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.

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.”

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:

Image via Wikipedia

Lance Armstrong will love this. Tony Kornheiser might not (though he doesn’t seem much like a texter to me; he would love this, however). But the Michigan House just passed a law banning texting while driving. It’s not law yet, but it’s close. And if it passes police will be able to slap a fine on anyone more focused on their thumbs than on the road (and that cyclist praying she is not about to get creamed).

This is important. Because according to this study:

• driver inattention led to 8 out of 10 crashes in the US, and was involved in 65% of near-misses
• in 2008 distracted drivers caused 5,870 deaths
• there’s not much difference between using a cell phone while driving and drinking a few beers (and it doesn’t matter if you use hands-free, though it does for the beers)
• professional truck drivers who text are 23 times more likely to crash, or come close to crashing

Similar laws are being looked at in a bunch of other states, so getting Michigan’s law on the books and seeing how it affects the numbers of car crashes (and crashed cyclists) will be key.

The challenge will of course be enforcement. So in the interests of societal advancement I offer the following additional proposal: offer drastically reduced auto insurance premiums to anyone who promises to shut off their phone when they are in their car (and allow their auto insurance holder to verify the status of their phone if they are involved in an accident). Save drivers $100 on their annual premium and lots would make that pledge (and I’d hike the rates on those who don’t. Hah!).

If only…

This helpful (and depressing) image comes via Ezra Klein, who notes:

It’s bad enough that our campaign finance system makes the rich more important constituents than, well, everyone else. But that’s actually the least of its problems. More infuriating is that they system is used qualitatively differently by the rich than by the poor. It would be one thing if the situation was simply that the rich had more money to donate to the candidates that ignited their passion. But in reality, the motivations of a child-care worker who sends $100 to Barack Obama or Ron Paul and a hedge fund manager who holds fundraisers for both the RNC and Chuck Schumer could not be more different. One is supporting a candidate. The other is investing in access to candidates.

Some version of this corrupt game gets played as ANY legislation moves forward. So if you are tired of a Congress that sells out your interests (i.e. the public interest) it’s not enough to simply elect new members of Congress. You have to elect only members who will pledge not to hook up to the special interest money IV. It’s that simple.

You can follow it all on the Story Of Stuff YouTube channel.

Here’s the latest:

Image by gsz via Flickr

Here’s a way to get a sense of how much carbon you are consuming with your meals, thanks to Bon Apetit’s Low Carbon Diet Calculator. Just click here, and then drag and drop your meals into the frying pan (what, no grill?).

Think how different consumer choices would be if prices reflected these sorts of costs. According to Raj Patel, in The Value Of Nothing, a burger (even if it wasn’t sandwiched between two deep-fried, honey glazed, donuts) would cost up to $200. That would cut carbon and obesity at the same time.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Is former Republican Congressman, and current Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, from an alternate reality? A place where common sense and innovation are valued? Sure seems like it, based on his commitment to elevate cycling and other calorie-burning modes of transport to parity with all the addictive carbon-burning modes.

Just check out the Dept. Of Transportation’s new policy statement on bikes and walking. Or read what LaHood had to say on his blog:

Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.

We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects. We are discouraging transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians. And we are encouraging investments that go beyond the minimum requirements and provide facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.

To set this approach in motion, we have formulated key recommendations for state DOTs and communities:

• Treat walking and bicycling as equals with other transportation modes.
• Ensure convenient access for people of all ages and abilities.
• Go beyond minimum design standards.
• Collect data on walking and biking trips.
• Set a mode share target for walking and bicycling.
• Protect sidewalks and shared-use paths the same way roadways are protected (for example, snow removal)
• Improve nonmotorized facilities during maintenance projects

This is like the Magna Carta for walkers and cyclists. And, predictably, there is furious pushback from the car- and truck-committed, with one Republican Congressman wondering if LaHood is on drugs.

I guess envisioning a different path than the one that is destroying the planet and indebting us to terrorism-loving oligarchs is by definition a drug-fueled fantasy. Too bad more people aren’t on that narcotic.

I give you Ray LaHood: first winner of the just-now-invented, Parallel Universe Vision Award.