Bike share programs are already fixtures in cities like Washington, D.C., above. (Photo credit: S. Diddy, flickr)

“Hubway,” Boston’s long-anticipated bike share program, is set to open this month. With 600 bikes at 61 stations around Boston (one a block away from CLF’s Boston office at the corner of Summer and Arch Streets!) and surrounding areas, Hubway will facilitate transportation around Boston by reducing crowds on the T and providing access to places that the T does not currently reach. Moreover, Hubway will contribute to fewer greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector– the largest single source of GHG emissions in the state– and create a more livable city with better transportation options to get people out of their cars and into their communities.

Already very successful in Europe, bike share programs are increasing in popularity in the U.S., and already exist in cities such as Minneapolis, Denver, and Washington, D.C. Many people in the Boston area are excited about the prospect of being able to grab a bike, go where they need to go, and return it at any station convenient to their destination. Operating three seasons a year (the system closes in the winter), Hubway offers 24-hour, 3-day, or annual memberships, allowing members access to all of the bikes and free rides under 30 minutes.

In anticipation of this program, Boston has been working hard to make the city more bicycle-friendly. In the past few years, 38 miles of bike lanes and 1,600 public parking spaces for bicycles have been built. However, there is still a lot of work to be done to prepare for this big change in how we use our roads. Currently, the Boston Police are getting ready for the influx of bicyclists. Focusing mostly at intersections known to have frequent crashes, Boston police officers are prepared to hand out tickets to drivers and bicyclists alike for disobeying traffic laws. The residents of Boston will have to learn to share the road regardless of whether they are biking or driving.

However, we at CLF believe that that’s a small price to pay for the myriad of benefits that Hubway will bring. The program will increase transportation choice and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while saving consumers money on gas and helping them get a little exercise while they’re at it, which will lead to public health benefits as well.

Learn more about CLF’s work to modernize transportation and build livable cities.

Editor’s note: Hannah Cabot is the summer 2011 communications intern at CLF Massachusetts. She is a rising senior at Milton Academy in Milton, MA.

Photo credit: Beerzle, flickr

In 2007, Congress passed energy efficiency standards for light bulbs that will decrease air pollution, improve public health and decrease household energy bills. A no-brainer, right? Wrong. This week, the House will vote on bills to repeal those standards – and we need your help to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

The standards require new bulbs to use 25 to 30 percent less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs beginning in 2012, and 65 percent less energy by 2020. These standards will not ban the incandescent light bulb, but instead give consumers a wider range of bulbs to choose from, including new and improved incandescent bulbs, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and light emitting diodes (LEDs) that are far more efficient than required by the 2012 standards. What’s more, several manufacturers, including GE, Philips Lighting and Osram Sylvania, already sell new energy-efficient incandescent bulbs that use halogen technology. These bulbs meet the 2012 standards and are already available for sale. Learn more about light bulb standards here.

By the numbers, these standards will:

• Save American households $100 to $200+ per year
• Reduce U.S. energy bills overall by more than $10 billion per year – energy savings equivalent to 30 large power plants
• Jump-start industry innovation and investment that is creating U.S. jobs
• Avoid 100 million tons of global warming pollution per year – equal to the emissions of more than 17 million cars

But we won’t see any of these benefits if the standards are repealed and we return to using traditional light bulb technology, which has changed very little since Thomas Edison invented the incandescent bulb some 125 years ago. This is a battle that we can’t afford to lose.

Here’s a bright idea. Send a message to your representatives opposing any bills that would weaken or reverse light bulb efficiency standards.

Photo credit: S1acker, flickr

As you hit the road this holiday weekend, you will be joining millions of others in filling up your gas tank and will watch in consternation as your paycheck pours into your tank. The sad thing is, you are probably driving a vehicle that gets far less than 45 mpg, so you might have to fill that tank more than once to get back home.

These days, Americans spend on average $369 dollars a month on gas. By contrast, the average monthly gas bill in April 2009 was $201. That’s a lot less money that you have to go towards dining out and hotel rooms this holiday weekend. The good news is that the EPA and DOT are currently contemplating raising fuel economy requirements to between 47 to 62 mpg starting with all 2017 model vehicles. That means  getting twice or even three times as far without having to fill up.

You would think that states buckling under the weak economy would rejoice at any effort that would give folks more money to spend. Unfortunately, Governor LePage seems to disagree.

In response to EPA and DOT’s effort, LePage joined a small handful of other governors this week in a signing a letter to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson cautioning them to be  “sensible” about raising fuel economy standards and claiming that “overreaching regulations can be a cost burden on individuals, families and businesses in our state” because the technology used for fuel-efficient vehicles makes them more expensive for consumers.

In other words, we haven’t learned any lessons, we couldn’t care less if our constituents have to spend half their paycheck at the pump and we have no problem with our addiction to foreign oil.

Fuel efficiency standards for 2012-2016 were set in 2007 at 35 mpg. When those standards were about to go into place, there was a remarkably similar wave of national hand-wringing. People were concerned that the new standards would have a negative effect on the auto industry and Americans’ perceived need to have large, affordable vehicles. Yet, the sky didn’t fall. Detroit had been teetering on the brink of survival not because of MPG standards but due to their failure to stay ahead of the innovation curve, like Toyota, in creating fuel efficient vehicles. The success of the Ford Focus speaks for itself.

Opponents to increasing the MPG standards claim that the government needs to stay out of this — market demand will dictate higher fuel efficiency.  But the data doesn’t bear that assertion out.  In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report on the effects of the CAFE standard. The report concluded that in the absence of fuel economy regulations, motor vehicle fuel consumption would have been approximately 14 percent higher than it actually was in 2002.

Americans are fully capable of stepping up to the plate and developing the affordable technology necessary to bring the higher standard to fruition. They’ve done it before and they can do it again. And here’s the thing– a whopping 78 percent of Americans think they should. According to a recent poll by the Mellman Group, the majority of Americans support efforts by the auto industry to reduce CO2 emissions. And if that also means saving money on gas, then Maine should be embracing the new standards and not trying to slow them down.

It is appropriate that Maine Public Broadcasting did this solid little story about the Supreme Court decision in AEP v. Connecticut.

The Supreme Court decision makes it clear that Congress, by enacting the Clean Air Act, entrusted the US EPA with the job of tackling air pollution emissions like the greenhouse gases causing global warming – and that if EPA does not use that power to address harm to the environment that the door is opened to private lawsuits against polluters.

This all means that Congress, particularly key “swing votes” like the Senators from Maine, should resist calls to distract EPA from doing its job.   The time for political game playing around this critical issue is long passed and EPA action, meeting its Clean Air Act responsibilities, is long overdue.

Today, the United States Supreme Court returned to the fundamental environmental challenge facing our nation and planet when it decided AEP v. Connecticut, a case in which a group of States, joined by the City of New York and private land trusts, brought a lawsuit against some of the largest emitters of the Greenhouse Gases causing the global warming and climate change that is causing harm to our environment and the public health.

First the biggest of the bad news:  The court said that the plaintiffs bringing the lawsuit could not, at this time, use federal “common law” to hold the polluters accountable.  It is always bad when misdeeds and harm are left unaddressed.

But there is a lot of good news:  The Supreme Court emphatically reiterated the obligation of the EPA to take action to deal with Greenhouse Gas emissions reasserting strongly the decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (a case brought by States and environmental groups including CLF).  In MA v. EPA the court clearly stated that the plain words of the Clean Air Act require EPA to begin the process of regulating Greenhouse Gas emissions.

In the decision today the Court said:

[The Clean Air] Act itself thus provides a means to seek limits on emissions of carbon dioxide from domestic power plants—the same relief the plaintiffs seek by invoking federal common law. We see no room for a parallel track.

This decision reaffirms the absolute importance of EPA doing its job and following through on the orders it was given by Congress in the Clean Air Act.   The time is long past for that task to be brought to completion.

It was bad enough when Senator Scott Brown voted to roll back the Clean Air Act and then lashed out against folks who criticized his vote.

Now the MBTA is blocking climate activists from running ads in the subway that call out Senator Brown about that same vote.

The MBTA has made this mistake before – forgetting that as government agency they can not reject ads because they feel it is controversial.  They should take the ad money the activists are offering – run the ads and concentrate on providing transit service, not acting as a censor that is reviving the bad old days of “Banned in Boston.”

Photo credit: christiannealmcneil, flickr

The City of Portland just launched a new website to make it easier for developers to comply with new planning requirements that incentivize alternative commuting strategies through transportation demand management plans, or “TDMs.”  The TDM requirement evolved out of a recognition that a city full of parking garages was not the best use of prime real estate – it isn’t attractive and it only encourages continued reliance on single occupancy vehicle use.  In Maine, 80 percent of employees still drive to work alone every day.  In an effort to shift commuters over to alternatives, such as METRO bus, GoMaine car and van-pooling service, biking and walking, the City of Portland passed a mandatory TDM plan for site plan approval for new developments over 50,000 square feet and for institutions serving more than 100 employees or students. There is also a voluntary TDM plan that companies may want to utilize to help their employees save money at the pump or reduce their overall carbon footprint.

In an effort to navigate the TDM requirements, the City launched a new website, found here at: http://www.tdm2go.info/.  The site is an easy, practical guide that provides a glossary of terms and high-lights case studies.  Four businesses featured on the site include Oak Street Lofts, the Portland International Jetport, St Lawrence Arts Center and Maine Medical Center (MMC).  In the case of MMC, the busy and ever-expanding hospital saw a 15 percent reduction in single occupancy vehicle use in the one year that its “Get On Board” program was implemented.  That impressive result was reached by installing numerous bike racks throughout the MMC campus, offering 50 percent off METRO tickets and providing free parking in the Gilbert St. garage to car-poolers that also had the extra amenity of enjoying the perks of first floor parking, so no stairs, no waiting for elevators, and instant access to the first floor cafe.  Plus, bike lockers and a group tool shed were installed.  These may seem like small perks, but the results speak for themselves – employees like perks!  The efforts by MMC successfully changed the culture of commuting at this major employer and in the process of doing so, they enrolled 734 employees in the program, 221 of those don’t use any carbon emitting vehicle at all – they are biking or walking to work.

What can other employers throughout the state learn from these successes?  First, brainstorming with employees on how to maximize the best alternative transportation mode is critical.  Second, a full educational campaign that informs employees on what their options are is instrumental in making the switch to alternative modes stick.  Resources on both of these are available on the City’s new site and the GoMaine website: http://gomaine.org/.  The benefits to employee’s pocketbooks and overall morale is worth the investment of some bike racks and educational information on our region’s transit services.

Two of the best sources of information and dialogue about climate and related issues are the Climate Progress blog edited by Dr. Joseph Romm a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, author, former Clinaton Administration official and general smart guy (pretty much known to everyone as Joe) who is now assisted by longtime renewable energy writer/editor/video producer Stephen Lacey and the Dot Earth blog maintained on the New York Times website by Andrew Revkin, who started the blog while working as a staff reporter at the Times and has continued with it while moving to a new day job at Pace University (and yes, he is known to one and all, including people who just know him as the guitar player in Uncle Wade, as Andy).

Andy Revkin and Joe Romm often disagree in ways that can be grating and sometimes, less often, entertaining.   So it is striking when they converge on the same topics.

In a Dot Earth post on May 25 Revkin calls out with approval for Romm’s blog post about tornadoes and global warming quoting Joe’s conclusion that:

When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.

Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.

In the same blog post Andy complements another Climate Progress blog post about the full greenhouse gas emissions associated with natural gas use, specifically discussing a new analysis from the National Energy Technology Laboratory (that is not yet peer reviewed) that, “appears to strongly undercut the widely cited conclusion by Robert Howarth of Cornell that leakage and other issues make natural gas a greater greenhouse threat than coal.”

These are two very important topics: the causal relationships that can be seen between global warming and our immediate environment, teasing apart the very real effects of climate change from other phenomena, and understanding the true environment effects of choices we make like increased extraction and use of natural gas.

Throughout human history one overarching story has been that as our society became wealthier we traveled more. The reality that our ancestors generally were born, lived and died in the same place with rare opportunities to “see the world” is hard to deny – so is the reality of our world where it is not unusual to find people walking the streets of our cities who woke up that morning on a different continent and rubbing elbows with masses of people who have lived, gone to school and worked in a wide and complex array of places.

But new academic research is suggesting that the upward surge in travel that has become such a feature of our world may have come to an end.

This could be very similar to well documented phenomena of air pollution rising as a society becomes more wealthy but then reaching a point where the relationship between economic activity (or income) flips -   air pollution increasingly declines as wealth/income rises.  This is know as an “inverted U-Shaped Kuznets curve” by economists (who are almost as poetic when they name things as lawyers).  This analysis suggests that as income rises people collectively take action to reduce pollution.  There is some controversy about applying this principle to pollution that is not as visible and obvious – like the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) that is a major cause of global warming, but some scholars believe that as income and wealth rises that emissions of CO2 drop very suddenly after a critical break point under some conditions.

But the possibility that we may have passed a critical “break point” where travel stops growing would be very good news in terms of slowing and reversing global warming given the critical role of the transportation sector in the emissions of these greenhouse gases – and the major role that travel growth plays in driving (pun intended) such emissions.

These trends are not handed down from above though – whenever we choose to build communities where people can walk, bike or even drive short distances to their offices, schools, stores, friends and families who move our world in a positive direction.  And when we build good transit systems that allow us to move around those communities quickly and cleanly everyone benefits.