Finally

Finally, I've found someone who agrees with me about ripping out highway lanes. I'm reading "Green Metropolis" by David Owen, published in 2009. He makes the point that making things easier for drivers is almost always the goal for road and highway designers, and that this goal is exactly the opposite of sustainable. He argues that increasing traffic flow encourages drivers to drive more. Cars like the Fortwo encourage urban walkers and riders to drive instead of walk. And the LEED certification process does not reduce energy consumption. As examples of the latter, he slams a supposed green building at the end of a 15-mile mountain road, and another on Chesapeake Bay that forced 80 employees to drive to work instead of taking public transit to a city center.

He spares no one in his critiques of conventional green wisdom, including Jefferson, Thoreau, the Green Building Council, and of course, affluent exurbanites who are going that extra mile to get away from the environmental "disaster" of the city. The overall point of the book is that the city, and particularly Manhattan, is the greenest place to live and work. We need to increase density, and turn lawns back into farms. According to Owen, the #1 irrigated crop in the U.S. is lawns, followed by corn. He makes the point that the lawn's only purpose is to be maintained. Walking or riding around the streets of our suburb, one sees acre after acre of manicured (by low cost labor using low cost petroleum) lawns, but no one using them. Even the school fields are almost always empty, except, of course, when the adult-organized kids sports are going on. The most-used field is the artificial turf soccer field that was built on top of a landfill.

I would love to see vegetables growing in every front yard, and we are doing our part. I've got the kids enthusiastically helping. Maybe inviting our non-gardening neighbors over for homegrown lunches and dinners will be a step in the right direction.