Apr 22
Photo by existentist.
Today’s New York Times has a letter to the editor I wrote in response to the paper’s . Entitled “Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing”, the piece notes that the honeymoon period for biofuels seems to be nearing an end, at least in some circles:
The idea of turning farms into fuel plants seemed, for a time, like one of the answers to high global oil prices and supply worries…But now a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people.
In my letter to the editor, I point out that while the Times’ article mentions the ‘government mandates’ helping to create this unprecedented demand for biofuels, it does not explain that these policies typically take the form of massive subsidies for biofuel production.
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Mar 07
There’s wifi on this bus! Photo by RACINGMIX
Transit with wireless is an incredibly attractive way to travel. And apparently AC Transit, a regional bus agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, agrees, providing wireless internet on all their buses crossing the San Francisco Bay.
Yesterday I had an action packed day of transit; I took BART from North Berkeley to Union City, then hopped on a bus with wireless that crosses the Dumbarton Bridge to Palo Alto, or so I thought. When I realized I was on the wrong bus, and figured out that there were no more buses coming, I had no other option but to take a cab. Read the rest of this entry »
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Feb 21
Photo from Yotatech.
Well, maybe not. Last year Ikea announced a plan to cut energy use by 25% by 2012. So far it has been working on this goal by, among other things, introducing a fleet of hybrids to its Spanish and UK operations. Unfortunately, the move to hybrids will not include its delivery vehicles, but just its car fleet.
So for any Ikea driver who has lost the assembly instructions, we’ve included the helpful image and assembly instructions above.
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Dec 23
Poznan’s currently car-free central square is threatened by increasing traffic congestion in the city. Photo by Lee Schipper.
Lee Schipper was recently invited to Poznań, Poland by the consulting firm Convoco. In this article, Lee and Sylwia Klatka (Convoco’s managing director and Poznań resident) report on the challenges the city faces in cleaning and greening its transport systems.
Poznań is one of the 10 largest cities in Poland, with the second highest per capita income in the country. The city sits on a major East-West highway connecting Berlin with Warsaw (and ultimately Moscow), and its modest population of 600,000 people is already choking on well over 200,000 cars. Lee’s invitation from the city was facilitated by Sylwia Klatka, the founder of ConVoco, a local company that works on transport and environment projects with cities around Europe. During his time in Poznań, Lee got to meet the Deputy Mayor, Mirosław Kruszyński, the head of the city Environmental Department, and key officials in city departments related to transport and infrastructure.
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Dec 20
Photo by mj*laflaca
In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences wrote a report suggesting a modest raise in new car fuel efficiency - from 28 miles per gallon to around 32 - was justified. The Bush Administration ignored this finding. A few years later it thumbed its nose at the environmental community by dissolving the “Partnership for a new Generation of Vehicles,” a joint government-auto industry initiative to put a super fuel-efficient, low-emissions diesel car on the road by the end of this decade. As if that weren’t enough, the Bush Administration has constantly opposed higher fuel taxes, ruling out an important step for reducing what the president calls our ‘addiction’ to oil. I must say that it’s strange that after repeatedly acknowledging the current energy problem he has so passively ignored or actively obstructed almost every effort to find a solution.
So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise yesterday when the EPA announced that it opposes California’s 2002 initiative to regulate CO2, a move that will once again put off the reckoning this country has with oil and carbon. Since this initiative in its original form has been law in California since 2002, it’s goals are no surprise to the Administration or automobile manufacturers. They’ve had roughly five years and little to show; perhaps instead of hiring the engineers to make their cars comply with the law, the auto industry hired the lawyers to take the law down.
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Jun 07
Bigger isn’t always better. Photo by powebooktrance.
Recently CNW Marketing Research, an Oregon-based automotive research group, published a paper making the audacious claim that the Hummer is actually more energy efficient than the Prius. The study later showed up in an op-ed piece by George Will, a conservative columnist for the Washington Post, who wrote that it might be responsible to buy a hummer and “squash a Prius with it.” The study was also cited uncritically in a piece from the Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization in Southern California, suggesting that the slogan for the next Save the Earth campaign should be: “Have you hugged a Hummer today?”
Peter Gleick, former MacArthur Fellow and head of the Pacific Institute, a think-tank specializing in the intersection of environment, development, and security, has made a habit of exposing junk science. His work in debunking the CNW study touted by George Will and others as a work of pseudo-science is simply excellent. As Mr. Gleick writes about his findings: Read the rest of this entry »
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May 22
A Ford Escape Hybrid. Left: Photo by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News, Right: Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images.
Mayor Bloomberg has finally given the push to something hybrids were created for - stop and go traffic in New York City. As the New York Times reports, the Mayor announced earlier today a plan to phase out the city’s 1,200 Crown Victoria taxis and replace them with hybrid vehicles powered by both electricity and gasoline. My only worry is that the new hybrids that the Mayor plans to add to the fleet will be large SUVs, like the one above, with modest fuel economy, rather than normal taxis with very good fuel economy. But regardless, the change will result in fuel and air pollution savings.
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Apr 06
On Monday, Marcelo Ebrad, the Mayor of Mexico City, and other high-ranking officials cycled to work to show their support for a cleaner, more humanized city. Although it was a time of relatively low traffic – they made their trip at the beginning of Holy Week – the officials braved rain and cars to make a powerful point about reclaiming Mexico City’s streets. A flat city originally built on a former lake, Mexico City has the ideal landscape for cycling; bikers can pedal for miles without ever breaking a sweat. Yet since the 1950s, “Chilangos,” as inhabitants of the city are affectionately known, have put the bicycle aside in favor of motorized transport. Since then, the precipitous growth of the city, along with the number of automobiles, has left the streets clogged with cars and the air fouled by pollution. Read the rest of this entry »
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Apr 02
Photo courtesy of J. Weinert, Univ of Calif, Davis
Dr. Tuan Le An, from Hanoi University of Technology, who is EMBARQ’s counterpart in Hanoi for our emissions project, kindly drove me 6 km back to the Melia on his Honda Dream. The project we are working on, sponsored by US AID, has us combining a pre-existing set of traffic scenarios for 2020 with estimates of emissions from vehicles, both CO2 and local pollutants. Riding on the back of the bike gave me the chance to try out the local pollutants. Read the rest of this entry »
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