Global Climate | ModeShift

High Speed Rail Cut Stirs Response in California

by Keith SchneiderMay 3, 2007May 5, 200711

Â Â Â PROPOSED CALIFORNIA HIGH SPEED RAIL ROUTE Â California Democrats have elevated building their state’s proposed high speed rail network to the top of their legislative priorities, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian. The Daily Kos, one of the most read blogs in the country, noted the swirl of attention that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stirred with his proposal to cut $2.5 million in state funding to the California High Speed Rail Authority, the agency overseeing …

Fast Trains There; Dreams of Fast Trains Here

by Keith SchneiderMay 2, 2007May 10, 20075

Almost three years after Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that put $2.5 million in the kitty of the California High Speed Rail Authority, which is charged with overseeing the planning of a 700-mile network of fast trains in the nation’s largest state, Schwarzenegger has had a change of heart. The governor’s 2007 budget proposal calls for cutting state appropriations for the Authority, according to an article in the April 29, 2007 edition of …

As Gas Heads to $4, Teachable Moment For Presidential Candidates

by Keith SchneiderApril 27, 2007April 27, 20073

Â We’re one-tenth of a penny short ofÂ $3-a-gallon gas today here in Michigan.Â Energy analysts predict that the price will approach or exceed $4 by mid-summer.Â Welcome to the new world of gas price politics and the emerging new culture of energy efficiency in America.Â Â It’s a whole lot easier to make the case for land and energy-conserving development patterns,Â energy efficiency, and a new economic development strategyÂ in the United States whenÂ consumers’ ire is stoked by the price at …

Email the Sun

by Keith SchneiderApril 25, 2007April 25, 20075

Â New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of a select number of Republican leaders in the United States who makes any sense, turned up at the American Museum of Natural History on Sunday to deliver an Earth Day plan for his city that should be the basic text for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the United States. A full account of the 127 steps the mayor proposed is here. The big pieces …

Build High Speed Rail in the Midwest

by Keith SchneiderApril 23, 2007April 25, 200722

Â Since 1996, nine states in the American Midwest have been gradually inching forward on a proposal to establish a 3,000-mileÂ high speed train network linking 100 of theÂ region’s big and small cities.Â Chicago would serve as the hub of the The Midwest Regional Rail System. Spokes would include Detroit, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Columbus, Des Moines, and many other large cities served by trains capable of traveling 110 mph, which would make the travel time and …

Earth Day is Boomer Day

by Keith SchneiderApril 21, 2007April 21, 20078

Â Perhaps not since the very first one 37 years ago has Earth Day attracted the credibility or theÂ genuinely intense national and global focus that it has this year. Thousands of grassroots celebrations, including the annual march in downtown Traverse CityÂ today, are occurringÂ this weekend.Â In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a moderate Republican, introducedÂ a greenÂ investment plan and policy strategy forÂ transforming the nation’s largest metropolis into an even more transit-friendly,Â energy-efficient, environmentally-sensitive place to live and do …

The Right To Speak and the Duty to Be Right

by Keith SchneiderApril 18, 2007April 18, 20076

For longer than I care to recount Rush Limbaugh has been in my life. My work takes me on the road, as it’s done for three decades now, and sometime in the early 1990s IÂ scanned the AM dial and happened on his show. He was an amusing host then; funny, well-informed, voluble, not nearly the sanctimonious blowhard,Â fabricating tool of the radical establishment right that he’s become.Â RushÂ attractedÂ so many listeners to his noon to 3. p.m. show …

Kunstler on Tom and His Green World

by Keith SchneiderApril 18, 2007April 18, 20070

Jim Kunstler, the author of The Geography of Nowhere andÂ wielder of one of the sharper editorial knives in the country, takes slices out of Tom Friedman’s Sunday New York Times Magazine article on the global green movement in anÂ essay that published on his site at kunstler.com andÂ picked up by Alternet.org.Â The money passage: “Friedman goes on to tout Wal-Mart’s mendacious campaign to “green” up its operations by, among other things, improving the mileage of its …

Tom and His Green World

by Keith SchneiderApril 16, 2007April 29, 20073

Tom Friedman, the New York Times’ great foreign affairs columnist and a former colleague of mine wrote this in a must read Sunday Magazine article yesterday: “After World War II, President Eisenhower responded to the threat of Communism and the â€œred menaceâ€ with massive spending on an interstate highway system to tie America together, in large part so that we could better move weapons in the event of a war with the Soviets. That highway …

More Big Boys Weigh In On Climate Change

by Keith SchneiderApril 6, 2007April 6, 20070

Â Â It was only a matter of time before global warming would become an organizing principle in the United States. Even for the conservative U.S. Supreme Court. It’s all come in a rush. This week, in aÂ 5-4 decision, the High Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority and duty toÂ regulate climate change gases produced by automobiles. The suit, brought in June 2003 by Massachusetts and 12 other states, asked the nine justices …