Apartment Ecology

lost in a moment from dennis wheatley on Vimeo.

I'm now the editor of the Stop Global Warming Blog at change.org.  It's consuming my blogging-brain attention, so Apartment Ecology may not be updated for a while.  

Video: Courtesy Streetfilms. 10 finalists in New York City's bike rack design competition are having their creations street-tested: prototypes have been installed at Astor Place. They're all pretty neat in one way or another, and it would be great to have any one of them become the official NYC bike rack and well distributed around the city. We're hard up here for good bike parking.

While I've been off tending to non-blog things, news has continued to bubble up, boil over, and froth all around our collective feet. Lots is getting lost in the unrelenting coverage of the Wall Street meltdown. I'll try to save a few stories from the dustheap, below.

Much distinction is being drawn between the concerns of Main Street ("regular" America) and Wall Street (Rich Uncle Milburn Pennybags) -- and how improbable it seems to be to people that the former is going to melt if Big Finance burns. Lately I've been considering that, as Wall Street IS Main Street here in NYC, it's pretty much a win-win for me and my fellow New Yorkers to bail it out.

• Off-Shore Wind Power Set to Expand (Worldwatch Institute)
• Mayors 'Get It' on Climate Change (World Resources Institute)
• Global Seed Vault Now Accepting Seeds (Scientific American)
• Mars Lander Detects Falling Snow (BBC News) [[this has nothing to do with cities, the environment, or sustainability -- it's just very exciting news of more proof of water on Mars]]
• Xcel Energy to Convert Coal Station Into Clean Biomass Power Plant (Biopact)
Google's Green Energy Futures Fund Could Save U.S. $1 Trillion (Treehugger) [[Good timing for Google: Now everyone knows we're going to need to save $1 trillion somewhere to make up for the Wall Street bailout]]

• Mitchell Joachim: Redesign Cities From Scratch (Wired)
• It Takes Just One Village -- Elevated Out of Poverty -- To Save a Species (The New York Times)
• Eco-Cities: Urban Planning for the Future (SciAm.com)
• Urban Energy Crisis: It Take 18 Coffee Trees to Caffinate 1 American (Treehugger)
• Iceland Shifting Green Car Plans (Dot Earth - nytimes.com)
• Flashmob Protest of Heathrow Airport Expansion (Ecostreet)
• Conflux 2008: Notes From Panel "Cartography of Protest and Social Changes" (We Make Money Not Art)

• Portland, Ore., San Fran, Seattle Top List of Most Sustainable U.S. Cities [[again]] [[My home town, NYC, moves from 6th to 5th place.]] (TriplePundit)
• Crude Reality: Who Said Anything About Cheap Oil? (Environmental Capital - wsj.com)
• Toyota iQ Urban Car Exposed at the Royal College of Art [[it's adorable -- I just want to hug it and kiss it and love it]] (Treehugger)
• Chicago Releases Climate Action Plan (DotEarth - nytimes.com)
• New Beijing Traffic Restrictions Surprisingly Popular (The City Fix)

Image: Beijing traffic, 2006, by proggie via flickr, who wrote in part, "What struck me most about the traffic in China was not so much the volume, but the controlled chaos. Cars, buses, bicycles, scooters, and pedestrians were going in all directions, disregarding traffic lights and sings, cutting each other off, weaving in and out, and performing maneuvers that drivers in Vancouver would have heart attacks over. Yet in China it seemed to be normal and expected, and nobody got angry or even lifted a finger. "

• Near New York Harbor, the Song of Whales(The New York Times)
• What Effect Could Wall Street Meltdown Have on Clean Energy Development? (Gristmill - Grist)
• After Ike, To Rebuild Cities or Not on Texas Coast? (The Christian Science Monitor)
• Berkeley Approves Landmark Solar Energy Lending Program for Homeowners (Solve Climate)
• States Aim to Cut Greenhouse Gases by Making Polluters Pay (The New York Times)

Image: "Oblique aerial photography of Bolivar Peninsula, TX, [[which is directly north-northeast of Galveston Island, TX]] on September 9, 2008 (top) and September 15, 2008, two days after landfall of Hurricane Ike (bottom). Yellow arrows mark features that appear in each image. In addition to the loss of houses, the evidence of inundation here includes eroded dune face and sand deposited well inland of the shoreline." Source: U.S. Geological Survey

• Could Newark Flower as an Eco-City? (The Star Ledger)
• Is It Time To Kill the Lawn? American icon losing ground to edible gardens (The Oregonian)
• Communities Plan for a Low-Energy Future? (The Christian Science Monitor)
• Creativity Helps Rochester's Transit System Turn a Profit (The New York Times)

• Telemetric air quality displays in downtown Seoul (Beyond the Beyond - wired.com)
• Air Pollution's Causes, Consequences and Solutions
(The City Fix)
• Wild Cats Take Up Residence in California Foreclosures (BLDG BLOG)
• Brooklyn, Butterflies and Bees (Slow Food Nation) [[I wrote this.]]
• San Francisco's Victory Garden Gets An Extension (Sustainable Cities Blog)
• New Orleans: "When do humans hold the line, and when do they back off, in the face of inevitable disasters?" (Dot Earth - nytimes.com)

Image: Via Bruce Sterling: "Urban informatics applications double as big, visible street billboards."

• A Look at Joe Biden's Environmental Record (Grist)
• An Interview With Joe Biden About Energy, Environment (Grist)
• Why Biden Is an Important Pick for the Climate (Climate Progress)
• Biden's Beliefs: Obama's Running Mate Calls Energy America's Top Issue (Environmental Capital - wsj.com)

Image: Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity, Sept. 3, 2008. Credit: National Hurricane Center

• Palin: No Fresh Pick on Energy, Enviro Policies (Elizabeth Grossman, Island Press Blog)
• Palin: Global Warming Not Man-Made (Political Radar - abcnews.com)
• Palin at Her "End Times" Church: Pray for Gas Pipeline (Gristmill)
• Palin on Higher Ed, Earmarks and Science (Inside Higher Ed)
• Sarah Palin and Big Oil (Energy Wire - washingtonpost.com)
• Palin Views On Oil, Polar Bears May Be Liabilities (AP, via CBS News)

Image: "This satellite image was captured on September 2 at 17:45 UTC (1:45 p.m. EDT) from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-11 and GOES-12). In the image, Tropical Depression Gustav is on the far left over northwest Texas; Tropical Storm Hanna is located to the right of Gustav, currently over the southern Bahamas; Tropical Storm Ike follows to the right in open ocean; and Tropical Storm Josephine is off the African coast, far right." Credit: NOAA/NASA GOES Project