Last week I wrote about parking lots and my distaste for them. While parking garages are a much better use of land, they can be quite ugly. My argument today is not an aesthetic one though. While riding the light rail the other day (where I also composed this op-ed), I passed a large parking garage, four levels [...]
Archive for the ‘Op-Ed’ Category
From Parking Lots to Parking Garages
May 20th, 2012 
Eric Wilson 
Posted in Behavior, Eric Wilson, Op-Ed, Sustainability, Transportation 
Tags: Cars, Environment 
No Comments »I Don’t Understand Parking Lots
May 13th, 2012 Eric Wilson In an op-ed a few months back I alluded to the coming diatribe against parking lots. As a form of land use, parking lots make no sense to me. Conversely, most parking garages are eye-sores. I understand that underground parking is expensive and laborious to construct. There are some wonderful advances in “parking lot technology,” [...]
Posted in Eric Wilson, Featured Posts, Op-Ed, Transportation Tags: Cars, Natural Capitalism, Urban Planning 1 Comment »What Will It Take to Make Mass Transit the Norm?
May 6th, 2012 Eric Wilson Will people start consistently riding mass transit when gas prices stay above $5 per gallon? $10? What about when we are paying the true cost of driving (i.e. emissions, disposal)? What if we had to swipe a credit or debit card every time you drive? How about charging for access to roads, like the congestion [...]
Posted in Eric Wilson, Featured Posts, Op-Ed, Transportation Tags: Bus, High Speed Rail, Mass Transit No Comments »Designing Cities with People in Mind
April 29th, 2012 Eric Wilson I’m not a city planner. I took one class in college, so I don’t even pretend to be qualified. However, living in a city and trying to commute without a car has led to some insights that I would not get out of a book. Last year I wrote a piece called “The Hegemony of [...]
REDD+: Beyond Carbon Credits; REDD＋:炭素クレジットを超えた利益を目指して
April 24th, 2012 Guest Author This post was written by Akane Hanai, a UN Volunteer working in Viet Nam on the UN-REDD Programme as a Programme Specialist with a Master of Arts in Environmental and Resource Policy from George Washington University. It’s been almost eight months since I got involved in the UN-REDD programme in Viet Nam. For my first post, [...]
Posted in Conservation, Guest Authors, News, Op-Ed, Policy, Sustainability Tags: Akane Hanai, Carbon Dioxide, Environment No Comments »What Does the Natural Gas Boom Mean for Sustainability?
April 15th, 2012 Eric Wilson Both NPR and the New York Times ran stories last week that highlighted the role of natural gas in the U.S. energy economy. NPR interviewed Amy Myers Jaffe, director of Rice University’s Baker Institute Energy Forum. Jaffe predicted that natural gas prices would remain low for the foreseeable future, specifically 5-10 years. The New York [...]
Posted in Eric Wilson, Featured Posts, Op-Ed, Renewable Energy, Sustainability, Transportation Tags: Biomimicry, Fracking, Natural Gas, Solar Energy, Wastewater No Comments »Building for the Next 500 Years
April 8th, 2012 Eric Wilson While attending a United States Green Building Council (USGBC) meeting recently, someone mentioned that a local university was building to a 500 year standard. I had never heard the term prior, but the idea was all too familiar. The university was constructing buildings to last the next 500 years. This is incredibly difficult to fathom [...]
Learning to Embrace The Slow Life
April 1st, 2012 Eric Wilson I was washing dishes the other day and bemoaning how time consuming it was. This sparked one of those internal conversations that seem to dominate my thoughts when doing mindless chores. “How much time would I spend going to a restaurant, not to mention money, to have a meal prepared that may or may not [...]
You Can Now Stroll Through Amazonian Rainforest on Your Desktop; Good or Bad?
March 27th, 2012 Justin Manger What do you all think of this? Google Maps now takes you into the heart of the Amazon rainforest. My reaction is split: 1) Great! I’ve always been interested in learning more about the rainforests and I think people being able to access information about them will lead to increased understanding and eventually recognition that [...]
Posted in Behavior, Conservation, Education, Justin Manger, News, Op-Ed, Sustainability Tags: Conservation, Environment, Nature, rainf No Comments »Why Dig for Energy When We’re Bombarded Every Day?
March 25th, 2012 Eric Wilson Ever wonder why oil is underground? I don’t mean how it got there (decomposing organisms trapped below layers of sediment that were compressed). I mean why we go through the trouble of digging it out of the ground. I realize it’s energy dense, but hear me out. I find it kind of curious to think [...]
