New Development Strategy | ModeShift

Michigan: Where New U.S. Efficiency and Emissions Rules Really Count

by Keith SchneiderMay 26, 2010May 27, 20102

On Friday, May 21, President Obama gathered in the Rose Garden the chiefs of his transportation and environmental departments to take the next big step to leverage federal climate policy and clean energy investment to spur new job growth. The president directed Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to draw up new rules that make heavy trucks much more fuel-efficient and produce less global warming gases. “This standard will …

The Sun, the Wind, and the Promise of Ohioâ€™s Clean Energy Development

by Keith SchneiderJune 29, 2009January 26, 20121

TOLEDO -This worn Lake Erie city is an unlikely launching point for Ohioâ€™s new clean energy economy. Dark storefronts and empty homes in Toledo, like the missing teeth of a tired grin, scar the shrinking city of 295,000 that once declared itself the auto parts capital of the world. Tall grass grows in the cracked asphalt of empty parking lots by closed factories that once made steel and glass and manufactured parts that kept America …

â€œBuilding Sprawl Forever, Those Days Are Over,â€ Obama Declares

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 10, 2009January 26, 20120

Today in Ft. Myers, Florida, President Barack Obama addressed what is arguably the central source of Americaâ€™s energy crisis, climate crisis, and jobs crisis. And that is the way weâ€™ve civilized ourselves. Or to put it more directly, the design of our spread out, energy-wasting, time-consuming, land-deteriorating, sprawling patterns of development. As Larry the Cable Guy would say, we could go on about this all day. A national smart growth movement that grew up in …

Majora Carter and the Green Energy Economy

by Keith SchneiderMarch 18, 2008March 18, 20084

WASHINGTON — Last week in Pittsburgh, Van Jones, the 39-year-old founder of Green For All and one of the people who introduced the idea of “green-collar jobs” to both Democratic presidential candidates, brought more than 600 veteran union and environmental organizers to an awed hush. His address on the potential of the green energy economy to produce millions of jobs and a pathway out of poverty for disadvantaged inner city residents was a tour de …

Green Collar Jobs

by Keith SchneiderMarch 13, 2008March 13, 20082

PITTSBURGH — A long time ago as a young reporter in Pennsylvania I attended a conference in Philadelphia that focused on the ties between jobs, the environment, and the economy. Essentially, said speakers from the state’s environmental community, there were more ties linking working people and environmentalists than hindrances. It was a novel thought then. It’s less so today. In fact, given the rising cost of energy, the threat of global climate change, and dwindling …

More On Taut Times For
Big Coal

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 18, 2008March 16, 20081

Â Sourcewatch today reports on the national campaign to end energy production from plants using coal as a fuel source. “Between 2000 and 2006, over 150 coal plant proposals were fielded by utilities in the United States. By the end of 2007, 10 of those proposed plants had been constructed, and an additional 25 plants were under construction,” said Sourcewatch.: In 2007, 59 coal-fired plants were cancelled, abandoned, or put on hold. The anti-coal forces …

About Those Suburbs and Cities

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 15, 2008February 1, 20080

As the dimensions of the mortgage crisis both expand and get clearer, a new picture is emerging of a nation in pain that simultaneously is coming to new conclusions about what it means to be safe and secure in America. For the first time since post-war federal policy ganged up on cities to promote suburban expansion, cities are rebounding in remarkable ways and suburbs appear to have reached some kind of new limits to growth. …

A Driving Rain in Northern Michigan; Rings Around Southwest’s Deepening Drought

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 8, 2008January 8, 20080

The era of global climate change has produced such rainy and warm conditions in northern Michigan that a winter’s worth of snow and ice melted completely here over the last two days. Meanwhile it’s dry, desperately so, in several huge and significant regions of the country. The striking contrasts are putting strains on the culture and economy in ways we’re only starting to understand. Yesterday I stood in a driving January rain talking to Jim …

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 …