Posted on 12/22/2006 12:20:39 PM PST by Namyak
Scranton’s recent decision to ban smoking in almost all public places — coming on the heels of a similar bans in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — represents one of the biggest culture changes of our times. Such a ban would have been unthinkable 50 years ago, when cigarette commercials dominated the airwaves and glamorous movie stars lit up regularly on the silver screen.
In recent years, 17 states and more than 500 local municipalities have enacted smoking bans. Cigarette sales have dropped 20 percent since 1998, when tobacco companies agreed to pay $248 billion to the states to help cover the costs of treating tobacco-related diseases. Today, about 20 percent of Americans smoke, half the percentage of 40 years ago.
This not only represents an enormous victory toward eradicating America’s most deadly habit, it demonstrates that concerted public and private efforts can change negative social behavior, no matter how deeply ingrained.
That’s heartening for a number of reform movements, including attempts to protect Pennsylvania’s farms and forests from another bad habit —the low-density, drive-everywhere-for-everything lifestyle that has emasculated our cities and decimated our countryside in the last half-century.
Just as the Surgeon General reported in 1964 that smoking was the leading threat to individual health, the 21st Century Environment Commission appointed by Gov. Tom Ridge in 1997, concluded that sprawling development is the No. 1 threat to Pennsylvania’s environmental health.
Sprawl, the Environment Commission said, consumes enormous quantities of farmland, isolates the poor in our cities and towns, creates massive traffic congestion, worsens air and water pollution, and requires exorbitant amounts of tax dollars to build and maintain.
But efforts to curb sprawl have gone nowhere, mostly for the same reason that efforts to curb smoking floundered in the first two decades after the Surgeon General’s report. Despite all the evidence of societal harm, smoking was considered an individual lifestyle decision that people had a right to make in a free country. Health workers concentrated on prodding smokers to “kick the habit” rather than emphasize the enormous economic costs and substantial health risks that smokers were inflicting on everyone else.
It was only when anti-smoking advocates changed tactics — lobbying for smoking bans and higher taxes on cigarettes, suing tobacco companies to pay for the health care costs of smoking, and campaigning about second-hand smoke —that tobacco use plunged.
Cigarettes began to lose their allure when smokers were forced to stand outside their office buildings to take a drag during work breaks.
Just as it once seemed almost impossible to attack smoking when more than half the men in America were doing it, fighting sprawl is a daunting mission when the American dream still revolves around acre housing lots and three-car garages. But as Anatole France said, if 50 million people do a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
When John and Mary buy a new home that can be reached only by car, they are contributing to America’s dependence on foreign oil and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. They are helping squander Pennsylvania’s open space, and they are raising the cost of government by compelling an inefficient network of roads and utility lines. Unfortunately, no one has brought home to them the negative impacts of their decision. Meanwhile, government has been subsidizing such behavior, not penalizing it.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is a good place to start changing the land-use paradigm.
Last month, a Transportation Commission created by Gov. Ed Rendell reported that an additional $1.7 billion is needed annually to maintain and improve the state’s highways and mass transit systems — about 40 percent more than Pennsylvania currently spends. The Commission recommended raising the extra funding through a combination of higher state fuel and realty-transfer taxes, driver fees, and local taxes.
While improving mass transit fights sprawl, building new highways does the opposite. Instead, PennDOT should expand its Home Towns Streets program that focuses on sidewalks and trails to encourage walking and bicycling as a means of transportation. Additional revenue should be raised by hiking gas taxes to discourage excess driving in the same way that higher cigarette taxes have discouraged smoking.
The Commonwealth Financing Authority, a state agency created two years ago to administer economic development programs, should cut funding for projects on undeveloped land and restrict future loans and grants to projects on recycled land in existing cities, towns and older suburbs.
The state Department of Education should eliminate state funding for sprawling new schools — like the proposed new North Pocono High School — and require school districts to pay the entire $1 billion annual cost of busing students instead of covering half the bill.
And just as former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop prominently campaigned for a smoke-free society, Mr. Rendell should use his bully pulpit to promote sustainable communities — ones that conserve resources, rather than waste them.
Pennsylvanians can be persuaded to adopt healthier lifestyles — but it will take a concerted effort to get their attention and make it fashionable as well as practical to walk instead of drive.
THOMAS HYLTON, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is author of “Save Our Land, Save Our Towns” and host of the public television documentary, “Saving Pennsylvania.”
With a quick search, the Author of the article lives in Pottstown PA and it looks like his front yard view is a parkinglot.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=222+Chestnut+St,+Pottstown,+PA
I don't want to be hemmed in like that - on any subject.
My house is the result of 'sprawl' in the 40's.
I suppose they will tax that too...
FYI: http://www.lifb.com/agriculture_on_li.0.html
Notice the copyright date...2004
The article mentions 5,000 acres, but I wonder if that included horse "farms", a growing part of the industry.
I remember when there were 27,000 acres being farmed, then I heard it was down to 7,000. The figure mentioned, 5,000 acres, is out of date, and today's figure is probably considerably less, but I've heard that the slowing home building market has taken some of the pressure off.
Ditter, you answered a question for me with your remark about the way the Amish have sold off the edges of their farms in Pa. There are many Amish buying farms in upstate NY and I wondered where they got the money, since I never heard that they were abandoning Pa.
Many farmers on LI were able to continue farming, long after rising property taxes would have forced them out, by selling off building lots on the edges of their farms.
Alot of the agricultural output is flowers and plants, raised in greenhouses. Growing sod is also a factor. There is also a remnant of the once huge duck farming industry.
Serving agricultural customers was, for quite a few years, an important part of my business.
"What do you propose for a solution to the "problem" of sprawl? The problem I'm having here is that many times the solution offered involves increased regulation, restriction, and control of private property. We wouldn't put up with increased government restriction of free speech...why should we allow it in regards to private property rights? They are obviously both guaranteed by the Constitution. I'm not saying you're solution would involve increased government restriction. Its been my experience, however, that talk of controlling sprawl = restriction of private property rights."
The only answer I know of:
http://prfamerica.org/OdeToTackiness.html
Well, I believe that since the lawmakers have no idea what to do about the illegals and how to stop their health care, they take the easy way out and just blame the high cost on fatty people and smokers. The easy way out, you know. What politician have you ever met that just wanted the easy way out and to hell with their constituents? heh!
I have lived in this house for such a long time just surrounded by fields as far as the eye can see. It would kill me to live house to house like that again. I could not stand all the kids and the traffic noise and the barking dogs now.
It's so peaceful and quiet where I live, that the noise from a busy city would drive me right up the wall today.
Then maybe you shoud stop advocating these takings.
"Are you calling me a name???"
Do you qualify for it?
Go back to school.
yep, and thats why we bought our 100 acres
More schooling is always good however I will leave registration in Nitwittery 101 to you.
Huh? Where do I go to get paid for writing such crap?
This article made me want to vomit.
"Rosie O Donnel" should be charged 10 times the ticket price, 4 for her fat and 6 for her mouth!
whoops...didnt realize this was the same thread I posted to before...I'll go away now.
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