Links tagged “development”

As explicitly stated, "This final rule, and Assessment Tools and guidance to be issued, will assist recipients of Federal funding to use that funding and, if necessary, to adjust their land use and zoning laws in accordance with their existing legal obligation to affirmatively further fair housing."

In brief, AFFH gave HUD a weapon of power to force any community that received federal funds to meet racial distribution quotas. To accomplish this, HUD applied the notion of "disparate impact," which unilaterally deemed housing patterns to be discriminatory if minority representation was not evenly spread across the jurisdiction.

Communities with high concentrations of minorities are then automatically labeled "segregated" according to paint-by-number land use assessments.

Accordingly, the proposed infrastructure plan would create a gigantic pot of taxpayer handouts for towns that agree to surrender self-rule to HUD bureaucrats.

A peer-reviewed study by five lead authors published June 29th in the journal Global Environmental Change: 

Slash annual energy use per person from Canada – 232 Gigajoules (GJ), U.S. –  204 GJ, and France 95 – GJ to a very low 27 GJ per year

“Fairer income distribution is crucial for achieving decent living standards at low energy use”

“To reduce existing income disparities, governments could raise minimum wages, provide a Universal Basic Income, and introduce a maximum income”

“We also need much higher taxes on high incomes, and lower taxes on low incomes”

Move from “an animal-based to a plant-based diet”

Move from “individual to collective transport”

Move from “motorized to active” (walking and cycling) travel

“Economic growth beyond moderate levels of affluence is detrimental for aspirations of sustainable development”.

“Degrowth… is an idea whose time has come”

“In short,” the study’s authors sum up, “we need to abandon economic growth in affluent countries, scale back resource extraction, and prioritize public services, basic infrastructures and fair income distributions everywhere.”

Time Mag: “AC Feels Great, But It’s Terrible for the Planet. Here’s How to Fix That.”

Excerpt: "The troubled history of air-conditioning suggests not that we chuck it entirely but that we focus on public cooling, on public comfort, rather than individual cooling, on individual comfort. Ensuring that the most vulnerable among the planet’s human inhabitants can keep cool through better access to public cooling centers, shade-giving trees, safe green spaces, water infrastructure to cool, and smart design will not only enrich our cities overall, it will lower the temperature for everyone. It’s far more efficient this way.

To do so, we’ll have to re-orient ourselves to the meaning of air-conditioning. And to comfort. Privatized air-conditioning survived the ozone crisis, but its power to separate—by class, by race, by nation, by ability—has survived, too. Comfort for some comes at the expense of the life on this planet. It’s time we become more comfortable with discomfort. Our survival may depend on it."