A less enthusiastic take on HSR in China

Image Credit: The Globe and Mail (August 12, 2011)

We have blogged about high speed rail (HSR) several times before, particularly focusing on China (see here and here). Amid my research this past year and constant enthusiasm for HSR in China, my own perspective on it has changed dramatically over the past few months. I was skeptical about its rapid progress to begin with, but the July 23rd crash only furthered my worries and general skepticism.

As shown in the map above, China leads the world in kilometres of HSR. The environmental motivations for this nation wide network are admirable, but given the citizens' demand for more low-cost transportation, along with a security of reaching destinations in a safe manner, HSR provides a case of tremendous uncertainty.

You can read this article for a more complete picture outlining genuine concerns of HSR in China. Take note: I am not against HSR in China. I think the country is on the right track in terms of sustainable transportation. However, rushing such projects with complete government control to ostensibly show off the nation's great technological rise is a bit idiotic, and when crashed do occur, this not only instills fear in the nation's citizens, but casts doubt from people all over the world.

Is the G.O.P. Anti-Science?

In a recent Op-Ed in the NY Times', columnist Paul Krugman argues that the Grand Old Party (GOP for short and the nickname for the Republican Party in the U.S.) is becoming anti-science. Paul cites just a few examples of Republican party contender nominees who still question topics such as evolution and climate change:

"Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

The article proceeds with Paul's worries and sentiments about the prospect of having a U.S. president -- or simply a U.S. party-- that is aggressively anti-science and anti-knowledge. This is concerning to say the least, particularly because of the emerging consensus about human induced climate change and the general importance of scientific research that informs public policy. Dismissing scientific research such as climate change or worse yet, cutting funding to it, is not only backwards but frightening!

Read the full article here.

A Case of Baptists and bootleggers?

From the Environmental Economics blog:

"A major environmental group has teamed up with a conservative think tank and others to urge the congressional supercommittee to slash oil, coal, ethanol and nuclear subsidies — a move the groups say would save $380 billion over the next five years.

Friends of the Earth, the Heartland Institute, Public Citizen and Taxpayers for Common Sense released a report Wednesday, dubbed “Green Scissors 2011,” that casts the cuts as benefiting both the environment and the economy.

“While all four groups have different missions, histories, goals and ideas about the role of government, we all agree that we can begin to overcome our nation’s budgetary and environmental woes by tackling spending that is not only wasteful but environmentally harmful,” the groups said in the report."

$20 million for water research in Southern Ontario

A couple of days ago, the University of Toronto announced that the Southern Ontario Water Consortium (composed of many diverse groups and individuals including U of T researchers) will be receiving $19.58 million from the federal government. FedDev Ontario, an agency created in 2009 as part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, was the agency that informed U of T of the grant.

"The funding will allow the Southern Ontario Water Consortium to build an integrated system for the development, testing and demonstration of new market-driven water technologies and services, primarily along the Grand River and adjacent watersheds".

This is important because the money will, among other things, help U of T researchers develop technologies to treat and improve water quality. Enviro Boys has blogged about water quality before,  discussing the emerging contaminants of concern including pharmaceuticals, personal care products (deodorant, soap, shampoo, perfume etc.) and illicit drugs which have and continue to worry many public health experts.

With the $20 million grant, Professor Andrews and his team at U of T will be to further develop advanced oxidation technologies to treat the aforementioned compounds. Improving water quality and enhancing dis-infecting technologies, are critical for water systems and for ensuring that the water we drink is safe. Their research is applied driven; the results will be shared with municipalities in Ontario and the province with the intention of improving current standards and targets for water quality. You can find out more about this through viewing the video below. This news really excites me (as a water nerd) but should excite everyone who appreciates the great water we enjoy in Southern Ontario.


Interview with Professor Robert Andrews, U of T from U of T Engineering on Vimeo.

U.S. widlife preserves, bike lakes, cheap gasoline and fuel subsidies

Check out the following links:

1. Emerald Cities from the NY Times.

2. Bike Lanes Benefit Drivers.

3. Gas Is Cheaper, but We’re Still Driving Less.

4. Eliminate All Fossil Fuel Subsidies, Says Org.

Using RCTs for Water Research

RCTs refer to Randomized Control Trials, a powerful statistical tool that has been used by the medical profession for quite some time. I am currently reading a book called "Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty" by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. These MIT researchers (both development economists) are using RCTs in a lot of the research they do on poverty.

One example of an RCT experiment is giving computers to kids in school to see if it improves their overall learning and educational experience. The example provided is that 100 schools are randomly selected. 50 are given computers (treatment group) 50 are not (control). Banerjee asks "if we find that the schools where children did have access to a computer did in fact learn more, does this mean it's because of the computers that they learned more, or is it because the government gave the computers to the schools where the students were more enthusiastic and were more interested, and that's why the kids learned more?

Banerjee says that one can easily conflate reasons for why children are doing better now because they received computers. But what randomized control does is it solves that problem of inference. It basically says: with this school and that other school, all the names of the students are put into a hat and we draw out 50 of their names at random. And so the schools that did get the computers are chosen at random, and that gives you the advantage that you can compare the two groups. There's no difference between them; decide by lottery which will be in each group. 100 is a smaller sample size but nonetheless, the idea is randomization which helps minimize selection bias.

There is a lot more sophistication to these experiments which you read about here. As someone who is learning more about statistics everyday and starting to appreciate them for their ability to produce policy recommendations,  RCTs are certainly worth exploring beyond the medical field or international development. Indeed, water researchers can certainly use them. Suppose we wanted to use water meters as an intervention in a community to test whether meters help cut down on household water consumption. Meters are expensive to install and are politically and socially unpopular and some argue they don't even cut down on water consumption. Thus, doing an RCT to evaluate their effectiveness merits consideration. If our sample was 2000 community members (all with different socio-economic backgrounds), we could randomly select 1000 people for the trial (like pulling names out of a hat). The other 1000 would be homes that do not receive water meters so we can compare the two.

You would probably have to wait a few months for the meters to be fully installed, but this intervention (while not as interesting or significant as a drug experiment by the FDA or an experiment by Banerjee and Duflo), would still help decision-makers understand the effect of the meters on water consumption. The intervention might show us that water consumption has gone done considerably and because we have randomized the population (litterally by doing a coin toss) we can have a better idea of the effect of this intervention. Not that meters cause consumption to go down, but help give us more reliable information.

Every method of research has its limitations, but the more we can do to minimize biases, the more influential and cogent our recommendations will be for policymakers (whether it's water meters or computers in schools in developing countries).

Short video on NYC's water supply system

The YouTube video above provides a short (but comprehensive) overview of NYC's water supply system; where it comes from, how it's distributed, how a majority of the water is unfiltered and what steps PlaNYC is taking to protect its water supply from contamination. Despite NYC's water abundance, it's important to keep in mind that conservation initiatives (public education and water metering) should be critical components of its planning process and vision.

It would great to see other videos on other cities' water supply systems such as the one above. I would personally like to see one of Vancouver and Toronto. Short videos like these can go a long way in building awareness of a city's water system and the programs, risks and policies that should be known by residents.

Two links to check out

Edward Glaeser on the "The death of distance and the rise of cities". In this audio lecture, Glaeser discusses regional policy and declining cities, urban sprawl, urban environment and gas emissions, density, affordable housing and other intriguing topics. The lecture is from 2008 and is on topics he is an expert on, not on urban farming which he evidently gets wrong.

The Heart of U.S. Economic Decline: Our Inability to Raise the Gas Tax. A link from the Infrastructurist on how raising the gas tax, among its many benefits such as helping re-build transportation infrastructure in the U.S., can actually help the country's financial troubles.

Flood zones and homeowner behaviour

This article from the NY Times presents a story of a community in South Dakota that is prone to flooding. Of course, residents and developers alike, aware of the flood risks in the first place, dismissed them in order to reap the benefits of living in a barren peninsula at the intersection of two rivers complete with million-dollar homes and a private golf course.

"They call it “the Dunes” for a reason, the warning went — the rivers put the sand there, and the rivers could sweep it away. But, much like the developers, the new residents were not worried. A few even paid a premium to be closest to the flowing water of the Missouri and the Big Sioux.

Now, a little more than two decades later, the stately homes on Spyglass Circle and Pebble Beach Drive have been evacuated and the 18th hole is under six feet of water, as miles of newly built levees strain to keep this community from surrendering to a historic flood".

“Most people don’t understand what flood risk is,” said Gerry Galloway, a civil engineering professor at the University of Maryland who has written extensively about his concerns. “They assume that if there is some level of protection like a levee or an upstream dam, they’re safe. As a general rule, public officials don’t like to dissuade them of that fact.”

This is a classic problem and often comes up in climate change adaptation research. First, people instill a lot of trust in engineering facilities such as levees or dikes instead of taking personal responsibility to protect their own homes or not live in these flood prone areas in the first place. Thus their perception of safety is based on infrastructural investments that are not even designed to account for frequent and strong floods in the first place.  I wouldn't blame the people though, much of this stems from bad policy.

In Matt Kahn's Climatopolis, he discusses the idea of the land assembly problem which is relevant to the story from the NY Times:

"An example comes from the state of Missouri where some local governments encourage developers to develop on high risk flood plains. This so-called "land assembly problem" allows developers to build on really cheap land in flood prone areas and make huge profits. The local government is excited about the new tax revenue and the job creation that accompany these projects. Alas, when floods happen in that state the federal government comes in a bails out the developer with tax payers' money because they were foolish enough in the first place to build in risky areas".

The second problem:

"As the years passed, those who dismissed a flood as unlikely started talking about it almost as an impossibility. Most residents dropped their flood insurance; only 172 homes in the entire county now carry it, backing studies that found that homeowners typically dropped the insurance after several dry years.

After about a decade, concerns about the less predictable Big Sioux prompted the construction of a levee, which led the government to reduce the flood risk for another 160 lots — removing the flood insurance requirement and making them easier to sell" (NY Times)

The problem above stems from the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (which covers more than $1.2 trillion of assets today).

Revival of Urban Agriculture

My good friend, Marc Schutzbank, recently published an article titled "revival of urban agriculture". His article provides a very informative and educational overview of the history of urban agriculture (or urban farming which can be used interchangeably) in North America and why it is a salient topic of discussion today. He discusses four principal reasons why urban agriculture is important which include its potential to alleviate obesity, assist cities with food safety, help mitigate the burden of high international food prices and its benefits in creating an environmentally focused local food system.

Marc is a Master's student in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC. His research is focused on evaluating the feasibility of urban farming in Vancouver, particularly how urban farming businesses contribute to both the economic and social fabric of Vancouver’s growing local food movement.

Here is an excerpt from his article:

"Canadians are witnessing increasing rates of obesity, heightened risk of food contamination, and inflated food prices. As a result, many people are starting to seriously consider the question of how to feed themselves for the first time since the 1950’s. One of the answers is the rejuvenation of urban agriculture, dusting off pitchforks and turning soil in a new grow-your-own food culture.

In this article, we will explore four modern motivations for urban agriculture in Canada: an increasing obesity epidemic, fear of food insecurity, heightened food prices, and a desire to make environmentally sound food choices. Canadian urban agriculture organizations are beginning to address these massive problems. We will highlight their work, concluding with a discussion of a new urban farm that we helped to initiate".

"Urban farmers are developing local food markets and producing food choice just by showing up at the market. Both local rural and urban farms build a market where citizens can use dollars to vote for local businesses over national chains, environmentally sustainable food over conventional agriculture, and a food culture that values its producers".

Please find his article here.