Sustainable Geometry: environment

Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts

Friday, May 1, 2015

Long and Short Carbon Cycles

Author's Note: The book cover images in the side margins of this blog are my own publications of eBooks available at both Amazon and B&N. Please take a moment and go to the sites and read about them. Then if you like it, buy one or two.

Burning carbon-based fuels that produce CO2 is not in and of itself a bad thing. It is not inherently a detrimental process for our environment or a net produced of greenhouse gases. The difference in a 'good' process and a 'bad' process is just where the carbon comes from.

Biological processes of photosynthesis sequester carbon in plant material that is withdrawn from the atmosphere. An acre of corn or wheat does it in one year. A tree does it in a couple of decades. Our human bodies do it in a life-expectancy of about 76 years. On the other hand entire forests that have been left unattended for millenniums will sequester carbon over millions of years. The removal of the carbon was good and planet Earth cooled to the pleasant level it is today.

The three Fires of Life: metabolism, rust and fire, all release carbon that has been tied up in the molecules of proteins, amino acids and the cellular strings of life. The amount of carbon released by one of these fires is not dependent on the speed of the process, only on the amount of carbon available.

You can burn a tree to heat a house and return the tree's carbon to the environment within the same century that it was removed. You can burn wheat or corn and return the carbon from earlier in the same year.

The problem arises when you burn coal and natural gas that contains carbon that was removed from the environment over a period of millions of years. What took millions of years to remove, we have been putting back in less than a century. Whereas burning the fossil fuels adds huge quantities of carbon to the surface of the Earth an its atmosphere, burning present-day biomass adds ZERO carbon.

As yet, the processes may not be the most efficient nor the most cost effective, but they don't degrade the atmosphere as does any form of fossil fuel, no matter how "Clean" and "Green" it claims to be. It's the carbon that makes it dirty.

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Monday, September 17, 2012

In Praise of the Nanny State

Not enough government regulations and support for humans in this world is just as bad as too much regulation and support. What we need is a middle ground where creativity and growth flourishes without causing degradation and despair in its wake. The term Nanny State is a pejorative that seeks to marginalize the benefits that it brings along with it. The term is never used by people who need one. It is the people who feel that they don’t need to be supervised and constrained who begrudge its existence and feel that they are being unfairly made to pay the bills for it.

People in wealthy countries have a skewed perspective on the remainder of the world. Some Americans grouse about public schools providing breakfast and lunch meals to the pupils when it is obvious that the children’s parents should be making sure their children are fed nutritious meals each morning and bring with them a good lunch. They don’t like being told that whole chocolate milk is not permitted because it is not as healthy as low fat or no fat milk without the sweet stuff mixed in. They object to not allowing children to eat a candy bar as a snack instead of an apple or a peach. They say the state is too intrusive in their lives.

The simple fact is that there are millions of children who have neither a candy bar not an apple or a peach for any meals at all. They are the children in poor countries who sift through the landfills looking for the stuff they were told will earn them a few coins to add to the miniscule wages their parents earn, sometimes doing the exact same thing.

For them there is no Nanny State. They are truly on their own when it comes to surviving in their environment.

They have zero health coverage for anything that ails them. They do not eat unless they earn the coins that allow them to buy whatever there is to have. Children are malnourished, not educated and remain unskilled for the technical and industrial jobs that come to their country from abroad, especially America. In a country where adults earn the equivalent of a few hundred dollars per year, there is zero opportunity to save for a future where they can no longer work. Then they are pushed aside to make room for the next laborer.

“When she was 6 years old, Natasha’s father left her mother. Shortly after, her mother remarried and sent Natasha and her brother to the orphanage.” Source This story has been played out millions of times in hundreds of countries around the world. Where there is no Nanny State willing and able to address the plight of parents who are unwilling or unable to care for their children, the children are merely abandoned in place. The children then become cast-offs in dismal orphanages or become assets in the sex trade or other exploitations.

In the US, one might be without a permanent dwelling, but a few select individuals are able to keep themselves going with innovation. That innovation is predicated on there not being too many others in their same situation who are also too close and create a social structure that is rebelled against by the fortunate people who never will have to sleep on an urban street.

Sao Paolo, Brazil is a city where 11 million of the approximate 20 million inhabitants live in poverty. In this burgeoning city there is no attempt to regulate the construction of the shanties that have grown like ground cover plants over the land around the planned and officially constructed urban core. Here there is no Nanny State and therefore no sanitation, no garbage collection. Polluted water runs in open channels, people eke out a living as best they can with no help from any municipal authority. Imagine yourself having a heart attack near the center of the neighborhood on the left.

Most Indians own a mobile phone, but don't have access to private toilets. The government and activists hope to help. There go those Nanny Staters again, trying to get people to use a toilet when they would rather poop by the railroad tracks. In a country of 1.3 billion people, getting the word out is a difficult endeavor. There was a time in America about 110 years ago that we resisted putting those filthy things in our houses too. But then the municipal authorities forced the issue. Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania installed sanitary sewers in 1892 and began the conversion from backyard privies to water transport waste removal. Back then they had sufficient water to allow everyone to flush as much water as they wanted to in the pursuits of making their waste disappear. But then the river became a sewer in itself. Along came the Nanny State again telling the communities that they must not put raw sewage in the river. Treatment plants were built at the cost of millions of dollars to keep the river water clean enough for the next community to draw it for drinking. Now they want everyone to install “low-flow” 1.6 gallon commodes to limit the amount of water that is run through the treatment plant. The other side of that equation is the necessity to build a new treatment plant to handle twice the flow of today.

Without someone telling a group of people that the house they live in is only permitted for one family, they would pack two or three families in the house and overload its capacity to handle sewage, electricity and cars parked on the street. Nobody want a Nanny State telling them that they all can’t live in the same house. After all where they came from they were THAT packed in and they built the shanty themselves (without a toilet.)

If we want to have a civilization that exists above subsistence, and doesn’t deteriorate into decrepitude we need someone who has society’s best interest in mind. They may go too far sometimes, but that is far less damaging than not going far enough.

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Saturday, July 9, 2011

Today's Reasons to Exist

If there is a picturesque landscape, a town may be able to attract visitors. Rolling hills and green pastures are not very effective at attracting people unless there is something to do. With many Americans accustomed to eating burgers, fries and sodas in their cars, fine dining in the country is not a high volume opportunity. Outlet stores are a dime-a-dozen and must be clustered on one site to attract a variety of customers. Unless the location is really far out of the city, few people will stay overnight.

Swimming and water craft are good attractions if there is water and the body large enough to accommodate the use. Skiing is seasonal and must generate an entire year of commerce in the few months of winter.

Business and industrial parks are a viable attractor of commerce but the community must also have a suitably aged drug-free workforce who can do the work. There is little use for such a business park in a community if all the labor must commute to the location. There must be ancillary commerce like grocery shopping, medical services, car repair, etc. collocated such that people will leave a portion of their earnings in the local community. Newcomers who seek to live nearby need available housing.

Many businesses that seek to locate in such prepared sites demand tax abatement as an inducement to come therefore, tax revenues will not be immediately benefit the community. Some industries are so mobile that when the tax abatement expires they can relocate once again to some other community that is hungry for commerce.

Retirement homes as a viable option if there are adequate medical services available to treat older residents, transportation available to get everyone to where they need to go and local amenities where their money can stay local.

Private house ownership is far more affordable in small presently economically depressed towns. What is lacking are the grocery stores, doctors, dentists and pharmacies. Without such services long distance travel is required and that offsets the affordability of the location.

Other posts in this series
Community, Reasons to Exist, The Making of Place This is the introductory section

reason-to-exist Every town, village city and region originally had a reason to exist.

todays-reasons-to-exist Every community needs a a reason today for its continued existance. Otherwise it will wither and die.

factors-that-are-missingThe economic system we use today removes critical factors tat allow a community to stay vital.

a-shared-historyThe people of a community need a sared history to stay cohesive as a community.

sustainable-community all of the essential factors must remain present for a community to continue its existance.

sustainable-unemployment As manufacturing and the services industries ccontinue to evolve, human labor and attentjon is diminised. We need to devise a society where most people do not labor for their living.

sustainable-consumerism A balance between product durability and its replacement neds to be reached in order for an equilibrium to be reached.

sustainable-populations The human population cannot continue on its present trajectory without a terrible price to pay in the coming decades and century.

suburban-sprawl Sprawl is only possible when tere is ample buildable land and ample resources available to service thiose locations.

complete-streets Our transportation ways are not just for the automobile. People must walk, bike, and use other modes of transport on tose public rights of way.

Monday, July 4, 2011

A Shared History

What makes a human settlement into a community? A suburb of culturally diverse homeowners may be a community but mostly they are not. In any population of approximately 5,000 people who live in a set of suburban subdivisions may attend as many as 50 different churches, buy groceries at a dozen different supermarkets, bank at a dozen different banks and have children who attend a myriad of public and private schools. Each new arrival came from a unique origin and settled there for the wide open yards and greater distances between front doors. In those residential land uses, people come and go isolated in their automobiles and may not know the names of the families even as close as two doors away. They all share a physical location but they do not have a shared history.

Swissvale, Pennsylvania is a small urban center now incorporated as part of the City of Pittsburgh. It was originally settled by Germans and Scandinavians who arrived from Europe to work in the steel mills on the Monongahela River Valley far below the bluffs where the streets of houses were built. So common was the employment in the valley and residence on the hillsides that several electric streetcar companies laid tracks through the neighborhoods and pointed them straight at the mills. It seems that everyone went to the mills each day to earn a living. They all spoke the language. They all had something in common: Emigration and working in the mills.

The next town over is Braddock. It was home to a large population of Polish immigrants. Their churches and fraternal association buildings still give testament to their former dominance of the area. The level of homogeneous character has since diminished considerably after the exit of steel making in the valley. These towns were sustained by the common history of the people who lived there. Today, Braddock is dying while Swissvale still lives. Both towns rely heavily on the pensions and retirement income of the people who still live there. The difference is Swissvale did not see the influx of lesser unskilled people who replaced the original population that left when the mills closed.

Railroad workers, lumberjacks, farmers, miners, steelworkers immigrated here from all over Europe and found work in company towns where they shared a past and the present. Wilkinsburg, another urban area just outside of Pittsburgh's city limits, is the town of churches. There are cross streets in that borough where each corner has a church. Although there might be a common employment in an area, people of diverse cultures did not mix well and formed their own communities. Irish and Chinese men and their families may live adjacent to each other and interact on an economic basis, but they lived apart. Still they share a common situation as cheap labor to a young growing land. And when the railroad was done they all shared the same fate of abandonment.

Today towns and rural areas struggle to find purpose that will keep their dreams alive. If they do not have an income stream on which to levy taxes then they need people to move in and bring with them the incomes and saved capital they have. If the newcomers still spend their money at distant stores then the community is still without revenue to maintain their physical presence and institutional needs. Newcomers don't have that shared history that is essential for "community" to exist. Efforts to gentrify a distressed community suggests that there is a reason to be renewed or that one can be created. Generally, though, there must first be a reason. That reason might be that it is suitable as a bedroom community to a larger urban area, new public transit options are expanded to the area, or that a large employer is locating nearby. In this latter example the jobs would need to be far better paying that a big box retail store or catalog fulfillment warehouse. Failing those requirements, the revitalization efforts will surely fail. They fail primarily due to the lack of a shared history where people will join together and assure the community success.

Other blog posts that are related in a Series

Community, Reasons to Exist, The Making of Place This is the introductory section

reason-to-exist Every town, village city and region originally had a reason to exist.

todays-reasons-to-exist Every community needs a a reason today for its continued existence. Otherwise it will wither and die.

factors-that-are-missingThe economic system we use today removes critical factors tat allow a community to stay vital.

a-shared-historyThe people of a community need a shared history to stay cohesive as a community.

sustainable-community all of the essential factors must remain present for a community to continue its existence.

sustainable-unemployment As manufacturing and the services industries continue to evolve, human labor and attention is diminished. We need to devise a society where most people do not labor for their living.

sustainable-consumerism A balance between product durability and its replacement needs to be reached in order for an equilibrium to be reached.

sustainable-populations The human population cannot continue on its present trajectory without a terrible price to pay in the coming decades and century.

suburban-sprawl Sprawl is only possible when there is ample buildable land and ample resources available to service those locations.

complete-streets Our transportation ways are not just for the automobile. People must walk, bike, and use other modes of transport on those public rights of way.

A Reason to Exist

Human settlements need a reason to exist. Unlike businesses and industry, people need both a functional reason and aesthetics to make a location worthy. Maybe it was a river landing or a placid flow area to run a ferry. Maybe it was the "head of navigation" where overland freight could then be floated down stream. A crossroads. A pass through the mountains. A gold mine or where there was energy to run the mill and transportation to move the goods. First was the energy and the transportation then the people came to fulfill the needs of the industry.

Every industry and every mode of transportation has its natural aging process that makes it more or less sustainable. Regions built canals to float freight across long and short distances. Most of those canals succumbed to the railroads as soon as the rails became operational. Each new system renders the last one obsolete.

Highways and trucks rendered the shortline railroad obsolete. When timber was plentiful and the coal mines flourished, a railroad ran a spur out to their location. But as the logging and mining operations became smaller in size at the outset of a new section, laying a new track was not a viable option. Rubber tires on dirt and gravel roads made more sense.

Industries moved leaving the human settlements behind. With a decimated income from labor, the towns dried up leaving only the most vulnerable people behind. Children left their families to follow work wherever it could be found.

"My own children will go, as soon as they grow, for there is nothing here now to hold them." North county Blues. Bob Dylan.

Today some American towns rely heavily on the Social Security checks, public assistance, and the pensions of aging residents. There is no industry there to create local wealth from commerce. All the money that does come into the town is spent externally in distant places. The grocery store is located 20 miles or more away and is operated by a national chain that sells items processed far away. All the money spent there leaves the community not to return. Gasoline and heating fuel is the same. A foreign supplier, international price speculators, regional distributors take away all the money spent on energy. Telecomm companies suck away another share. Doctors and pharmacies take more away from the community. While all these enterprises are essential to the people who live in the community, they do nothing for the sustainability of the community. As far as each of these enterprises is concerned, a person equals one person, no matter where he lives. He will eat as much, drink as much, heat his home as much and need the same pharmaceuticals. The place that the people consider home is not important to the businesses.

Without a natural means of producing local wealth by Mining, Manufacturing, Farming and Fishing the net worth of the community cannot increase and decreases a little more each day.

Human settlements must possess a reason to exist. Old reason may disappear and not have a replacement. Those settlements will eventually disappear. If a new reason to exist is found and cultivated then survival of the settlement may be maintained.

With all due respect to the hopes and desires of the people who remain, the mere desire to remain in their accustomed homes is not a reason to exist. If they have the capital to sustain their place, they can fund the continuation of that place. No one else will care nor be willing to pay for it.

Braddock, Pennsylvania is a town that is being allowed to die. It once was a vibrant steel mill town where the historic Edgar Thompson Steel Works is located. The steel operation was once the site of a bloody labor strike put down by Pinkerton Guards and is now a shell of industrial decay. There was a hospital there until 2010 when it too closed down. People still live there and a few low-end businesses like pawn shops and a bar or two remain. Entire buildings disappear on a regular basis as they become unsafe and are demolished. This is a town that has no reason to exist. And soon it won't. Its location has potential, but no one who is a part of the community will ever benefit from the massive influx of capital it will take to completely raze and replace everything that is not historic. The old community will cease to exist and a new one will be constructed when the price is right.

In 1989, Actress Kim Basinger put up $20 Million to buy the town of Braselton, GA. Her own financial status went sour and she sold her interest in the town to a developer in 1993. See Wikipedia: Braselton, GA, for details. The idea was to make a tourist destination and the town should flourish. It didn't. The developer still has not made a viable destination 20 years later.

There were the Main Streets grants in the 1990s that were supposed to revitalize small towns and economically depressed areas. The money was given to repave main street business strips, do sidewalk and streetscape improvements. The thought was that a capital investment in the infrastructure would make the place attractive again. They were wrong. If the main street had no reason to exist, the money failed to create one. Decay once again consumed the business district. Some towns did prosper as the result of the grant capital, but the landscape is littered with its failures.