In a departure from transit and housing, today we present a map created by Imgur user Fejetlenfej. This map shows the massive expanse of river basins across the United States, especially those which feed the Mississippi River. The rivers that feed the Mississippi are in hot pink. For those looking for high ground as we start to […]
Every day at The Overhead Wire we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the DC region. […]
More parking leads to more driving, which leads to more greenhouse gas emissions. And we’re long past being able to afford that.
In the midst of the polar vortex / rapid warming / re-cooling / wild temperature fluctuations that are linked to climate change, it’s worth re-reading this recent Minnpost piece about where Minnesota’s CO2 emissions are coming from. Transportation has become the largest culprit: In Greta Kaul’s article, she talks about the reasons behind these trends, […]
Too often it is framed as either/or. In a world where climate change is bearing down on us, why not both?
Here’s a cool chart from the New York Times, that has interactive charts for each state showing changes in electricity sources over time. Minnesota’s chart looks like this: The Times follows up the chart with a brief caption: Coal has been the top source of electricity generated in Minnesota for the past two decades. But […]
Here’s some bad news for folks concerned about climate change: national greenhouse has emissions have gone up markedly over the last year. In a New York Times article today, Brad Plumer has a story about the 3% uptick over the last year. Here’s the chart: According to Plumer, there are a few reasons for the […]
Granted, California is different than Minnesota. I suspect our footprint would look slightly different, considering that Minnesota’s electricity sector is generally more fossil-fuel dependent than those on the West Coast (though Xcel is quickly moving away from coal). The other big difference, I am guessing, would be energy use for home heating. But with this […]
Here is a very cool map showing the “average annual carbon footprints” of different parts of the state, down to the level of individual zip codes! It’s put together by the Cool Climate Institute at Berkeley using a carbon footprint calculator developed in an academic paper in the Environmental Science and Technology journal. Here’s the […]
There have been a lot of posts about the Minneapolis 2040 Comp Plan, including many, many public hearings in which YIMBYs and NIMBYs stand up and fight for more housing, or less housing, or neighborhood character. Every city in the Met Council is supposed to have a 2040 plan. Meanwhile, we are all frogs in […]