Posts in the 'Energy + Climate Change' category
California Dreaming
California Dreaming
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. ...
Covering the UN's Climate Change Conference
Covering the UN's Climate Change Conference
The entrance to the conference. Photo by Maria Cordeiro. Bali, Indonesia World leaders from 191 countries have convened in Bali, Indonesia for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, a two week event aimed at setting the agenda for a plan ...
What is Congestion Pricing?
What is Congestion Pricing?
Photo of traffic congestion in Hong Kong by A.H. 1987 from Flickr Solving the problem of congestion is usually a top priority for city authorities, who note that congestion not only causes air pollution, but also decreases quality of life ...
Is There a Third Way to Think About Low-Cost Cars?
Is There a Third Way to Think About Low-Cost Cars?
Photo from https://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j212/anjanesh/Blog/tata-1.jpg By Ethan Arpi and Rob Katz While discussions of Ratan Tata’s 1 lakh car – and other entrants to the ultra-cheap car market – are nothing new to thecityfix.com and many other blogs, the concept received another ...
Forget Cash, Cooking Oil Can Buy Your Bus Pass
Forget Cash, Cooking Oil Can Buy Your Bus Pass
In Kilmarnock, Scotland, bus passengers will soon be able to pay their fare with used cooking oil instead of cash. Eight buses carrying over 15,000 passengers a week will run on 100% biodiesel generated from used cooking oil and tallow, ...
The Politics of Petrol
The Politics of Petrol
Under the leadership of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela has become a country flirting with socialism, what Chavez, in one of his rhetorical flourishes, calls the 20th century heir of the Bolivarian Revolution. Yet paradoxically the Venezuelan government under Chavez has been ...
Bio Fuels or Bio-Fools?
Bio Fuels or Bio-Fools?
The agrarian arms race to turn larger swaths of farmland over for the production of biofuels recently reached rhetorical heights as Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, argued that it would be a crime against ...
The Green Car Issue
The Green Car Issue
Are car companies thinking about more than one type of green? Photo by makeshiftlove from Flickr. The New York Times latest automobile issue takes a dramatic departure from the past and includes several articles on how environmental concerns are shaping ...
What Do Cheap Cars Mean for India's Cities?
What Do Cheap Cars Mean for India's Cities?
An Indian street scene. Photo by Satbir from Flickr. Last week the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune ran a story on the new Tata Car priced at $2,500 coming out in India in 2008. Some time ago ...
The Hidden Costs of Personal Mobility
The Hidden Costs of Personal Mobility
A biker struck by a car in Beijing. Courtesy of pmorgan of Flickr. It’s helpful to think about traffic safety with the following thought experiment: What would happen in a democratic forum, if the world’s population, represented by elected officials, ...
Demystifying TranSantiago
Demystifying TranSantiago
TranSantiago in action. Photo by Cobalito. “It is not common for a president to stand before the nation and say ‘Things haven’t gone well,” Michele Bachelet, Chile’s President, said in March of this year. “But that is exactly what I ...
What's Worse: Production or Use?
What's Worse: Production or Use?
Photo by Stephane Foulon. From Road and Track. This week’s addition of BusinessWeek includes an article about Gordon Murray, a celebrated race car designer, who is switching gear and working to create “a compact, fuel-efficient urban vehicle for the masses,” ...
Choking on Smog
Choking on Smog
Photo from BusinessWeek. In a Pulitzer grab, The New York Times is now running a series of two-page spreads called Choking on Growth about the dark under side – namely environmental contamination – of China’s economic development. Below are several ...
How to Debunk the Junk
How to Debunk the Junk
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 ...
Hybrids for New York City
Hybrids for New York City
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 ...
Right Menu Icon