Modeshift

Here’s a great example of how to deploy Internet technology and interactivity to conserving farmland. The Michigan Land Use Institute just posted the latest version of our Taste The Local Difference Web site, which links buyers of local farm products to sellers. Here’s a new facet of the site that enables wholesale suppliers and buyers to connect very quickly on the Web, an online wholesale market as it were.   Just great work by the Institute’s Entrepreneurial Agriculture Project and our Web producer, Doug Rose. Nice job guys. 

On the day late last month that Rachel Carson would have turned 100 years old I posted a piece on Mode Shift that focused on the surprising failure of the nation’s major environmental organizations to defend the mother of modern environmentalism. The free market right has set out on a deliberate path to diminish Carson, and by extension the American environmental community, as credible in responding to the consequences of industrial technology. The attack on Carson is an important facet of the free market right’s campaign to diminish the reach of local, state, and federal safeguards. And it’s been remarkably effective and destructive. The federal government, for instance, has no strategy for responding to global climate change because of its sympathy to free market assertions that the science of climate change is deeply flawed.  

In any case on Tuesday this week John Tierney, an influential free market science writer and columnist at the New York Times, leveled a broadside at Carson in the pages of Science Times. Calling Silent Spring a “hodgepodge of science and junk science,” Tierney accused Carson of using “dubious statistics and anecdotes (like the improbable story of a woman who instantly developed cancer after spraying her basement with DDT) to warn of a cancer epidemic that never came to pass. She rightly noted threats to some birds, like eagles and other raptors, but she wildly imagined a mass ‘biocide.’”

I know Tierney and worked with him at the Times in the early 1990s, when he joined the paper. He’s smart, thorough, and delights in being a contrarian on environmental issues. He wrote a famous piece questioning the value of recycling, essentially saying that recycling wastes more energy and materials than it saves. In another piece for the Times Magazine, Tierney singlehandedly changed the public’s view of Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich when he reported on a bet that Ehrlich made with Julian Simon, an economist at the University of Maryland. In 1968 Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which predicted a runaway global population boom (he was right on that) and mass starvation globally and food riots in the United States in the 1980s (he was wrong about that).  Ehrlich bet that the prices of five key metals would rise as a result of population increases and scarcity of natural resources. Simon bet that innovation would drive prices down. In 1990, Ehrlich conceded defeat and sent Simon a check for $576.07, the amount that represented the decline in the metals’ prices after accounting for inflation, he reported.

Now Tierney is after Rachel Carson, using as the basis of his critique a 1962 review of Silent Spring in the journal Science written by I. L. Baldwin, a professor of agricultural bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin. Baldwin’s review was the subject of debate as intense at the time as Carson’s ground-breaking journalism. Her assessment of the toxic trail left by pesticides in plants and animals was defended and confirmed then by independent scientists, some of them working at the behest of President John F. Kennedy. And they’ve been reconfirmed time and again in the real world since.

Pesticide use has resulted in mass killings of songbirds and wildlife, and the poisoning of farm and industrial workers. I personally reported on the consequences to production workers in Lathrop, California in the 1980s who were left sterile because of their exposure to the pesticide DBCP during its manufacture. I reported on the incidence of young children who’d been born deaf in a California community where the drinking water supply had been contamined by DBCP and other toxic farm chemicals. 

I tracked through the forests of western North Carolina in the early 1980s, identifying uncommon rates of death and illness in communities exposed to the defoliants 2,4-D and picloram, which were used to kill broad-leafed trees. The mix of 2,4-D and picloram, by the way, was sprayed in Vietnam, was known as Agent White, and was used to clear forests where Agent Orange didn’t work. A military study of the effects of Agent White, which I found in the library of Auburn University in Alabama, said that Hmong tribes exposed to the defoliant displayed levels of cancer and birth defects far in excess of neighboring communities that weren’t exposed. 

So you can’t tell me that Rachel Carson’s reporting inspired “chemophobia” as Tierney charges, or is exaggerated or untrue. What he does is focus the knife edge of an eloquent rhetorical attack on the outer membrane of Carson’s reporting, such as the predictions she made that haven’t come to pass — a big loss of robins, for instance. He doesn’t note that such a prediction might well have come to pass, and fortunately hasn’t, because several of the most toxic compounds she critiqued, especially DDT, have been banned for agricultural use. 

I appeal again to the major national organizations to get involved in setting the record straight about the value of Carson’s journalism and scholarship. Their credibility and the salience of the environmental movement’s science is at stake.

Last November, just as they have in previous local and state elections stretching back to the mid-1990s, voters in 13 states considered 32 transit-related ballot measures and approved 70 percent of them, according to the Center for Transportation Excellence, a research group based in Washington, D.C. Spending on those projects will total $40 billion—bringing both immediate stimulus and long-term economic development tools to local economies.

Well, the beat goes on. Last month voters in the Grand Rapids region approved a property tax increase to enhance and expand that region’s first-rate bus system. It’s the third time since 2000 that Grand Rapids, the most conservative major metropolitan region in Michigan, approved tax increases for transit.

The Center for Transportation Excellence reports that Aspen, Colorado residents approved building a combination highway and bus rapid transit system, and Winter Park, Florida approved building a new commuter rail station. Of the five binding transit ballot measures this year in four states, only Kitsap County, Washington defeated a sales tax increase to provide new ferry service to Seattle. A fifth measure to establish new tax funding for transit has yet to be voted on in Washington’s Puget Sound region.

With such consistently strong non-ideological votes in favor of new transit service, and with gas prices climbing inexorably, you wonder when presidential candidates of either party will pick up the issue. Is it possible for the 2008 presidential campaign to be only about health care and the war? Doubtful given the global transition underway and the need to talk about much more than that.

 Though it’s completely understandable why the triple whammy of rising peak oil energy prices, global climate change, and record population growth might get you down, here are a number of promising Mode Shift trends that indicate the end is not nigh.

Singles now head the majority of American households and are repopulating America’s great cities. This from Baltimore, according to the May 29, 2007 edition of the Baltimore Sun: “Across Baltimore, single women – old and young, black and white – are buying houses, many for the first time, at rates far exceeding the national average. According to a 2006 survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors, 40 percent of city homebuyers last year were single females, nearly twice the national average and the Baltimore County rate.”

In Denver, the expanding Fastracks regional rapid transit system is encouraging suburban communities served by the light and heavy commuter rail lines to embrace higher density neighborhood development. The reason: It makes sense in a transforming world. ”Metro Denver now averages 4 or 4.5 homes per acre,” reports the Denver Post. ”Increasing that to 6.5 or 7 houses per acre will mean smaller lots, which use less water than larger lots, and more compact developments, which will shorten the length of vehicle trips and improve the air quality. Perhaps as valuable is the intangible effect of improving transit for commuters and creating more jobs that are closer to home.”

California Attorney General Jerry Brown is using the newly approved Global Warming Solutions Act, which requires reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, to challenge sprawling patterns of development. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on May 27, 2007, that Brown and lawyers in six other pending cases are using the landmark law enacted last year by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to argue that the “state must rethink the kind of immense and far-flung housing developments that have defined California land-use patterns for decades. The global warming fight has given new ammunition to the battle against sprawl, which detractors argue creates more cars on the road and energy use and is therefore a key ingredient in the climate-change crisis that threatens the California coastline and snowpack. The need to rein in sprawl has not received much attention from Schwarzenegger, who has garnered international attention as he has talked about creating more efficient cars, boosting solar power, and developing new carbon-trading markets for industry. But experts, including the governor’s own climate advisers, argue that changing how housing is developed is key to meeting the emissions reductions.”

Lawmakers in the Arizona state House, by a 50-1 vote, late last month approved new legislation that has already passed the state Senate and provides authority under the state growth management law to limit new sprawl in communities that have tight water supplies. Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano, who supports the measure, is expected to sign the bill any day. The Los Angeles Times picked up the story in its May 27, 2007 edition:  “Legislative approval of the measure came a quarter-century after the 1980 enactment of a historic groundwater management law imposing new pumping and irrigation restrictions in ‘active management areas.’ Those areas include Phoenix, Tucson and Prescott. Those urban-oriented restrictions were aimed at curbing groundwater depletion that outpaced natural replacement. Subsequent population growth in the nation’s fastest growing state has started to crowd some rural areas, leaving some straining to secure adequate water supplies. In parts of eastern and northern Arizona, residents have to truck in water.” 

Indianapolis (see pix) is gaining national recognition as one of the nation’s most significant comeback cities. According to an article in the June 1, 2007 edition of the Rochester (Minn.) Post-Bulletin, Indianapolis has invested more than $6 billion of public and private funds in a host of downtown projects. More development is on the way — again through public and private partnerships — and $3.2 billion more in construction and renovation efforts are on the drawing board.  ”Some 1,500 residential units — condos, houses and apartments — totaling nearly $348 million will be completed by 2010. In just the past few years, the inventory of hotel rooms has increased 44 percent to a total of 5,338 rooms.”

Late on the Friday night before the Memorial Day weekend, Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Michigan reached agreement with Democratic Governor Jennifer M. Granholm on a very temporary fix to close an $800 million state budget deficit. The deficit, for those who might be unfamiliar, is what happens when what the state earns in tax revenue doesn’t keep up with what it spends on programs. Next fall the crisis worsens when lawmakers look down the raw throat of a $1.8 billion deficit.

“Some people might say that the agreement makes things worse,” said Governor Granholm in an interview last week with Michigan Public Radio. “They’re right.”

There are reasons to sympathize with our governor. Ever since she took office in 2003, Granholm has faced the nation’s largest state budget deficits. Their cause is two-fold. During the 1990s Michigan’s Republican Governor John Engler, and the Republican-led House and Senate engaged in a program of tax cutting that steadily diminished the percentage of personal and business income that Michigan paid in taxes. Then came the acceleration of energy, land, and living costs, globalization, and declining incomes across the country. The state’s manufacturing sector, which has lost over 300,000 jobs since 2000, went into free fall, further reducing income and sales tax revenue. The result is that over $4 billion in revenue has drained from state coffers since Granholm was sworn in. As recently as the 2004/2005 fiscal year, Michigan earned $9 billion in general fund revenues. In fiscal 2007/2008, it is expected to raise $7 billion in general fund revenue. Michigan now has 52,299 state employees, fewer than at any time since 1973, when the state’s population was 9.1 million or 11 percent less than the 10.1 million people that live here today. 

But if you’re getting ready for me to take a swipe at those tax-cutting Republicans, forget it. The governor and her Democratic allies, who are pressing for tax increases to balance the budget, have just as much responsibility for producing Michigan’s budget mess. Both sides are tangled in the heavy ropes of partisan and ideological conflict. 

There’s a way out — collaboration around new ideas — that is proving successful in the prosperous regions of the country and ought to be just as useful here. There’s nothing new about this approach, other than how well it works at the state level in California, Maine, and North Carolina, and in metropolitan regions like Denver, San Diego, Albuquerque, St. Louis, and Chicago. Those of us who’ve engaged in intense public disagreements over highways or new Wal-Marts, farmland conservation, windmills, natural rivers, and downtown development also know that the resolution often accompanies proposing a better idea. An alternative to the status quo. A vision that makes sense for its time and can generate common ground.

The problem with Michigan’s budget standoff, now in its fifth year, is that neither side has agreed on such a vision. Republicans want to keep cutting programs they don’t much like, including environmental protection, health care, and the union-dominated public school systems. Democrats want to spend in those same programs. But if you look at most state-financed programs, you see very quickly that, with few exceptions, they are meant to ensure the continuation of ideas that fit the 20th century, not the 21st. Put another way: As long as Michigan’s state government defends its authority to spend on the programs it’s financed over the last 35 years, it really won’t make much difference for ensuring prosperity for the next 35.  

Transportation’s $3.4 billion budget is heavily weighted to building and maintaining roads. Under 10 percent of the budget is devoted to public transit and not one penny is focused on regional rapid transit, which has proved so successful in igniting economic development in Washington, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Portland and nearly 30 more cities since the late 1980s.

The state’s $113 million agriculture budget includes $3 million to promote Michigan farm products for global markets, and next to nothing to promote local food networks, which have far more capacity to generate higher incomes for food producers and processors, not to mention the ability to help preserve the state’s farmland and rural beauty, both important ingredients to prosperity in the 21st century.

A year ago the Michigan Land Use Institute, Michigan State, and the Upjohn Institute collaborated on an economic study that found that if Michigan growers increased the amount of fruits and vegetables they sold in local markets the shift could increase net farm income by $164 million, or nearly 16 percent. As farm families spend this new income, the study shows they could generate up to 1,889 new jobs across the state and $187 million in new personal income from those jobs. In other words if Michigan spent a little — a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year for technical support and capacity building — it could gain as much new income and as many jobs as it now tries vainly to do by spending tens of millions unsuccessfully in trying to attract new manufacturers. 

The Department of Labor and Economic Growth, the principal economic development agency, spends 48 percent of its $1.3 billion budget on job training, and 9 percent on commissions, boards, and its own staff. But there isn’t any money devoted to the proposed Airport City that lies between Detroit Metropolitan Airport and Willow Run. The proposed new urban region of 450,000 residents and 350,000 new jobs takes advantage of the global reliance on air transport, the advanced manufacturing base, and the $1.3 billion a year in research grants earned by the three big universities in southeast Michigan — Wayne State, Michigan State, and the University of Michigan. The budget agreement reached on May 25, in fact, cuts $166 million in state support for higher education in 2007.

As Larry the Cable Guy would say, “I could do this all day.” The point is that as long as lawmakers are defending turf and ideology, Michigan loses. The vast pool of financial capital managed by our state lawmakers is being used to operate obsolete programs and support old ideas about growth and prosperity. The Michigan Land Use Institute published a report in 2005, “Follow The Money,” that identified $10 billion a year in state economic development funds used for schools, highways, universities, research, and other programs. 

Michigan doesn’t have a shortage of money, as Democrats argue. The state’s budget is $43 billion annually. Michigan has a shortage of ideas, vision, and willingness to collaborate. So long as the state’s budget is devoted to building more roads not regional rapid transit, promoting farm products in the farm-killing global commodity markets, subsidizing sprawl in rural areas, selling state forests and other assets at bargain prices, and cutting funding to higher education in the knowledge economy, we all lose. Unless Granholm and state legislators develop a prosperity plan and the programs to carry it out that fit the 21st century — programs that promote fresh local foods, rapid transit, energy efficiency, environmental protection, housing and urban neighborhoods, and access to great schools — it doesn’t matter how much money the state spends or doesn’t spend. The existing programs neither buttress the present nor prepare for the future. They do, however, ensure that Michigan’s standing in the world will continue to diminish.

Packaged Facts, a useful site for keeping track of demographic and economic trends, just published an analysis of US Census figures that concludes singles now head the largest number of American households. For years demographers have documented the declining size of the US household and the rising number of total American households. Now we find that the single person is the majority.  

Packaged Facts found that “America’s 89.6 million singles head over half of America’s households — 50.3%, according to the 2006 U.S. Census. Several trends converge to make singles the majority group. Adults are marrying later (or not at all), divorce rates remain high, and increasing numbers of adults live together without exchanging “I dos.” “More racially diverse than the overall population, singles are also younger: 57% are less than 45 years old, whereas nearly a quarter are Baby Boomers.”

The Mode Shift point is that the place that more singles are choosing to call home also happens to be America’s urban areas, according to US Census figures. Central city neighborhoods are gaining population for the first time since the 1940 and 1950s. Singles seek cities for a number of obvious reasons — jobs, entertainment, social networking, tribalism. Still, my own reporting from various metropolitan regions across the country in recent months — Knoxville, Salt Lake City, Seattle, New York, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, and Grand Rapids — indicates that single people — young, middle age, and seniors – also are motivated by time and expenses. They’re finding it less expensive and more efficient to live in cities where housing costs may be higher, but those costs are offset by much lower transportation expenses — less driving. They also have more time because the places in their lives are closer, and many feel safer now in the city than they do in suburbs that can be very isolating.

The effect of this demographic trend, coupled with rising energy and land costs and static incomes, is having profound effects on housing choices and development patterns. These are becoming more apparent to builders and planners. Dwellings, enormous now, will start to become smaller, closer together, and closer to metropolitan centers. Salt Lake City is a good example. Townhomes and apartments built close to the region’s rapid transit line are selling out even before they are built. Many buyers are single. The homes are priced and sized right — $200,000 for 1,400 square feet – and located near the center of things.