From Florida to China, showcase "green" communities are popping up all over the globe. But some have already failed. Here are four model cities that might actually make it.
Dongtan, China was supposed to be "the world's first eco-city." And if you were to believe the press releases, government officials, and a deluge of articles lauding the project a few years back, construction of this planned low-carbon, car free community near Shanghai-should be well underway.It is not.Rather, the site on Chongming Island where planners had promised to showcase "a methodology for sustainable communities across China and beyond"-where superefficient buildings would be clustered in dense, walkable neighborhoods, where 90 percent of all waste would be recycled, where energy would be produced locally by wind, solar, and bio-fuels, where high tech organic farms would produce nearly all the food, where public transport would run on hydrogen fuel cells, and where half a million people would call home within 30 years, at least 25,000 of them settled in in time for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010-remains an untouched greenfield. Permits to develop the land have expired. Pretty much everyone involved-from Chinese officials to the prominent British design and engineering firm Arup-have distanced themselves from the project. A local farmer with fields inside the development site told the Telegraph earlier this year that he'd "never heard of it."Dead is Dongtan, the project that Worldchanging publisher Alex Steffen once described as "absolutely the best current model for bright green Chinese city planning" and that a similarly glowing Wired article summed up as such: "If Dongtan lives up to expectations, it will serve as a model for cities across China and the rest of the developing world-cities that, given new tools, might leapfrog the environmental and public health costs that have always come with economic progress."So much for expectations.But what happened? It's hard to pinpoint a single cause for the abandon of Dongtan. Some scapegoat the Shanghai official who was in charge of the project, and who is now serving 18 years for fraud. Since his sentencing, the project has been a political hot potato in China. Some claim that the Chinese government and Arup couldn't agree on who was paying for what.Still others more cynically believe that Dongtan was never more than smoke and mirrors, a much hyped government greenwash that created a ton of positive PR for Shanghai and Chinese leaders, hiding the realities of rampant, dirty, inefficient urban development behind pages upon pages of fancy renderings.But just because Dongtan has fallen flat, that doesn't mean there aren't other places to look for the "model green city" of the future. Here are a couple other candidates:MASDAR CITY, United Arab Emirates If anyplace is the frontrunner to take over the mantle of premiere model green city, it's surely Masdar.Using wealth accumulated over half a century of oil extraction, the Abu Dhabi government is purportedly aiming to shift their local economy to one of clean, renewable energy technology, and Masdar will be a living showroom. If all goes according to plan (a huge if), within 15 years the city of 50,000 will burn no oil or gas, allowing for it to become the "first city where carbon emissions are zero."Personal cars will be banned, but electric "personal rapid transit" systems (which look like something out of The Jetsons), will move residents around. Seawater will be desalinized by a solar-powered plant, and 80 percent of water will be recycled. Nearly all waste will be recycled or converted to energy. Produce will come from local greenhouses.These are all bold claims, but some early skepticism over the true carbon neutrality of the construction process have been quieted by the completion this week of a 10-megawatt solar plant that will power the building boom.Likelihood it'll live up to the hype (1-10): 8The project weathered some uncertainty as the UAE economy stalled, but as oil is back on the rise, it will get built. Whether a completed Masdar will showcase all the bells and whistles (and personal transit pods) that it now boasts is another question.BABCOCK RANCH, FloridaAmidst the strip malls, sprawling subdevelopments, and golf courses of Southern Florida, ex-NFL lineman Syd Kitson is building a solar-powered "city of tomorrow." ("Some people think I got hit in the head a few too many times," he says.) A deal with Florida Power & Light ensures that the self-contained, "live where you work" city of 45,000 will be powered by a 75-megawatt photovoltaic plant (nearly twice as big as the world's current largest in Germany), and the company's slick website paints the picture of an eco-utopia: "Ultramodern electric vehicles will glide along avenues beneath the glow of solar-powered street lamps, plugging in to recharge at convenient community-wide recharging stations. Revolutionary smart-grid technologies will monitor and manage energy use, while smart-home technology will allow residents to operate their homes at maximum efficiency."Likelihood it'll live up to the hype: 7Kitson might have picked the nation's toughest real estate market to launch this experiment. Still, his deals with the state of Florida and the utility are promising. In a more progressive (and less foreclosed) part of the country, Babcock Ranch would be a better bet.TIANJIN, ChinaPossibly China's best shot at Dongtan redemption, the Tianjin Eco-City, a joint project with Singapore, aspires to create a home for 350,000 migrants from the countryside in an area described as "wasteland" from decades of salt farming. All water demand will be met by desalination and rain capturing, public transit will cover 90 percent of all transportation, and buildings will be outfitted with renewable energy systems.Likelihood it'll live up to the hype: 5We've learned our lesson from Dongtan, and will keep a skeptical eye on Tianjin. Still, the project has sped from concept (revealed in April 2007) to groundbreaking (last September) with ridiculous ease, an enormous contrast to the dozens of other Chinese "eco-cities" that have languished on the drawing boards for years. (Many credit Singapore's involvement for the actual progress.) It'll be worth following the reporting of Julian Wong, who writes the great Green Leap Forward blog about China's sustainability evolution, who most recently posted some great images comparing the lofty plans for Tianjin with progress on the ground. GREENSBURG, KansasTwo years ago, a tornado ravaged this town of 1,500 residents, killing 11 and leaving little more than concrete slab foundations and driveways. Even before the twister, the town was struggling with a declining population and a scarcity of jobs. But in the aftermath of the disaster, some folks saw potential in this new blank slate.And an opportunity for the town to grow into its name. Now Greensburg is rebuilding sustainably-new homes will be 50 percent more energy efficient than old structures, businesses are being decked out with solar panels and green building materials, and the new City Hall plans call for geothermal heat pumps, rainwater collection systems, solar energy cells and ‘living walls' of plants and grasses.A "green" town in plaid country is something of an anomaly. And, hopes Daniel Wallach, director of the non-profit Green Town Greensburg, a model for other not-so-liberal heartland communities. "These are conservative people," said Wallach, "so you talk about conserving energy, conserving money. People get it."Likelihood it'll live up to the hype: 9Given all the national attention focused on Greensburg, it's nearly impossible to imagine anything short of great things. Leonardo DiCaprio has produced a show about the town's plight for Discovery's Planet Green (soon airing it's second season), and the respected carbon offset company Native Energy has created a special offset product for the town. And while there won't be too many lessons for cities to learn from the small town's eco-resurrection, Greensburg will certainly live up to very lofty expectations and prove the benefits of sustainable design at any scale.Illustration by Jonathan Park.
Throughout history, women have stood up and fought to break down barriers imposed on them from stereotypes and societal expectations. The trailblazers in these photos made history and redefined what a woman could be. In doing so, they paved the way for future generations to stand up and continue to fight for equality.
This article originally appeared on December 14, 2016.
Shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
While conspiracy theories are not limited to any topic, there is one type of event that seems particularly likely to spark them: mass shootings, typically defined as attacks in which a shooter kills at least four other people.
When one person kills many others in a single incident, particularly when it seems random, people naturally seek out answers for why the tragedy happened. After all, if a mass shooting is random, anyone can be a target.
In the United States, where some significant portion of the public believes that the government is out to take their guns, the idea that a mass shooting was orchestrated by the government in an attempt to make guns look bad may be appealing both psychologically and ideologically.
Our studies of mass shootings and conspiracy theories help to shed some light on why these events seem particularly prone to the development of such theories and what the media can do to limit the ideas' spread.
Back to the 1990s
Mass shootings and conspiracy theories have a long history. As far back as the mid-1990s, amid a spate of school shootings, Cutting Edge Ministries, a Christian fundamentalist website, found a supposed connection between the attacks and then-President Bill Clinton.
The group's website claimed that when lines were drawn between groups of school-shooting locations across the U.S., they crossed in Hope, Arkansas, Clinton's hometown. The Cutting Edge Ministries concluded from this map that the "shootings were planned events, with the purpose of convincing enough Americans that guns are an evil that needs to be dealt with severely, thus allowing the Federal Government to achieve its Illuminist goal of seizing all weapons."
Beliefs persist today that mass shootings are staged events, complete with "crisis actors," people who are paid to pretend to be victims of a crime or disaster, all as part of a conspiracy by the government to take away people's guns. The idea has been linked to such tragedies as the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, and the Sandy Hook Elementary attack that resulted in the deaths of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.
These beliefs can become widespread when peddled by prominent people. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been in the news recently because of her belief that the Parkland shooting was a "false flag," an event that was disguised to look like another group was responsible. It's not clear, though, in this instance who Rep. Greene felt was really to blame.
After the country's deadliest mass shooting to date, with 59 dead and hundreds injured in Las Vegas in 2017, the pattern continued: A conspiracy theory arose that there were multiple shooters, and the notion that the shooting was really done for some other purpose than mass murder.
Shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Making sense of the senseless
These conspiracy theories are all attempts to make sense of incomprehensibly terrifying events. If a lone shooter, with no clear motive, can singlehandedly take the lives of 60 individuals, while injuring hundreds more, then is anyone really safe?
Conspiracy theories are a way of understanding information. Historian Richard Hofstadter has indicated they can provide motives for events that defy explanation. Mass shootings, then, create an opportunity for people to believe there are larger forces at play, or an ultimate cause that explains the event.
For instance, an idea that a shooter was driven mad by antipsychoticdrugs, distributed by the pharmaceutical industry, can provide comfort as opposed to the thought that anyone can be a victim or perpetrator.
Polls have shown that people worry a lot about mass shootings, and more than 30% of Americans said in 2019 that they refused to go particular places such as public events or the mall for fear of being shot.
If the shootings are staged, or the results of an enormous, unknowable or mysterious effort, then they at least becomes somewhat comprehensible. That thought process satisfies the search for a reason that can help people feel more comfort and security in a complex and uncertain world – especially when the reason found either removes the threat or makes it somehow less random.
Some people blame mass shootings on other factors like mental illness that make gun violence an individual issue, not a societal one, or say these events are somehow explained by outside forces. These ideas may seem implausible to most, but they do what conspiracy theories are intended to do: provide people with a sense of knowing and control.
They also misdirect blame and distract from efforts to better understand tragedies such as mass shootings. High-quality scholarship could investigate how to better protect public places. But robust debates about how to reduce events such as mass shootings will be less effective if some significant portion of the public believes they are manufactured.
These steps can work, as shown by the substantial drop in misinformation on Twitter following former President Donald Trump's removal from the platform.
Mass shootings may be good fodder for conspiracy theories, but that does not mean people should actually consume such ideas without necessary context or disclaimers.
Michael Rocque is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Bates College.
Stephanie Kelley-Romano is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies at Bates College
This article first appeared on The Conversation on 02.20.21.. You can read it here.
Between the bras, makeup, periods, catcalling, sexism, impossible-to-attain beauty standards, and heels, most men wouldn't survive being a woman for a day without having a complete mental breakdown. So here's a slideshow of some of the funniest Tumblr posts about the everyday struggles that women face that men would never understand.
This article originally appeared on Common Dreams on 3.3.21. You can read it here.
Emphasizing that the world still has a "fighting chance" to limit global warming with immediate and ambitious climate action, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday urged governments and the private sector to cancel all planned coal projects, cease financing for coal-fired power plants, and opt instead to support a just transition by investing in renewable energy.
"Once upon a time, coal brought cheap electricity to entire regions and vital jobs to communities," Guterres said in a video message at the virtual meeting of the Powering Past Coal Alliance. "Those days are gone."
"Phasing out coal from the electricity sector is the single most important step to get in line with the 1.5 degree goal," Guterres continued, referring to the policy objective of preventing planetary temperatures from rising more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. "Global coal use in electricity generation must fall by 80% below 2010 levels by 2030," he added.
Meeting the 1.5 °C climate target over the course of this decade is possible, according to Guterres, but will require eliminating "the dirtiest, most polluting and, yes, more and more costly fossil fuel from our power sectors."
In his address, the U.N. chief outlined three steps that must be taken by public authorities as well as companies to "end the deadly addiction to coal."
Cancel all global coal projects in the pipeline;
End the international financing of coal plants and shift investment to renewable energy projects; and
Jump-start a global effort to finally organize a just transition.
Guterres called on the 37 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—a group of relatively rich countries with a greater historical responsibility for extracting fossil fuels and emitting the greenhouse gasses that are causing deadly pollution and destroying the climate—to "commit to phasing out coal" by 2030, while urging non-OECD countries to do so by 2040.
Pleading for an end to the global bankrolling of coal projects and a move toward supporting developing countries in transitioning to clean energy, Guterres asked "all multilateral and public banks—as well as investors in commercial banks or pension funds—to shift their investments now in the new economy of renewable energy."
While stressing that "the transition from coal to renewable[s] will result in the net creation of millions of jobs by 2030," Guterres acknowledged that "the impact on regional and local levels will be varied."
"We have a collective and urgent responsibility to address the serious challenges that come with the speed and scale of the transition," he continued. "The needs of coal communities must be recognized, and concrete solutions must be provided at a very local level."
The U.N. chief urged "all countries to embrace the International Labor Organization's guidelines for a just transition and adopt them as minimum standard to ensure progress on decent work for all."
The coronavirus pandemic, Guterres noted, has "accelerated" the decline in "coal's economic viability," while recovery plans provide an opportunity to bring about a green transformation of the world's infrastructure.
In many parts of the world, a just transition dovetails with guaranteeing universal access to energy, said Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and special representative of the secretary-general for Sustainable Energy for All.
Ogunbiyi told conference attendees that almost 800 million people worldwide still lack access to basic electricity, while 2.8 billion are without clean cooking fuels.
"Right now, we're at a crossroads where people do want to recover better, but they are looking for the best opportunities to do that," she said. "And we're emphasizing investments in sustainable energy to spur economic development, create new jobs, and give opportunities to fulfill the full potential."
In some states, women are put through humiliating and dangerous pre-abortion medical consultations and waiting periods before being allowed to undergo the procedure. In four states, women are even forced to bury or cremate the fetal remains after the procedure.
These government-mandated roadblocks and punitive shaming serve no purpose but to make it more difficult, emotionally damaging, and expensive for women to have an abortion.
Eighteen states currently have laws that force women to delay their abortions unnecessarily: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In a number of other states, mandatory-delay laws have been enacted but are enjoined or otherwise unenforced.
To help women get around these burdensome regulations, The Satanic Temple is promoting a religious ritual it believes provides an exemption from restrictions. According to the Temple, the ritual is supported by the federal Religious Freedoms Restoration Act.
The Temple is a religious organization that claims it doesn't believe "in the existence of Satan or the supernatural" but that "religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition."
The Temple says its exemption is made possible by a precedent set by the Supreme Court's 2014 Hobby Lobby decision. According to the Temple, it prevents the government from putting a "burden on free exercise of religion without a compelling reason."
Ironically, Hobby Lobby's case claimed that providing insurance coverage for birth control conflicted with the employer's Christian faith. The Satanic Temple argues that unnecessary roadblocks to abortion conflict with theirs.
via The Satanic Temple
Religious freedoms.
The Temple is promoting the ritual on I-95 billboards in Florida where women must endure an ultrasound and go through pre-procedure, anti-choice counseling before having an abortion.
The Temple's billboards inform women that they can circumvent the restrictions by simply citing a Satanic ritual.
"Susan, you're telling me I do not have to endure a waiting period when I have an abortion?" one of the women on the billboard says.
"That's true if you're a SATANIST!" the other replies.
Next to the ladies is a symbol of a goat head in a pentagram and a message about the ritual.
via The Satanic Temple
Image of The Satanic Temple billboard.
The Temple also provides a letter that women seeking abortions can provide to medical staff. It explains the ritual and why it exempts them from obligations that are an undue burden to their religious practice.
The Temple believes that some medical practitioners may reject its requests. However, it believes that doing so is a violation of religious freedom and it will take legal action if necessary.
"It would be unconstitutional to require a waiting period before receiving holy communion," the temple says in a video. "It would be illegal to demand Muslims receive counseling prior to Ramadan. It would be ridiculous to demand that Christians affirm in writing the unscientific assertion that baptism can cause brain cancers."
"So we expect the same rights as any other religious organization," the video says.
To perform the ritual, a woman looks into a mirror to affirm their personhood and responsibility to herself. Once the woman is focused and comfortable, they are to recite two of the Temple's Seven Tenets.
Tenet III: One's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone. One's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone.
Tenet V. Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.
Then they are to recite a personal affirmation: "By my body, my blood. Then by my will, it is done."
The ritual affirms The Temple's belief in personal responsibility and liberty that, coincidentally, mirror that of the U.S. Constitution.
"Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority, forever defending personal sovereignty even in the face of insurmountable odds," the Temple's website reads.
There are two types of people in this world – those who panic and fill up their cars with gas when the needle hits 25% or so, and people like me who wait until the gas light comes on, then check the odometer so you can drive the entire 30 miles to absolute empty before coasting into a gas station on fumes.
I mean…it's not empty until it's empty, right?
But just how far can you drive your car once that gas light comes on? Should you trust your manual?
Photo from Pixabay.
I believe that reads empty.
Now, thanks to Your Mechanic sharing this information in a recent post, you can know for sure. Of course, they also want to warn you that driving on a low fuel level or running out of gas can actually damage your car.
Now, thanks to Your Mechanic sharing this information in a recent post, you can know for sure. Of course, they also want to warn you that driving on a low fuel level or running out of gas can actually damage your car.
Proceed at your own risk.
These are, of course, approximations that depend on several factors, including how you drive, your car's condition, etc. So don't automatically blame your mechanic if you find yourself stranded on the side of the road.
If you ask people what they think the “perfect" body looks like, you're sure to get a range of answers, depending on where the person is from. Last year, Superdrug Online Doctor created a project, “Perceptions of Perfection" that showed what people in 18 countries think the “perfect" woman looks like. The project was a viral hit.
This time, they asked graphic designers—11 women and eight men—in 19 countries to photoshop the same image to highlight the male beauty standards for their country.
Some of the images are certainly amusing, but the collective result is an interesting look at what people find attractive around the world.
Body autonomy means a person has the right to whatever they want with their own body.
We live in a world where people are constantly telling women what they can or can't do with their bodies. Women get it form all sides — Washington, their churches, family members, and even doctors.
A woman on Twitter who goes by the name Salome Strangelove recently went viral for discussing the importance of female body autonomy.
Her mother was made to feel guilty about simply exploring the medical options about her own body. But later on, a new doctor made her feel more comfortable about her situation.
