Blame it on the birds. And the elephants, lions, biochar, Indonesian agroforestry, dirt batteries, mechanical caterpillar waves, global maps, messenger bag-cum-lighting systems, a cyber-dance experience and one very lovely essay about migration. But not too far into the first day of PopTech, the conference’s “Reimagining America” theme disappeared. Which was fine. It seemed too limited for a confab about Big Thoughts, even here in a small, charming  American town (that could use a little reimagining itself – connectivity way, way too spotty). In any case, you can’t really reimagine, or even imagine, America without including the rest the world in the equation.

And nobody brought that point home with more heart-wrenching eloquence than Chris Jordan with his slide show of photographs of dead albatross on Midway Island, killed by a diet of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Photograph after photographs of birds, heads twisted by pain, guts split by a bounty of all too familiar bottle caps – perky shades of reds and blues favored by marketers – had the audience in shock and *this* audience in tears. This wasn’t an isolated occasional bird tragedy, but the picture of a extinction-in-progress. And because it took so darn long for anyone to discover the Garbage Patch, a ghostly-insidious man-made chemically-enhanced primordial soup the size of at least a couple of Texas’s (Texi?), it is far too late to do much about it – at least for the albatross (“Midway Journey” project blog – notes & videos).

Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Save the microbes! Save the plankton! Save the food chain!  Who knows? We might just save ourselves, too.

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The day was filled with jolts of Overwhelming Problems paired with Glimmers of Hope.

John Fetterman, the myth-come-to-life mayor of Braddock, PA, a bankrupt rust-belt town that had been all but written off. A strikingly tall bald figure, with dates tattooed on his massive arms to remember the victims of violent crimes (thankfully, no new tattoos in over a year), Fetterman’s unvarnished recitation of all that had gone wrong coupled with some very basic ideas of what can be done had the crowd on a can-do upswing. Renovate those $5,000 homes (average price – since the recession, they’ve lost value). Add artists. LOTS of artists. Plant urban gardens. Hold lots of family-friendly it-takes-a-village-to-make-a-village. Clear debris and make a park. Then came news of a major hospital closing, which will not only take jobs from the area, but leave the population – mostly poor and minority – in a health-care desert. It is hard to make money taking care of poor people. So much for the greater public good or, for that matter, public health.

I began to wonder whether some of the health solutions being tested in the developing world -  many driven by cell phone tech – wouldn’t be appropriate here, too? (e.g., PopTech Fellow Josh Nesbit’s FrontlineSMS: Medic & Hope Phones).

Indeed, one of the conference’s most intriguing themes to emerge so far is this concept of two-way innovation: developed to developing world and vice-versa. (Note to makers of One Laptop Per Child: I really really REALLY want one of those computer screens designed for use in full sun…)

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On the Glimmers of Hope front, the PopTech Fellows were batting it out of the park. From Jason Aramburu‘s efforts to commercialize biochar, a carbon negative solution that also improves soil fertility, to Eben Bayer’s nifty mushroom-mediated compostable alternative to landfill-choaking styrofoam, Aviva Presser Aiden and Hugo van Vurveen’s “dirt batteries” and Emily Pilloton’s no-nonsense determination to enlist an army of young designers to come up with Better Answers, there was a sense that it’s still not too late. We can, just maybe, turn this thing around and not go down the climate change tubes.

FLAP – Flexible Light and Power – a prototype of a portable lighting system stitched into a Timbuktu messenger bag – also caught the crowd’s imagination. Designed by MIT’s Sheila Kennedy, it’s a simple idea that could radically change the way we think about solar deployment, opening up the space to all kinds of new ideas. No longer would solar be consigned to rooftop panels or a strip on a pocket calculator. It can almost literally be woven into the fabric of our lives, turning us into portable “plants,” photosynthesizing as we go about our daily business. (More from Erik Hersman on field-testing the design in Africa.)

Indonesia-based Willie Smits also has big plans for photosynthesis, with a scheme that would not only reforest the world’s rain forests, but generate jobs and an array of crops, supply power to poor villages, restore biodiversity and wildlife habitat and dramatically reduce demand for foreign oil. Smits “Tapergy” plans is an integrated system that works with Nature to increase the productivity of land while capping CO2 “volcanos” that result when millions of acres of land, particularly peat-lands, are cleared from monoculture oil palm plantations. (read more about Smits work in “Trees for Trees” post – page down to section on “You Had Me at Organgutan” – includes videos)

There was much more to Day 1. But Day 2 is about to begin. So, connectivity willing, follow on twitter: #poptech / @trackernews.

Or at least try to make the best of it.

Jakarta, from "The world’s 20 cities with the worst traffic jams"

• In Jakarta, where “total traffic” (all rush hour, all the time) is expected by 2011, some have found a bit of gold in the gridlock. Passengers-for-higher called “jockeys” hustle for pick ups from drivers needing to fill seats to qualify for slightly speedier high occupancy lanes.

• In Sao Paulo, where traffic jams can stretch well over 100 miles and commute times average between two and three hours a day, the tale is told of a lovesick soul who threw a cell phone through the open window of a neighboring car to ask a girl for a date. Alas, the car-crossed lovers probably spent most of their courtship simply trying to rendevous.

• In Cairo, the Egyptian Horatia Alger is Nasser Sedky, a budding valet parking tycoon who had some business cards printed up for $10 and now runs a mini-empire of 50 professional parkers.

• In Chicago, parking pays the bills: The city recently leased its meters to meet a budget shortfall: $1.16 billion for 75 years.

• In San Francisco, cars have become data points for a team at UC-Berkeley testing a system to crowdsource traffic reports via GPS-enabled driver cell phones.

WHEN COPING ISN’T ENOUGH: TRAFFIC AS A MALARIA-LEVEL KILLER

Making the most of a bad situation still leaves a bad situation. According to the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration, more people die each year from traffic accidents (~1.2 million) than from malaria (~1 million). Millions more are injured and maimed, which is several orders of magnitude more than are killed and wounded by land mines. Not surprisingly, most the carnage is in the developing world where vehicles tend to be older, roads worse and health care systems beyond overburdened. 85% of the deaths are in low and middle-income countries, leaving a trail of wrecked lives and nicked GNPs (estimate: 1% to 1.5% of gross national product). Young people are particularly at risk, with traffic injuries listed as one of the leading causes of death for between the ages 5 to 25 years-old.

In short, traffic isn’t just inconvenient, but a full-out, top-tier global public health disaster. If nothing is done, the numbers are expected to double by 2030. Does the World Health Organization have a scale for that?

George Robertson, chair of the U.K.-based Commission for Global Road Safety (CGRS), points out the irony of spending millions in development aid while ignoring things as basic, if mundane, as building better roads and investing in traffic signs:

Our overseas aid is devoted to improving life chances for education, for health. Dangerous roads damage this effort, killing the young and productive, disrupting commerce and trade. They impose a high burden on under-funded health services. They make the daily journey to school a high-speed life or death lottery for millions of children. Worse, many of these dangerous roads are being built with our taxes. Roads are being funded by our governments’ international development agencies, the World Bank and EU with one objective; to speed traffic and increase trade flows, but without sufficient attention to road safety safeguards or the needs and views of local communities.

“The killer we know too well: roads” / The Guardian

A new report by CGRS, “Making Roads Safe,” proposes a UN-sponsored “Decade of Action for Road Safety” to start in 2010, with the goal cutting the death rate by half. The cost – $300 million to save 5 million lives – is positioned as a bargain. By comparison, the annual cost of traffic deaths and injuries is tallied at $100 billion, “equivalent to all overseas aid from OECD countries.”

THE ROAD TO CLIMATE CHANGE…IS PAVED

But roads are only part of the problem. To the extent they contribute to the urban heat island effect, they are a problem all by themselves. Dark hard surfaces soak up heat, making cities several degrees warmer than surrounding areas. This local warming, seasoned with CO2 from the city’s million-plus tail pipes, has given scientists a way to see into the future.

In 2002, Lewis Ziska, a scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, planted three plots of weeds: one on a farm, one in the suburbs and one near Baltimore’s inner harbor. Not only was the temperature at the Baltimore plot 3 to 4 degrees warmer, but CO2 levels averaged 450 parts-per-million – roughly the middle-case scenario projected for the planet as a whole in 30 to 50 years. The city weeds dwarfed their suburban and country cousins, producing more allergy-inducing pollen in the process.

As much as the weeds may have reveled in the smoggy muck, it hasn’t been all that good for us. Air pollution from cars and trucks has been linked to childhood asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

OPTIONS?

Two words: Drive less. Even an electric car requires urban-warming roads, so it is not just a question of trading up to a cleaner power source, but of rethinking the entire transportation equation. A billion cars and trucks, and the massive infrastructure that supports them, are not (short of an asteroid) going to disappear overnight. We have built our world and designed our cities based on their existence.

But what if we didn’t have to drive so much? Could we begin to chip away at some of the 12,000 pounds of CO2 each car adds to the atmosphere each year? (U.S. figures) Are there ways to better mix and match transportation options?

• In Vauban, Germany, an upscale suburb of Freiberg, most residents don’t even own a car. This modern throwback to simpler village life was laid out for walking and bicycles. Rental cars and car-sharing clubs are used for longer trips.

• More and bigger garages near commuter train stations can make it easier for drivers to split commutes, dramatically reducing the number miles spent in stalled traffic. For extra green points, build garages using  CO2-negative cement and landscape with green roofs that help keep cities cooler.

• Duel mode transportation schemes envision cars that can be hooked up to tramways where strings of cars form trains.

No matter how we wriggle out of global gridlock, benefits will be dramatic and immediate. Fewer traffic deaths. Healthier air. Improved prospects on the climate change front. Insti-savings from reduced fuel bills. Quieter, cleaner, cooler cities. Not being stuck in “total traffic.” Blue skies (an unexpected bonus for Mexico City during the recent swine flu shut-down). Now wouldn’t that be something?

MORE READING

“Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us” by Tom Vanderbilt (book website)

NPR Science Friday and Fresh Air interviews with Tom Vanderbilt (audio)

“Transportation Futuristics” (web exhibition)

“The Lincoln Park Pirates” by Steve Goodman (for all the Chicagoans / ex-pat Chicagoans out there….)

"Invisible Car" by Artist Sara Watson