Rush Hour in Copenhagen, photo courtesy of Mikael Colville-Andersen @ flickr

On the afternoon of July 6th, I rode my bike home from work through the streets of Portland, Maine, sharing the lane with car traffic. Parts of my commute could benefit from a bike lane or increased signage, but the prospects for those projects do not look good in the near term. Earlier that day, President Obama had signed a new transportation bill that slashed federal funding for biking and pedestrian infrastructure.

The bill reduces funding for bicycling and pedestrian improvements by about thirty percent. Additionally, it allows those reduced funds allocated for bike and pedestrian projects to be used instead for other transportation work at the discretion of the state. This despite the fact that a 2010 census study showed that the number of people who used a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation increased by 43% in the preceding decade. Even greater gains were seen in cities, where commutes tend to be shorter.

My own bike obsession (my third-floor walk-up houses eight bikes, four of which are mine) began when I spent a semester abroad in Denmark. Its capital city, Copenhagen, is full of wide bike lanes bustling with two-wheeled traffic. The bike lanes are bordered by a curb to separate them from the road and are built so that bikers can safely pass one another within the lane. According to the City of Copenhagen, half of its residents bike to work or school every day. To compare, in Portland, Oregon, the large U.S. city with the most bikers, 6% of residents primarily use their bike to get to work.

Bicycling is contagious. Living in Copenhagen I found that having so many bikes on the roads and such good infrastructure makes it more fun, safer, and easier to ride. Drivers expect cyclists and operate accordingly. Bike racks sit on seemingly every corner. People carry heavy loads of groceries in bike baskets, transport their children around the city in specially-made cargo bikes, and use fenders or even an umbrella to get around in the rain. My memory could be deceiving me, but I still swear that I once saw a man in a business suit eating a sandwich and talking on a cell phone while navigating rush hour bike traffic.

I returned to Portland for law school largely because it is such a wonderful place to live. The city is big enough to have great restaurants and good music, but relatively quiet and geographically small. I own a car, but never drive within the city because biking is cheaper, more fun, and often faster. Traffic is light, speeds are slow, and drivers are generally courteous.

The city has made strides in recent years, adding bike lanes, pursuing federal grant money for further improvements, and even hiring a bike-pedestrian coordinator.  However, more remains to be done. Dangerous intersections, narrow streets, and perilous railroad crossings remain unsafe even for experienced cyclists, and intimidate those who might otherwise choose to commute or recreate on a bike. Greater federal funding would enable Portland to more quickly and completely make its streets safer for all users.

Our country’s transportation system needs help, that much is clear. Many roads and bridges need costly repairs to remain safe. But it is short-sighted to spend huge sums on automotive infrastructure in lieu of making cities more livable for bicyclists and pedestrians. Walking and biking keeps people healthier and happier, all while saving gas and reducing emissions. American cities could be cleaner, more bikeable, more walkable, and less car-dominated if we choose to invest wisely in our biking and walking infrastructure.

No one is completely happy with the outcome.  Even President Obama described what he hammered out as being a “first step” and “not enough” to avoid disaster describing the Accord he worked out as the beginning of a process.

The climate change denier community (and people playing that role in the US, Europe, Israel, etc… should be very nervous about the fact they are in close alliance with Saudia Arabia) must be upset at the reaffirmation  that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced in order to avoid  dangerous global warming – a conclusion that relies upon the mountain of science showing that global warming is very real and very dangerous.

Some leading voices like Joe Romm and commentators share the “glass 2/3′s full” interpretation of the Copenhagen Accord presented by the President and applaud the fact that Accord was worked out by the U.S. and China (with Brazil, India and South Africa) and then embraced by others – seeing it as a good thing for international climate discussions and negotiations to be headed down a new path of bi-lateral discussions between large emitters and among smaller groups of nations and away from the UN structure that has been in place since the 1992 Rio Summit.  Robert Stavins at Harvard University and David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council argue that the UN process can and will continue augmented by these new side negotiations.  (Update 1/7/2010 – Robert Stavins has developed this argument even farther.)

Other important voices like Bill McKibben see this change in the process and nature of climate negotiations as a disaster – part of a complete collapse of political and moral will by a President and Administration that should know better.  A related perspective is the view that the Copenhagen outcome shows that the “the elites are not up to the job of saving the world.” Follow the links in that last piece if you want to see some really terrifying analysis of the world that we are headed to if only current pledges and agreements for emissions reductions are met.

To hear these two different interpretations collide check out McKibben and Doniger on the “On Point” public radio show on December 22, 2009.

And what Andrew Revkin calls the “Copenhagen blame game” is now a full scale global enterprise.  With British Columnist George Monbiot blaming the US (and President Obama) personally, Chinese and British officials savagely attacking each other in the press on the question of China’s role at Copenhagen and officials of the European Union laying blame on the developing nations and the US.

So what do we know and what should we (those of us not playing in the titanic global climate game) do?

The answer for CLF is clear.  We need to continue with our work to make New England, the region in which we work, a replicable model of real and affirmative change for the better.  We need to purge our electricity system of old, high emissions coal fired power plants, we need to fight to make highly efficient use of energy in homes and buildings, we need to ensure that our forests are healthy and do their many jobs, including capturing carbon out of the air, and we need to foster clean effective transit and massive deployment of renewable energy.   Our goals are right out there for all to see as is the way in which you can support our work.

Clearly there is a powerful need for global and national action to protect our climate.   And while those epic struggles play out, and we do what we can to shape the outcome, we must not waver in our resolve to advance a climate protection agenda here in our region, our states and in our communities.  We can argue about how far we have come – but it is very clear that we have far to go.