Recent Posts by Ethan
Bio Fuels or Bio-Fools?
Bio Fuels or Bio-Fools?
The agrarian arms race to turn larger swaths of farmland over for the production of biofuels recently reached rhetorical heights as Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, argued that it would be a crime against ...
The Green Car Issue
The Green Car Issue
Are car companies thinking about more than one type of green? Photo by makeshiftlove from Flickr. The New York Times latest automobile issue takes a dramatic departure from the past and includes several articles on how environmental concerns are shaping ...
Does Leaded Gasoline Cause Violent Crime?
Does Leaded Gasoline Cause Violent Crime?
Photo by x-eyedblonde from Flickr. A few years ago, the celebrated economist Steven D. Levitt argued in Freakonomics that the legalization of abortion in 1973 was one of the primary reasons for the drop in crime in the 1990’s, a ...
Hot Wheels for Rwandan Coffee Workers!
Hot Wheels for Rwandan Coffee Workers!
One of the primary causes of urbanization is what demographers call “rural to urban migration.” Migrants leave their homes in rural areas for a confluence of reasons — degraded farm land, drought, confiscated land, etc. — and move to cities, ...
Weirded Out by Public Transit
Weirded Out by Public Transit
GM thinks you’re a creep and a weirdo if you ride the bus. As the automotive industry ramps up its marketing efforts to target the emerging middle class in places like India, China and Brazil, it helps to crack open ...
What's Worse: Production or Use?
What's Worse: Production or Use?
Photo by Stephane Foulon. From Road and Track. This week’s addition of BusinessWeek includes an article about Gordon Murray, a celebrated race car designer, who is switching gear and working to create “a compact, fuel-efficient urban vehicle for the masses,” ...
Choking on Smog
Choking on Smog
Photo from BusinessWeek. In a Pulitzer grab, The New York Times is now running a series of two-page spreads called Choking on Growth about the dark under side – namely environmental contamination – of China’s economic development. Below are several ...
World Expert in Bus Rapid Transit Systems Joins EMBARQ
World Expert in Bus Rapid Transit Systems Joins EMBARQ
Dario Hidalgo, an international expert in urban mobility and development with extensive experience in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), has joined EMBARQ, the World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport, as New Business Development Director and Senior Transport Engineer. Hidalgo will ...
Bikes in Africa
Bikes in Africa
Photo by Will Okun. Published online by the New York Times. In the last year, New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristoff has made a thing of inviting students and young professionals to accompany him as he wanders the planet collecting ...
The Four Hour Commute
The Four Hour Commute
Photo from the Washington Post. On Sunday, The Washington Post Magazine ran a cover story describing the transport woes Washington DC-area residents face as they move further and further outside the suburbs in order to escape the ever-expanding sprawl. Marc ...
Introducing Google Transit
Introducing Google Transit
Like the release of most Google products, we’re not really sure when Google Transit came out. However, doing of few Google searches showed that as far back as December 2005 Google had already piloted Google Transit in Portland, Oregon. So ...
Air Pollution in Calcutta
Air Pollution in Calcutta
Clean hair but dirty lungs in Calcutta. (Photo by Shayan Sanyal.) Today the BBC reports that traffic police offices in Calcutta will be outfitted with oxygen devices as a way to counteract the ill-effects of air pollution. The news item ...
More Highways, Less Traffic?
More Highways, Less Traffic?
Photo by Justin Ulmer. Published in JPG Magazine. Is building roads good for the environment? The European Road Federation seems to think so, arguing in a recent paper that, “More investment in road infrastructure is needed to remove bottlenecks, avoid ...
UN Urges Caution on Biofuels
UN Urges Caution on Biofuels
Will biofuels lead to deforestation? Photo by Mike Warren. When it comes to fighting global warming, biofuels are all the rage these days. Just ask Richard Branson, the hot-air baloon adventurer, whose post-industrial empire includes Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Limousines, Virgin ...
A Project in Social Forecasting
A Project in Social Forecasting
From the BBC: “How will climate change have affected the world by 2050?” Listen to Lee Schipper, EMBARQ‘s Director of Research, as he explains how urbanization, climate change, and transportation will combine to effect the world’s cities. Note: This file ...
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