Wednesday, May 27, 2009

George Will hates Portland

Well, the New York Times may love Portland, but George Will hates us. We're too liberal by far for his taste. Just because we do stuff that encourages people to live sustainably by taking mass transit or bicycling places.

His lamentations would be more convincing if he had any facts straight. He scoffs at the idea of getting more than 0.01 percent of commutes to be made by bike, while in Portland we achieve 400 times that number. He reports a totally made-up claim that the government is going to take your light bulbs away.

I had in the past been impressed by the intelligence of George Will's writing. I'm sad to see him decline so far. (Although I gather he's made collossal factual errors in the past.)

Correction: OK, it turns out that the government is going to take your light bulbs away. At least, in 5 years, light bulbs will be required to achieve efficiency levels that will make incandescent bulbs illegal.

But I still disagree that our urban growth boundary is a bad thing. I've seen sprawl, and I don't see anything good about it. I much prefer a smaller yard and a shorter commute to living on half an acre and driving for 90 minutes to get to work.

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