Climate Change

The California Assembly Transportation Committee passed Assemblyman Mike Feuer's legislation that would allow LA County to place measures on the ballot to fund transportation projects.  A.B. 2321 allows for the county to levy an additional half cent sales tax that would go directly to transportation projects after approval by two-thirds of voters.  The controversial A.B. 2558 will allow the county to increase vehicle fees or the gas tax in the name of fighting climate change with majority support of voters.  Both initiatives could be on the ballot this fall.

As we get closer to next week’s hearing on Mike Feuer’s transportation funding legislation, you can expect to see more and more piling on as newspapers trip over themselves to see who can write the worst editorial.  So far, the Press Enterprise's "Daily Dude" still has that distinction.

This Has Nothing to Do with Global Warming

Last week we saw the Investor's Business Daily advise people that global warming doesn't exist and any tax on gas is a bad idea. IBD isn't the only voice criticising Feuer's legislation, the Press-Enterprise's "Daily Dude" is enraged at the mere thought of increasing the gas tax to help fight global warming but leaves out any substantial discussion to leave space for jokes about pandas mating.

A new report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the non-partisan research branch of the legislative branch of government, ranks each state in terms of their Greenhouse Gas emissions per capita (called GHG Intensity Levels) and releases a dire warning about how far we have to go to even come close to meet the goals set in the Kyoto protocol.

Knowing that environmentally friendly cars aren't the silver bullet that is going to solve all of our transportation problems (cleaner cars will probably increase demand for automobiles and could worsen sprawl and congestion) wasn't enough to stop me from taking the chance to test drive one today at a luncheon held by the Women's Transportation Seminar of Greater Los Angeles. Silver Bullet or not, its pretty cool to drive a car that has water vents instead of a tail pipe.

Following my coverage of the Greenhouse Gas Forum last month, I received a call from a fundraiser for one of the Democratic candidates asking me to put my money where my mouth was and fashion a "green transportation proposal" for the candidates. I'm way behind on getting this done, but I still hope to wrap it up this week. If anyone out there has any suggestions for changes in federal transportation funding/policy that they would like to see, please feel free to post something below...

For as long as the government has been keeping track of such things, the amount of greenhouse gases put into the environment by the transportation sector has grown year by year. Growing at almost the same speed has been the amount of miles people travel in their cars. With CA spending more and more efforts to deal with vehicle emission standards, it is worth noting that one of the easiest ways to reduce Carbon and other Greenhouse emissions is to reduce people's need to drive their cars.