Keith Schneider | ModeShift

Flip: As Bali Climate Conference Begins, One Man Makes a Multi-Media Difference

by Keith SchneiderDecember 3, 2007December 3, 20070

How useful can imagination and multi-media imagery be in helping to explain the risks of global warming?Â Check out this remarkable interactive map produced by Architecture 2030, the non-profit founded by Ed Mazria, an architect based in New Mexico. Each of the red hot spots identifies a coastal community that would largely disappear in a torrent of tidal flooding caused by the melting ice caps. It’s among the most immediately visual scenarios of a potentialÂ national calamity …

Lake Michigan Nears Lowest Level Ever Recorded

by Keith SchneiderNovember 29, 2007January 31, 20131

Â Tom Kelly, who directs the Inland Seas Education Association in Suttons Bay and is among the state’s foremost authorities on the Great Lakes, showed me a number of very interesting graphs earlier this week about the falling water levels in the Great Lakes. Much of the nation’s attention this summer was directed toÂ Lake Superior, where evaporation, much lighter winter snows and unusually dry spring and summer seasons hadÂ produced miles of shoreline nobody had ever …

Fresh Food, Rapid Transit Meet In Grand Civic Space

by Keith SchneiderNovember 28, 2007December 4, 20071

Â NEW YORK –Â The day after Thanksgiving it was as though no one had ever eaten a square meal, judging from the lines that formed atÂ Zaro’s Bread Basket or the Little Pie Company or Two Boots Pizza. Like everyplace else in midtown Manhattan, the ground floor, the “dining concourse” Â of Grand Central Station was mobbed. Some of what New York City presents to the world these days is familiar to those of us raised there …

Saying Goodbye To Thanksgivings With Newspapers

by Keith SchneiderNovember 20, 20071

Thanksgiving at my house in White Plains wasn’t just the day thatÂ you could hear the trumpets and trombones warming up at the old stadium for the annual high school football game, orÂ when grandmothers and grandfathers from both sides,Â aunts and uncles and cousins showed up for Mom’s turkey feast. It also was the day that the Reporter Dispatch thumped onto the driveway, a holiday newspaper stuffed with advertisements and inserts. It’s still that way in some …

More on Midwest Energy Schizophrenia

by Keith SchneiderNovember 18, 2007November 19, 20071

With as much Midwest fanfare as they daredÂ toÂ muster, nineÂ governors last week announced a regional compact to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. It was the third such multi-state climate change agreement.Â States in the Northeast and the far West have already ratifiedÂ similar pacts. Midwest governors also agreed on an economic development plan forÂ our increasingly wintry and troubled region that focused on promoting biofuels, wind energy, efficiency, conservation, and other measures to reduce costs and clear pollutants. Michigan …

Michael Moore Directs A Downtown Smash

by Keith SchneiderNovember 13, 2007January 31, 20133

Â On Monday nightÂ Michael Moore, the Academy Award-winning director, best selling author, andÂ one of theÂ nation’s most vociferous detractors of the Iraq War and the Bush White House, was in the newly renovated lobby of the State Theatre in downtown Traverse City complaining about the lights. “It’s all wrong,” he said, pointing to the ceiling whereÂ fluorescent lightsÂ shined brightly from fixtures whereÂ he wanted dimmer incandescent bulbs.Â “They didn’t have bright fluorescent lights in 1949.” On Saturday night,Â November 17, …

What Is Selling? Homes Close To Transit

by Keith SchneiderNovember 11, 2007November 13, 20071

According to real estate listing services, thereÂ are nearly 41,000 homes for sale in Detroit and its three neighboring counties — Wayne, Oakland and Macomb. That’s more than twice as many homes on the market as in 2004, when the housing slump started in southeast Michigan. Moreover, it takes an average of six months to sell a house in metropolitan Detroit, and prices have slipped 15 percent to 3o percent, depending on where the home is …

Election Results for Smart Growth Are Strong

by Keith SchneiderNovember 8, 2007November 12, 20070

Smart Growth continues to flourish at the ballot box. With the exception of the defeat of a disputed highway and transit measure in the Seattle region, voters on Tuesday this week again overwhelmingly approved candidates and strategies that make their places cleaner, greener, more neighborly, and much more efficient consumers of land and resources. Voters across the country approved 34 of 55 conservationÂ measures on the ballot, generating $1.4 billion in new conservation funding. The election …

Blueprint for American Prosperity

by Keith SchneiderNovember 6, 20071

Â If you’ve had the chance to visit America’s big cities, you’ve no doubt noticed thatÂ almost without exception they’re pretty terrific places to be these days. The revival of America’s big city downtowns and neighborhoods, the development that’s occurring in the inner ring suburbs, all portend something very useful to the nation’s well being in this century.Â The prosperity that’s occurred in American cities represents one of the great achievements in the United States in the …

Lake Superior and Climate Change

by Keith SchneiderNovember 1, 2007November 5, 20076

Â Last summer, the National Park Service issued a little-noticed bulletin with this tidbit. The northern Midwest, including the upper Great Lake region, has warmed by almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the 20th century. Data for Lake Michigan, Huron and Superior show that summer water temperatures are increasing. Lake Superior’s summer surface water temperatures have increased by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since since 1980. This week top resource scientists gathered in Duluth to add a few …