Climate Cities

Hot plans rile the Chicago waterfront

Two curious things going on along the waterfront in Chicago, which Mayor Richard Daley envisions as the “greenest city in America”: a brouhaha over plans to relocate the children’s museum […]

Florida city takes another smart(ish) step

Yesterday, the Tampa city council gave preliminary approval to a plan that offers incentives for green building; they’re expected to formally approve it later this month. We mentioned in our […]

San Francisco approves giant solar incentive program

San Francisco has become the proud owner of the largest municipal solar program in the United States. The Solar Energy Incentive Program, approved by the city board of supervisors on […]

Focusing population growth in the right places will make us both

The New York Times looks at the impact of high gas prices in communities across the nation today and concludes that increases are most painful in rural areas. Part of […]

California launches database of green state buildings

Some day I’ll stop being surprised at the eco-dreaminess of California. But for now, I’m still tickled by even relatively minor developments — say, the creation of the country’s first […]

USA Today: oil prices drive up asphalt costs, derail road maintenance

For decades, public cash has gushed into building infrastructure designed to get us around in those little (or not-so-little) privatized pods. Indeed, the mobilization to create and maintain our road […]

Scooter ridership zooms as gas prices rise

For reasons both environment- and wallet-related, motor scooter ridership is zooming (along with transit and bike ridership, natch). Between 1997 and 2007, annual sales of new scooters jumped from 12,000 […]

Rail and the coming changes in transport

National Train Day was marked this year on May 10, so it's not too incredibly late to mention two new books of note: John Stilgoe's Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape that came out in the fall says that rail is "an economic and cultural tsunami about to transform the United States." Maybe that's a little grand, but rail is definitely on the ascendancy, since it can move people and freight at a fraction of the energy usage vs. petroleum.

Also, Radio Ecoshock's March 28 edition of its useful weekly podcast had a recording (skip to minute 11 for the presentation) by authors Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl at the launch event for their new book Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil. They are forecasting a grid-tied and electrified (increasingly from renewables) rail system among four revolutions coming in transport:

Toxic trailers will be used again if need be, says FEMA

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has promised it will never again use formaldehyde-tainted trailers to house victims of a natural disaster — unless, of course, it does. In a draft […]

Airlines, cargo ships increasingly desperate due to rising fuel costs

Globalization was built on cheap oil. As that era draws to a close, so will the current phase of global integration, whether Thomas Friedman, Wal-Mart, and all those involved in intercontinental trade like it or not.

The current transportation infrastructure is based on cars, trucks, airplanes, and cargo ships, which together consume about 70 percent of the gasoline used in the United States. While the greatest focus has been on cars, trucking and airline companies are facing collapse.

The International Air Transport Association just published a new report in which they call the situation of many airlines "desperate." According to The N.Y. Times:

If price of oil, which is now just below $130 a barrel, averages $107 over 2008, the aviation industry would lose $2.3 billion for the year, the chief executive of the group, Giovanni Bisignani, said. Should it hold at $135 a barrel for the rest of the year, the industry will lose $6.1 billion.