Cars and car infrastructure cover North America like a bad rash. Car advocates like to argue that this is necessary and that we can’t possibly get rid of this rash because all the cars will become immobile and our economy will crash. The bad news is that the economy crashes even if you love cars, on the other hand, the really good news is that if you remove highways you can improve the economy by revitalizing local neighbourhoods.

Here’s a look at how tearing down highways is a good thing.

Though our transportation planners still operate from the orthodoxy that the best way to untangle traffic is to build more roads, doing so actually proves counterproductive in some cases. There is even a mathematical theorem to explain why: “The Braess Paradox” (which sounds rather like a Robert Ludlum title) established that the addition of extra capacity to a road network often results in increased congestion and longer travel times. The reason has to do with the complex effects of individual drivers all trying to optimize their routes. The Braess paradox is not just an arcane bit of theory either – it plays frequently in real world situation.

Likewise, there is the phenomenon of induced demand – or the “if you build it, they will come” effect. In short, fancy new roads encourage people to drive more miles, as well as seeding new sprawl-style development that shifts new users onto them.

Of course, improving congestion is not the main reason why a city would want to knock down a poorly planned highway–the reasons for that are plentiful, and might include improving citizen health, restoring the local environment, and energizing the regional economy. More efficient traffic flow is just a wonderful side benefit.

Sound dubious? Here are several examples of how three cities (and their drivers) have fared better after highways that should never have been built in the first place were taken down.

I’m not too hopeful in the use hydrogen as a replacement for oil that burns and kills our planet, but there might be hope in the future. Apparently urine can be turned into hydrogen.

Now, as Ariel Schwartz of Fast Company reports, Ohio University researcher Geraldine Botte has come up with a nickel-based electrode to oxidize (NH2)2CO, otherwise known as urea, the major component of animal urine.

Because urea’s four hydrogen atoms are less tightly bound to nitrogen than the hydrogen bound to oxygen in water molecules, it takes less energy to break them apart: Just 0.037 Volts need to be applied across the cell, against the 1.23 Volts needed to break down water.

This means the energy balance of urea-derived hydrogen could be considerably better from start to finish than projections for other so-called pathways for obtaining the highly combustible gas.

Given the early stage of this research, we’re betting that the Honda and General Motors fuel-cell researchers aren’t exactly rushing down to do deals with their local sewage plants.

Mike sent in a note letting us know that the campers at Camp Wenonah are planting trees to make the world a little better. The trees were donated from the business Love Trees which aims to, obviously, plant more trees.

From Mike:

Each camper, POLARIS, and WCIT is planting a tree at Camp this Period thanks to donations from LoveTrees. Neat little idea – they donated 2000 trees to the Canadian Camping Association

More on Love Trees:

Love Trees is a business built on giving.

• giving kids a Wish Tree as an educational tool to as many children as we can;
• giving businesses and individuals a chance to help kids and the planet by purchasing tree planting certificates;
• giving the planet more trees;
• giving environmental charities a portion of every sale

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Love Trees manages a powerful and unique educational tree planting program. We sell Wish Tree Certificates to clients worldwide. Love Trees then donates and distributes tree seedlings to schools and kid’s organizations in North America and Africa so kids can have a Wish Tree to plant and make a wish for the planet. It’s a great way to learn about the environment – and help make the world a better place!

The New Economics Foundation has declared Costa Rica as the happiest place on earth.

The New Economics Foundation looked at 143 countries that are home to 99 percent of the world’s population and devised an equation that weighed life expectancy and people’s happiness against their environmental impact.

By that formula, Costa Rica is the happiest, greenest country in the world, just ahead of the Dominican Republic.

Latin American countries did well in the survey, occupying nine of the top 10 spots.

Australia scored third place, but other major Western nations did poorly, with Britain coming in at 74th place and the United States at 114th.

The New Economics Foundation’s measurements found Costa Ricans have a life expectancy of 78.5 years, and 85 percent of the country’s residents say they are happy and satisfied with their lives.

The United Nations and China have started a program this summer that will employ 1,000 youth to talk about the environment. The youth will teach people how to be more conscious about the environment and what individuals can do to protect it.

Through a new training program called “One Thousand Environment-Friendly Youth Ambassadors Action,” eight Chinese ministries, along with the UNDP, hope to educate 1 million people about the actions they can take to preserve the environment and limit climate change.
The program started last month with training for 1,000 high school and college students in Beijing (north China), Shanghai (east), Xi’an (northwest), Chengdu (southwest) and Guangzhou (south).
Each young ambassador is expected to train another 1,000 people, hence one million people around the nation will be informed of professional environmental knowledge. The program is sponsored by the national Center for Environmental Education and Communication, China Environmental Awareness Program, Ministry of Environmental Protection, UNDP and Johnson Controls.