Jacques Leslie: Self-Driving Cars - Utopia or Dystopia?→

Yale360:

“Automated cars, often referred to as “autonomous vehicles” (AVs) — whose passengers determine their routes without having to drive them — are being widely developed and tested, and probably will be used commercially in controlled settings within a few years. Lyft, Uber, and others have introduced ride-sharing, in which customers agree to travel with strangers in return for reduced fares. Put all three concepts together in one vehicle, posit that within a few decades this shared EV-AV technology will take over the nation’s automobile fleet, and the outcome seems environmentally irresistible, verging on fantastical.

But it’s equally plausible that the vision may turn out to be a mirage. Automated vehicles may eventually be widely adopted, but if the fleet is not electrified using renewable energy, or car sharing fails to take off, greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution could actually increase. A study last year by University of California, Davis researchers projected that if vehicles are automated but not electrified or shared, greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector would go up 50 percent by 2050 compared to business as usual. But if shared, electrified, automated vehicles flourish, greenhouse gas emissions could plunge by 80 percent, the study concluded⁠.”

Kurt Kohlstedt: Taxes Shaping Architecture→

99% Invisible:

“Ever noticed how the bricks on newer British buildings are bigger, or stopped to appreciate hand-stenciled wallpaper, or enjoyed a sip from a fancy hollow-stemmed glass? If so, you may well be admiring a product of regulation and taxes as much aesthetic tastes. From basic materials to entire architectural styles, building codes and taxation strategies have had huge historical impacts on the built world as we know it...

Dutch canal houses are another classic example of how rules and regulations can shape structures. Taxed on their canal frontage rather than height or depth, these buildings grew in tall and thin. In turn, this typology evolved narrower staircases, necessitating exterior hoist systems to move furniture and goods into and out of upper floors.”

Bill Donahue: Aging with Intention→

Outside:

Heinrich examining a raven’s skull. (Jesse Burke)

“In 1951, when Bernd was 11, his family wrangled passage to the U.S. and landed in western Maine. They planned to grow pota­toes. Instead they were taken in for a summer by a kind family, the Adamses, whose ramshackle farm was a mess, a melange of dogs and cows and chickens and broken tractor equipment. To Bernd, the place was paradise, as he writes in his 2007 memoir, The Snoring Bird, recalling the adventures he shared with the two eldest Adams kids, Jimmy and Billy. The boys built a raft out of barn wood and spent countless hours watching baby catfish and white-bellied dragonflies. The Adamses taught Bernd English. He killed a hummingbird with his slingshot. He ran around barefoot and shirtless.

Bernd Heinrich is now 77 years old and the author of 21 books. The vaunted biologist E. O. Wilson speaks of him as an equal, calling him “one of the most original and productive people I know” and “one of the best natural-history writers we have.” Runners also revere him, for his speed and for his 2002 book, Why We Run. “He was the first person of scientific stature to say that ultramarathoning is a natural pursuit for humans,” says Christopher McDougall, author of the 2009 bestseller Born to Run. “He did the research himself, in 100-plus-mile races.””

Fascinating story of Bernd Heinrich's interesting and productive life.

Amy Crawford: Need to Rethink Alien Species→

Smithsonian:

“In the 19th century, European and American landscape architects expressed a patriotic pride that was sometimes tinged with nativist suspicion of “foreign” plants. In the 1930s, the Nazis took this concept to the extreme with a campaign to “cleanse the German landscape of unharmonious foreign substance.” One target was an unassuming Eurasian flower, Impatiens parviflora, which a 1942 report condemned as a “Mongolian invader,” declaring, “[A]n essential element of this culture, namely the beauty of our home forest, is at stake.”

Today’s critics of invasive species rhetoric are quick to clarify that they aren’t calling their colleagues racist. But Macalester College ecologist Mark Davis, for one, questions whether our modern campaign against non-native species has gone too far.

Davis is perhaps the field’s most notorious heretic, lead author of a widely-read 2011 essay in the journal Nature, co-signed by 18 other ecologists, that argued for judging non-native species based on environmental impact rather than origin. He believes that invasion ecology has been led astray by its central metaphor: the idea that non-native species are invading native ecosystems, and that we are at war with them. “Militaristic language is just so unscientific and emotional,” says Davis. “It’s an effective way to bring in support, but it’s not a scientific way.””

Tia Ghose: Can We Manage the World's Largest Organism?→

Live Science:

“Pando is a colony of quaking aspen that spans 106 acres (43 hectares) of south-central Utah. Because of an explosion of deer in the area, new sprouts from Pando are eaten before they have a chance to mature, and the venerable organism is at risk of dying out altogether. “The system is not replacing itself; it’s highly out of balance,” said Paul Rogers, an ecologist at Utah State University and the director of the Western Aspen Alliance.”

Eliminating or reducing common predators has consequences. 

Reid Forgrave: Mining vs. Wilderness→

New York Times:

“Today Ely is home to a few thousand people, a place of long, hard winters that is, in the words of one resident, “not on the road to anywhere — we’re literally the end of the road.” People do not end up here by accident. For most of the town’s history, the main reason they came was to make a living off the rocks. The ore supported abundant mining jobs for generations.

For almost as long, however, people have been coming to this area for another reason, too: to visit America’s most popular national wilderness area, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, which encompasses roughly a million protected acres and thousands of lakes and welcomes 150,000 visitors annually. The “Land of 10,000 Lakes” is actually a land of 11,842 lakes, and that figure counts only those bigger than 10 acres. They are a legacy of the glaciers that retreated from the region about 10,000 years ago. As a result, the state has a significant fraction of the world’s supply of surface-available fresh water; 6 percent of Minnesota’s surface area is water, more than any other state.

Geological coincidence makes Ely — one three-square-mile town in the northernmost reaches of the continental United States — a focus of a national debate about the proper use of public lands. The place also distills the political fault lines in today’s America, pitting an angry working class against progressive activists. Just southeast of Ely, an international mining conglomerate has invested hundreds of millions of dollars during the past decade toward potential copper-nickel mines a few miles outside the Boundary Waters. The company — Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta — has drilled 1.6 million feet of core samples out of 496 holes to explore the deposit from which it soon hopes to process 20,000 tons of mineralized ore a day. The company believes the area’s valuable metals — copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, gold and silver — can be extracted in an environmentally responsible way and can provide hundreds of jobs to the job-starved economy of Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region, along the northwestern coast of Lake Superior.”

Is it a question of what is more important? Is the answer to this question dependent on the time horizon? Where are the best places to get our metals that each of us use? These types of questions we wrestle with as a community, and of course there are no easy answers. For us that value wilderness and lakes, we want to protect the quality of these valuable places and the risks associated with the mining are not worth it. For miners and would-be-miners, they wish to provide a means to support their family and enjoy the woods and lakes for recreation. They too do not do not want to destroy the quality of the lakes and wilderness. For the company, they wish to produce profits for the benefit of the CEO, other corporate cadgers, and shareholders. They don't wish to jeopardize those profits; however, the quality of the lakes and wilderness that remains after the extraction of precious metals is not important. 

David Peterson: Lake Water Level Appeal→

Star Tribune:

“The state of Minnesota will appeal a landmark ruling on the excessive pumping of groundwater around White Bear Lake, saying it is “not supported by scientific evidence” and would “immediately halt important development” within five miles of the lake.

In a written statement Tuesday underlining the ruling’s potential to reach all across Minnesota, DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr said: “The DNR is strongly committed to protecting Minnesota’s many precious water resources, including White Bear Lake and its surrounding aquifers. We take that responsibility very seriously. But responsible, effective water management must be supported by sound science.”

Katie Crosby Lehmann, lead attorney in a team of lawyers that worked the case over several years’ time, said in a statement late Tuesday: “We stand by the detailed scientific evidence from the monthlong trial. As demonstrated by the [judge’s 140-page] opinion, the DNR has known of the problems caused by its permitting actions since issuing its own 1998 study and has concluded that the water use in the north and east metro area is not sustainable.””

Also see Pioneer Press's article.

Emily Nonko: The Roots of NYC Subway System Woes→

Curbed NY:

“New Yorkers now use a transit system in a state of emergency. The past few months have laid bare the enormity of the problems currently facing the century-old subways, from aging infrastructure to a lack of federal dollars available to help make things better.

Much has also been said about how the world’s largest public transportation system has gotten so bad—the lack of funding, of course, but also Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s penchant for prioritizing flashy projects over system maintenance, along with years of mismanagement within the MTA, an agency that’s admitted to misspent funding that doesn’t go toward maintenance.

But start looking at the decline of, and disinvestment in, New York’s rail lines—from the subway to commuter rails like the Long Island Rail Road—and you’ll find that those problems go back much, much further. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, they seem to lead to one man in particular: Robert Moses.”

Lucas Reilly: The Most Important Scientist You've Never Heard Of→

Mental Floss:

“For 60 years, American drivers unknowingly poisoned themselves by pumping leaded gasoline into their tanks. Here is the lifelong saga of Clair Patterson—a scientist who helped build the atomic bomb and discovered the true age of the Earth—and how he took on a billion-dollar industry to save humanity from itself...

on the prairies and farms of central Iowa, a 2-year-old boy named Clair Patterson played. His boyhood would go on to be like something out of Tom Sawyer. There were no cars in town. Only a hundred kids attended his school. A regular weekend entailed gallivanting into the woods with friends, with no adult supervision, to fish, hunt squirrels, and camp along the Skunk River. His adventures stoked a curiosity about the natural world, a curiosity his mother fed by one day buying him a chemistry set. Patterson began mixing chemicals in his basement. He started reading his uncle’s chemistry textbook. By eighth grade, he was schooling his science teachers.

During these years, Patterson nurtured a passion for science ... Luckily for the world, the child who’d freely roamed the Iowa woods remained equally content to blaze his own path as an adult. Patterson would save our oceans, our air, and our minds from the brink of what is arguably the largest mass poisoning in human history.”

Natalie Sopinka: Fish Habitat Loss in Canada→

Canadian Science:

“Favaro and Olszynski quantified a net loss of over 2 million m2 of fish habitat. This loss of habitat was calculated assuming perfect compliance of habitat compensation requirements. The net loss of habitat jumped to almost 4 million m2 when only 80% of required habitat compensation occurred.

An overall loss of fish habitat suggests effectiveness of policies should have been enhanced not reduced; the former Act did not go beyond conservation goals (e.g., no net loss of habitat) as the goals were not even being met. If the HADD regime as previously set out in the Fisheries Act was not adequately protecting habitat why change what the law says? Why change the rigor of how projects causing harm are reviewed? Favaro and Olszynski contended the language of the former Act (i.e., inclusion of HADD) should be reinstated and that future amendments be informed by data accessible to all stakeholders. The authors obtained data for the study through the Access to Information Act and recommended a public registry of DFO authorizations be created. Favaro and Olszynski published their findings earlier this year in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (CJFAS) and submitted them to FOPO.”

Dennis Anderson: Minnesota Buffer Law→

Star Tribune:

“While Republicans in the Legislature again take aim at the state’s new stream-and-ditch buffer law, John Mages rests easy.

Mages, a past president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, farms 850 acres of good soil in Stearns County, planting corn and soybeans in spring and harvesting the crops in fall. To save topsoil and reduce overhead costs, he practices minimum tillage. And if the weather cooperates, his yields are superb: The past two years he’s averaged more than 200 bushels an acre of corn, without irrigating.

But one day last week, as Mages showed a visitor around his well-kept operation, the issue wasn’t crops but buffers. In all, he has about 30 acres of grasslands bordering waterways that either abut his croplands or run through them.”

Jed Kolko: Growth of Suburbs Exceeds Urban Areas→

FiveThirtyEight:

“The suburbanization of America marches on. Population growth in big cities slowed for the fifth-straight year in 2016,1 according to new census data, while population growth accelerated in the more sprawling counties that surround them.

The Census Bureau on Thursday released population estimates for every one of the more than 3,000 counties in the U.S. I grouped those counties into six categories: urban centers of large metropolitan areas; their densely populated suburbs; their lightly populated suburbs; midsize metros; smaller metro areas; and rural counties, which are outside metro areas entirely.2
The fastest growth was in those lower-density suburbs. Those counties grew by 1.3 percent in 2016, the fastest rate since 2008, when the housing bust put an end to rapid homebuilding in these areas.”

An inefficient development pattern keeps chugging along... until it doesn't make sense economically to individual homeowners.

Isaac Davison: A First -- A River is Given Legal Status→

New Zealand Herald:

Whanganui River

“Whanganui River now has the legal status of a person under a unique Treaty settlement passed into law today. The settlement means the river, the third-longest in the country, has all the rights, duties and liabilities that come with personhood.

Among other things, the river could now be represented in court proceedings, Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson said. “I know the initial inclination of some people will say it’s pretty strange to give a natural resource a legal personality. But it’s no stranger than family trusts, or companies or incorporated societies.””

Andrew Small: What Cities Looked Like Before the EPA→

CityLab:

“This might be a good time to reflect on its legacy, especially in urban spaces. Though environmentalism conjures “America the Beautiful” images of purple mountains and unspoiled wilderness, much of the EPA’s heaviest lifting in rescuing this nation from its own filth happened in cities...”

Dave Orrick: Minnesota Lakehome Owner Demographics→

Pioneer Press:

“Minnesota lake home and cabin owners — that oh-so-MN demographic — are getting older. And not any richer. And their health care costs are rising.

Which might prove troublesome for the cherished natural resources — namely our lakes — that lakefront property owners are at the forefront of protecting.

Those are among the findings of a study released Friday by Minnesota Lakes and Rivers Advocates, an environmental-advocacy group that often focuses on issues relevant to lake property owners associations.

The group called the findings a “disturbing trend” because of the uncertainty it could create over the future of both seasonal property ownership and environmental stewardship.”

Walker Angell: Bicycles Benefits→

Streets.mn

“Bicycles are arguably the most efficient form of transportation there is. Over 4 times faster than walking and they can carry heavier loads. Bicycling requires much less infrastructure, maintenance, and space than motor vehicles and are massively more affordable for individuals and communities.”

David Brooks: Dignity and Sadness in the Working Class→

New York Times:

“Suburbia isn’t working. During the baby boom, the suburbs gave families safe places to raise their kids. But now we are in an era of an aging population, telecommuting workers and single-person households.

The culture and geography of suburbia are failing to nurture webs of mutual dependence.

We are animals who can’t flourish unless we can’t get along without one another. Yet one finds too many people thrust into lives of semi-independence.

These are not the victims of postindustrial blight I’m talking about; they are successful people who worked hard and built good lives but who are left nonetheless strangely isolated, in attenuated communities, and who are left radiating the residual sadness of the lonely heart.”

Suburbia may have made sense when families were larger, one parent stayed home, and energy was cheap. Now this form a development leaves kids in basements with video games and parents more isolated from their community.

Lee Bergquist: Water Wars on the Sand Counties of Wisconsin→

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Two articles on groundwater and lakes

“War Over Water

In 2010, Minnesota lawmakers passed legislation giving that state’s DNR the authority to establish groundwater protection areas that allow the agency to limit water use to meet human needs and protect lakes, streams and wetlands.

After three years of review, the first protection area was designated in November 2015 in metropolitan St. Paul — an area that runs to the Wisconsin border. Two other areas have been identified in rural areas of Minnesota.

In Wisconsin, with Kraft’s work being questioned and environmentalists pressing for action, the DNR and the growers association underwrote a two-year, $230,000 study of the Little Plover.

In April, the Wisconsin Geological & Natural History Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey found that groundwater played a key role in the health of the Little Plover; the river was vulnerable to groundwater pumping; and that stream flows would improve substantially if wells nearest the river were removed.

The study “did not refute the work of Dr. Kraft — if anything, it built on that work,” said Ken Bradbury, director of the state natural history survey and co-author of the study.

But Tamas Houlihan, executive director of the potato and vegetable group, said his industry isn’t convinced, although he says growers near the Little Plover have voluntarily changed their farming and irrigation practices to conserve water.”

— http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2016/09/03/war-over-water-land-plenty/89481060/

“Water Policy

Plainfield — Three years after Brian Wolf bought his home on Long Lake in 2006, lawmakers and water policy experts began stopping by to see what had happened to the lake.

”It’s as if someone pulled the plug in a bathtub,” Wolf told one group of visitors in November 2009. “This lake is dead.”

Legislators left Wolf’s home in western Waushara County with plans to address growing worries about high-capacity wells and the effect groundwater pumping was having on lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands.

But lawmakers tried and failed to pass a groundwater bill in the 2010 legislative session. This year, legislative efforts also went nowhere.

This summer, the water in Long Lake is mostly gone, dotted by a few marshy areas. Cattails and grasses sprout from the former lake bed. Other traditionally shallow lakes in this region of sandy soil in the middle of the state have shared similar fates.

A dock on Long Lake near Coloma is surrounded by weeds. The lake has seen its water levels plummet and has become a marsh. Landowners blame the large number of high-capacity wells used to irrigate crops in the region.

They have become symbols of the tug-of-war over water use in Wisconsin. The advantage has shifted to large water users as the number of high-capacity wells have proliferated and efforts to put more limits on the use of groundwater have foundered.”

— http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2016/09/04/conflicts-thwart-reforms-state-water-policy/89482796/

Governor Dayton Moves to Protect Bees

PAN:

“This morning at the State Fair, Governor Mark Dayton and Commissioner of Agriculture Dave Frederickson announced Minnesota’s comprehensive new plans to limit the use of bee-harming pesticides across the state. Today’s decision concludes a nearly 3-year review of the impact of neonicotinoid insecticides on pollinators, conducted by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA). The executive order announced today makes Minnesota a national leader in pollinator protection — and the first state to tackle neonicotinoid use in farm fields and on public lands.

“Today, Minnesota set the strongest rules in the nation to protect pollinators from pesticides,” said Lex Horan of Pesticide Action Network. “The plan will help ensure that bee-harming pesticides won’t be used unnecessarily, and it lays the groundwork for reducing the use of neonicotinoid seed coatings. This decision is rooted in the resounding scientific evidence that neonicotinoids are harmful to pollinators. It’s past time for state and federal decisionmakers to take action to restrict the use of bee-harming pesticides, and today Minnesota did just that.””

— http://www.panna.org/press-release/new-rules-minnesota-leads-country-protecting-pollinators-pesticides

MPR: Gunderson & Dunbar

“Seeking to reverse a decline in bees and other pollinators, Gov. Mark Dayton issued an executive order Friday that limits the use of nicotine-based pesticides.

The governor’s move won praise from environmentalists, but farm groups said it could hurt farmers financially.

Nicotine-based insecticides known as neonicotinoids are effective against a variety of pests, so they’re widely used, but a growing body of research shows the insecticides harm bees.

After a two-year review of 300 scientific studies, the state Agriculture Department decided restrictions were necessary, said Agriculture Commissioner Dave Frederickson.

”Some of these are bold recommendations that have not been considered by any other state across the nation,” Frederickson said at a Minnesota State Fair news conference.”

— http://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/08/26/dayton-orders-steps-protect-bees-pollinators

We now await the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's review of the neonicotinoids, which is anticipated to be completed by 2018.  

The Governor's Executive Order

Minnesota Department of Agriculture - Neonicotinoid Review

Justin Fox: Zoning Overuse - 100 Year Review→

Bloomberg News:

“Over the past few years, zoning has been blamed, mainly by economists bearing substantial empirical evidence, for an ever-growing litany of ills. The charge that zoning is used to keep poor people and minorities out of wealthy suburbs has been around for decades. But recent research has also blamed it for increasing income segregation, reducing economic mobility and depressing economic growth nationwide.

One can never be certain about these things, but it’s quite possible that excessive land-use restrictions are among the major causes of our long national economic malaise. Jason Furman, chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, made this very point in a speech in November. Yet the platform adopted at the Democratic National Convention this week made no mention of either “land use” or “zoning,” while the Republican platform mentioned them only to condemn the current administration’s purported efforts “to undermine zoning laws in order to socially engineer every community in the country.”

The irony, of course, is that zoning laws are themselves a form of social engineering. That doesn’t mean they’re always malign, but during this anniversary week it does seem worth going over how and why the engineering got started. ”