ModeShift - Part 69

Kunstler on Tom and His Green World

by Keith SchneiderApril 18, 2007April 18, 20070

Jim Kunstler, the author of The Geography of Nowhere andÂ wielder of one of the sharper editorial knives in the country, takes slices out of Tom Friedman’s Sunday New York Times Magazine article on the global green movement in anÂ essay that published on his site at kunstler.com andÂ picked up by Alternet.org.Â The money passage: “Friedman goes on to tout Wal-Mart’s mendacious campaign to “green” up its operations by, among other things, improving the mileage of its …

Tom and His Green World

by Keith SchneiderApril 16, 2007April 29, 20073

Tom Friedman, the New York Times’ great foreign affairs columnist and a former colleague of mine wrote this in a must read Sunday Magazine article yesterday: “After World War II, President Eisenhower responded to the threat of Communism and the â€œred menaceâ€ with massive spending on an interstate highway system to tie America together, in large part so that we could better move weapons in the event of a war with the Soviets. That highway …

Gas Prices, Peak Oil, and the New American Backwater

by Keith SchneiderApril 12, 2007April 18, 20075

It’s the nuttyÂ season here in the first weeks of spring.Â The purebred chicken scratchÂ hill billy hound dog puppy that I picked up off the highway in southern Virginia almost 18 years agoÂ decided she’d had enough and wandered off two days ago and vanished.Â It’s been snowing hereÂ in Michigan’s great white north for more than a week.Â Over the weekend I shoveled nine inches of snow off the deck and driveway and it’sÂ colder than it was in January when …

New Media, Old Media, Race and the Internet

by Keith SchneiderApril 11, 2007April 12, 20070

[youtube]Yd6dsrxd_Qc[/youtube] In May 2004 when writer David Brock launched Media Matters For America, the Web site that specializes in documenting the lies and otherÂ distasteful discourse that permeates talk radio and TV, I paid immediate attention.Â Mediamatters.org went up near the top of my favorites listÂ for a couple of reasons. TheÂ reporting was entirely new and airtight — the Web site made very good use of on-air clips and transcripts.Â The frame was values driven and righteous.Â Brock and …

Thinking Big in Knoxville, Tulsa, Salt Lake City

by Keith SchneiderApril 10, 2007April 12, 20070

KNOXVILLE — From his office on the fifth floor of the Knoxville City County building, Dave Hill looks across the Tennessee River toÂ 350 acres and more than two miles of riverfront. None ofÂ it is enchanting. Yet all of itÂ essentialÂ to this mid-size southern city’s plan to be a green, clean, energy efficient, and lovely statement about America’s capacity to build the century’s new world class urban centers. As my Manhattan mother might say: “Knoxville? Where’sÂ Knoxville?” …

Flip: The Unsustainables

by Keith SchneiderApril 9, 20070

[youtube]V6MKYnBULyg[/youtube] The work to make the nation’s metropolitan regions greener, cleaner, and more energy efficient is too often impeded by the overly earnest language of the movement. Sustainlane.com is trying to break through the wall of techno-legal-political speak with its Unsustainables, an animated series broadcast on the Internet.Â According to the Sustainlane.com’s editors, the Unsustainables “depicts the lives of a blended family in a modern urban environment. Each segment centers around our characters who, like …

Flip: Global Voices

by Keith SchneiderApril 7, 2007August 27, 20070

If you’re interested in what happens beyond the borders of the United States, then you also know that an awful lot ofÂ what’s reported as foreign news is distilled through the filter of government to government action, diplomat to diplomat negotiation.Â A different kind of communication is now available on the Internet, which fills that huge space between the conversation among international elites and the conversation occurring at the grassroots. Few Web sites are doing that …

More Big Boys Weigh In On Climate Change

by Keith SchneiderApril 6, 2007April 6, 20070

Â Â It was only a matter of time before global warming would become an organizing principle in the United States. Even for the conservative U.S. Supreme Court. It’s all come in a rush. This week, in aÂ 5-4 decision, the High Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority and duty toÂ regulate climate change gases produced by automobiles. The suit, brought in June 2003 by Massachusetts and 12 other states, asked the nine justices …

Smart Growth and Gentrification

by Keith SchneiderApril 5, 20070

For as long as I’ve been involved in understanding the dimensions of urban disinvestment, as well as the solutions, one more civic concern has always lurked in the shadows. That’s gentrification, the process by which wealthier people interested in moving back into a city use buying power and sway to push the poor out of their homes. As a journalist, public policy specialist, and citizen of America I’ve personally experienced almost every side of this …

Pure Michigan

by Keith SchneiderApril 4, 2007April 4, 20070

If you’ve followed what’s going on here in Michigan you know thatÂ we continue to lead the nation in too many categories that aren’t welcome — joblessness, rates of obesity and heart disease,Â income gap between wealthy and poor,Â racial segregation, home foreclosures. And weÂ are at the bottom of the heap in categories that define well-being –Â income growth, business starts, educational achievement,Â the quality of our big cities, state fiscal health. There are many reasons why Michigan has slid …