As part of the national effort to streamline and improve regulations launched by President Obama in an Executive Order the Environmental Protection Agency is soliciting comments on what regulations should be “modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed” — so tell them what you think! They have a webpage that explains what they are looking for and provides an opportunity to submit comments online.

At a recent “listening session” held in Boston CLF offered these thoughts to EPA.  The deadline for comments is April 4, 2011– let your voice be heard !

We have discussed the pros and cons of electric vehicles on this blog in the past.  Here is a really cool new vehicle: it is electric and when stopped and at slow speeds is the same size as a Segway but as it speeds up it unfolds and expands into full size motorcycle.   It is described as “Motorcycle that changes like a ‘Transformer.’”

Electric motorcycles are not new and fans of them will proudly tell you that they can get the equivalent of over 100  miles per gallon (this guy says 112 and shows his math) – an electric motorcycle manufacturer supplies this little gas and carbon calculator.

But of course it is still a motorcycle – exposing a rider to the open road at high speeds.  So none of my kids are ever allowed to ride or own one !

(Photo credit: BoostyTSi, flickr)

The good folks at Walk Score have been doing everyone a real service by analyzing neighborhoods on the basis of walkability.  They have on a simple and cool concept: you type in an address and it analyzes that place based on what is close enough to get to by an easy walk (restaurants, stores, coffee shops, banks, etc . . .) and it also generates a “Walk Score” (for example,  CLF’s office in Boston gets a 95 out of 100 which falls into the “Walker’s Paradise” zone) and a Transit Score^TM that rates accessibility and availability of trains and buses (CLF in Boston, in the heart of the city, gets a perfect score of 100 or “Riders Paradise” because of the 75 nearby transit routes).

At the bottom of the main Walk Score page you will notice a button that allows you to check an address against their new beta “Street Smart” Walk Score.  You can get to that directly through a blog post explaining and previewing this new mechanism.

Such tools are not perfect of course.  Anyone who has had to endure a delay ridden ride on the MBTA (the essential and beleaguered transit system serving Boston) might spit out their coffee at the suggestion they are in a “Rider’s Paradise” for example.  However, tools like this illustrate how real neighborhoods offer us, and our families, neighbors and work colleagues a chance to engage in so many of the opportunities to engage in the activities of daily life without driving.

Perhaps it is obvious – but it bears repeating – walkable communities provide us a chance to meet our neighbors and avoid burning gasoline and putting pollution (including greenhouse gases causing global warming) into the atmosphere.  And in dense communities where things are close together when we do drive, we drive less, preserving so many of these benefits.  Building such communities and the transit that supports them, is I note with pride, the mission of CLF’s Healthy Communities and Environmental Justice program and of course you can read all about it in the blog posts about the work in that program.

One of the easiest ways to make bad decisions is to allow ourselves to be drawn into a false choice – to see two options as an “either/or” where seeking one goal means stepping away from another. This can be a false choice because, fortunately, sometimes making the right decision will yield a double benefit.

When we have an opportunity to reduce energy use and harmful emissions while building jobs and the economy we encounter that kind of golden moment: when the right choice yields double, triple and even quadruple benefits.

There are people who will reject this formulation – who will present that most fundamental of false choices: the flawed argument that making the right choice for our environment and the public health is bad for the economic health of our communities and building jobs.

We are surrounded by proof that economic benefit flows from the same actions that reduce dirty energy use and emissions. The nation-leading energy efficiency programs funded by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) which have created jobs while slashing the energy bills of families and businesses of the Northeast is a prime example.  A recent report issued by the states participating in RGGI (described here) provides hard numbers documenting this happy phenomena.

But we can do far better – and we need to if we are going to address the fundamental challenge of global warming and if we are going build the new economic base that can provide jobs and financial security for the future. Building that cleaner and more secure future will mean building on the successes of RGGI, making it more effective in reducing emissions and creating even more investment in energy efficiency so it slashes even more customer bills and creates even more jobs.

The story is sad and simple:

The National Research Council (the “NRC”) of the National Academies, the official science and technology adviser to the nation was directed by United States Congress in 2008 to “investigate and study the serious and sweeping issues relating to global climate change and make recommendations regarding what steps must be taken and what strategies must be adopted in response to global climate change, including the science and technology challenges thereof.”

In its report to Congress in 2010 the NRC stated that, “A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”  Not surprising as this is deeply consistent with the conclusions that so many other scientists and experts, like those at the American Geophysical Union, have also reached about the phenomena of Greenhouse Gas emissions from human activities and the resulting changes to our climate.

Did Congress respond to this expert advice by enacting comprehensive climate legislation?  If you are reading this you are almost certainly aware that the answer is “no” – that after heroic efforts led to passage of a climate and energy bill in the House that effort, sadly, collapsed in the U.S. Senate.

Many of the same folks who prevented Congress from taking action to address this most systemic and dangerous of threats are now working to stop the Federal Government from taking action to reduce emissions of the Greenhouse Gases that are threatening the public health and environment.  Incredibly, those who stopped Congress from taking action are now arguing that EPA should not step in – but rather leave this job to Congress, a job they worked so hard Congress did not complete.

Specifically, at 2:23 AM on February 19, 2011 the U.S. House of Representatives approved an amendment to the “Continuing Resolution” needed to prevent a shut-down of the Federal Government that would “prohibit use of funds by EPA to implement, administer, or enforce any statutory or regulatory requirement pertaining to emissions of greenhouse gases”.  Yes, you read that right, they are not eliminating the responsibility of EPA to take action – just taking away the money to fund the agency from doing so !! Want to see how your Representative voted? Check it out.  And at 4:40 AM the “Continuing Resolution” (now with that amendment embedded in it) was passed by the House.

But the story is not over. Not by far.  Will the Senate step up and allow EPA to do its job? A  job that (as explained by the United States Supreme Court in the court case known as  Massachusetts v. EPA)  was given to it by Congress in the Clean Air Act.  Will the Senate listen to science and allow EPA to protect the environment and the public health?  Give your Senator a call or drop them an email and ask them where they stand on this issue – with science and working to protect our health and the environment and with those trying to build a new clean energy economy or with the forces of denial who are fighting against the future and protecting entrenched fossil fuel interests.  Ask them oppose this effort to deny EPA of the power and resources to move forward in the battle to fight global warming.

On February 15 the “Blog Your Way to the North Pole” contest ends.  Once again we urge you to take a second to vote for CLF friend Leslie Harroun as she surges to the top of the polling.

The ice is melting and the climate is changing and we need folks to do some on-the-scene reporting as Leslie will do if enough folks vote for her !

We have previously written about CLF friend Leslie Harroun trying to blog her way to the North Pole so she can tell the climate story.   She has made great progress and is now in 8th place with well over 900 votes.  And she just needs to get the top 5 and if she continues to pile up votes at her current pace she will definitely make it. So read her post and vote for her !!

President Obama is accepting questions from the public. Ask him if he will defend the Clean Air Act in the State of the Union. Tell him yourself at YouTube.com/askobama or on Twitter using #askobama

The folks who deny that the globe is warming are fond of saying the computer models that show how our climate is changing are wrong.  It looks like they may be right – but not in they way they intend. The situation may be much worse as in-depth review of paleoclimate data (information about the changes in the earth’s climate stretching back millions of years) suggests that CO2 “may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models” – which would mean that we could see changes in global average temperatures by 2100 that would render large sections of the earth uninhabitable.

Scary stuff that is described quite clearly by Joe Romm on his authoritative Climate Progress blog.

This science reinforces, yet again, the need to take aggressive action on a wide range of fronts to slash greenhouse gas emissions.