Living Sustainably (and bigger)

Is that even possible? It may not be entirely possible, but give our current state of affairs, we could at least evaluate ourselves to see which set of people are living most sustainably relative to others. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a reputed non-profit environmental group, rated large, medium and small cities based on a sustainability index. Their scoring/ranking criteria is explained below:

We sought the advice of academic, non-profit and government experts to come up with a broad set of criteria by which to measure and compare sustainability efforts in cities across the U.S. The ranking scheme, developed with the help of a scholar from Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, was intended as a tool for identifying, for the purpose of spotlighting, those cities that are taking the lead in addressing the major environmental challenges of our time, from global warming to clean air and water.

The cities were evaluated based on air quality, energy production and conservation, recycling, transportation, water quality, etc. More details on the criteria are provided here.

The Top 15 large cities list is dominated by the West - 9 cities, with 6 from California. Seattle, WA tops the list, followed by San Francisco, CA and Portland, OR. 2 cities from the Northeast, Boston and New York as do the two Texas cities - Austin and Dallas. Finally, two cities from the Midwest complete the list - Chicago, IL and Columbus, OH. Wow... Columbus makes it to the top 15 large sustainable cities in the US...at the 15th spot! See the rankings here:
http://smartercities.nrdc.org/rankings/large

Except for the Texas cities, no other city from the South makes it to the Top 15. Louisville, KY takes the 21st spot, making it the only southern city to feature in the Top 30. Well, Louisville is just a few miles away from Cincinnati, so it does not represent a typical city from the South.

Madison, WI tops the list for medium cities, followed by Santa Rosa, CA and Fort Collins, CO (again from the West). Another Western city captures the top spot for small cities - Bellingham, WA.

The profile on Columbus claims that the city and the Mayor are working towards expanding the bike routes in the city to make Columbus the "biking capital" of the country by 2012.

http://smartercities.nrdc.org/cities/columbus-oh

Healthcare quotes

Quotes from today's web on Obama's healthcare plans:

Karl Rove writes in the nation's trusted newspaper, WSJ (see my earlier post):
On Tuesday, Gallup showed Mr. Obama’s personal approval was 55%, down from more than 60% a few weeks ago and lower than the 56% George W. Bush had at this point in his first term.

Didn’t know 1% made all that difference. I guess he didn't get to take a Statistics course, before dropping out of college...twice!

Betsy McCaughey using the same mouthpiece:

Since Medicare was established in 1965, access to care has enabled older Americans to avoid becoming disabled and to travel and live independently instead of languishing in nursing homes….. Medicare has made living to a ripe old age a good value. ObamaCare will undo that.

So, Medicare is good, in spite of being run by the....government, while insurance run by the same government can wreak havoc.

Intershame frames the debate quite well:

Complaining that a inherently socialist concept like insurance - the collection of funds by many to redistribute to the needy - will somehow be more socialist if the government gets involved is laughable.

while Gail Collins at The New York Times blames Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT):

Meanwhile in the Senate, everyone is waiting on Max Baucus of Montana. Nothing is going to happen on health care without the approval of Baucus, whose vast authority stems from the fact that he speaks for both the Senate Finance Committee and a state that contains three-tenths of one percent of the country’s population (emphasis mine).

Wall Street Journal: fair and balanced?

Few days ago, my good friend Srivathsan forwarded a link to a Wall Street Journal article to me on India's success with reducing rural poverty and contrasted it with China's approach. Though WSJ has won an impressive 33 Pulitzer prizes for excellence in reporting, it continues to hire editors and columnists, whose work can be explained in one word: shoddy. One-more word to describe WSJ: neo-conservative.

Via Wikipedia: Two summaries published in 1995 by the left leaning Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and in 1996 by the Columbia Journalism Review.^[23] repeatedly criticized the editorial page of the Journal for inaccuracy and dishonesty in the 1980s and 1990's. During the Reagan administration, the newspaper's editorial page was particularly influential as the leading voice for supply-side economics. Regarding issues of international politics and national security, the Journal editorial page is squarely in the neo-conservative camp, for example supporting the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and the legitimacy of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The Journal in recent years has strongly defended Lewis Libby, whom it portrays as the victim of a political witchhunt. The editorial page routinely publishes articles by scientists skeptical of the theory of global warming, including several influential essays by Richard Lindzen of MIT.

Although their reporting on the news is fairly impartial and even liberal, its editorial content is too conservative to easily tilt the balance towards the right. Another recent example is the public face of WSJ on TV: Peggy Noonan. Here are two statements she made recently.

On the release of Bush torture memos by the Obama administration, she said: "Sometimes in life you just want to keep walking", and, "Some of life has to be mysterious."

On SC Gov. Mark Sanford's hike to the Appalachian Trail and the revelation of the affair by the media: "Um..I must say I've been thinking about Clinton a lot and it seems to me that in the Clinton era, during that famous story, a new devilishness was unleashed, especially in the media where a new meanness took style."

I started with an idea of commenting on the WSJ article, but went on to write a lot about WSJ itself. I guess I will comment on the article in my next post. Keep waiting.