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Europe beats the US for walkable, livable cities, study shows

Midsize European cities such as Zurich and Dublin found to have essential services accessible to 95% of residents within 15 minutesWhen Luke Harris takes his daughter to the doctor, he strolls down well-kept streets with “smooth sidewalks and curb cuts [ramps] for strollers at every intersection”. If the weather looks rough, or he feels a little lazy, he hops on a tram for a couple of stops.Harris’s trips to the paediatrician is pretty unremarkable for fellow residents of Zurich, Switzerland; most Europeans are used to being able to walk from one place to another in their cities. But it will probably sound like fantasy to those living in San Antonio, Texas. That’s because, as new research has just shown, 99.2% of Zurich residents live within a 15-minute walk of essential services such as healthcare and education, while just 2.5% of San Antonio residents do. Continue reading...

When Luke Harris takes his daughter to the doctor, he strolls down well-kept streets with “smooth sidewalks and curb cuts [ramps] for strollers at every intersection”. If the weather looks rough, or he feels a little lazy, he hops on a tram for a couple of stops.Harris’s trips to the paediatrician is pretty unremarkable for fellow residents of Zurich, Switzerland; most Europeans are used to being able to walk from one place to another in their cities. But it will probably sound like fantasy to those living in San Antonio, Texas. That’s because, as new research has just shown, 99.2% of Zurich residents live within a 15-minute walk of essential services such as healthcare and education, while just 2.5% of San Antonio residents do.“Zurich feels extraordinarily walkable to me, coming from the US,” said Harris, a landscape architect from Portland, Oregon. “Most of the things you need are within walking distance – and if they’re not, it’s easy to take public transport.”Just a tiny fraction of 10,000 cities around the world can be considered “15-minute cities”, according to a study published in the journal Nature Cities on Monday. The researchers used open data to work out the average distance people must walk or bike to reach essential services – such as supermarkets, schools, hospitals and parks – and calculated the fraction of residents who have the necessities at their fingertips.“When we looked at the results, we were amazed by how unequal they are,” said Matteo Bruno, a physicist at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Rome and lead author of the study.The researchers selected 54 cities to explore in detail and found the most accessible cities were midsize European ones such as Zurich, Milan, Copenhagen and Dublin – all of which had essential services that could be accessed within 15 minute by more than 95% of residents. At the bottom of the rankings were sprawling North American cities with a high dependency on cars, such as San Antonio, Dallas, Atlanta, and Detroit.Small cities tended to score better but the researchers found that in some big metropolises, such as Berlin and Paris, more than 90% of residents live within a 15-minute walk of essential services.The authors developed an algorithm to explore how much these cities would have to change to become more accessible. They found Atlanta would have to relocate 80% of its amenities to achieve an equal distribution per resident, while Paris would need to relocate just 10%.The study is not a proposal to destroy cities and reallocate their services but a mathematical exercise to get people thinking, said Hygor Piaget, a co-author of the study who grew up in São Paulo, where 32% of people live within a 15-minute walk of essential services. “We’re searching for ways to make the lives of most people better.”The concept of a 15-minute city has been attacked in recent years by conspiracy theorists who see it as a government plot to control movement and restrict freedom. The vitriol has frustrated scientists, urban planners and doctors, who point out that reducing car dependency is a powerful way to help people lead healthier and safer lives.“The idea of 15-minute cities is not new,” said Piaget. “People who do research on this have been doing it for decades.”The authors say the study is limited by the quality of the open data, which is patchier in cities outside of Europe and North America, and how practical it is to walk in some cities. Heavy traffic, high crime, bad weather and steep hills may discourage people from walking even geographically short distances.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionNatalie Mueller, an environmental epidemiologist at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), who was not involved in the study, said there was no “one-size-fits-all” approach that would work for all cities, but that the research could help foster more inclusive and sustainable urban environments.“By minimising car dependency, encouraging active and public transport, and integrating nature-based solutions such as planting trees and expanding green spaces, we can improve urban environmental quality, which directly benefits the health of the population.”Researchers also caution that making a city more accessible is not enough, in itself, to wean it away from private cars. The Netherlands boasts some of the best bicycle infrastructure in Europe but has more cars per person than rural countries such as Ireland and Hungary.In Zurich, where 71% of residents voted in favour of a proposal in 2020 to build 50km of bicycle infrastructure, locals have long grumbled about the lack of bicycle lanes and the threats to cyclists.“You still see a lot of cars on the street,” said Harris. “In terms of the pedestrian experience, it’s lovely, I truly cannot think of other cities I’ve been to where it feels easier to walk … but in terms of cycling, and the special relation between cycling and cars, it seems like there’s still friction.”

How can we cut food waste in half by 2030?

Engaging youth through targeted education and leadership programs is also a priority. . ."

In 2015, food and agriculture sustainability advocates succeeded in pressing the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency to commit to a goal of cutting national food waste in half by 2030. This would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from methane released by organic waste in landfills and help bridge the gap between food surplus and the national hunger crisis, in which 44 million people in the U.S. face hunger. Without any specific strategy for how to meet this goal, however, the problem has grown. The amount of surplus food produced in the U.S. in 2021 was 4.8 percent higher than it was in 2016. Now, nearly a decade after the commitment, there is finally a national road map. In June, a coalition of government agencies unveiled the National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics, that aims to concretize and make actionable the goal set in 2015. Advocates say these centralized, clear objectives for meeting food waste goals are long overdue. “In 2015 the USDA and EPA committed to that national goal but we hadn’t seen any sort of plan written out as to how the agencies were going to help achieve that goal,” said Nina Sevilla, Program Advocate for Food Waste & Food Systems at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “We’ve been asking for a while to have some sort of road map, and this is the result of that.” This initiative is structured around four main objectives: preventing food loss, preventing food waste, increasing the recycling rate for organic waste and supporting policies that incentivize these practices. This strategy is the first of its kind as far as a federal, systems-level approach to tackling the country’s food waste crisis, in which 30-40 percent of food in the supply chain is wasted. So how exactly does the Biden Administration’s strategy propose to reach its lofty goal in the next six years? Let’s take a walk through each section of the strategy.   Preventing Food Loss The first pillar of the strategy focuses on preventing food loss at the production and distribution stages, namely the farm and transit between the farm and the final destination where it will be sold. It aims to enhance economic returns for producers, manufacturers, and distributors while ensuring more food reaches consumers. Food loss is a type of food waste, which refers to any edible food that goes uneaten at any stage of the process, like in a home, market, or a crop that never leaves the field. It refers to a decrease in the quantity or quality of food that comes from inefficiencies in the supply chain, and can happen if a crop is damaged during harvest, if food is rejected due to quality standards, or if food is stored improperly. By fostering more collaboration across the food supply chain, harvest and collection can be optimized, with less food wasted. The strategy encourages whole crop purchases by retailers, which means including imperfect produce, and accepting partial orders to reduce the volume of rejected crops. It also aims to support biotechnological advances to slow decomposition, like edible coatings for produce, and mechanisms that detect and quantify gases like oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and ethylene to ensure optimal storage conditions, prevent spoilage and extend the shelf life of perishable foods. The USDA’s Farm Storage Facility Loan Program and microloan programs will be tasked with improving storage and extending the shelf life of produce. There will also be investment in innovations like genetically engineered crops with longer shelf life. The strategy seeks to improve demand forecasting technologies, tools used by businesses to predict how much of a product people will want in the future, which allows for more accurate ordering and therefore less waste. It also emphasizes the importance of improving data collection to measure progress, yet Sevilla spoke to her disappointment in the scope and specificity of this aspect of the strategy. “We had hoped to see a specific food loss and waste report that would happen more periodically so the field can all learn from what the agencies are doing in a more centralized and clear space.”   Preventing Food Waste Preventing food waste at the retail, food service and household levels is the next key focus. This type of waste is produced once food reaches the consumer, and can come in the form of uneaten leftovers, unsold produce that is still fit for consumption, or food that’s past expiration but still safe to eat. This approach is based on the idea that a lot of waste happens because people don’t know how to do better or why it is important to do so. Consumer education and behavioral change campaigns will be launched nationally to spur actionable change among businesses and consumers. “Because households are the number one generator of wasted food, this kind of thing will hopefully have a huge impact,” said Sevilla. “We’re hoping to see it cover things like food date labeling, which is one of the leading causes of food waste in the home.” Better understanding of food date labeling helps reduce waste by enabling people to distinguish between “best before” and “use by” dates, allowing them to confidently use food that is still safe, make informed shopping decisions, and minimize unnecessary disposal. This has enormous potential for impact, especially as households account for 40-50% of all food wasted in the US. Engaging youth through targeted education and leadership programs is also a priority under the broader educational umbrella, and the USDA is investing $10 million in educational grants and initiatives that would go to schools or educational organizations.   Increasing food recycling rate It’s not only minimizing loss and waste that will help meet food chain sustainability goals – investing in infrastructure and establishing protocols for food to be rescued or recycled will help achieve a more circular system altogether and address the reality that some food loss is unavoidable. Food rescue is considered a form of recycling because it involves diverting surplus food from waste streams and redirecting it to those in need, thereby giving it a new, valuable purpose. The EPA will improve and gather more detailed data on existing food donation and recovery systems to make food distribution more efficient. Through this, the EPA will be better able to identify areas where current infrastructure is lacking or where inefficiencies exist. For example, they might find regions with surplus food but insufficient donation networks or areas where donated food isn’t reaching those in need efficiently and target these areas with funding for infrastructure improvements The strategy also highlights the importance of developing markets for non-edible recycled products like compost, which can cut methane emissions compared to landfilled food waste while providing a high-quality soil amendment for sale to farmers and gardeners.   Policy support  Support for local policies related to food waste and loss management both domestically and internationally is the fourth objective , and a critical one for actually getting effective food waste prevention strategies implemented. The USDA will continue to provide financial and technical assistance for composting facilities, emphasizing community-scale organics recycling infrastructure to reduce pollution, create jobs and support green infrastructure. The EPA will continue to lead and expand two key networks — the National Compost and Anaerobic Digestion Peer Network and the Food: Too Good to Waste Peer Network — bringing together state and local government staff to share strategies, research, and solutions for organics recycling and reducing household food waste. Some experts emphasize that these local and state efforts might be key in meeting reduction goals, and have an even greater direct impact than national ones. “Implementing a national strategy is a tricky strategy for a couple of reasons,” said Dana Gunders, Executive Director of ReFED, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending food loss and waste by advancing data-driven solutions. “One is that a lot of waste jurisdictions are at the state level so there’s only so much that can be codified at a national level.” Different states may have their own laws regarding food waste, such as New York’s Food Donation and Food Scraps Recycling Law or California’s requirements for organic waste recycling. So while a national strategy might encourage similar laws nationwide, it can’t mandate them in states that choose not to adopt them. Also, waste management infrastructure like recycling facilities or composting programs, is often managed at the local level. So actual implementation would depend on local governments’ resources and priorities. But what the national strategy can excel in is bringing widespread awareness and priority to the issue, one which has been receiving increased public attention in recent years. In 2021, 25 states introduced food waste legislation. New York enacted a Food Donation and Food Scraps Recycling Law which requires large food generators like supermarkets, universities, and hotels to donate excess edible food and recycle food scraps. Massachusetts expanded its existing ban on commercial food waste disposal to require more businesses and institutions to comply, thereby reducing the quantity of food sent to landfill or incinerator. Overall, the experts we spoke with are optimistic that this strategy can achieve its goals, even though some details about funding and accountability are still unclear. The ambiguity in the strategy is mostly as it relates to the funding and accountability for the aforementioned objectives. “It’s wonderful to have it all there and in one place but there’s so much more need, and having more identifications of specific funds would have been wonderful,” said Neff. “There’s a lot of places [in the strategy] where, if we can get that [initiative] into the farm bill, we’ll be able to fund it.”

Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is power

Cinema Verde provides environmental education to the public to help ensure that students, their parents, our political leaders and the titans of industry can learn about the problems we are facing so we can all work together to solve these problems. We all want our children to have the best possible future and to be able to enjoy happy, healthy lives. Students in Florida - and everywhere - have a resource to learn essential information about the environment and the challenges we face. 

The Florida Department of Education has agreed to suppress knowledge about environmental issues that are visibly threatening our future - essentially disabling our children from solving the problems that our generation and our parents’ generation have created. What parent would want their children to perish in fires like those in Maui and California or floods such as those in Maine and Vermont? When we send our children to school, we want to educate them so they can lead better lives - we are arming them with knowledge to build a safe and prosperous future for themselves and the world. What value is there in providing them with false information that will prevent them from that brighter future? Fossil fuel companies profit from poisoning our planet and they literally pay some of our government leaders to keep their profits flowing. Cinema Verde provides environmental education to the public to help ensure that students, their parents, our political leaders and the titans of industry can learn about the problems we are facing so we can all work together to solve these problems. We all want our children to have the best possible future and to be able to enjoy happy, healthy lives. Students in Florida - and everywhere - have a resource to learn essential information about the environment and the challenges we face. Cinema Verde offers a discount program for professors and students to access our films via our website at www.CinemaVerde.org. [More info: Discount for Professors and Students] Or anyone with a Roku tv or roku device can access our films for free. The films are organized in both places by category - you can search for water films or films on Florida, etc., to see what you want. https://www.cinemaverde.org/roku We gather articles from reputable sources around the world to provide environmental news on our GoGreenNation environmental news page: https://www.cinemaverde.org/news We’re not like Nazi’s, as the propaganda being fed to our children under the guise and sanction of education in Florida suggests. We at Cinema Verde are dedicated to helping and protecting our children and all children - even those of fossil fuel company executives and sold-out politicians who continue to spew lies - they’re trading our lives to fill their pockets with cash. We don’t have to allow this. Knowledge is power. Tune in to Cinema Verde - we are powering the planet for a successful future. – By Trish Riley, Director of Cinema Verde and award-winning investigative environmental journalist and author.

Florida approves PragerU curriculum: Why critics are sounding the alarm on right-wing bias

Florida schools have approved the use of “supplemental curriculum” created by PragerU, an unaccredited right-wing advocacy group that seeks to offer an alternative to “dominant left-wing ideologies,” in classrooms...

A war of words on CA ballot props

It’s one of the battles within California’s ballot measure wars: The wording that voters see about the propositions.  Monday marked the end of the public inspection period for the state’s official Voter Guide, so there was a flurry of activity. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association was waiting to hear Monday night what a state appeals […]

Voters fill out their ballots at a polling place inside Assumption Church in Los Angeles on March 3, 2020. Photo by Kyle Grillot, Reuters It’s one of the battles within California’s ballot measure wars: The wording that voters see about the propositions.  Monday marked the end of the public inspection period for the state’s official Voter Guide, so there was a flurry of activity. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association was waiting to hear Monday night what a state appeals court decided on a Sacramento County judge’s ruling that the ballot label for Proposition 5 needed to be rewritten. Critics have long complained that the state’s elected attorney general — they’ve all been Democrats since 1999 — skews the label, title and summary of ballot measures to match their political preferences.  The taxpayers association argued that the Prop. 5 label should say that it would lower the majority required to approve local borrowing measures from two-thirds to 55%. The original label — a condensed version of the title and summary — only included the 55% figure, so voters might believe that the threshold is being raised from a simple majority, the taxpayer group says. The ruling last week, which the attorney general’s office appealed, found that the label “fails to inform” voters the main purpose of Prop. 5, and that without “additional clarifying language,” the label could mislead voters. (Labels are allowed to run 75 words long and Prop. 5’s label is 65 words.) Laura Dougherty, the association’s director of legal affairs, said in an email to CalMatters that the attorney general “has a duty to inform the public of the chief points and purposes of every measure” and that “there are plenty of words left for the printer to add the information.” In his appeal, Attorney General Rob Bonta said the office is afforded “substantial deference” in determining ballot labels. Not only is Prop. 5’s label accurate, Bonta argued, but also that the court “seemingly invented a new” standard of review that granted his ballot materials less consideration “if he does not use all available words.” Rent control: It’s not just the title and summary: Supporters and opponents can also go to court about the official ballot arguments. The same judge on Monday found that four of the six statements made by the California Apartment Association about Prop. 33, a rent-control measure that the association opposes, must be deleted or amended. The court order called for language that hedges the association’s claims: For example, its argument must say Prop. 33 would “weaken,” not “repeal” renter protections, and “undermines,” not “eliminates” a statewide rent control law. School bond: There’s another battle brewing, this one on Prop. 2, which would let the state borrow $10 billion to fix and build schools and community colleges. The state Republican Party is weighing whether to endorse it, and a recommendation for “yes” from the party’s 14-member Initiatives Committee is drawing fire from California College Republicans and some Republican legislators.  The college group says Prop. 2 violates the party platform and also points out that the state party had a neutral position on Prop. 1, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mental health measure on the March ballot that included $6.4 billion in bonds — and that barely passed. (The state Democratic Party is supporting Prop. 2.)  GOP delegates can reject the committee’s recommendation with a two-thirds majority and have until Aug. 28 to vote. Ellie Hockenbury, California GOP spokesperson: “The CAGOP’s ballot initiative endorsement process is still underway, and we have not yet taken a position on Proposition 2. The party greatly respects our delegates and values their opinion as part of that process.” November election: Keep up with CalMatters coverage by signing up for 2024 election emails. Check out our Voter Guide, including updates and videos on the 10 propositions and a FAQ on how to vote. More honors: Sisi Wei, now chief impact officer at CalMatters, won the leadership in diversity and solidarity award from the Asian American Journalists Association for her work as editor in chief of The Markup, which joined CalMatters earlier this year. Speaking of the AAJA, it partnered with CalMatters for the second year of JCal, a summer training program for high school journalists. Read more on both from our engagement team. CalMatters covers the Capitol: We have guides and stories to keep track of bills and your lawmakers; find out how well legislators are representing you; explore the Legislature’s record diversity; and to make your voice heard. Other Stories You Should Know Time is short on insurance fix State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara speaks during a press conference with labor leaders and advocates in Commerce on Sept. 26, 2022. Photo by Alisha Jucevic for CalMatters From CalMatters economy reporter Levi Sumagaysay: California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara bypassed the Legislature and announced changes that could mean insurance companies’ requests to raise premiums would get approved more quickly.  As the state scrambles to deal with problems with property insurance availability and affordability, a planned trailer bill by Gov. Newsom proposed speeding up insurance rate reviews to get insurance companies to start or resume writing more policies here. (Trailer bills are attached to the state budget, and sometimes change policy with minimal public discussion.)  But apparently even this shortcut was not fast enough: On Friday, the Insurance Department and the governor’s office said they needed to act immediately, so Lara issued a bulletin that does the same thing as the trailer bill. “We do not have the luxury of time,” Lara said in a press release. The Legislature actually took no action on the trailer bill, according to two sources familiar with the matter. They said the proposal was more about policy and not about the budget, so lawmakers — who are having to make difficult choices as they deal with a multibillion-dollar deficit — didn’t even consider it. Democratic Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire of Santa Rosa did not seem to mind that Lara issued a bulletin instead. “The importance is intensifying as wildfires continue to take lives, destroy homes, and level communities,” he said in a statement. The changes Lara announced in the bulletin establishes a tighter timeline for rate reviews and are one part of his broader plan to try to fix the state’s insurance woes. The Insurance Department must respond within 60 days of a rate review, with room for two 30-day extensions, once its new rate-reconciliation tool that will help with the process is up and running. This is expected to be in January, according to department spokesperson Michael Soller. Insurance companies have complained about rate reviews taking too long, so some representatives of the insurance industry have said the changes are necessary.  But Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group that often challenges rate reviews, is looking into the commissioner’s authority to make such changes. Carmen Balber, the group’s executive director, told CalMatters the stricter timelines for rate reviews might “limit consumers’ voice in oversight.” Speaking of insurance: Rising insurance costs don’t just impact single-family homeowners. Levi dives into how insurance companies have nearly stopped writing policies for apartment and commercial properties, too. And landlords could pass higher insurance premiums onto tenants, further worsening the state’s housing crunch. Uwe Karbenk, a landlord who co-owns a building in San Bernardino, said soaring premiums are especially hard for mom-and-pop landlords. Landlords are already limited by state laws over how much they’re allowed to raise rent each year, and another rent-control measure is on the Nov. 5 ballot. To be a landlord in the state is like “death by a thousand cuts,” said Karbenk. Read more about the impact of rising insurance costs in Levi’s story. Should CA schools build housing? Carolina Sanchez Garcia cooks with her daughter, Berthalinda Hernandez, 6, at their home in San Diego on Aug. 7, 2024. Photo by Zoë Meyers for CalMatters To address the state’s high cost of living and looming teacher shortage, California’s schools chief Tony Thurmond laid out an ambitious plan in July to develop more housing for teachers using land owned by school districts.  While some teachers have benefited greatly from similar housing projects, some superintendents remain wary, writes CalMatters K-12 education reporter Carolyn Jones. Thurmond’s plan includes financial incentives for districts that pass bonds to build staff housing. But many districts can’t even pass bonds to repair existing school buildings. Some superintendents also say they’re already spread too thin — to expect them to undertake complex real estate projects is a tall ask.  Mendocino County Superintendent Nicole Glentzer: “When you’re the superintendent and the principal and head of maintenance and you’re teaching Spanish, how are you supposed to find the bandwidth for this? I have a degree in education. I never took a real estate course.” But supporters of the plan point to teachers such as Carolina Sanchez Garcia, a San Diego preschool teacher. For more than a decade, she said she commuted from Tijuana, waking up at 2 a.m. to get to work on time. After landing a three-bedroom apartment through San Diego Unified, it now takes her 15 minutes to get to work. She pays $1,300 a month in a city where the median rent is $3,156 a month. Garcia: “It’s changed my life. … It’s made me a better mother and a better teacher. Now, I start my day feeling positive and energized.” Learn more about affordable housing for teachers in Carolyn’s story. California Voices CalMatters columnist Dan Walters: Gov. Newsom is quick to blame local governments for not doing enough to reduce homelessness, but experts and local officials say withholding state funds is the biggest impediment. California Voices intern Kate McQuarrie: Seven years after the #MeToo movement galvanized women in the state Legislature, accusations of sexual assault within the San Francisco Democratic Party underscore how prevalent sexual misconduct remains in California politics. Other things worth your time: Some stories may require a subscription to read. CA Legislature passes bills to curb retail theft // Los Angeles TimesDemocrats strip party switcher Alvarado-Gil of leadership, committee posts // KCRA Sen. Atkins, 2026 candidate for governor, missed retail theft bill votes // The Sacramento Bee Environmental justice cause is drawing Harris both cheers and attacks // Politico New CA laws take effect as the school year begins // EdSource Widely felt 4.4 earthquake rattles Los Angeles // Los Angeles Times CA’s oldest family-owned rice farm is closing // San Francisco Chronicle Fentanyl is getting weaker, making users more desperate // The San Francisco Standard Where LA stands on key transit projects for 2028 Olympics LAist Golden Gate Bridge protesters surrender to face controversial charges // KQED