nurses address pain and emotional distress—not to mention how they help patients and families sort through their choices as life nears its end.

Bert Gold is doing pretty well for a man who recently turned 91. A retired professor of social work, he lives at home. But he is frail. He takes a lot of medicines. He falls sometimes. He lost a big toe five years ago and still deals with pain and an awkward gait.

Bert visits Meier in her office today before going back to the foot surgeon, and Meier spends more than an hour with him—yes, an hour—reviewing his symptoms, his diet, his medications, his mood. Open or stubborn wounds can be dangerous for elderly patients, but Meier, who has worked with Bert for 12 years, also worries that the pain has isolated him, kept him home watching television instead of going to the Y for his regular bridge game.

“Are you having fun?” she asks.

“No,” he says, frowning.

“You’re not?”

“No. I’m not depressed, but I’m not having fun.”

Meier keeps listening. She offers some advice, more in the spirit of a friend than a doctor. She gently reminds him that even if he doesn’t like his wheelchair, it can get him out to a movie now and then. They talk about his diet, good-naturedly negotiating over...prunes. Though he flat out refuses to eat them for breakfast, he agrees to have them at lunch. Bert smiles. He has been listened to by a doctor who took the time to treat him not as a collection of symptoms, but as a person who deserves to get the best he can out of life, even at 91.

Meier believes strongly that palliative care should not be the “death team,” and she sees patients early in the course of a disease. On one recent day, two palliative-care nurses at Mount Sinai were treating a French-speaking African woman in her 30s dying of AIDS, and a man in his 80s with cancers of the skin, prostate, bladder, and pancreas, who now had relentless hiccups from the march of his tumors through his belly.

“Sometimes something like that—hiccups—will get us in the door, to then say, ‘What else is going on? How’s life when you’re at home and not in the hospital,’ ” says Sue McHugh-Salera, a palliative-care nurse at Mount Sinai.

Which brings us to another of palliative care’s radical-but-shouldn’t-be concepts: family meetings. That’s right—actually sitting down with patients and their families to discuss the good, the bad, and the scary. Ira Byock, M.D., a longtime leader in hospice care who now heads palliative care at Dartmouth, recalls a man who had been languishing in the ICU for months. The patient was “stable,” but no one had helped his family see the chasm between the clinical realities and their hopes for a miracle. So the man’s doctor called in the palliative-care team, and Byock set up family meetings to discuss the patient’s condition and the family’s expectations.

“We couldn’t change the fact that he was not going to survive,” says Byock. “But when he did die, his family’s sadness—as deep as it was—was free of the doubts, the ‘could haves’ and ‘should haves,’ that often complicate grief.”

Although most of the programs, such as Meier’s, are consultant teams, moving through the hospitals and clinics, a few have dedicated inpatient units, such as the 11-bed section at the Massey Cancer Center at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. It’s peaceful, without the jarring bustle of a typical hospital floor. Families have their own lounge, with a TV, a computer, games for the kids, and cookie dough in the fridge. Some patients will go home when their symptoms are under control. Some will shift to home hospice. Others will die on the unit, with a lot of hands-on care and fine-tuning of medications. All will have received more focus on their comfort than they would get in a traditional hospital environment.

Meier’s goal is to improve the treatment of seriously ill patients, but she sells hospitals on the idea that palliative care can cut costs. CAPC estimates that hospitals can save up to $3,000 per patient, in part by moving people out of the ICU sooner, avoiding a flurry of tests when it’s too late, and slowing the revolving door between nursing homes and emergency rooms.

But not everyone is sold on the benefits. Some health-policy experts are skeptical of the savings (they want more detailed data); others wonder if palliative care should even be its own entity, or whether all physicians should provide the caring, coordination, and communication that Meier gives to her patients. Meier agrees—to a point:

“It’s like saying, ‘Shouldn’t cardiology not have to be there; shouldn’t every doctor know how to handle hypertension, congestive heart failure, angina?’ Of course every doctor should. But nobody would argue that we don’t need specialists to handle the more complex aspects of cardiology.”

Palliative-care specialists are needed, she says, to step in and manage the challenging cases that other doctors don’t have the skills, or perhaps the time, to manage themselves. “It’s the rare primary care practitioner who can do repeated 90-minute family meetings, because they’ve got 50 patients in the waiting room,” she says.

So Meier keeps pushing for more programs. Thirty percent of U.S. hospitals and 70 percent of teaching hospitals now offer palliative care. The more hospitals buy into the philosophy, she says, the better it will be for patients. Too many are stuck in a medical nowhere-land, forced to choose between comfort care and emotional support in a hospice—or a chance to keep fighting their illness. “It’s not human nature to accept death and agree to give up on life,” says Meier. With palliative care, we don’t have to.

Joanne Kenen is a health writer in Washington, D.C.

Learn more about palliative care at www.getpalliativecare.org.