Anyone who follows CLF’s work knows about plans being pushed to move oil derived from tar sands in Canada through pipelines that would cut across Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.  The purpose of the these pipelines is simple and clear: to allow this oil to reach the sea and foreign markets that can only be reached by oil tanker.

It is easy to understand why the Canadian oil industry, and the multi-national petroleum companies with big Canadian investments, want to move the oil extracted from the Tar Sands of Western Canada out to the larger world markets: doing so will mean they make A LOT of money.  The Canadian petroleum industry has explained this for us all very helpfully in an ad found on page 2 of the June-July 2013 issue of the Canadian Public Policy and Politics magazine with the zippy name of “Policy” that we reprint here.

The ad confirms the purpose of the wave of pipeline building being pushed by the Canadian petroleum industry (and ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, the owners of leading Canadian companies like Imperial Oil/Esso and Flint Hills Resources): to raise the price of Canadian oil up to the levels found on many global markets.  As the ad shows, using little prices tags, the price of oil in the North American market hovers around $85 a barrel at times when the same barrel of oil sells for $110 elsewhere in the world. If the producers, refiners and sellers of that oil have access to world markets they can demand that North American customers pay them the higher price if they want to buy this oil.  This reality is especially stark when you look at the fact that oil refining companies with operations in the United States just don’t care if these pipelines get built – they are fully occupied with oil extracted right here at home.  It is just Canadian companies (and the multi-national companies like ExxonMobil and Koch who own Canadian operations) who profit from the push for these pipelines.

So we know who wins if new pipelines carry Canadian oil to reach global markets: the petroleum companies who reap the higher prices found beyond the United States and Canada. But who loses?

The answer to that requires us to think both about the short-term in which we all live our day-to-day lives and the longer-term world in which future generations will have to live.

When we think about immediate and short-term concerns for our families and businesses it doesn’t get any more real than gasoline prices.

Supporters of building pipelines to move Canadian oil to market generally and the highest profile project, the Keystone XL pipeline that would move oil through the middle of the United States from Canada to the Gulf Coast, invoke gas prices as a reason for taking that step, at least implying that the new pipelines will drive down gas prices.

However,  it is well documented in a number of reports and studies that Midwestern drivers would see gasoline prices rise on the order of 42 cents a gallon if that pipeline is built. And this is not surprising – if the oil used to make gasoline is being sold (and bought) at higher prices then gasoline prices will rise.

So in the short term – the losers in this equation? Anyone who buys gasoline or relies upon goods or services that rely on gasoline or diesel fuel that are transported by car, truck, ship or airplane – in short all of us.

And that doesn’t even get into the critical longer term issue: that tapping into the tar sands oil, bringing them to market and burning them would be a large step towards the devastating climate disaster that is unfolding around us and that we need to stop.

There are those who disagree with this assessment. Some politicians argue that tar sands oil from Canada is needed to free ourselves from dependence on oil imported from volatile (and often hostile) nations overseas.  They suggest that these pipelines will simply bring it that oil to markets we, here in the U.S., draw upon, oddly ignoring the stated purpose of the pipelines to bring the oil to higher-priced offshore markets.

And there are thoughtful and detailed analyses that disagree with the climate argument about this oil.  This analysis argues that if the tar sands oil is not brought to market that it will simply be replaced by slightly-easier-to-access Venezuelan oil with a very similar carbon footprint.

That climate impact analysis, and the political argument for building pipelines to tap into tar sands oil, however ignore one important, essential and difficult option: use less oil instead. The advent of electric vehicles, smarter urban development and increases in transit use all converge to show us a way forward and off of oil. The increase in fuel economy standards, a process that is well underway, is a step on that path.

Getting off oil will not be easy.  As the social critic, songwriter and bicycle enthusiast David Byrne has noted, “From the age of the Dinosaurs, cars have run on gasoline.”  Changing something so fundamental will be hard but it is what we need to do; that is what in all of our interests, not laying new pipelines to bring ancient oil derived from the cracking and boiling of tar sands to foreign markets where it will be burned and released into the atmosphere.

You just can’t find a more solid, conservative, reliable and grounded group than the American Geophysical Union.  Since 1919 the AGU has been the hub of the physical sciences in the United States providing a gathering place and information exchange for earth, air and space scientists and then communicating carefully reviewed scientific information to the public and decision-makers in government, business and throughout society.

When a group like the AGU speaks through an official statement you know that every word of the statement has been scrutinized and carefully chosen to communicate important ideas and complex climate science as accurately as possible. The process of creating these statements involves hours, days, weeks and years of meetings, reviews, re-reviews and painstaking scrutiny.

This means when that when the AGU issues (as it did in 2003) and then updates (as it did again last week) its official position statement on a subject like global warming, attention should be paid. The latest version of that statement can be downloaded in PDF form from the AGU website and is “pasted” below in its entirety.

The calm and carefully chosen words of the AGU should reinforce a critical realization that immediate and dramatic action is needed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions immediately. By becoming much more efficient in our use of energy and dramatically reducing the amount of fossil fuels that we burn, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Meeting these goals will require developing dense and sustainable cities where most trips can be made on foot and convenient and affordable public transit plays a strong and supporting role as well as technological shifts to highly efficient buildings powered by renewable energy like wind and solar power.  The AGU also reminds us that even if we slash our greenhouse gas emissions very sharply and immediately we must deal with the implications of the emissions of the past and the warming that is already baked into the system, warming that is bringing us rising sea levels and extreme and disrupted weather.

The call to action that the scientists of the AGU is sounding is being heard here in New England – laws like the renewable energy and energy efficiency standards are on the books in part because of this fundamental challenge.  This legislative response to climate science is even more obvious in the case of laws specifically requiring emissions reductions – like the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act.  But passing laws is only one in a series of needed steps forward.

Translating the law into regulations (as the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection just refused to do when pressed by a remarkable group of kids) and then action, actually delivering on the promise of reduced pollution emissions, will not be easy.  But we really don’t have a choice . . .

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Human-induced climate change requires urgent action.

Humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years.

Rapid societal responses can significantly lessen negative outcomes.

“Human activities are changing Earth’s climate. At the global level, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases have increased sharply since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel burning dominates this increase. Human-caused increases in greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed global average surface warming of roughly 0.8°C (1.5°F) over the past 140 years. Because natural processes cannot quickly remove some of these gases (notably carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere, our past, present, and future emissions will influence the climate system for millennia.

Extensive, independent observations confirm the reality of global warming. These observations show large-scale increases in air and sea temperatures, sea level, and atmospheric water vapor; they document decreases in the extent of mountain glaciers, snow cover, permafrost, and Arctic sea ice. These changes are broadly consistent with long-understood physics and predictions of how the climate system is expected to respond to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. The changes are inconsistent with explanations of climate change that rely on known natural influences.

Climate models predict that global temperatures will continue to rise, with the amount of warming primarily determined by the level of emissions. Higher emissions of greenhouse gases will lead to larger warming, and greater risks to society and ecosystems. Some additional warming is unavoidable due to past emissions.

Climate change is not expected to be uniform over space or time. Deforestation, urbanization, and particulate pollution can have complex geographical, seasonal, and longer-term effects on temperature, precipitation, and cloud properties. In addition, human-induced climate change may alter atmospheric circulation, dislocating historical patterns of natural variability and storminess.

In the current climate, weather experienced at a given location or region varies from year to year; in a changing climate, both the nature of that variability and the basic patterns of weather experienced can change, sometimes in counterintuitive ways — some areas may experience cooling, for instance. This raises no challenge to the reality of human-induced climate change.

Impacts harmful to society, including increased extremes of heat, precipitation, and coastal high water are currently being experienced, and are projected to increase. Other projected outcomes involve threats to public health, water availability, agricultural productivity (particularly in low-latitude developing countries), and coastal infrastructure, though some benefits may be seen at some times and places. Biodiversity loss is expected to accelerate due to both climate change and acidification of the oceans, which is a direct result of increasing carbon dioxide levels.

While important scientific uncertainties remain as to which particular impacts will be experienced where, no uncertainties are known that could make the impacts of climate change inconsequential. Furthermore, surprise outcomes, such as the unexpectedly rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice, may entail even more dramatic changes than anticipated.

Actions that could diminish the threats posed by climate change to society and ecosystems include substantial emissions cuts to reduce the magnitude of climate change, as well as preparing for changes that are now unavoidable. The community of scientists has responsibilities to improve overall understanding of climate change and its impacts. Improvements will come from pursuing the research needed to understand climate change, working with stakeholders to identify relevant information, and conveying understanding clearly and accurately, both to decision makers and to the general public.”

Adopted by the American Geophysical Union December 2003; Revised and Reaffirmed December 2007, February 2012, August 2013.

Since Governor Patrick proposed his plan to raise revenue for transportation and education, a lot of time has been spent on discussing the merits of the revenue sources he has chosen. In comparison, relatively little time has been devoted to how such money should be spent. The great American humorist Evan Esar once wisely said, “The mint makes it first, it is up to you to make it last.”

Transportation for Massachusetts has worked closely with Representatives Tricia Farley-Bouvier of Pittsfield, Representative Carl Sciortino of Medford, Senator Katherine Clark of Melrose, and others to draft legislation that addresses this side of the coin. In addition, Transportation for Massachusetts helped develop a bill that could prepare Massachusetts for better ways to raise revenue for transportation in the future. In total there are currently three great bills pending that Transportation for Massachusetts helped develop.

Here they are:

An Act relative to transportation investment, regional fairness, and accountability to state policies (HD 3119 introduced by Rep. Farley-Bouvier, Rep. Sciortino, and S. 1670 by Senator Clark) will guide any transportation investments the legislature and the governor agree on to build a financially stable, safer and more modern transportation system in every corner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This bill would:

• Eliminate the unsustainable practice of paying for day-to-day operational costs of our highway system by borrowing through state bonds (currently, MassDOT is spending roughly $1.75 for every $1.00 borrowed because of the interest on the bonds);
• Require that an equitable portion of transportation revenue benefit all regions throughout the Commonwealth;
• Set aside funding for Gateway Cities and environmental justice neighborhoods to plan and design projects that are eligible for federal transportation money. This would allow these communities to invest in projects that residents care most about—such as fixing roads and bridges, improving Regional Transit Authorities, and investing in sidewalks, bike lanes, and other projects that promote transit oriented development and affordable housing;
• Require that transportation projects comply with existing policy goals and objectives that reduce pollution, improve public health, improve land-use coordination and meet our mode shift goals;
• Require that transportation investments over $15 million be analyzed for their impact on our economy, environment, public health, low-income communities and communities of color, pedestrian and bike access, and cost of operations;
• Ensure that sufficient money is available for critical maintenance and safety investments; and
• Support the state’s existing mode shift goal to triple trips made on public transportation, biking and walking across the Commonwealth.

An Act relative to contract assistance for Central Artery debt of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (H. 3141 introduced by Rep. Sciortino) proposes a way to address the crippling debt load at the MBTA by paying down the debt related to the Central Artery Project. The legislation would require that the Commonwealth provide contract assistance from the Commonwealth Transportation Fund for the Big Dig debt held by the MBTA. This money couldn’t come out of funds that are already set to support investments at the MBTA or RTAs.

An Act relative to the establishment of a vehicle mileage user fee pilot program by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (H. 3142 introduced by Rep. Farley-Bouvier and Rep. Sciortino) proposes a voluntary vehicle miles traveled pilot program to identify alternatives and supplements to the gas tax. The pilot seeks 1000 volunteers from the entire Commonwealth to evaluate ways to protect data collected, ensure privacy, and vary pricing based on time of driving, type of road, proximity to transit and vehicle fuel in order to help Massachusetts prepare for the future of transportation revenue.

We are grateful to the legislative sponsors of these bills who share our commitment to creating and sustaining a 21st-century transportation system that serves all people in communities across thes state.

You can also find this post on the Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA) blog.

Vermont keeps working on better ways for people and goods to get where they need to go. The threats from climate change and the high cost of maintaining our travel ways mean we need to be smarter and greener.

In 2011 Vermont’s Governor Peter Shumlin announced that the Circ Highway – an expensive, polluting and ill-conceived highway project outside Burlington — would not be built as planned. In its place a Task Force would work on solutions that won’t bust the budget or foul our air and water.

Over the past year a good part of that work looked at targeted improvements in the immediate Circ area. The result is a study of the network . With this are recommendations that were just adopted by the Task Force to move forward with making improvements to some existing roadways in and around Williston.

A public meeting will be held on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 from 7:30 – 9:00 PM at Williston Town Hall, with a presentation of the findings of the study and the recommendations. The meeting is hosted by the Williston Planning Commission. Refreshments will be served.

CLF has been mostly pleased with this work and encouraged that new and more effective solutions are moving forward. As we noted in comments to the group, a bigger role for transit and roundabouts could cut costs and pollution further.

Come learn about new projects and let the transportation officials working on these projects know what you think.

My son’s third grade class is looking for “juicy” adjectives, and I found one.  Again and again, journalists are describing the Massachusetts Governor’s 21st Century Transportation Plan, which proposes to raise revenue for our chronically underfunded transportation system, as “ambitious.” Not the kind of “ambitious” your mother admired in you when you were a college student, but the “ambitious” that implies hubris. As in asking for a lot. Maybe even too much. Insisting that the Governor’s plan is “ambitious” immediately gets people thinking about how they can cut it down to size. So before the knives come out, having carefully reviewed the plan and understanding the real needs of our transportation system well, let’s take a look at what’s really in there:

• The plan proposes to increase Chapter 90 funding for local street maintenance and associated projects from $200 to $300 million per year.  The Massachusetts Municipal Association, however, just recently estimated the actual need to be $562 million per year.
• Likewise, the Governor’s plan only dedicates 23% of the capital to strategic expansion projects, the rest is all maintenance of roads, bridges and transit infrastructure, replacement of old trains and buses, capacity upgrades, and other costs of the current system.
• More importantly, only 4% of the money set aside in the Governor’s plan for operations is related to strategic expansion projects.
• The plan also assumes that good and necessary transportation projects which have long been recommended by transportation planners and economists, such as the Red-Blue Connector and the Urban Ring, would be left unfunded over the next ten years.

I don’t know whether “reasonable” or perhaps “conservative” would be juicy enough adjectives for my son and his friends, but they would surely be a more accurate description of the Governor’s transportation plan.

There is an epidemic of truth telling underway, globally, nationally and in Massachusetts.  And as hard as some of that truth is to hear it is a very healthy and important exercise.

On the global level the business and political leadership is finally waking up to the deep and systemic threat of a changing climate.  The 2013 Global Risks Assesment from the World Economic Forum describes how business and political leaders see climate risk as the only thing competing with “risk of financial collapse” as the biggest threat facing the world economy:

respondents also identified the failure of climate change adaptation and rising greenhouse gas emissions as among those global risks considered to be the most likely to materialize within a decade. Compared to last year’s survey, the failure to adapt to climate change replaced rising greenhouse gas emissions as the most systemically critical. This change in our data mirrors a wider shift in the conversation on the environment from the question of whether our climate is changing to the questions of “by how much” and “how quickly”.

Meanwhile back in America, the experts preparing the National Climate Impacts Assessment dropped a terrifying draft report on the government and the internet, seeking public comment. That report, summarized in a “Letter to the American People,” described how the changing climate is already visible:

Americans are noticing changes all around them. Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of  extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between.

 The report then goes on to lay out in excruciating detail the impacts of global warming that have been observed and are anticipated by very solid science – laying out the facts in over a thousand pages of text (147 MB PDF) and 32 alarming charts and graphs.

So what does all this have to do with transportation infrastructure, and paying for it through taxes, in Massachusetts?

It matters because the transportation sector is the second largest (or largest depending on what definition of “sector” you use), and fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts. If the Bay State is going to meet the mandate of the Global Warming Solutions Act and live up to its Clean Energy and Climate Plan we will need to invest in a modern and effective transportation system.  The Governor and his Department of Transportation have laid out the formidable challenge of updating a chronically underfunded and neglected system to meet these challenges in a startling clear and powerful document titled, “The Way Forward: A 21st-Century Transportation Plan”.

The job of solving our transportation infrastructure crisis brings together a powerful coalition.  Citizens who just want a transportation system that will let them lives,  the business community who are shouting from the front page of the newspaper about how the weaknesses in our transportation system are undermining our economy and need to be addressed through investment and Climate Hawks who want Massachusetts to again lead the nation and the world.  Leading, as it did at the time of the American Revolution and as it did as the cradle of the movement to abolish slavery, both through our words and thoughts but also lead by example by building a better Commonwealth with the clean and climate-protective transportation system of the future.

Transportation options in nothern tier states like Maine are a critical part of sustainable communities and a low-impact ecncomy. Photo credit: Lawrence Whittemore @ flickr

Let’s face it: population density is a critical factor in any decision to provide transit services. In CLF’s “northern tier” states, where dense populations are limited to a few metropolitan areas, transportation options like bus services  have been slow to develop, leaving people to drive. In asking for directions from one place to another, the response most often is: “You’re on your own.”

In Maine, for example, Portland and surrounding towns and cities are served by a number of independent municipal fixed-route bus systems, an inter-city commuter bus linking Portland with a few cities in southern Maine, and an outlying “on demand” provider. But there is no regular service between Portland and Maine’s second-largest metro area, Lewiston-Auburn, about 40 miles away. Maine’s L/A has a growing immigrant population and plenty of affordable housing, but greater Portland, where housing is expensive, is the locus of most employment expansion.

CLF Maine has been working with the elected leaders of these areas to promote new ways for commuters on this corridor to avoid single-occupancy vehicle commuting, and provide greater connectivity to Portland’s air, bus, and train transportation hub. Recently, at the urging of Auburn’s mayor, Jonathan Labonte and Portland’s mayor Mike Brennan, Portland’s city council voted to explore this option, as reported here.

It’s an encouraging step in the right direction and validates the work of CLF and its partners to create a unified transit authority for the entire southern Maine region. This would promote better customer service and alignment among providers as disparate as a ferry service, Amtrak, and local bus lines, and provide the potential for common investment and bonding authority.

Image courtesy of Dr. RawheaD @ flickr.

For over a decade the Federal government has allowed transit riders to use pre-tax money to pay for their ride to and from work. A benefit of greatest interest and benefit to commuter rail riders who often pay more over $100 a month for their passes.

Unfortunately, due to congressional inaction, in 2012 the tax code subsidized driving to work over transit by allowing employees to spend up to $230 per month in parking expenses tax-free but only allowing $125 per month for public transportation. Attempts to restore parity between these programs foundered in the choppy seas of Congress.

However, in one of the lesser-known elements of the fiscal cliff deal, the two benefits have now been set at equal levels again ($240/month) for 2012 (retroactively, although there are very few people who will be able to take advantage of this) and 2013.  A welcome change that should encourage employees to make the desirable shift to public transportation.

So transit riders who spend more than $125 per month on public transportation should contact their human resources department right away and hop onboard this new benefit. And it is indeed a benefit – we all gain when folks commuting to work leave their cars at home, reducing the amount of pollution traveling our roads and being emitted into the air.  Solid transit infrastructure and service driving and being driven by regular ridership allows families to live with fewer (or no) cars, saving money, reducing pollution and building cooler and better communities.

Imagine this: the Governor of Massachusetts addresses the people of the state about an important issue. From the television screen he looks us all in the eye and discusses . . . transportation infrastructure. Improbable? How about if this happened back in the days of when Boston had 5 commercial channels and one public TV station and a statewide address by a Governor was a very big deal? It may be hard to believe that a subject that wonky and technical could be the focus of that sort of hot and intense attention. But it happened.

The year was 1970 and the Governor was Frank Sargent, the strong leader who years later served as Chairman of the Board of CLF. In that dramatic 1970 speech Governor Sargent accepted a report from a special task force reviewing plans to build a massive network of highways in and around Boston and launched a planning effort that set the course of transportation planning for decades to come. Memorably, Governor Sargent, a former head of the state agency that built and operated highways (then known as the “Department of Public Works”) confessed: “Nearly everyone was sure that highways were the only answer to transportation problems for years to come. But we were wrong.”

The powerful story of that speech, the events that precipitated it and most importantly the massive planning process that followed it is told in The Roads Not Taken, the core story in Turn Signal, the Winter issue of ArchitectureBoston, the quarterly publication of the Boston Society of Architects. And the rest of the issue is well worth your time – both for the eloquent essays, like the story of the activists who fought off the highways that were threatening their community, and the photo essays that document what was saved when the highways were stopped.

The good folks at ArchitectureBoston have done something very important here. The Boston Transportation Planning Review (the “BTPR”) that grew out of that  very unique moment set a powerful precedent for the nation and charted a course that has literally shaped the face and communities of Greater Boston. CLF has had a front-row seat at the implementation process for the BTPR and dove into that process even deeper, unsurprisingly given the importance of the transportation system to our mission and the unique fact that Governor Sargent served as Chair of CLF’s Board of Trustees after leaving office.

As Stephanie Pollack, who worked here at CLF with great distinction for many years, powerfully describes the challenge going forward in an essay in Turn Signal:

Forty years on, the time has come for the Commonwealth to fulfill three of the most important unkept promises: institutionalizing open and visionary planning, healing the scars still left in neighborhoods cleared for the cancelled highway projects, and completing and funding the state’s public transportation system.

This theme of the need to finish the job of the BTPR by providing needed funding to our transportation system and institutionalizing good planning practices was picked up in a recent Boston Globe Op-Ed by former Governor Michael Dukakis and another elder statesman of Massachusetts government who began his career in the BTPR era, Stephen Crosby. Dukakis and Crosby wrote:

With transportation issues again at the top of the Commonwealth’s political agenda, we should look back at those long-ago events not out of nostalgia, but as a roadmap for the equally momentous decisions we face today. After decades of investment, Massachusetts has a vastly improved transportation system that includes an extensive network of highways, the MBTA, and regional transit systems serving virtually every part of the state. But this system and the people and businesses that depend on it are in trouble. From aging bridges in Springfield to the T’s financial woes, the state is paying the price for neglecting the basic maintenance and financial backing that any transportation system requires.

And we can’t just maintain what we’ve already built. For a first-class economic future, the Commonwealth requires a first-class transportation system. As state transportation officials have already spelled out, this future will rely heavily on public transportation and will focus highway funds on maintenance rather than expansion. Massachusetts needs to expand existing transit and build high-speed rail to serve the entire state. With so many projects awaiting action, the Commonwealth once again needs to set honest and rigorous priorities for transportation investment — and create a long-term financing plan to efficiently implement those priorities.

This is indeed the bottom line: building thriving communities will require vision, careful planning and investing in our transportation system. This is not the most fun message (folks may claim otherwise but no one really enjoys slowing down to plan or paying for investments) but it is a solid truth — if we want to keep moving forward we need to build, maintain and operate the system that literally keeps us moving.