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Saturday, December 10, 2005

Speaking of Sharkansky

Posted by on December 10 at 15:11 PM

There’s a really moronic post over at Sharkansky’s Sound Politics blog right now that criticizes Mayor Nickels’s Kyoto initiative. (Nickels has been lining up U.S. cities to honor the Kyoto Protocols despite Bush’s objections to the international treaty.)

Sharkansky’s colleague Matt Rosenberg writes: “Anyone who really believes global warming is a problem - like Nickels - ought to get that their huge populations and growing industrial sectors will more than offset any gains we make in Puget Sound in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

WRONG. Despite the conventional wisdom that cities kill the environment, cities are actually good for the environment.

As I wrote in our Urban Archipelago essay last year: “As counterintuitive as it may seem to composting, recycling self-righteous suburbanites, living in dense urban areas is actually better for the environment. The population of New York City is larger than that of 39 states. But because dense apartment housing is more energy efficient, New York City uses less energy than any state. Conversely, suburban living—with its cars, highways, and single-family houses flanked by pesticide-soaked lawns—saps energy and devastates the ecosystem.”

I got this from a must-read New Yorker article (“Green Manhattan,” October 18, 2004, by David Owen).

Oh, and cities are also good for the environment because they have mass transit. On that score, yes, Mayor Gridlock has proven to be a problem.


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Sigh. The one time the Shark discusses something outside of Republicans getting jobbed in an election, and he puts his foot in his mouth with utterly ridiculous commentary.

Also, the alternative is to spread the industry across rural America, and actually accelerate global warming by spewing greenhouse gases into more locations and a wider span of airspace.

Point of order: It is actually Matt Roseberg who wrote that post.

Hey Josh,

Are you guys going to cover another Democratic candidate for President early, like you did Dean? Because that Gov. Mark Warner (D-VA) is hot shit, and he's raising money like crazy.

Josh, you failed to even include a link to the post you are criuticizing. Utterly Bush league. We're pissing in the wind here in Seattle, and the U.S., if China and India don't join in on post-Kyoto goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You offered no real rebuttal, just a re-hashed screed about how virtuous it is to live in cities.

Next time, you''re going to rip someone's post, include a link to the post itself, not just the main page of the blog. You DO know how to do that, right?

My hamster loves The Stranger.

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