Water

The Gazette's 2016 "editorial focus" is on "Building Blocks: Working Together to Make Our Communities Great Places to Live." With the current legislative focus on water quality, this week's Writers Circle columns deal with "How Do We Save Our Water?" My first contribution to the 2016 focus was "Design Communities to Support Communication, Interaction and Learning," February 7, 2016. This is my second. -- N.J., Feb. 29, 2016

Some Basic Facts About Water

Nicholas Johnson

The Gazette, February 29, 2016, p. A6 Water.

First, some basic facts.

Life began in water; human life still does. Our bodies are a mix of star stuff and water -– in the same proportions as Earth’s surface. We need replenishment of two to three quarts daily.

But 80% of our society’s consumption is used in agriculture (one gallon for each almond). More goes to industry, like fracking.

We each use about 100 gallons daily. For all Iowans that’s 110 billion gallons annually.

Residents of Flint are right to worry about lead. Thousands of other cities ought to -- 40% of reporting states have more lead poisoning than Flint. And the 15 parts per billion standard’s not science based. It’s chosen as a standard 90% of cities can pass.

But wait; it’s worse. I used to hike where pure water came from springs and ran in streams. Those sources reach us today containing 100 potentially toxic substances that have not been researched, tested, or regulated. Even if they were, one-third of Americans’ water sources aren’t covered by clean water laws.

Rain brings air pollutants, runoff brings fertilizer, industrial waste may be dumped, and nitrate removal treatments can leave toxic nitrosamines. More dangerous elements (like Flint’s lead) can come from aging water mains, or pipes from the mains to, and inside, the home.

One of the greatest single “medical” advances for 2.5 billion of the world’s people? Not a new AIDS or malaria drug. It would be pure drinking water and sanitary facilities for the two million who die every year without them.

There are other ways water can sicken or kill you. Worldwide, an estimated 372,000 people annually die from drowning –- the third leading cause of unintentional injury death.

Ocean levels are rising at increasing rates, as warmer water expands and glaciers melt. If all land ice melted, oceans would rise 197 feet. That’s not happening. But a possible 20-foot rise by 2100 would necessitate relocating a billion people.

And all that’s the good news. Most serious? The coming severe water shortages and inevitable water wars.

Kind of puts our Iowa legislative proposals into perspective, doesn’t it?

My proposals?

1. Prepare to spend $1 trillion on the infrastructure our grandparents built and we, preferring tax cuts, have allowed to rot.

2. Fund the scientific and medical research necessary to understand the human impact of all the substances in water, and then set standards.

3. Give Americans free access to test data about what comes out of their own faucets (not just what comes out of their cities’ treatment plants).

4. Finally, elect public officials who care more about our health than their donors’ wealth.
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Nicholas Johnson, a former FCC commissioner, writes about public policy in FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com and maintains www.nicholasjohnson.org. Contact: mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org


Sources
Note: The Gazette has instituted a new procedure for op ed columns, requiring that submitted work be accompanied with sources. This not only provides yet another level of editorial scrutiny regarding the veracity of facts and assertions, but also makes it easier for the occasional reader engaged in topic research to follow up on portions of a column that may be of further interest.

To serve either purpose it’s necessary to provide not only citations and links complete enough to lead to a source, but sufficient accompanying text to indicate what it was about that source that is thought to support the fact or assertion. Sometimes that can be a single phrase or sentence, such as, in the second one below, "About 71 percent of the Earth's surface is water-covered . . .." Other times, when a simplistic assertion in a 436-word op ed column (as this one is) while reasonable, has not been fully explained in the column, a lengthier excerpt is required. An example would be the third source listed below (the supporting sources for the percentage of one’s weight represented by water).

The sources are listed in the same order as the text which they support.

– N.J.


"'The cosmos is also within us, we're made of star stuff,' was the famous knowledge bomb that Sagan dropped in his original award-winning TV series "Cosmos" . . .."

Eric Mack, "'We Are Made of Star Stuff': A Quick Lesson on How; Carl Sagan Famously Said That the Death of Ancient Stars Helped to Create Us. Huh? Here's a Quick Primer on What he Meant," CNET, November 3, 2014, http://www.cnet.com/news/we-are-made-of-star-stuff-a-quick-lesson-on-how/

"About 71 percent of the Earth's surface is water-covered . . .."

U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior, The USGS Water Science School, "How Much Water is There On, In, and Above the Earth?" http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html

"Water is of major importance to all living things; in some organisms, up to 90% of their body weight comes from water. Up to 60% of the human adult body is water. According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%. Each day humans must consume a certain amount of water to survive. Of course, this varies according to age and gender, and also by where someone lives.

Generally, an adult male needs about 3 liters per day while an adult female needs about 2.2 liters per day. Some of this water is gotten in food. . . .

According to Dr. Jeffrey Utz, Neuroscience, pediatrics, Allegheny University, different people have different percentages of their bodies made up of water. Babies have the most, being born at about 78%. By one year of age, that amount drops to about 65%. In adult men, about 60% of their bodies are water. However, fat tissue does not have as much water as lean tissue. In adult women, fat makes up more of the body than men, so they have about 55% of their bodies made of water."

U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior, The USGS Water Science School, The Water in You," http://water.usgs.gov/edu/propertyyou.html

"So how much fluid does the average, healthy adult living in a temperate climate need? The Institute of Medicine determined that an adequate intake (AI) for men is roughly about 13 cups (3 liters) of total beverages a day. The AI for women is about 9 cups (2.2 liters) of total beverages a day."

Mayo Clinic Staff, "Healthy Lifestyle; Nutrition and Healthy Eating; Water: How Much Should You Drink Every Day?" Mayo Clinic, http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/water/art-20044256

"Agriculture is a major user of ground and surface water in the United States, accounting for approximately 80 percent of the Nation's consumptive water use (see definitions) and over 90 percent in many Western States."

United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, "Irrigation & Water Use; Overview; Background," http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/irrigation-water-use.aspx

"One almond 1.1 gallons of water. . . . Jay Lund, a water expert at the University of California-Davis, says that water problems mean that agriculture may soon play a less important role in California's economy, as the business of growing food moves to the South and the Midwest, where water is less expensive."

Alex Park and Julia Lurie, "It Takes How Much Water to Grow an Almond?! Why California's Drought is a Disaster for Your Favorite Fruits, Vegetables, and Nuts," Mother Jones, February 24, 2014, http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-californias-water-going

"Oil and natural gas fracking, on average, uses more than 28 times the water it did 15 years ago, gulping up to 9.6 million gallons of water per well and putting farming and drinking sources at risk in arid states, especially during drought. . . . The amount of water used for fracking in each well varies widely by region. In southern Illinois, an operation can use as little as 2,600 gallons of water each time fracking triggers the flow of oil or gas into a well. In West Texas’ Permian Basin surrounding Midland and Odessa, fracking uses between 264,000 and 2.6 million gallons of water each time. In Pennsylvania, Ohio, south and eastern Texas, Arkansas, northern Colorado and Montana, fracking can use more than 9 million gallons of water."

Bobby Magill, "Water Use Rises as Fracking Expands; And Certain Wells Use Far More Water Than Others, a Possible Threat in Dry Regions," Scientific American, July 1, 2015, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-use-rises-as-fracking-expands/

"The average American family of four uses 400 gallons of water per day. On average, approximately 70 percent of that water is used indoors, with the bathroom being the largest consumer (a toilet alone can use 27 percent!)."

United States Environmental Protection Agency, "Water Sense; Indoor Water Use in the United States," http://www3.epa.gov/watersense/pubs/indoor.html

“Data collected by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that over 40 percent of the states that reported lead test results in 2014 have higher rates of lead poisoning among children than Flint.”

Yanan Wang, "Untold Cities Across America Have Higher Rates of Lead Poisoning Than Flint," The Washington Post, February 4, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/04/untold-cities-across-america-have-higher-rates-of-lead-poisoning-than-flint/

“The E.P.A.'s trigger level for addressing lead in drinking water -- 15 parts per billion -- is not based on any health threat; rather, it reflects a calculation that water in at least nine in 10 homes susceptible to lead contamination will fall below that standard.”

“The biggest hole in the drinking-water safety net may be the least visible: the potential for water to be tainted by substances that scientists and officials have not even studied, much less regulated. The EP.A. has compiled a list of 100 potentially risky chemicals and 12 microbes that are known or expected to be found in public water systems, but are not yet regulated. . . . There are thousands of other chemicals, viruses and microbes that scientists like Dr. Griffiths say the agency has not begun to assess.”

“The Environmental Protection Agency says streams tapped by water utilities serving a third of the population are not yet covered by clean water laws that limit levels of toxic pollutants.”
“[R]esearchers were long unaware that removing nitrates from finished water can leave behind a toxic byproduct, nitrosamines, the cancer-causing chemical found in cooked bacon.”

Michael Wines and John Schwartz, "Unsafe Lead Levels in Tap Water Not Limited to Flint," The New York Times, February 9, 2016, p. A1, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/us/regulatory-gaps-leave-unsafe-lead-levels-in-water-nationwide.html

“An estimated 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation (more than 35% of the world’s population)”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Global Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene (WASH); Global WASH Fast Facts," http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/global/wash_statistics.html

"Diarrhoea [sic] occurs world-wide and causes 4% of all deaths and 5% of health loss to disability. It is most commonly caused by gastrointestinal infections which kill around 2.2 million people globally each year, mostly children in developing countries. The use of water in hygiene is an important preventive measure but contaminated water is also an important cause of diarrhoea."

World Health Organization, "Water Sanitation Health; Water-Related Diseases; Diarrhoea," http://http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases/diarrhoea/en/

"Inadequate drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene are estimated to cause 842,000 diarrhoeal disease deaths per year WHO 2014, and contribute substantially to the other diseases listed above."

World Health Organization, "Water Sanitation Health; Water-Related Diseases," http://http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases/en/

"Drowning is the 3rd leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide, accounting for 7% of all injury-related deaths. There are an estimated 372,000 annual drowning deaths worldwide."

World Health Organization, Media Centre, "Drowning," Fact Sheet No. 347, November 2014, Key Facts, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs347/en/

“If all the land ice on the planet were to melt, it would raise sea levels about 197 feet . . ..”

Tia Ghose, "NASA: Rising Sea Levels More Dangerous Than Thought," Live Science, August 26, 2015, http://www.livescience.com/51990-sea-level-rise-unknowns.html

"[H]undreds of millions of people live in areas that will become increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Higher sea levels would force them to abandon their homes and relocate. Low-lying islands could be submerged completely. Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. . . .

[D]ire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London."

"Sea Level Rise; Ocean Levels Are Getting Higher -- Can We Do Anything About It?" National Geographic, http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/

“According to the United Nations, water use has grown at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century. By 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued by water scarcity, with two-thirds of the world's population living in water-stressed regions as a result of use, growth, and climate change.”

"Fresh Water Crisis," National Geographic, http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/freshwater-crisis/

“Off and on for two decades, my colleagues and I have worked on issues involving water, including some discussed here. This experience has led me to conclude that statesmanship must go beyond diplomacy, in particular to championing new agricultural technologies. Without growing more food with less water (land, too) the water-war surprises will come, perhaps not in one year, perhaps not in four, but soon, and long into the future.”

Clark S. Judge, "The Coming Water Wars; The Next Big Wars Will be Fought Over Water," U.S.Newsw, February 19, 2013, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/clark-judge/2013/02/19/the-next-big-wars-will-be-fought-over-water

“The American Water Works Association . . . puts the tab [to provide clean drinking water to all Americans] at $1 trillion in new spending in the next 25 years.”

Editorial, "Fixing Our Broken Water Systems," The New York Times, February 14, 2016, p. SR8, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/fixing-our-broken-water-systems.html

"Erik D. Olson, head of the health and environment program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said: '. . . We're mostly living off the investment of our parents and grandparents for our drinking water supply.'"

Michael Wines and John Schwartz, "Unsafe Lead Levels in Tap Water Not Limited to Flint," The New York Times, February 9, 2016, p. A1, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/us/regulatory-gaps-leave-unsafe-lead-levels-in-water-nationwide.html

# # #

Big Oil: Calling Shots, Corrupting Government

May 26, 2010, 7:00 a.m.
[For BP disaster see, "Obama As Finger-Pointer-In-Chief," May 18, 2010; "Big Oil + Big Corruption = Big Mess," May 10, 2010; "P&L: Public Loss From Private Profit," May 3, 2010.]

Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho
Salazar Has Got to Go!
(bought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
All systems of government are capable of being bent and twisted beyond recognition, compared with their initial theoretical promise and potential -- democratic capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism.

The only limits on the pejoratives thrown by President Obama's opponents are the limits of human imagination. But one of their favorites is that he is a "socialist." That is so far off the mark as to be funnier than the best from Jon Stewart. Were that he were! To watch our democratic capitalism morph into democratic socialism -- a highly unlikely prospect at any time -- would cause me far less concern that what I see happening.

The real risk is that we have already allowed our democracy to morph into corporatism, rule by major corporations, unchecked by democratic institutions -- a form of fascism. (Although even fascism at least typically allows for a stronger role for government than what we seem to have today in a corporate-government ruling partnership.)

Consider this report from the New York Times: "In the days since President Obama announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore oil wells and a halt to a controversial type of environmental waiver that was given to the Deepwater Horizon rig, at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted, according to records." Ian Urbina, "Despite Moratorium, Drilling Projects Move Ahead," New York Times, May 24, 2010, p. A1.

The story gets worse, as I'll lay out in a moment; but for now just re-read that lead. This was not a call for a moratorium by the executive director of some environmental group. (There were those as well.) This was the President of the United States ordering a moratorium on drilling permits and environmental waivers.

Note that it was not even a order to stop pumping oil from offshore Gulf of Mexico wells -- as reasonable and understandable as such an order would be at this time. It was only a prohibition on more drilling in violation of the nation's environmental laws.

And how did his Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, and his corrupt Minerals Management Service, respond? Did they, as Oliver North once characterized as the appropriate response, "salute smartly and charge up the hill," canceling all pending applications for additional drilling? No. They totally ignored it, and continued business as usual with their powerful buddies in the oil industry, risking additional pollution of the Gulf from others utilizing BP's approach.

So what are we left with? The pollution in the Minerals Management Service has continued to spread just as BP's continuing pollution of the Gulf increasingly destroys the human and animal life from the depths of the ocean to the nation's southern coast.

And who has President Obama -- who as late as April 2 of this year was still functioning as cheerleader for the offshore drilling gang -- decided can best clean up these messes? Ken Salazar -- who has presided over the MMS mess for over a year, and either knew, should have known, or actually made worse, what was going on there -- is the fox in charge of cleaning up that chicken coop. And who's in charge of cleaning up the ongoing pollution? Why BP, of course; the very folks who got the waivers from the MMS that permitted them to drill without an environmental plan in the first place.

Here are some excerpts from "the rest of the story":

[S]ince the April 20 explosion on the rig, federal regulators have granted at least 19 environmental waivers for gulf drilling projects and at least 17 drilling permits, most of which were for types of work like that on the Deepwater Horizon shortly before it exploded . . ..

Asked about the permits and waivers, officials . . . pointed to public statements by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, reiterating that the agency had no intention of stopping all new oil and gas production in the gulf. . . .

[C]ritics say the moratorium has been violated or too narrowly defined to prevent another disaster. . . .

Since the explosion, federal regulators have been harshly criticized for giving BP’s Deepwater Horizon and hundreds of other drilling projects waivers from full environmental review and for failing to provide rigorous oversight of these projects. . . .

Mr. Obama announced on May 14 a moratorium on drilling new wells and the granting of environmental waivers.

“It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies,” Mr. Obama said. “That cannot and will not happen anymore.”

“We’re also closing the loophole that has allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews,” he added in reference to the environmental waivers.

But records indicated that regulators continued granting the environmental waivers and permits for types of work like that occurring on the Deepwater Horizon. . . .

At least six of the drilling projects that have been given waivers in the past four weeks are for waters that are deeper — and therefore more difficult and dangerous — than where Deepwater Horizon was operating. While that rig, which was drilling at a depth just shy of 5,000 feet, was classified as a deep-water operation, many of the wells in the six projects are classified as “ultra” deep water, including four new wells at over 9,100 feet. . . .

[O]one of the main justifications of the moratorium on new drilling was safety. . . .

And yet, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has classified some of the drilling types that have been allowed to continue as being . . . hazardous . . .. [T]here have been at least three major accidents involving spills, leaks or explosions on rigs in the gulf since 2002 caused by the drilling procedures still being permitted. . . .

Mr. Salazar, when pressed to explain why new drilling was being allowed, testified on May 18 that “there is no deep-water well in the O.C.S. that has been spudded — that means started — after April 20,” referring to the gulf’s outer continental shelf.

However, Newfield Exploration Company has confirmed that it began drilling a deep-water well in 2,095 feet of water after April 20. . . .

Among the types of drilling permits that the minerals agency is still granting are called bypass permits. These allow an operator to drill around a mechanical problem in the original hole to the original target from the existing wellbore.

Five days before the explosion, the Deepwater Horizon requested and received a revised bypass permit, which was the last drilling permit the rig received from the minerals agency before the explosion. The bore was created and it was the faulty cementing or plugging of that hole that has been cited as one of the causes of the explosion. . . .

Even before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the use of environmental waivers was a source of concern. In September 2009, the Government Accountability Office released a report concluding that the waivers were being illegally granted to onshore drilling projects.

This month, the Interior Department announced plans to restrict the use of the waivers onshore, though not offshore. . . .

The investigation, however, is likely to take months, and in the meantime the waivers are continuing to be issued. There is also a 60-day statute of limitations on contesting the waivers, which reduces the chances that they will be reversed if problems are found with the projects or the Obama administration’s review finds fault in the exemption process.

At least three lawsuits to strike down the waivers have been filed by environmental groups this month. The lawsuits argue that the waivers are overly broad and that they undermine the spirit of laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, which forbid drilling projects from moving forward unless they produce detailed environmental studies about minimizing potential risks.

Ian Urbina, "Despite Moratorium, Drilling Projects Move Ahead," New York Times, May 24, 2010, p. A1.

Even the most inattentive, blind and hardhearted of institutional executives usually respond to massive bad publicity in the mainstream media. The major problems involve matters that do not receive such public attention, and thus can be ignored -- often to the profit of the institution, even if to the loss of its customers and employees.

In this instance, it's not even clear that the otherwise sophisticated Obama Administration has even responded as one would expect from a public relations disaster.

But as tragic as are the consequences of America's most serious ecological disaster in history, there is an even more serious problem.

What has President Obama done during the last year-plus with regard to other abuses of the public trust that may be going on in the federal government? What has he done proactively, preemptively, to avoid the corruption and agency capture by industry elsewhere than at the MMS? To what extent does he care; and how has that care been manifest -- beyond running through the playbook after the disasters occur?

I can't begin to list all the possible places to look, but here are a few: President Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex" (the Defense Department-defense contractor revolving door; Congressional pressure for weapons systems the military don't want or need); the "cozy relationship" (to use Obama's characterization) between the industry that is supposed to be regulated and, say, the FAA, FDA, OSHA, MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration; think Massey Coal and 29 dead), SEC, agricultural and other subsidy and price support programs. The list is endless.

Has President Obama initiated any inquiries into general Washington "coziness"? Has he provided any, specific, instructions to his appointees on this score? Is he aware that he is the CEO of an organization with hundreds of otherwise-hidden agencies, any one of which is a potential political weapon of mass destruction?

I recall a companion once commenting as the driver of the car in front of him was seemingly unable to bring himself to proceed beyond a "Yield" sign: "Hey, it says 'yield,' not capitulate completely!"

I fear that we as a nation have also passed beyond merely yielding to corporate control to the place where we have capitulated completely. We're not even running a reputable fascist state anymore.

The first step on the road to reform is to get rid of Secretary Salazar. The second is to acknowledge that the problem is systemic and that the removal of one cabinet officer isn't going to clean up either corruption in government or oil pollution in the Gulf.
_______________

* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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Benefits & Joys of Bicycling

July 15, 2007, 11:45 a.m.

Note: If there is any reason why you might want to know this, within the past 24 hours [from the morning of July 16] someone has kindly translated the following into German.

Bicycling: Introduction

Thirty-six years ago, caught up in the environmental movement of that time and enjoying my 15 minutes of fame, I decided to see if I could contribute to creating a year in which more bicycles than automobiles would be sold in America. (The goal was achieved.)

I had reported somewhere (somewhere I can't now find on the Internet) that the average automobile driver invests 1500 hours a year in their automobile. That includes the driving, visits to the gas pump, mechanic, motor vehicle and driver's licensing agencies -- and the hours it takes to earn the money to pay for the vehicle, gas and oil, repairs, insurance, taxes and licensing. At that time the average driving distance was 7500 miles a year. Thus, I argued you were only making 5 miles an hour with this arrangement -- a speed you could have walked in the same time once in good condition. Clearly, the reduced cost, and increased speed, of bicycling make it the benefit-cost "best buy."

Bicycling is very much in the news these days as well. We had "Bike to Work Week," "Live Earth" caused some reflection about the impact of internal combustion engines (and the pedal power alternative), and next week will be the 35th year that a population of bicyclists (larger than most Iowa towns, including some they pass through) will traverse the State of Iowa from the Missouri to the Mississippi River in an annual event called "RAGBRAI."

All told, I thought it might be interesting to some readers to see for the first time (or re-read) a brief example of what I was writing about bicycling 35 years ago.

The joys of bicycling became a major part of an article I wrote for the Saturday Review of Literature at that time. Nichiolas Johnson, "Test Pattern for Living," Saturday Review, May 29, 1971, p. 12. A year later it had become a book by the same name, Nicholas Johnson, Test Patter for Living (New York: Bantam, 1972) (available in full text from one of my Web sites).

Being the early 1970s and all, the Introduction was sheet music and each page of text (the odd numbered pages) was juxtaposed with a page of quotes (on the even numbered pages) related to the text. The bicycling material from the Saturday Review became Chapter 7, "Antidote to Automobiles." (Should anyone care, the pagination from the book is retained, as immediately below with "# p. 110#.")

Here it is, beginning with the first, even-numbered, page of quotes:

Antidote to Automobiles

# p. 110 #

We might have to slow down a little or perhaps even sit quiet occasionally to develop better taste. One can't think very deeply at 70 miles an hour.
-C. E. Warne


My new pattern requires renting new cars at the airports as needed. I am progressively ceasing to own things, not on a political-schism basis, as for instance Henry George's ideology, but simply on a practical basis. Possession is becoming progressively burdensome and wasteful and therefore obsolete.
-R. Buckminster Fuller


When you drive a car, you drive a reflection of your self. And, in the case of the 1971 MGB, it's a reflection of someone very special.
-MG advertisement in Time

# # #

# p. 111 #

So far, we have approached alternate life styles almost in terms of hedonism: What feels best for you? What will remove the pain of living in a corporate state -- other than the drug life (whether alcohol, tranquilizers, or others) that only brings more ultimate pain? But what we so often discover is that the very products, activities, and attitudes that make you feel better also have significant social advantages: They use less of our nation's precious natural resources, they pollute less, they make less noise, they add to the pleasure of others, they enable each of us to live in a society in which we can grow in individual worth and fulfillment, they are more aesthetically pleasing, they make for better citizenship, and they are even more economical. Take bicycles, for example.

I ride a bicycle -- not because I hate General Motors but haven't the courage to bomb an auto plant. I don't do it as a gesture of great stoicism and personal sacrifice. I am not even engaged, necessarily, in an act of political protest over that company's responsibility for most of the air pollution by tonnage in the United States. It's like finally giving up cigarettes. You just wake up one morning and realize you don't want to start the day with another automobile. Cigarette smoking is not a pleasure, it's a business. In the same way, you finally come to realize that you don't need General Motors, they need you. They need you to drive their cars for them. You are driving for Detroit and paying them to do it. Automobiles are just a part of your life that's over, that's all. No hard feelings. You've just moved on to something else. From now on you just use their buses, taxis, and rental cars when they suit your

# p. 112 #

The most natural form of locomotion, walking has been In use since before the Invention of the wheel and the discovery of fire. Reliable and totally non-polluting, it offers convenience -- no parking, no cost. Invigorating, it promotes health and gives you the chance to think.
-Paul Swatek


Automobiles insulate man not only from the environment but from human contact as well. They permit only most limited types of interaction, usually competitive, aggressive, and destructive. If people are to be brought together again, given a chance to get acquainted with each other and involved in nature, some fundamental solutions must be found to the problems posed by the automobile.
-Edward T. Hall


ANNOUNCER: Sidney spent Sundays shelling at the seashore. Then Sidney started digging the Mustang -- the great original . . .. Now Sidney's making waves all over. Last week he saved three bathing beauties. (And they all could swim better than Sidney!) Only Mustang makes it happen!
-a television commercial

# p. 113 #

convenience. You don't keep one for them that you have to house, feed and water, insure, and care for.

You ride a bicycle because it feels good. The air feels good on your body; even the rain feels good. The blood starts moving around your body, and pretty soon it gets to your head, and, glory be, your head feels good. You start noticing things. You look until you really see. You hear things, and smell smells, you never knew were there. You start whistling nice little original tunes to suit the moment. Words start getting caught in the web of poetry in your mind. And there's a nice feeling, too, in knowing you're doing a fundamental life thing for yourself: transportation. You got a little bit of your life back! And the thing you use is simple, functional, and relatively cheap. You want one that fits you and rides smoothly, but with proper care and a few parts it should last almost forever. Your satisfaction comes from within you, not from the envy or jealousy of others. (Although you are entitled to feel a little smug during rush hours, knowing you are also making better time than most of the people in cars.)

On those occasions when I am not able to cycle through the parks or along the canal -- because the paths are rough with ice or muddy from rain or melting snow -- bicycling enables me to keep closer to the street people: folks waiting for buses or to cross streets, street sweepers, policemen, school "patrols," men unloading trucks. Needless to say, you cannot claim any depth of understanding as a result of such momentary and chance encounters, but by the time I get to the office I do somehow have the sense that I have a much better feeling for the mood of the city that day than if I had come to my office in a chauffeur-driven government limou-

# p. 114 #

On a different speed scale, bicycles could move 2.8 times as many people per amount of space. If a bicycler can make 10 miles an hour, the car would have to exceed 28 mph to rack up more passenger miles on the same system of streets. But the New York City average speed for cars during rush hour is only 8.5 mph, 13 mph on the feeder roads. It's a fact that today in many cities you can make better time aboard a bicycle than in a car.
-Paul Swatek


Make your second car a bicycle.

Consider the advantages that the bicycle has to offer -- low cost, no pollution, and convenient to park.

For under $50 you can get a bicycle fitted with enough trimmings to make it practical for going shopping and carrying a small child. The cheapest car costs about thirty times that.

A bicycle is also inexpensive to operate, maintain, and insure.

Bicycles are quieter than any form of motorized transportation, produce no pollution, and use up no fuel.

A bicycle takes up about 1/30th the parking space of a car.

In city traffic today, the bicycle is often faster than the car or bus.

Bicycles give the rider the sort of healthy exercise that many Americans usually do not get.

Riding a bicycle makes it possible to get a better appreciation of a beautiful day, or a pleasant ride through the park.

. . . The New York Times quoted a 32-year-old millionaire who pedals up Fifth Avenue to social engagements in a dinner jacket as explaining, "It's much easier than fussing with a chauffeur."
-Paul Swatek

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sine. Although I am willing to brave the traffic and exhaust, I am aware it is dangerous. I think bicycles ought to be accorded a preferred position in the city's transportation system. At the very least, they deserve an even break.

Notice that bicycle riding also has some significant social advantages over the automobile. Cars unnecessarily kill sixty thousand people every year, permanently maim another one hundred and seventy thousand, and injure three and a half million more. The automobile accounts for at least 60 percent of the total air pollution in the United States by tonnage -- as high as 85 percent in some urban areas -- and 91 percent of all carbon-monoxide pollution; it creates about nine hundred pounds of pollution for every person every year. One million acres of land are paved each year; there is now a mile of road for each square mile of land. The concrete used in our Interstate Highway System would build six sidewalks to the moon. Even so, everyone is familiar with the clogged streets and parking problems -- not to mention the unconscionable rates charged by the parking garages. Automobile transportation is the largest single consumer of the resources used in our nation's total annual output of energy. It is an economic drain on consumers -- in no way aided by auto companies that deliberately build bumpers weaker than they were fifty years ago in order to contribute to an unnecessary bumper-repair bill in excess of one billion dollars annually.

The bicycle is a model citizen, by comparison.

The bicycle does not kill or maim; it does not pollute; it does not deplete natural resources; it makes no noise; it takes a great deal less space; and it is very much cheaper. (You can buy a brand new bicycle for

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Commuting by bicycle? Is this some kind of put-on? It may sound like a joke to motor-minded America, but in the rest of the world nobody is laughing. In countries that are willing to take it seriously, the bicycle [is] transportation. Switzerland, for example, which traditionally places a high value on peace of mind and purity of air, has more bicycles than automobiles. In Amsterdam -- a national capital with roughly the same population and climatic conditions as Washington, D.C. -- 150,000 people ride bikes to work every day. Hundreds of thousands more commute by bicycle in other European cities. The same is true in much of Africa and Asia.
-Thomas R. Reid, III


This year an estimated 10 million bicycles will be sold, compared to a projected 8.6 million new cars.
-Friends of the Earth

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little more than what it costs to operate an automobile for two weeks.) Although the bicycle makes a direct assault on four great problems that plague the modern city -- traffic, noise, parking, and pollution -- urban planners have overlooked it in their search for solutions to the urban transportation crisis.

It is more than ironic that America can invest so much stock faith and rhetoric in the competitive marketplace of commerce and yet ignore the "marketplace of ideas" (to use a phrase by Mr. Justice Holmes) by tolerating the television monopoly that is used to merchandise Detroit's peculiar dreams of the appropriate automotive life style -- with all that life style's attendant social ills. My own commission, the Federal Communications Commission, has been instrumental in encouraging broadcasters' censoring off the airwaves the messages from ecology groups (like Friends of the Earth) that would cry out against the urban devastation being wrought by Detroit's automobiles. (The FCC decision, fortunately, has been substantially reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals.) In perhaps one of the greatest advertising overkills of all time, we Americans are being grossly oversold an automotive product and life style (bigger, faster, sexier cars) that we neither need nor may really want, and that will surely eventually kill us with its exhaust by-products and lethargy-induced heart attacks, if it does not get us first in a crash. This may serve the corporate profits of the automotive, oil, steel, cement, and road-building industries, but it is shortchanging the American people.

There are other ways to get around.

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It's nice to see such thinking coming back in style a little over a generation later. Now if only we could substitute a system of public financing of elections for our "best legislators money can buy" they, too, could act upon such common sense and solve our multiple problems simultaneously: wars for oil in the Middle East, with their attendant disproportionate share of the federal budget, global warming, heart disease and obesity.

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