Clinton the Bloodthirsty Monster

Today on Ken Silverstein’s Harper’s blog, Washington Babylon, he quotes an anonymous reader’s remarks on Clinton and Obama. I think this person is spot on:

Put in simplest terms, I think Obama understands this moment in a way that Hillary doesn’t (and cannot afford to) understand. Hillary’s skill set, like that of her husband, works only when she can present herself as beleaguered, hemmed in by irrational opponents who deride her personally. It’s true that I find such politics distasteful—both the dumb-ass pursuit of centrist Democrats pushing a Republican agenda in power as though they were some kind of violent cohort of secular socialist revolutionaries, and the no-less-oafish effort to depict conservative political power as a dark mystical force that can be defeated only by an authentic battle-tested victim of the right’s predations (or a bloodthirsty monster, if you will).

What’s frustrating in all this is that it seems almost beside the point to object to Hillary’s candidacy—which I most emphatically do—on grounds of her policy positions. There’s her purist posturing on the health-care mandate she all but single-handedly destroyed in 1993; her pandering on the “gas tax holiday”; and—worst of all in my book—her hollow symbolic pose as a fire-breathing populist when she actively backed all sorts of worker-damaging policies in the White House, from the ratification of NAFTA to the repeal of Glass–Steagall.

A lesser but still baleful strain of her ideology is what a friend of mine calls “pedo-centric liberalism”: the effort to define liberal governance as an extended exercise in kiddie protection. Hence, her epically time-wasting hearings in the Senate (abetted by that equally self-regarding thug Lieberman) on the graphic content of videogames; hence, her long tutelage at the child-fetishizing feet of Marion Wright Edelman. I’ve got nothing against kids per se, mind you—it’s just that their recruitment as “poster children” in the effort to resuscitate liberal politics diminishes both them and whatever remains of liberal thinking and legislating in these dark times. It’s also empirically untrue that this generation of children is in some grave moral peril thanks to the digital gadgets they covet. There’s no shortage of real problems—like trade, energy policy, the real costs of environmental upgrades, a national industrial policy—that the Dems haven’t even started to address in any elementary fashion. As Roger Waters said, leave those kids alone.

At the end of the day, I don’t give a shit whether candidate A or candidate B has a self-image as a fighter, a reformer, a hope-pusher, or what have you. I just care about their ability to deliver some semblance of economic equity while forthrightly acknowledging that imperialism in the service of daft efforts to re-engineer parts of the world and systems of belief we know nothing about is a really, really bad idea. (Don’t get me started on Hillary’s mind-bending efforts to reel back her 2002 vote on the Iraq use of force resolution without conceding it was a mistake.) Obama, while no angel himself, stands a far better chance of delivering on some of these basic agenda items, by virtue of record, temperament and—most of all, I think—his salutary impatience with the dorm-room tenor of Boomer politics. Also—no small thing, this—he’s shown a striking ability to bring more people into the party. Hillary at best mobilizes a pre-existing Dem base that is, in all sorts of demographic measures, shrinking. If you cleave to the sentimental notion that the Dems should be the party of the ordinary people’s interests, counterposed to the G.O.P.’s standing as the party of money and business, then you want candidates at the top of the ticket who can use a broader voting base to fight the influence of today’s robber-baron class.

Anyway, this is all pretty much academic, since Obama’s going to be the nominee, barring a Michigan-Florida floor fight that would basically destroy the party. I have no doubt that Clinton, bloodthirsty monster that she may be, is contemplating such a measure—just as I have no doubt that, should she go through with it, John McCain would have the presidency locked down by the time the Democrats leave Denver.

I think it’s time to celebrate

From Andrew Sullivan:

• Drudge Calls It

From Matthew Yglesias:

• Now We Know

From Huffington Post:

• Reality Has Well-Known Obama Bias
• Obama Victorious, Clinton On The Ropes

From Politico:

• Obama takes decisive step toward nomination

From RealClearPolitics:

• How Obama Beat the Line

From AP News:

• Clinton lends herself $6.4M as Obama’s lead grows

From The Economist:

• In Obama’s grasp

From The New York Times:

• Obama Widens Delegate Gap With N. Carolina Win
• Clinton’s Options Seem to Dwindle

From NPR:

• Clinton Lacks Clear Path to Victory

Combat and Composure

From David Brooks’ Op-Ed in the New York Times:

Clinton signaled that she wasn’t going to concede even an inch to the vast elitist conspiracy. She wasn’t going to feel guilty about ignoring the evidence. She was going to stomp on it, flay it and leave it a twisted mass of jelly quivering on the ground. She was going to perform the primordial duty of an alpha dog leader — helping one’s own. …

…Obama still possesses his talent for homeostasis, the ability to return to emotional balance and calm, even amid hysteria. His astounding composure has come across as weakness in the midst of combat with Clinton, but it’s also at the core of his promise to change politics. He vows to calm hatred and heal division.

This contrast between combat and composure defines the Democratic race. The implicit Clinton argument is that politics is an inherently nasty business. Human nature, as she said Sunday, means that progress comes only through conquest. You’d better elect a leader who can intimidate. You’d better elect someone who has given herself permission to be brutal.

Obama’s campaign grows out of the longstanding reform tradition. His implicit argument is that politics doesn’t have to be this way. Dishonesty and brutality aren’t inevitable; they’re what gets in the way. Obama’s friend and supporter Cass Sunstein described the Obama ideal in The New Republic: “Obama believes that real change usually requires consensus, learning and accommodation.

Campaign issues come and go, but this is a thread running through the race. One believes in the raw assertion of power, the other the power of communication.

Read the full article here.

Group with Clinton Ties Tries to Suppress Black Vote

Yesterday, Peter Overby of NPR reported that Women’s Voices, Women Vote, a group with ties to Hillary Clinton, placed thousands of robo-calls to (mostly black) North Carolina voters last week. The calls, which are illegal because they do not give the recipient any way to contact the group nor even identify the sponsoring group, led registered voters to believe that they were, in fact, not registered. This is what they heard:

Hello. This is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is fill it out, sign it, date and return the application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return your registration form when it arrives. Thank you.

As Overby notes: “This sounds like a classic example of voter suppression — sowing confusion in order to drive down turn-out.”

The founder of Women’s Voices worked on Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, and board member John Podesta was President Clinton’s chief-of-staff. Maggie Williams, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, used to be on the Women’s Voices leadership team and did consulting work for the group.

This afternoon, I called Women’s Voices, Women Vote to register a complaint about these ridiculous calls. The woman who answered said that they are doing everything they can to rectify the situation.

I’m not surprised that things like this happen, but it does make me feel sad and defeated that most Americans can speak more intelligibly about crazy Paula Abdul than voters who were disenfranchised in November 2000 and 2004, the voters in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin who have been misled by Women’s Voices, and the voters in Indiana who will now be unable to vote thanks to the Supreme Court’s latest ruling.

In an editorial in today’s New York Times, Adam Cohen calls on Congress to protect voters:

It is chilling to think that state legislators and election officials would intentionally try to make it harder for Americans to vote, but they always have — with poll taxes, literacy tests and gerrymandering. There was a time when the Supreme Court regularly struck these restrictions down. In 1966, it held Virginia’s $1.50 poll tax unconstitutional. In 1972, it ruled that Tennessee’s one-year residency requirement for voting violated the Constitution.

Now the Supreme Court has switched sides. This week, it upheld a harsh Indiana voter ID law that could disenfranchise many poor, elderly and student voters. The ruling will make it even easier for other states to block voters’ access to the ballot box.

If the courts won’t protect voters, Congress has to. The Constitution, in Article 1, Section 4, gives Congress broad authority to set the rules for federal elections. It should use this power to set minimum voting rights standards that would apply nationwide and ensure that all eligible Americans could vote.

… Critics of reform make the specious argument that states have the right to set the rules for federal elections. The founders, when they wrote the Constitution, said otherwise.

If you’d like to call Women’s Voices to complain, this is their phone number: 202-659-9570.

You can read or listen to the full NPR story here.

There is another great article about it here, on Wired.

Lester Brown - Plan B 3.0

Yesterday evening, I went to hear Lester Brown speak at Busboys and Poets about his new book, Plan B 3.0.

I actually left feeling slightly hopeful about the climate crisis. He emphasized that we don’t have much time to act – we need to cut carbon emissions 80% by 2020… but we do already have the technology to do it. Someone from the audience asked him if he believes we have the political capacity to do it… and he answered that Senators McCain and Clinton seem to be incrementalists, and we simply do not have time for incremental change – but Senator Obama does seem to have the potential to implement the kinds of environmental and economic policy changes we need and to mobilize and inspire the nation to get behind those changes.

Plan B 3.0 is a comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are fast undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth’s damaged ecosystems. Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.

At the heart of the climate-stabilizing initiative cited above is a detailed plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2020 in order to hold the future temperature rise to a minimum. This initiative has three major components—raising energy efficiency, developing renewable sources of energy, and expanding the earth’s tree cover. Reaching these goals will mean the world can phase out all coal-fired power plants.

In setting the carbon reduction goals for Plan B, we did not ask “What do politicians think is politically feasible?” but rather “What do we think is needed to prevent irreversible climate change?” This is not Plan A: business-as-usual. This is Plan B: an all-out response at wartime speed proportionate to the magnitude of the threats facing civilization.

We are in a race between tipping points in natural and political systems.

Although efforts have been made in recent decades to raise the efficiency of energy use, the potential is still largely untapped. For example, one easy and profitable way to cut carbon emissions worldwide is simply to replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs that use only a fourth as much electricity. Turning to more efficient lighting can reduce world electricity use by 12 percent—enough to close 705 of the world’s 2,370 coal-fired power plants.

In the United States, buildings—commercial and residential—account for close to 40 percent of carbon emissions. Retrofitting an existing building typically can cut energy use by 20–50 percent. The next step, shifting to carbon-free electricity to heat, cool, and light the building completes the transformation to a zero-carbon emissions building.

We can also reduce carbon emissions by moving down the food chain. The energy used to provide the typical American diet and that used for personal transportation are roughly equal. A plant-based diet requires about one fourth as much energy as a diet rich in red meat. The reduction in carbon emissions in shifting from a red meat–rich diet to a plant-based diet is about the same as that in shifting from a Chevrolet Suburban SUV to a Toyota Prius hybrid car.

In the Plan B energy economy, wind is the centerpiece. It is abundant, low cost, and widely distributed; it scales easily and can be developed quickly. The goal is to develop at wartime speed 3 million megawatts of wind-generating capacity by 2020, enough to meet 40 percent of the world’s electricity needs. This would require 1.5 million wind turbines of 2 megawatts each. These turbines could be produced on assembly lines by reopening closed automobile plants, much as bombers were assembled in auto plants during World War II.

In the development of renewable energy resources, Brown notes, we are seeing the emergence of some big-time thinking—thinking that recognizes the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels. Nowhere is this more evident than in Texas, where the state government is coordinating an effort to build 23,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity (the equivalent of 23 coal-fired power plants). This will supply enough electricity to satisfy the residential needs of over 11 million Texans—half the state’s population. Oil wells go dry and coal seams run out, but the earth’s wind resources cannot be depleted.

Solar technologies also provide exciting opportunities for getting us off the carbon treadmill. Sales of solar-electric panels are doubling every two years. Rooftop solar water heaters are spreading fast in Europe and China. In China, some 40 million homes now get their hot water from rooftop solar heaters. The plan is to nearly triple this to 110 million homes by 2020, supplying hot water to 380 million Chinese.

Investment in geothermal energy for both heating and power generation is also growing fast, notes Brown. Iceland now heats nearly 90 percent of its homes with geothermal energy, virtually eliminating the use of coal for home heating. The Philippines gets 25 percent of its electricity from geothermal power plants. The United States has 61 geothermal projects under way in the geothermally rich western states.

The combination of gas-electric hybrid cars and advanced-design wind turbines has set the stage for the evolution of an entirely new automotive fuel economy. If the battery storage of the typical hybrid car is doubled and a plug-in capacity is added so that batteries can be recharged at night, then we could do our short-distance driving—commuting to work, grocery shopping, and so on—almost entirely with cheap, wind-generated electricity.

This would permit us to run our cars largely on renewable electricity—and at the gasoline-equivalent cost of less than $1 per gallon. Several major automakers are coming to market with plug-in hybrids or electric cars.

With business as usual (Plan A), the environmental trends that are undermining our future will continue. More and more states will fail until civilization itself begins to unravel. Time is our scarcest resource. We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize. These deadlines are set by nature. Nature is the timekeeper, but we cannot see the clock.

The key to restructuring the world energy economy is to get the market to tell the environmental truth by incorporating into prices the indirect costs of burning fossil fuels, such as climate disruption and air pollution. To do this, we propose adopting a carbon tax that will reflect these indirect costs and offsetting it by lowering income taxes. We propose a worldwide carbon tax to be phased in at $20 per ton each year between 2008 and 2020, stabilizing at $240 per ton. This initiative, which would be offset at every step with a reduction in income taxes, would simultaneously discourage fossil fuel use and encourage investment in renewable sources of energy.

We can all make lifestyle changes, but unless we restructure the economy and do it quickly we will almost certainly fail. We need to persuade our elected representatives and national leaders to support the environmental tax restructuring and other changes outlined in Plan B. Beyond this, each of us can pick an issue that is important to us at the local level, such as phasing out coal-fired power plants, shifting to more-efficient light bulbs, or developing a comprehensive local recycling program, and get to work on it.

We all need to educate ourselves on environmental issues. For its part, the Earth Policy Institute is making Plan B 3.0 available for downloading free of charge from its Web site.

Like earlier civilizations that got into environmental trouble, we have to make a choice. We can stay with business as usual and watch our economy decline and our civilization unravel, or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that mobilizes to save civilization. Our generation will make the decision, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.

Colbert and the Candidates

Steven Colbert is pretty amazing.

Clinton, Edwards, and Obama all in one show. Not to mention some delightful satire on the Philadelphia debate.

Blogger Steve Rosenbaum offered some excellent commentary on the appearances in his Huffington Post article “Clinton becomes Political Hor’dourve on Colbert Report:”

It must have seemed like such a good idea at the time. Stephen Colbert is in Philadelphia, his show is being taped there for the debates - why not do one of those funny walk-ons that politicians love to do.

Hillary opened the show with a bit of business, she got a warm laugh - and she was off. She’d fixed a tech problem with the set, got to make a joke about being on call - “even at 3am” and strode off the stage looking confident and Presidential.

Next up - Philadelphia congressman Patrick Murphy.

Back from Iraq - and looking, as Colbert put it, like the kind of guy that would vote for Hillary. Nope. Murphy proclaimed Barack Obama one of the most exciting politicians of this generation and proclaimed his support for Obama.

But, it gets better - just wait.

As Colbert dug in to the election - he played a medley of news clips about the election turning on the White Male Vote. And then, proclaimed it would be “one White Male.” Out strode a shockingly upbeat John Edwards. Wow - where’s he been? And WHAT is HE doing in Philadelphia not endorsing anyone?

Not only did Edwards look great- but his 3 min long “Ed” Words segment was maybe one of the most brilliant bits of writing I’ve heard in a long time. Funny, self-deprecating, and strongly political all at the same time. This is no easy act to pull off, and he was masterful. All of a sudden, Hillary’s bit about the broken video screen seemed like both lame politics and lame comedy. Edwards was on fire!

So, for those of you keeping score at home.

Hilary opens with a laugh.

Patrick Murphy looks heroic, boyish, charming, and endorses Obama.

Edwards makes a political speech about two Americas while hitting all his laugh lines and begging for a Jet Ski from either Hillary or Obama.

So, the bookers at The Colbert Report must be feeling pretty good right about now.

Colbert is signing off - and then - behind him - looming VERY large. Its Barack Obama.

Grinning. Last Laugh. Colbert says “Hillary must be wishing she didn’t fix the screen right about now.” Indeed.

And then, Obama delivers the line of the night - playing off a long running Colbert joke where he puts “On Notice” things that are no longer culturally acceptable. Said Obama: “Manufactured political distractions, you are officially on notice!”

Wow. Somebody buy the Colbert writing staff a drink. Someone deserves a bow.

Go to The Colbert Report website now and be sure to click on the segment of the show dealing with the Philadelphia debate.

Worst. President. Ever

This blog post by Scott Horton at Harper’s warrants a full re-print. Read it all, and then watch the new ad at the bottom about John McCain.

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”

America’s historians, it seems, don’t think much of George W. Bush.

Now in all fairness, historians should wait a while before passing judgment on a president’s who served recently, much less one still in office. But the current incumbent is a special case. After all, 81 percent of Americans, according to a recent New York Times poll, believe he’s taken the country on the wrong track. That’s the highest number ever registered. The same poll also says 28 percent have a favorable view of his performance in office, which is also in Nixon-in-the-darkest-days-of-Watergate territory.

But, as George Mason University’s History News Network reports, the historians have a different measure. They want to stack him up against his forty-two predecessors as the nation’s chief executive. Among historians, there is no doubt into which echelon he falls–his competitors are Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Franklin Pierce, the worst of the presidential worst. But does Bush actually come in dead last?

Yes. History News Network’s poll of 109 historians found that 61 percent of them rank Bush as “worst ever” among U.S. presidents. Bush’s key competition comes from Buchanan, apparently, and a further 2 percent of the sample puts Bush right behind Buchanan as runner-up for “worst ever.” 96 percent of the respondents place the Bush presidency in the bottom tier of American presidencies. And was his presidency (it’s a bit wishful to speak of his presidency in the past tense–after all there are several more months left to go) a success or failure? On that score the numbers are still more resounding: 98 percent label it a “failure.”

Historians Rate George W. Bush a “Failure”

This marks a dramatic deterioration for Bush. Previously he wasn’t viewed in the most positive terms, but there was a consensus that he wasn’t the “worst of the worst” either. That was in the spring of 2004. In the meantime, Bush has established himself as the torture president, the basis for his invasion of Iraq has been exposed as a fraud, the Iraq War itself has gone disastrously, the nation’s network of alliances has faded, and the economy has gone into a tailspin–not to mention the bungled handling of relief for victims of hurricane Katrina. In 2004, only 12 percent of historians were ready to place Bush dead last.

Here are some of the comments that the historians furnished:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of areas: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

And now, this ad, called “Out of Touch,” from Progressive Media:

Cartagena

I have been wanting to write about Cartagena for a while, but it’s hard to whittle the week abroad down to a blog post. Cartagena is warm, beautiful, relaxed, and old.

Instead of trying to put everything into words here, I will just post a few pictures and hope that I will see you in person soon so that I can tell you about Cartagena.

Green Our Vaccines

In 1983, the CDC recommended that all children receive 10 different vaccines by the age of five. The rate of autism then was 1 in 10,000. Now, the CDC recommends 36 different vaccinations for children by the age of two. This 260% increase in injections coincides with a rise in autism: now 1 in every 150 children is autistic.

This is a problem that we all should care about. For more information, visit www.generationrescue.org.

Suburban Sprawl

During my own fifteen mile commute along the Potomac River, this NPR story called “Life in the ‘Burbs: Heavy Costs for Families, Climate,” seemed particularly relevant — especially because I spent the weekend in Ashburn, Virginia (thirty miles west of DC, in Loudon county — the county with THE fastest growing population in the United States — median household income: $103,000).

In fact, Billy, Abigail, and I were trying to parse out our strong aversion to suburbia. Part of it, as Billy explained, is that the suburban landscape — in addition to being totally sterile and homogeneous — reflects an eerie refusal to confront reality. So many suburban houses have “brick fronts” but vinyl siding on the three planes not facing the road. The vinyl siding itself is often molded with wood grain to look more “authentic.” And, as the NPR story points out, people move to the suburbs to do what seems “best” for their families — they have more space for less money and good schools for their children — but many of these families seem to be in total denial about the environmental legacy they are creating for their children.

According to the NPR story, “The average Atlanta resident with a job drives 66 miles every day. In fact, people here drive so much that if you added up every commute and every trip to a store or soccer practice on just one day, you’d get a number that’s larger than the distance between the Earth and the sun.”

Just a few points on the negative effects of sprawl from Smart Growth America:

Social Equity

Our public investments are a reflection of our social priorities. Much of the nation’s infrastructure has been invested in new suburban communities, which have disproportionately benefited white and middle class neighborhoods. Cities that lose residents to the suburbs suffer from a decline in business investment and tax revenues, yet still must pay for a large physical infrastructure and the disproportionate social problems (crime, drug abuse, welfare) of those who cannot or do not leave.

Urban disinvestment, white flight and the concentration of poverty and minorities within city borders may seem like “natural” facts of economic life – tragic but unavoidable. But in fact, the residential segregation that prevails in so many metropolitan regions derives from deliberate policy choices.

In a recent survey by the Fannie Mae Foundation, interstate highway investments were ranked as the number one the promoter of suburban sprawl. The typical sprawling development pattern that follows has isolated low-income people, particularly people of color living in low-income communities, from broader regional opportunities.

Sprawl’s pernicious effect on social equity took two generations to create and it will surely take longer to fix. Smart growth, by investing public and private resources into existing communities; encouraging the production of affordable housing; and eliminating barriers to affordable housing production; can create more equitable communities.

Contrary to what some people argue, sprawl is not a child of the free-market. It was a direct result of public policy at the federal, state and local level. The federal government dedicated funding to highways to the detriment of mass transit; states provided economic development money to the urban fringe; and localities have directly or indirectly prohibited the construction of affordable housing.

Besides the many barriers against the construction of affordable housing, many local governments have largely zoned out affordable housing. This so-called exclusionary zoning creates pockets of concentrated poverty in the urban core in much of metropolitan America.

Economy

Because it makes the most efficient use of taxpayer investments in roads, water and sewer systems and services from police to fire fighting, smart growth stretches taxpayer dollars farther. Numerous studies have affirmed this to be the case.

Among the most recent was a five-year study by researchers at Rutgers University and the Brookings Institution that found the nation could save hundreds of billions of dollars and preserve 4 million acres of land over the next quarter-century by channeling development into existing urban areas and compact new towns.

Even as we’re overinvesting in subsidizing new sprawl development, we’re dramatically underinvesting in maintenance, repair and upgrading of infrastructure in existing areas. This is economically unsustainable in the long haul, notes Prof. Robert Burchell, the author of the Rutgers study.

As tough times linger for state and local governments, more and more officials – in states from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania to Tennessee — are abandoning traditional subsidies for sprawl development and adopting a “Fix it First” policy. Where they are undertaking new capital projects, they are insisting that hard-won infrastructure investments go as far as possible.

Environment

Of all of the ill effects of sprawl, few are as well documented as its environmental consequences. In addition to an abundance of scientific evidence, examples of the impact of sprawl on nature are all around us. Seeing cornfields transformed into office parks, scenic vistas soiled with monster homes, and billboards lining historic roads, one does not need a PhD to know something is wrong.

Poor water quality remains a persistent problem across the nation, with more than one third of assessed rivers and streams not meeting water quality standards. Sprawl adds to this crisis in several ways. Rain and snowmelt move across highways, roads, parking lots and yards, sweeping a variety of contaminants into our storm drains and into our rivers and lakes. As land in the watershed is converted to hard surfaces that are impervious to water, the area loses its ability to absorb and store rainfall. Many of those hard surfaces are roads, which collect oil, solvents and other contaminants that are then washed into streams or other bodies of water. In addition, rain runs off of hard surfaces much more rapidly and in much greater volume than under natural conditions. The result is an increase in flash flooding, and a decrease in groundwater flows into streams, and less recharge into aquifers. While sprawl cannot cause drought, it can lead to making many of the effects drought worse because of decreased recharge.

As development spreads farther into wild lands – what scientists refer to as the “urban/rural interface” – wildlife habitat becomes become fragmented. It is this fragmentation that is leading several scientists and wildlife preservation organizations to target sprawl as the key indicator of species loss. In addition to sprawl’s danger to biodiversity, there is a growing threat to the human species in these “urban/rural interface” regions through a heightened risk of “natural” disasters, such as extreme flooding and fires.

Current development patterns also bring substantial air pollution, largely because of the increased automobile dependence that is associated with sprawl. For most people, especially those in conventional suburban developments, the only realistic choice for running these errands is to drive. Motor vehicle use in America doubled from one to two trillion miles per year between 1970 to 1990. SGA’s Measuring Sprawl and Its Impact found that a family of four living in a very sprawling region will drive 40 more miles a day than the same family in a more compact region. The more sprawling areas have higher peak ozone levels.