Recently in Environment Category

Interstates aren't green, but Karrie Jacobs has an idea: use interstates as corridors for high-speed rail and transport of energy.

It's been a long time since we've been able to see beyond the traffic and the exhaust fumes. But if we expand the highway system's uses in anticipation of a time when we are no longer dependent on the internal combustion engine, we may also appreciate the beauty in its graceful overpasses, lofty bridges and complex cloverleaf interchanges.

I don't know about "appreciating the beauty of graceful overpasses", but multiple use of existing interstate corridors just makes sense. Gulliver argues that it won't be simple:

First, America's interstates don't always cut through empty prairie--in many places, there won't be enough clearance on either side to build the "adjacent rail lines" Ms Jacobs is so psyched about. And where the interstates do cut through virgin prairie, infrastructure advocates will have the opposite problem: convincing environmentalists and locals that a landscape already sliced in half by I-Whatever should be further defiled.

The clearance problem is real, though in many places there's a wide median that could be used instead of using corridors on one side or the other. And using the median, which in my experience is often very wide in areas where I-Whatever cuts through "virgin" landscapes, won't add to the damage that's already been done.

I'm not prepared to go as far as Gulliver and conclude

Ms Jacobs' broad point is generally correct--infrastructure advocates and environmentalists should see America's highways as an opportunity for better, greener development--not an obstacle.

We have interstates because we have cars. And the American response to traffic congestion is always to add lanes rather than beefing up mass transit. Roads are a problem, but that doesn't mean we can't use them more wisely.

I've written before about the death of newspapers. And as Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum describe in their recent book, Unscientific America, science and environmental journalism seems to be suffering disproportionately. Here's more evidence that Chris and Sheril are right, from the Columbia Journalism Review:

For the first time since it was created fourteen years ago, Columbia University's highly regarded dual-degree graduate program in environmental journalism will not be accepting applications for next academic year.

In a letter to faculty at the Graduate School of Journalism, the Department of Environmental Sciences, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the program directors cited falling employment in the field, the rising costs of education, and a lack of financial aid for students as the reasons for their decision.

At a time when the environmental challenges we face are enormous and when the need for good environmental reporting is greater than ever, it is very sad to learn that environmental journalism will no longer be available as a specialty in one of our leading schools of journalism.