Category Archives: News commentary

Is Jared Diamond, the Malthusian alarmist about our future prospects, arithmetically challenged or economically challenged? That’s the first question I asked when I read his op ed in January 2’s New York Times.

“The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world,” says Diamond. Based on this, he calculates that, if everyone in the world consumed as much as we do, “It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people.”

Of course, it is perfectly obvious — to Diamond — that the world cannot support this. So he “is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now.”

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The New York Times asks six economists, “Are we in a recession?” Of course, they don’t agree: one says, “the American economy is slipping into its second post-bubble recession in seven years.” Another says, “as to the factual question of whether we are in a recession given the data in hand, the unambiguous answer is no.” A third says, “Nobody knows.”

If we are entering a recession, most agree that the housing crisis is the cause. And the evidence is overwhelming that the housing crisis was caused by urban planning.

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A Union Pacific coal train derailed in the path of adjacent light-rail tracks and a Denver light-rail train ran into one of the derailed cars. No one was injured, but the Union Pacific says it may be 36 hours before the line is cleared. In the meantime, rail riders will be bused around the accident.

A slide show shows the wintry conditions in which the accident took place. The light-rail cars are shown only in the second half of the show.
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Of course, buses don’t have this problem. If a bus is involved in an accident, other buses can go around. Rail lines don’t have such easy options, which is one more reason to rely on low-cost buses instead of high-cost rails.

A Boulder citizens’ group managed to gather more than 9,000 signatures in just 18 days to stop the rezoning of some land to allow high-density mixed-use development. Under the law, the Boulder city council must either reverse the rezoning or allow the entire city to vote on it.

Boulder residents march together to present their petition to city hall.

The land at issue is a former elementary school, which was closed due to the declining number of school children in Boulder — no doubt because most families with children can’t afford to live there. According to this news story (written before all the signatures were gathered), the rezoning moved the boundary between an existing high-density zone and a low-density zone by 48 feet, so that more of the former school site is zoned for high densities. The city also reduced parking requirements, leading residents to fear that people will park in their neighborhood.

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Boulder, Colorado residents often describe their city as “twelve square miles surrounded by reality.” A couple of recent stories illustrate just what they mean.

Suppose you have a house with a nice view. However, someone owns the lot in front of you, and if they ever build on it, they could block your view.

You could buy it from them. But Richard McLean, former slow-growth mayor of Boulder, Colorado, had a better idea. He simply trespassed — or claimed that he trespassed — on a part of his neighbor’s land for twenty years. Under the common law of adverse possession — also known as squatter’s rights — McLean could claim the land as his own. Under Boulder’s zoning codes, the lot that remains in his neighbor’s hands is too small to build on.

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Dear Jack,

Well, Jack, you made your choice. I hope you will be happy with it.

For several years now, you have blogged incisively about Portland’s high-density mania, its weird transportation projects, and its corrupt political system — or, as I like to call them, the Three Big Cons: condos, congestion, and con artists swindling taxpayers out of their money.

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