By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now
In his Jan. 27 State of the Union Address, President Obama included high-speed rail, stating, “From the first railroads to the Interstate Highway System, our nation has always been built to compete. There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains or the new factories that manufacture clean-energy products.”
He followed that up with a visit to Tampa the next day, where he stated that $8 billion in grants would be going to a Tampa-Orlando-Miami route in Florida, followed by similar rail projects in California and Illinois.
This is music to the ears of longtime train advocate Anthony Perl, a fellow with the Post Carbon Institute (PCI). The San Francisco-area institute in an apolitical think tank that envisions a world of communities and economies that thrive within ecological bounds. The president’s address spurred PCI to send Obama an open letter applauding the speech but imploring him to lead the transition to a post-carbon economy by, in part, preparing for the future with cost-effective energy, such as trains. In addition to his position with PCI, Perl is the director of the Urban Studies Program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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City households emit fewer greenhouse gases, study reports
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
City centers are often portrayed as grimy, polluted places. And they can be grimy, polluted places – the daily destination for thousands of carbon-emitting commuters and home to many smokestack industries.
Just don’t blame the people living there. Households closer to the urban action are, on average, far less polluting, according to research by the Center for Neighborhood Technology. The reason is not hard to fathom: People living in more densely developed areas drive less and are more likely to take public transportation.
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Tags: · Center for Neighborhood Technology, Commuting, greenhouse gas emitts, Housing + Affordability Index, public transportation, suburbs, transportation costs, urban centers
Stimulus plan puts green into green; the details so far…
From Green Right Now Reports:
In a alert released this afternoon, entitled “Congress Gets It Right — Recovery Deal to Spur Clean Energy Economy”, the Natural Resources Defense Council praised the compromise stimulus package hammered out by Congress for the ways it steers the American economy in a greener direction.
“Congress really got it right with this economic recovery package that will deliver jobs and green infrastructure to America. The bill makes smart investments that will jumpstart the economy, help sustain future growth, and meet the challenges of the 21st century,”effused Wesley Warren, director of programs for the NRDC. “We need to put America on a path to a clean-energy economy, and Congress has taken a big step forward in heeding this call.
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Tags: · clean energy, Congress, green incentives, Green jobs, high-speed rail, Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC, public transportation, stimulus package, Tax Credits, Weatherization Assistance Program
