Image by Toni_V via Flickr

Not to sound all dramatic and everything, but…..Since the future of the planet turns in part on whether we can kick our reliance on cars (and petroleum), it’s important to try and walk (or bike) whenever you can. How often you leave your car keys at home depends on how energetic you are, and how walkable your neighborhood is.

To find out how walk-friendly your neighborhood is, I give you this very interesting “Walk Score” calculator. Just plug in your address.

Here’s why you should care:

Environment: Cars are a leading cause of climate change. Your feet are zero-pollution transportation machines.

Health: The average resident of a walkable neighborhood weighs 7 pounds less than someone who lives in a sprawling neighborhood.¹

Finances: One point of Walk Score is worth up to $3,000 of value for your property. Read the research report.

Communities: Studies show that for every 10 minutes a person spends in a daily car commute, time spent in community activities falls by 10%.³

Here’s what counts when it comes to encouraging walking over driving:

A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a center, whether it’s a main street or a public space.

People: Enough people for businesses to flourish and for public transit to run frequently.

Mixed income, mixed use: Affordable housing located near businesses.

Parks and public space: Plenty of public places to gather and play.

Pedestrian design: Buildings are close to the street, parking lots are relegated to the back.

Schools and workplaces: Close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.

Complete streets: Streets designed for bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit.

And here is the difference between walkable and not so walkable:

A one-mile walk in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge takes you through a grid-like street network with a mix of residences and businesses.

A one-mile walk in Bellevue, WA with cul-de-sacs and winding streets has few shops and services within walking distance.

Walkability. It’s the cousin of Drinkability, and the right way to look at neighborhoods.

Image by DVIDSHUB via Flickr

Social media continues to out the carnage and brutality of war, forcing us all to answer hard questions of morality and efficacy. First it was a devastating helicopter attack in Iraq, which killed two Reuters employees and wounded children. And now it is a special forces attack in Afghanistan which wiped out a family, including three women (two of whom were pregnant).

There is no video of the Afghanistan attack (yet). But HuffPo’s Dan Froomkin, who has been all over these two stories, is drawing attention to a video in which the Afghani scholar whose family was killed details what happened and calls on President Obama to reconsider his Afghanistan policy. Here’s Froomkin:

American soldiers initially tried to cover up the killings, going so far as actually digging their bullets out of the bodies of the three women they had shot — two of whom were seven-months pregnant.

NATO headquarters, led by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then joined the cover-up and repeatedly tried to discredit Jerome Starkey, the intrepid British reporter who didn’t believe the military press releases and went to investigate what happened on his own.

Now, in a video shot for Brave New Films, Sayid Mohammad Mal, the assistant dean of the local university, has a message for President Obama.

“They say they have come to protect us, they have come for peace and providing security,” Mohammad says. (See the video, below.) “But on the contrary, they are killing us and we are awaiting our deaths….

“I tell Mr. Obama that you fight for security on this planet, but your people came and mass-murdered government people in blood in Khataba, Gardez District.

“You be the judge yourself, Mr. Obama, the president of the United States, whether you sent them to bring peace or mass-murder government people? Including women, men, government employees and even pregnant women.? I let Mr. Obama judge this.”…

[snip]…Obama has remained silent on the matter. He’s also not commented on the recent rash of civilian shootings, including four civilians in a passenger bus on April 10, and four more in a car earlier this week. USA Today reported just last week that deaths of Afghan civilians by NATO troops have more than doubled this year.

The video is powerful and revealing, as eyewitness testimony often is. It is also profoundly tragic, and has become the emotional core of of a movement to rethink Afghanistan.

Videos like this and the WikiLeaks Iraq video help us understand what is really happening on the ground in war zones, and the impact war is having on civilian lives. You can only imagine how Americans would feel if their families were dying in this way.

Plastic is getting hammered on YouTube, and that’s a good thing. Water bottles got nailed here. And if you want to watch the most cinematic, eloquent, mesmerizing case ever made about the problem of plastic bags, then just watch below (Werner Herzog, you were created for exactly this sort of film!).

The backstory to this remarkable vid is here.

And if you want to do something about plastic on the planet, my friends sailing across the Pacific on Plastiki (a boat made from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles) have some ideas for you.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

When it comes to watching and understanding Wall Street there are few analysts more shrewd and dispassionate than James Grant, the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer (boring title, yes, but a Bible for investors).

And Grant has just proposed driving a stake through the heart of the reality that Wall Street’s profits are privatized (massive bonuses) and its losses are socialized (taxpayer bailouts). Here’s Grant’s analysis (full essay is here):

The trouble with Wall Street isn’t that too many bankers get rich in the booms. The trouble, rather, is that too few get poor — really, suitably poor — in the busts. To the titans of finance go the upside. To we, the people, nowadays, goes the downside. How much better it would be if the bankers took the losses just as they do the profits.

Happily, there’s a ready-made and time-tested solution. Let the senior financiers keep their salaries and bonuses, and let them do with their banks what they will. If, however, their bank fails, let the bankers themselves fail. Let the value of their houses, cars, yachts, paintings, etc. be assigned to the firm’s creditors.

Grant doubts that any system which does not demand true accountability from the people making decisions and taking risk will prevent ballooning bubbles, boisterous bacchanals of risk-taking, and bilious bailouts.

From the administration and from both sides of the congressional aisle come proposals to micromanage the business of lending, borrowing and market-making: new accounting rules (foolproof this time, they say), higher capital standards, more onerous taxes. If piling on new federal rules was the answer, we’d long ago have been in the promised land.

His solution: put executive wealth on the table when it all goes belly-up.

In Brazil — which learned a thing or two about frenzied finance during its many bouts with hyperinflation — bank directors, senior bank officers and controlling bank stockholders know that they are personally responsible for the solvency of the institution with which they are associated. Let it fail, and their net worths are frozen for the duration of often-lengthy court proceedings. If worse comes to worse, the responsible and accountable parties can lose their all.

I like it. I like it alot. Simple, elegant, and a sharp wake-up smack to the face of Wall Street. Of all the complex and loophole-ridden proposals you have heard so far to “reform” Wall Street, can you think of a single one that would do more to induce Wall Streets overseers to act with more caution and responsibility? I thought so.

Unfortunately, it’s probably way too good an idea (which is to say it would be effective and scare the hell out of lots and lots of Wall Street campaign donors) to actually become part of the fast-moving financial reform debate. But you never know. A lot of people take James Grant very seriously. So let’s hope the “Grant Rule” takes its rightful place alongside the “Volker Rule.”

The furor over the WikiLeaks video of a US helicopter attack in Baghdad (which killed two Reuters employees and wounded children) has receded a bit, but there are still many loose ends and questions.

Some of them are addressed by the “The Danger Room” blog, which has an absolutely fascinating account of the incident from the point of view of the Army specialist who carried the children wounded by the helicopter to safety. And his account is not so good for the Army. Here’s one key piece:

Wired.com: Wikileaks presented the incident as though there was no engagement from insurgents. But you guys did have a firefight a couple of blocks away. Was it reasonable for the Apache soldiers to think that maybe the people they attacked were part of that insurgent firefight?

McCord: I doubt that they were a part of that firefight. However, when I did come up on the scene, there was an RPG as well as AK-47s there…. You just don’t walk around with an RPG in Iraq, especially three blocks away from a firefight…. Personally, I believe the first attack on the group standing by the wall was appropriate, was warranted by the rules of engagement. They did have weapons there. However, I don’t feel that the attack on the [rescue] van was necessary.

Now, as far as rules of engagement, [Iraqis] are not supposed to pick up the wounded. But they could have been easily deterred from doing what they were doing by just firing simply a few warning shots in the direction…. Instead, the Apaches decided to completely obliterate everybody in the van. That’s the hard part to swallow.

(Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/2007-iraq-apache-attack-as-seen-from-the-ground/#ixzz0lrLPZD89)

And here is how McCord’s feelings over the incident were received back at his unit: