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Like millions of Americans, we’re celebrating July 4th, Independence Day.

However, we’re celebrating this national holiday by focusing on the many aspects of our life that, in various ways, have led us to quite a different vision for a sustainable tomorrow – complete with local, renewable energy and lots of delicious meals harvested within ten miles of where we live – if not from our own kitchen garden.  Sometimes we even celebrate July 4th with a rainbow.

Here’s how our Independence Day is different — and yours can be too:

•  Be energy independent by generating all our power with renewable energy systems.
For a vast portion of the United States, there is enough solar and wind energy to completely meet our needs right where we live.  True, adopting renewable energy will require an investment either personally or for your business if you work from home.  But with present Federal tax credits and many state incentives, the time couldn’t be better.  We completely power our Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast and Farm with solar electric and wind turbine systems.  In fact, we overproduce renewable energy to the tune of about 4,000 kWhs (kilowatt hours) a year.  We share the surplus with our neighbors.

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Cars are among this country’s greatest polluters, emitting 20 pounds of CO2 for every gallon of gas they burn along with lead, ground-level ozone, and a slough of other greenhouse gases. More walkable neighborhoods mean fewer cars on the road, and that means less pollution. Period. So what makes a neighborhood walkable?

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Google is making it easier to ditch your car and use local transit with their new Google Transit tool. At the moment, they have transit information for select cities around the world, but I hope they plan to expand it further! They also have the service available to download to your phone, which is handy when you’re out and about. It gives you walking, bus, and rail directions and calculates your total travel time.

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If you live in New York City, London, Paris, or on Mackinac Island, and you either have access to a great subway system or cars are banned from your small island, going for 24 hours without driving is not a big deal.  But here in Chicagoland, despite a decent public transportation system, driving is a way of life.  So I decided to spend a day without getting into my car or any other car, and see how I would fare.

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No, not that… rather, the Chinese are experiencing American-style SUV mania with their low gas prices. Also in this edition:Find out how walk-able your neighborhood is, and People Cube helps offices become sustainable.

Links for this week’s ZapRoot:

China Hummer

Zipcode Village

Walk Score (Also see the “Walk this Way” series at Ecolocalizer)

People Cube

For lovers of historic architecture, what can beat a stroll down one of the streets of the French Quarter or Garden District? And, of course, for people-watching, live music, a few of the good kind of Hurricanes (thanks, Pat O’s!) and general weirdness, there’s nothing like a walk along Bourbon Street, day or night.

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Pensacola’s a unique town, as far as both Florida and walkable communities are concerned. Tucked into the northwest corner of Florida, the City of Five Flags is so close to Alabama, it’s often treated not as if it’s part of the Sunshine State but L.A. (as in, “Lower Alabama”).

While it sometimes seems to be the Rodney Dangerfield of Florida towns, Pensacola does have a lot going for it, especially in its historic and compact waterfront downtown area. With numerous ancient live oaks and buildings often reminiscent of New Orleans’ French Quarter (Pensacola is equally old and went through waves of Spanish, French and English settlers), downtown Pensacola is a kind of walker’s diamond in the rough.

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If you missed the news last week, Google Maps has added a new feature letting users request walking directions rather than car or public transit directions for trips of less than 10 kilometers (a little over six miles).

The appeal of the new feature is that it gives you directions that don’t make you go out of your way because of one-way streets or paths that aren’t drivable. While a set of car directions might have to follow a circuitous path to get you from Point A to Point B, a set of walking directions lets you take advantage of routes that cars can’t travel but people can.

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The question of whether to walk, bike or take public transportation is a no-brainer if you live in a city like New York, where driving can often be more of a pain than a pleasure. But what about the rest of the country? Not every community is large enough or dense enough to offer the auto alternatives the Big Apple does. And what about people who live in rural areas where everything is a half-hour’s drive away or more? Can we refashion our country’s way of getting around to be more European? Or are those of us in unwalkable communities doomed to either move elsewhere or live like so many billions do in the rest of the world, consigned to life in a radius of space measured in only a few miles?

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But here is the good news: Green walking is not just “nature walking” per se, not just walkabout. Green walking is also ideal for city travel…helping cut down on many kinds of pollution, smog that obscures the lovely natural views everywhere, travel expenses, resource consumption, and driver rage, just to name a few things.

In order to facilitate your transition from commuter to sustainable commuter, from walker to green walker, I offer here a few more tips on green walking in a city environment…on going urban walkabout.

1. Like walkabouts in nature, urban walkabouts should be as sensual as possible. Although some urban settings have been deliberately “greened up” with strategic flowerbeds, parks, and eco-friendly architecture, many cities are truly urban jungles–forests of concrete. But even here you can listen to the cooing of pigeons or find some green things struggling for life in the cracks of sidewalks. And there are often flower shops, produce stands, and pets to be encountered. So enjoy these instances of nature-here-and-now whenever you can. Of course, the sun is almost always shining–or if not, then rain is falling or wind is blowing–so you still can likely get some sensual stimulation on your urban walkabout if you pay attention.

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Walking? C’mon.

Yes, walking. Seriously. Walking is not only easy to do and inexpensive (unless you go all out and make it complicated and costly), but it is also a wonderful way to go green–to travel without using up one fuel source or another, to keep the planet and yourself healthy, and to enjoy the health-giving splendor of nature.

If you want to go green, then just go walkabout!

Green Walking? C’mon.

Yes, green walking. Walkabout. Seriously. And in order to facilitate your transition from normal, mundane, boring old walking to green walking, to walkabout, I offer here a brief introduction and field guide, a short vade mecum of tips for all the walkabouters.

1. First and foremost, for walking to be green walking or walkabout, it must be entirely sensual. Your walking should stimulate every sense in some way, and you should appreciate the stimulation and the sources with full reverence and revelry:

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Whatever the cause (and there’s good reason to blame all three to some degree), most so-called experts these days aren’t expecting oil prices to drop anytime soon. In fact, Newsweek this week features a sobering article titled, “The Coming Energy Wars,” that predicts we’ll soon see oil prices top $200 a barrel. When that happens, the authors warn, we can expect everything about our daily lives to change.

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Some people are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to promote environmental alternatives, demonstrating just what is possible in a world that has long been reliant on fossil fuels.

I recently wrote of a Swiss family who are at the half way point of an epic round the world eco journey travelling only by foot, bicycle and wind power. During this journey they aim to cross seven seas and climb seven of the world’s highest mountains.

Now, a Swiss doctor is undertaking an adventure of similar proportions. Matrin Vosseler, in a bid to raise awareness on climate change has walked across much of Europe and the Middle East, sailed a solar powered boat across the Atlantic, and is now walking across the United States from West to East.

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Total greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks is a function of three factors: amount of driving, fuel economy, and carbon emissions per gallon of fuel (the "three-legged stool [PDF]"). The news media tend to focus on the latter two factors, but how much people drive has a huge impact.

A new report published by the Urban Land Institute says that greenhouse gas emissions cannot be reduced sufficiently by making vehicles more efficient, because growth in driving cancels out improved fuel economy. People also must drive less. And the report’s solution is not just better public transportation.

The way to reduce driving sufficiently, the authors say, is to shift development patterns to favor compact, mixed-land-use neighborhoods where you can walk to school and the grocery store. If you live in a car-dependent area, moving to a walkable area will do more to fight global warming than buying a fuel-efficient hybrid car.

This idea is already being put into action in some areas. New York City is expecting one million more people by the year 2030, and is using rezoning to direct development towards areas with strong transit access.

Environmental Defense helped California’s San Joaquin Valley, which is notorious for bad air quality, implement a similar strategy. The Air Pollution Control Board adopted an incentive program [PDF] that gives developers two choices: reduce the environmental impact by creating sidewalks, bike paths, and nearby schools and commercial districts, or pay a fee for any excess pollution.

Living in a walkable neighborhood has other advantages. Recently released figures from the New York City Department of Health show that New Yorkers tend to live longer than most people in the country — an odd finding considering the lack of fresh air and other hazards. The city’s Commissioner of Public Health thinks it’s because New York is a walking city.

I’m still walking home after school: this time, from the high school where I teach in St. Louis. Hopefully, I’m not alone. October is International Walk To School Month, and schools around the world are joining in. In 1969, 42% of children walked or biked to school; in 2001, less than 16% did. Interestingly enough, more than 1/3 of children live within a mile of school, but less than half of those students walk or bike even one day per week. Among 9 to 13 year-old children, 61.5% do not engage in organized physical activity during non-school hours, and 22.6% do not participate in any free-time physical activity.

Ditching the car and walking to school (or work) is not just good for the environment; it increases your activity level, a huge benefit during a time when childhood obesity rates are skyrocketing. Walking also reduces congestion in traffic, creates social time for neighborhood kids, raises awareness and analysis of walkability of neighborhoods, and reduces crime by taking back neighborhoods for foot traffic.

Unfortunately, with sprawling communities, students are living further and further from their schools. Even if you live relatively far from your school, many communities are promoting the month by having kids walk around the track after they get off the bus. In Ayer, MA, students at Page Hilltop school walked between 1/2 mile and 1 1/2 miles, either once or twice per week, while the school pumped music out to walkers. About half of the school’s 500 students participated. 2006’s Walk To School Month had millions of participants worldwide, and over 50% of event organizers at schools reported that their Walk to School events resulted in policy or engineering changes that would improve safety for walkers and bicyclists in their school community, such as new sidewalks or bike paths. Other schools are creating a party along the way, with balloons and music provided by parents along heavily-traveled routes.

For more information, especially on how to organize a Walk to School event in your school community, check out their website.

California Healthy

The book is broken into sections by county, and each includes restaurant listings, wineries, walks and local festivals. By far the best part of this guide are the walks, taking you to beautiful and scenic places, and listing dog parks for healthy fun with Rover. The local events section, although not complete, lists seasonal festivals throughout the region and is a useful tool and one of the book’s strengths.

The restaurant listings are on the other hand are weak at best. Granted, some of my favorite joints are listed, but the descriptions are limited, leaving the reader with little idea of why they should go. Most disappointing is that the list is nowhere near comprehensive. There are thousands of restaurants in SoCal, and the organic and local food movement is thriving, yet California Healthy names only of a handful of the good places out there, and gives the reader no sense of what they have in store.

The book is supplemented with recipes and a cooking guide from Chef Biron of Stanford fame. His additions are thoughtful and delicious, and but slightly out of place. Despite its attempt to be more, California Healthy is a walking book, not a health book. Absent are yoga and pilates studios, bike, skate, and surf rentals, a comprehensive listing of restaurants, holistic health practitioners, masseuses and environmentally friendly spa services, among other truly valuable health information.

I just saw a kinda disturbing article on fark.com and wondered what you would think of it. Could walking really be worse of the environment than driving?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2195538.ece

Seulswalker

Seulswalker,

When I read your question, I assumed that there was no way the article had any credibility… that it was written by an angsty high school student who was sick of people telling him what to do. But I was wrong, and that is scary.

Someone took the results of a scientific study on how inefficient our food production system is, did some really bad math, and then found themselves a glorious headline that would send shock waves throughout the blogosphere. You could call it sensationalism…I just call it evil.

Here’s the "scientific" basis for their thesis:

Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg of CO2 to the atmosphere … If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

Now I hope we can all see some gaping holes here, but maybe not all of them at first glance. So let’s go through the five I came up with one by one.

Most obviously, this assumes that 100% of the calories we use to walk come from beef. Actually roughly 75% of the calories most people burn come from plants (usually in the form of carbohydrates.) Plant calories are much less energy intensive to create. This leaves out Atkins dieters…but I hope they’re offset by vegetarians.

Second, We need to pick our battles in this war. As both driving and eating inevitably add to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, these are both issues that we should be working on. But if we go 100% I’dl rather remove cars than exercise from my lifestyle. Not because it’s better for the earth, but because it’s better for me.

Third, we have the supposed correspondence between exercise and consuming food. Yes, if you exercise, you’ll have to eat food to replace those calories, but the obesity epidemic is a testament to the fact that, frankly, most people eat because they want to, not because they need to.

Fourth is probably the least obvious hole…but it might turn out to be the most important. Walkers don’t travel thirty miles to go to the grocery store, but drivers do. Walkers opt for the corner grocer over the Wal-Mart. Driving doesn’t encourage waste because just because it’s inefficient. It also exponentially increases the amount of ground we can cover, creating sprawling cities and destroying local economies. Even if walking produced four times more CO2 emissions per mile than driving, walking reduces the number of miles traveled for most errands by ten to forty times.

Fifth, and this really is a huge omission, the study counts every piece of CO2 produced in the creation of the cow, but it only counts the carbon produced by burning the gasoline for the car. That’d be like only counting the CO2 that we exhale while walking. The hidden carbon costs of automobile travel are gigantic, more than double the final emissions for the car. They include the cost of mining and smelting the steel, pumping the oil, shipping the oil, refining the gasoline, shipping the gasoline, creation and maintenance of roads, construction of the car, etc etc. To leave out these costs while counting every drop of fertilizer sprinkled on a cow’s pasture is extremely foolish and, frankly, disappointing.

So, in short, walking is better for you and the world than driving is. Biking, being even more energy efficient than walking, however, is indeed better for the Earth. However, the point of the original study rings true. Our food production system is foolishly inefficient and unhealthy. It must be reformed in order for this to become a healthy and sustainable world. And for more on that, I suggest Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy.

1. In the Oil and Coal Age, everyone drove solo during gridlock hours to their one work location to toil over their designated machine. Now people are most effective working some days at one location, other times at home, others at a customer or supplier locations. We can take advantage of the new flexible workplace solutions to annually save hundreds of wasted hours, thousands of gallons of wasted gas, and pocket thousands of dollars. Hewlett Packard saves over 2 million round-trip commutes for its North American employees with an effective Telework program. Info tech meets cleantech.

The semiconductor chips in your computers, electronic games and mobile devices are likely to be made with equipment from Applied Materials. Their program, "Applied Anywhere," addresses their global business environment and provides agility to be closer to the customer as well as supporting the needs of many employees who perform some or their entire job outside the traditional office place. The program “Applied Anywhere” supports eligible employees that at different times may need to work from one of several corporate offices, at home, at an airport, or at a customer site.

Investigate your employer’s flexible work program or simply spend the next rush hour working at home.

2. It is a joy to sail past gridlock traffic in the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane. HOV lanes have been a major success in encouraging people to save gas and ride together. A common requirement is that the lane only be used by vehicles with two or more passengers during designated rush hours. It is easy to join a carpool. See if there is one organized at work, or go to your favorite Internet site and type “carpool” and your zip code.

3. Public transit saved 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline in the USA in 2006. Public transit ridership increased 25% in ten years. 56% of transit trips are work related. Public transit is widely used in cities where light rail and buses are convenient and arrive frequently. 73% of all U.S. public transit rides occur in areas with over 5 million people. Most people in New York and many in Chicago commute to work with public transit.

Lauren Hurley loves living in Chicago. She finds the city alive with people, career opportunities, and places to be. Unlike her bedroom community friends, Lauren does not own a car. She can walk to the grocery store, to friends, and to neighborhood cafe.

Chicago’s bus service takes her to a stop that is a two minute walk to work. Being environmentally concerned, Lauren likes the fact that per person, riding a bus results in only 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions of driving solo. Lauren would not want a car in Chicago, “Parking is a major hassle. Parking lots and parking tickets are quite expensive. Public transit and taxis are more convenient.”

4. Enjoy a long life. Walk an extra mile each day to improve your health and burn extra calories. You will also help the environment. Next time you are stuck waiting for a parking place, considering parking the car, turning off that engine spewing emissions and walking.

In Washington D.C., eleven percent of the residents walk to work. An added 34% of commuters use public transit combined with some walking.

Ellen De Generes quipped, “My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 today, and we don’t know where the heck she is.”

John Addison is the author of the upcoming book Save Gas, Save the Planet and publishes the Clean Fleet Report. This article is copyright John Addison with permission to publish or excerpt with attribution. A related article about Flexible Work and Cool Commutes is at http://www.cleanfleetreport.com/vault/cool_commutes.htm