Report a Comment

"Likewise, trees fall in urban areas,"

but people on the 7th and 8th floors are seldom killed by them.

"People drive in urban areas, suburban areas, and rural areas."

but the choice to walk somewhere is more available in denser areas. I am speaking from my own experience in Annandale during the power outage. When you've just spent a couple of days powerless in a suburb, and have had the experience of waiting in line for an hour for gasoline, cause otherwise you were stuck in your hot home, the praise of how suburbs do in an outage elicits a gut reaction I am afraid.

"that was not even the initial intent of the discussion."

I have my own judgement of what the initial intent of the discussion was.

I for one, am not willing to give up on the planet. If we maintain our current GHG path we will have 8 to 10 degree F warming, and we will likely release the methane trapped in the siberian permafrost. The entire greater washington region may become uninhabitable at that point. Its important we prevent (or as the term of art is, "mitigate") that. Some adaptation strategies are orthogonal to mitigation. But when someone suggests adaptation strategies that counter mitigation- IE ways to adjust to global warming that will increase GHG emissions and worsen warming, that gets me very angry. Especially after what we have suffered this last week.

What this blog needs NOW, above all, is something that ties together the arguments FOR density and alternate transit modes, with the urgent need to counter global warming. That would not only be timely, but fully in keeping with the spirit of the blog.

I see instead attempts by commenters to divert from the key, and urgent, lessons of the last two weeks on the issues we address here.

Lights were out in urban areas, suburban areas, and rural areas.

by AWalkerInTheCity on Jul 9, 2012 10:56 am • link • report