Cities should receive credits for reducing speeds limits to 20 mph to enable neighborhood electric vehicles. Cities and counties should receive clean air credits for coordinating landuse decisions within a 1/4 mile of a transit center to better the bottom line of the agency and remove the structural deficit.
Transportation corridors should use electric buses. This is because the global warming problem has been left to fester too long and the alternate fuel issues are not viable any more. San Francisco has proved that electric buses are cheap reliable and Zero Emission Buses. Programs like the Grand Boulevard are ideal places for ZEB. The Grand Boulevard is also an opportunity to make the land use partnership that will ensure a sustainable revenue stream to the transit agency.
We need a floor tax on gasoline to ensure that alternatives continue to be developed. If oil drops below $75 a barrel the tax should kick in. The last year shows the clear benefits of high gas prices to reduce global warming with choice.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
More duh from McCain
In the midst of the bond collapse which means cities and CCAGs and Caltrain has problems raising money and may even have lost some in the collapsed financial institutions McCain proposing to have the government replace/reset bad mortgages with new ones at lower value with lower payments to keep people in their homes.
McCain's always been the more pragmatic politician on the latest issue, a sort of Johnny-come- lately. There is campaign finance reform, global warming, oversight of Pentagon spending, we don't torture, etc.. The problem has been the results. Take the last one for example. If someone had proposed torture ten years ago they would have been yelled out of the room, considered a crazy person, out of touch, a Klan nut. Then Charles Manson takes over the White House and everyone is marching under the holy cross of Abu Grahib. So McCain after saying he had the experience and was a supporter of Geneva Conventions then proceeds to embrace reform (torture reform sounds nuts) in name only, i.e. excepting the special circumstances of the presidency (which was claimed) and putting a few ridiculous restrictions in elsewhere ( which wasn't claimed and was now watered down.) Instead of saying, it's unacceptable to live in a world in which torture can be discussed rationally, we got the present dispicable situation.
You can see the same thing with Campaign Finance. After reform, media, friends, and issue groups were legal to bring in much more money than was previously possible, completely tilting the elections in favor of sound bites and entertainment and the stupendously crazy claims from the competing like Obama raised $60M in September. Can you imagine how much that would feed instead of feeding Fox and ABC?
So I'm wary of johnny come lately touching another important issue and adding his special blend of incompetence; which comes from a past understanding of a problem, instead of the social morality of the global community. For one thing what is he trying to solve? Is it the decline in home prices which is dragging down everything or an attempt to arrest the bleeding from bad mortgages? The latter may already be solved by the bank defaults and the federal buyout. Its a small function of the problem: which is that entities like Fannie Mac and Mae who did not have toxic loans also collapsed when valuations dropped for their legal loans. These issues in taxes, revenue, and spending also need to arrested by negatively capitalizing the loses in the entire market with similar formulations used in the real estate market segments of the Federal Reserve.
McCain's always been the more pragmatic politician on the latest issue, a sort of Johnny-come- lately. There is campaign finance reform, global warming, oversight of Pentagon spending, we don't torture, etc.. The problem has been the results. Take the last one for example. If someone had proposed torture ten years ago they would have been yelled out of the room, considered a crazy person, out of touch, a Klan nut. Then Charles Manson takes over the White House and everyone is marching under the holy cross of Abu Grahib. So McCain after saying he had the experience and was a supporter of Geneva Conventions then proceeds to embrace reform (torture reform sounds nuts) in name only, i.e. excepting the special circumstances of the presidency (which was claimed) and putting a few ridiculous restrictions in elsewhere ( which wasn't claimed and was now watered down.) Instead of saying, it's unacceptable to live in a world in which torture can be discussed rationally, we got the present dispicable situation.
You can see the same thing with Campaign Finance. After reform, media, friends, and issue groups were legal to bring in much more money than was previously possible, completely tilting the elections in favor of sound bites and entertainment and the stupendously crazy claims from the competing like Obama raised $60M in September. Can you imagine how much that would feed instead of feeding Fox and ABC?
So I'm wary of johnny come lately touching another important issue and adding his special blend of incompetence; which comes from a past understanding of a problem, instead of the social morality of the global community. For one thing what is he trying to solve? Is it the decline in home prices which is dragging down everything or an attempt to arrest the bleeding from bad mortgages? The latter may already be solved by the bank defaults and the federal buyout. Its a small function of the problem: which is that entities like Fannie Mac and Mae who did not have toxic loans also collapsed when valuations dropped for their legal loans. These issues in taxes, revenue, and spending also need to arrested by negatively capitalizing the loses in the entire market with similar formulations used in the real estate market segments of the Federal Reserve.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Get off the fossil fuel drug
The journal featured a discussion of carbon footprints which most green groups also tend to get wrong. In WSJ.com - Six Products, Six Carbon Footprints Ball starts with the wrong assumptions and then backs into the foretold conclusion.
1- That the fossil fuel economy can be adapted to a low carbon future.
2- that a style of green consumption can reduce carbon sufficient for 350ppm future.
Lead to the foretold conclusion that small incremental steps to correct global warming are unclear, insufficient,and risk carrying the stigma of greenwashing.
The library is filled with millions of dust collecting solutions to each aspect of the fossil fuel economy because the constitution sees nature as property and gives rights over it to the corporations that deliver consumable desires. Cap and trade is an example of the constitution selling rights to the biosphere which rent our lungs out for asthma and cancer.
Seeking to spread confusion from his wrong assumptions and conclusion Ball writes: So far, these efforts raise as many questions as they answer. Different companies are counting their products' carbon footprints differently, making it all but impossible for shoppers to compare goods. And even if consumers come to understand the numbers, they might not like what they find out.
Rather we need to be slower and smarter, meaning disengaged from consumerism as the primary avenue of experience. Get more from less- reuse existing streets to increase zero CO2 mobility. Ball instead is mired in the other paradigm.
Why slower? I can deliver a truck load, 1400 cubic feet, of fava beans from Half Moon Bay to Belmont every half hour. On a bicycle I can maybe deliver 20 cubic foot in eight hours- 30 if I pushed myself. But fossil fuels also mean I can build houses in Belmont and leave the agriculture to HMB and Chile. HMB meanwhile chafes under the property prices for agriculture versus growing homes and can't wait for the road to come through. The established solution to green house gases is to go slower allowing an economy to develop around the bicycle and horse and burro and walking and the golf cart.
The silver bullet of SB375 and electric trucks and hydrogen cars can still come on line later. We don't have the time to wait for the silver bullet to work and to get enacted and to deliver results. Species are going extinct now, oceans are collapsing, food riots are spreading. Hyping the silver bullet is just another way of saying lets do nothing. We need to get of the toxin of going faster with fossil fuels now.
1- That the fossil fuel economy can be adapted to a low carbon future.
2- that a style of green consumption can reduce carbon sufficient for 350ppm future.
Lead to the foretold conclusion that small incremental steps to correct global warming are unclear, insufficient,and risk carrying the stigma of greenwashing.
The library is filled with millions of dust collecting solutions to each aspect of the fossil fuel economy because the constitution sees nature as property and gives rights over it to the corporations that deliver consumable desires. Cap and trade is an example of the constitution selling rights to the biosphere which rent our lungs out for asthma and cancer.
Seeking to spread confusion from his wrong assumptions and conclusion Ball writes: So far, these efforts raise as many questions as they answer. Different companies are counting their products' carbon footprints differently, making it all but impossible for shoppers to compare goods. And even if consumers come to understand the numbers, they might not like what they find out.
Rather we need to be slower and smarter, meaning disengaged from consumerism as the primary avenue of experience. Get more from less- reuse existing streets to increase zero CO2 mobility. Ball instead is mired in the other paradigm.
Why slower? I can deliver a truck load, 1400 cubic feet, of fava beans from Half Moon Bay to Belmont every half hour. On a bicycle I can maybe deliver 20 cubic foot in eight hours- 30 if I pushed myself. But fossil fuels also mean I can build houses in Belmont and leave the agriculture to HMB and Chile. HMB meanwhile chafes under the property prices for agriculture versus growing homes and can't wait for the road to come through. The established solution to green house gases is to go slower allowing an economy to develop around the bicycle and horse and burro and walking and the golf cart.
The silver bullet of SB375 and electric trucks and hydrogen cars can still come on line later. We don't have the time to wait for the silver bullet to work and to get enacted and to deliver results. Species are going extinct now, oceans are collapsing, food riots are spreading. Hyping the silver bullet is just another way of saying lets do nothing. We need to get of the toxin of going faster with fossil fuels now.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Why we need car free TOD now
We need to bailed out of the fossil fuel economy.
Yesterday the government had to bail out AIG because it was "too big to fail." Today three banks, JP Morgan, Citicorp, and Bank of America have reached the size of being too big to fail because of mergers engineered by the Federal Government. What moral bind are we in down the road for irresponsible actions from these Goliaths?
Rising gas prices forced consumers to confront the hole they had dug for themselves by greedily consuming the toxic products put out by rising bank stars on Wall Street on the fringes of the commute beltway in Tracy and Merced and Modesto and Stockton. The average commuters costs have gone up 25% because of rising gas and related food prices (from $2500 to $3000,) and upto 50% of homes are in or will be in foreclosure. Meanwhile the government was quietly funding its illegal war, in Iraq for Halliburton and Exxon's benefit, on the basis of consumer borrowing from the home equity.
Despite owning Iraq, gas prices have and will continue to rise because of peaking supply and increasing demand. Another 25% increase seems reasonable in the next eight years making the housing problem worse. Simultaneously, foreclosures will continue to put downward pressure on homes values by increasing the supply of depressed inventory. The next government will need to provide another bailout. The pattern of home value collapse on the fringe of the commuting suburbs outside the urban job centers in San Francisco and Silicon Valley needs to be addressed. A bailout needs to remove incentives for Americans to live far from where they work. Policies to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled will solve the problem of rising gas and falling home prices with locational choice. Carfree Transit Oriented Development is a logical bailout policy initiative if we want to escape the fate of the post soviet empire.
Yesterday the government had to bail out AIG because it was "too big to fail." Today three banks, JP Morgan, Citicorp, and Bank of America have reached the size of being too big to fail because of mergers engineered by the Federal Government. What moral bind are we in down the road for irresponsible actions from these Goliaths?
Rising gas prices forced consumers to confront the hole they had dug for themselves by greedily consuming the toxic products put out by rising bank stars on Wall Street on the fringes of the commute beltway in Tracy and Merced and Modesto and Stockton. The average commuters costs have gone up 25% because of rising gas and related food prices (from $2500 to $3000,) and upto 50% of homes are in or will be in foreclosure. Meanwhile the government was quietly funding its illegal war, in Iraq for Halliburton and Exxon's benefit, on the basis of consumer borrowing from the home equity.
Despite owning Iraq, gas prices have and will continue to rise because of peaking supply and increasing demand. Another 25% increase seems reasonable in the next eight years making the housing problem worse. Simultaneously, foreclosures will continue to put downward pressure on homes values by increasing the supply of depressed inventory. The next government will need to provide another bailout. The pattern of home value collapse on the fringe of the commuting suburbs outside the urban job centers in San Francisco and Silicon Valley needs to be addressed. A bailout needs to remove incentives for Americans to live far from where they work. Policies to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled will solve the problem of rising gas and falling home prices with locational choice. Carfree Transit Oriented Development is a logical bailout policy initiative if we want to escape the fate of the post soviet empire.
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