U.S. Fossil Energy Boom | ModeShift

Geoff Anderson Takes Helm at Smart Growth America

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 7, 2008January 8, 20082

Don Chen, the very sharp founding executive director of Smart Growth America, announced late last year that he was taking a position with the Ford Foundation. Interesting move for a canny advocate and non-profit executive with the sort of keen entrepreneurial instincts to take an eight-year-old organization from a Washington-based start-up to a national leader in new designs for development. Smart Growth America has a $2 million annual budget and a 10-member staff that includes …

Taut Times For Big Coal

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 6, 2008January 7, 20080

The weight of history is a heavy burden. Just ask the developers of nuclear power, or the manufacturers of toxic farm chemicals, or the makers of cars that aren’t competitive in fuel economy or quality. These industrial sectors, and many more, were reshaped by cultural, political, and economic trends they neither anticipated nor were able to manage. Now that weight appears to be pressing hard on the American coal industry and the utilities that buy …

In Seattle, A Change of Heart on Harbor Highway

by Keith SchneiderDecember 13, 2007December 29, 20070

Cary Moon, the founder of the People’s Waterfront Coalition in Seattle, and one of the country’s premier advocates for alternatives to wasteful highways, wrote me this week about the progress she and her colleagues are making to replaced the elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct with a less expensive, neighborhood conserving, energy efficient alternative. “You might find this joint press release from the governor, the county, and the city interesting,” said Ms. Moon (see pix). “Quite a …

Was Jim Kunstler Right About “The Long Emergency”?

by Keith SchneiderDecember 6, 2007June 18, 20143

Â In 2005, when Jim Kunstler published “The Long Emergency,” Â an unsettling synthesis ofÂ major market trends (peak oil),Â environmental conditions (global warming, water scarcity, disease),Â and what he called the other “converging castastrophes of the 21st century,” IÂ was among the skeptics who was convinced that Kunstler’s analysis was uncharacteristically hyperbolic. Nearly two years later the shine on my bubble of optimism has dulled a bit.Â Essentially, Kunstler predicted that soaring oil prices would generateÂ enormous economic, political, andÂ cultural …

Flip: As Bali Climate Conference Begins, One Man Makes a Multi-Media Difference

by Keith SchneiderDecember 3, 2007December 3, 20070

How useful can imagination and multi-media imagery be in helping to explain the risks of global warming?Â Check out this remarkable interactive map produced by Architecture 2030, the non-profit founded by Ed Mazria, an architect based in New Mexico. Each of the red hot spots identifies a coastal community that would largely disappear in a torrent of tidal flooding caused by the melting ice caps. It’s among the most immediately visual scenarios of a potentialÂ national calamity …

Fresh Food, Rapid Transit Meet In Grand Civic Space

by Keith SchneiderNovember 28, 2007December 4, 20071

Â NEW YORK –Â The day after Thanksgiving it was as though no one had ever eaten a square meal, judging from the lines that formed atÂ Zaro’s Bread Basket or the Little Pie Company or Two Boots Pizza. Like everyplace else in midtown Manhattan, the ground floor, the “dining concourse” Â of Grand Central Station was mobbed. Some of what New York City presents to the world these days is familiar to those of us raised there …

More on Midwest Energy Schizophrenia

by Keith SchneiderNovember 18, 2007November 19, 20071

With as much Midwest fanfare as they daredÂ toÂ muster, nineÂ governors last week announced a regional compact to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. It was the third such multi-state climate change agreement.Â States in the Northeast and the far West have already ratifiedÂ similar pacts. Midwest governors also agreed on an economic development plan forÂ our increasingly wintry and troubled region that focused on promoting biofuels, wind energy, efficiency, conservation, and other measures to reduce costs and clear pollutants. Michigan …

$100 Barrel Oil Nears; Streetcars in Portland

by Keith SchneiderOctober 31, 2007November 1, 20070

Â Two items caught my eye today. World oil prices reached $93 a barrel this week, which is why gasoline at the Wesco down the road is $3.07-a- gallon tonight.Â The other news is the announcement on MondayÂ that city leaders inÂ Oregon want to dramatically expand the number of neighborhoods served by Portland’s spectacularly successful streetcar. The two developments are related, of course, because as fuel prices rise the sanity and fuel-efficiency of streetcar lines makes ever …

New Peak Oil Assessment – Not Good

by Keith SchneiderOctober 23, 2007October 30, 20076

Â Cheap oilÂ was, arguably, the most important driver of prosperity in the industrial world during the 20th century.Â Expensive energy is one, but not the only significant driver of theÂ economic Mode Shift occuring in the 21st.Â Today, just in time for gas prices here in Benzie County to edge close to $3.00 again, and with news of $90 a barrel oil this week, comes the latest independent assessment of global oil stocks. The conclusion that the …

1Sky, Step it Up, and the Citizen-Media Campaign to Prompt Action on Climate

by Keith SchneiderOctober 22, 2007November 9, 20071

[youtube]q71cMRGXx9o[/youtube] When it came to reaching large numbers of people inÂ the 20th century, it was all about mass. Mass marketing. Mass audiences. Mass communication. Journalist David Halberstam published an important book inÂ 1979, The Powers That Be, that documented the influence ofÂ a handful of large publishers — Time, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times — and a broadcast companyÂ — CBS — in setting the cultural, political, and social agendaÂ in the United States.Â One of the …