Martin Kelly Jones sued the MBTA for providing Boston bus riders with real-time arrival information. Photo: MBTA

Lloyd Dobbler, John Cusack’s generation-defining character in Say Anything, notably said, “I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career.”

Martin Kelly Jones lives by a similar creed. He doesn’t make or sell anything. Instead he makes his living by attacking transit agencies for using real-time tracking technologies that he says he owns. It’s a practice known as “patent trolling.” Lloyd Dobbler probably wouldn’t want to be a patent troll either, but Jones has made it into his entire career.

Jones filed his first transit-related patent in 1993, securing rights to the idea of letting parents know when school buses were running late. More than 30 additional patents of similar ideas followed.

Jones doesn’t develop or sell any technology relating to real-time vehicle tracking, but that hasn’t stopped him (and his two offshore firms, ArrivalStar and Melvino Technologies) from punishing anyone who does. To date, he’s filed more than 100 lawsuits against anyone who uses such technology – everyone from Ford to Abercrombie & Fitch to American Airlines to FedEx. He’s one of the top 25 filers of patent infringement suits according to a database maintained by the patent tracking site PriorSmart.com.

Lately, Jones has focused his litigious impulse on transit agencies around the country. According to a brief by the Georgetown Climate Center, “ArrivalStar has brought suit against at least ten transit entities, and at least eight more have received demand letters.” GCC, which convenes the Transportation Climate Initiative, worries that the suits can create a chilling effect, discouraging agencies from employing vehicle tracking technologies. Providing real-time bus arrival information has been shown to increase ridership [PDF], taking cars off the road and reducing vehicle emissions.

Jones’ strategy is not to sue transit agencies for all they’re worth, but to offer them a relatively low-cost way to keep these cases out of court. In fact, not one of his lawsuits has gone all the way through trial. They always end up settling, usually for $50,000 to $75,000, though the demands can go as high as $200,000.

“That’s $75,000 of taxpayer money that’s going into ArrivalStar’s pockets without the validity of the patent ever being challenged,” said attorney Babak Siavoshy, who represents the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “If they make the settlement amount low enough, where the costs and benefits favor settling, then most municipalities are going to settle, and it costs them a lot of money, because the cost of litigation is a big stick.”

Siavoshy and EFF want the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to review Jones’ patents. EFF is looking for what’s known as “prior art”: examples of real-time vehicle tracking being discussed before Jones took out the patent, to show that he wasn’t the first one with the idea. Advocates also think they can prove that the systems Jones patented were too “obvious” or “non-novel” – that they were logical extensions of existing technology. Abstract ideas, with no technology or product attached, are not patentable.

ArrivalStar attorney Anthony Dowell contends that the patents are defensible and that Jones has the right to seek money from the agencies. “Just because an entity is funded with taxpayer dollars doesn’t give them the right to steal property,” said Dowell in a recent interview with ArsTechnica. “My client now owns 34 patents that are being infringed, and what else is he to do?”

The transit agencies I called couldn’t comment, since the case was pending. But the general counsel of the Monterey-Salinas Transit Corporation, David Laredo, said that they’re not challenging the validity of the patents. Their strategy is to assert that the vendor who sold the technology to the transit agency (Trapeze, a spinoff of Siemens) does hold a license from ArrivalStar, and if they don’t, that’s the vendor’s problem, not theirs.

To date, ArrivalStar has reached settlements with the city of Fairfax, Virginia; Boston’s MBTA; New York City’s MTA; Chicago’s Metra, and the Maryland Transit Authority. Suits are pending against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s PATH; King County, Washington; the Monterey-Salinas Transit Corporation; the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority; and Portland’s TriMet.

In the past, transit agencies may not have talked to each other about these lawsuits because Jones reportedly insists on a nondisclosure agreement as part of the settlement. He only brings a few suits at a time, using a divide-and-conquer strategy, taking care not to extract so much from these public entities that it would incentivize them to pursue litigation. The recent focus of Jones’ lawsuits on transit agencies has inspired Georgetown Climate Center and the American Public Transit Association to get these entities to communicate more and to develop a more cohesive strategy. So far, though, Jones’ strategy has been working.

But since Jones brought a suit against the U.S. Postal Service last November, the federal government is now affected. His suit charges the post office with violating his patents with its package tracking services.

Since U.S.P.S. is a federal agency, the Department of Justice is now involved, defending the post office against ArrivalStar’s claims by saying the patents are invalid and that no infringement occurred. Advocates and attorneys are trying to persuade the feds to broaden their interest in ArrivalStar from just U.S.P.S. to all the transit agencies that have been affected.

After all, the transit agencies, by and large, bought the GPS tracking devices with federal dollars, in pursuit of federal transportation goals. Publicly available real-time transit information — on smartphone apps, transit agency websites, or on screens in bus stops and train stations — makes transit a more attractive option, with the potential to reduce congestion and pollution. SAFETEA-LU, the transportation authorization the country is still (amazingly) working under, specifically requires states to identify ways to deliver real-time transit information to the public.

Georgetown Climate Center Director Vicki Arroyo told Streetsblog that she’s had some “early but hopeful discussions” with senior U.S. DOT officials.

“Earlier, some of the more junior people within the federal government were not keen to take this on, saying they didn’t have a dog in the fight — now they do,” she said, referring to the suit against the postal service. “We’re hoping they won’t just look at this as a one-off matter. There’s a much higher public stake here.”

Here's what the administration wants you to know about its energy security efforts: It may have no impact on gas prices, but oil companies are drilling away! Source: White House

It’s been almost a year since the Obama administration released its Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future, but more importantly, it’s been two weeks since Energy Secretary Steven Chu got chewed out for not caring enough about lowering gas prices. And Newt Gingrich, whose presidential campaign is slipping into irrelevancy, can still do some political damage with his claim that he could bring gas prices down to $2.50.

So, the administration is taking this opportunity to show off what it’s done to reduce the nation’s dependence on oil with its one-year progress report on the blueprint.

Two weeks ago, Chu said something in a Congressional hearing that vaguely hinted that reducing gas prices so Americans could continue to guzzle fuel in SUVs was not actually his top priority. Here’s how it went: Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-MS) was grilling Chu about what the department was doing to lower gas prices. Nunnelee wasn’t impressed by Chu’s talk of developing “cost-effective” alternatives, like new battery technologies and natural gas – he wanted relief from high prices now.

Nunnelee started to ask, “But is the overall goal to get our price —”, but didn’t finish the sentence before Chu replied, “No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy.”

It’s the “no” that killed Chu. The point he was making is unassailable – that the administration is looking far beyond day-to-day price fluctuations and toward real economic and environmental sustainability. But all conservatives heard was the “no” and went around proclaiming that President Obama’s energy secretary is still trying to “figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” as he advocated in an interview with The Wall Street Journal before assuming his current position. (He has since repudiated that idea.)

The revised blueprint comes at the perfect time to bring home what Chu actually meant in his comments to Nunnelee. But it’s not all the rosy picture environmentalists might have wished for.

The first thing the report highlights is the fact that domestic oil production has increased every year Obama has been in office, reaching the highest level since 2003. Then it goes on to boast about the administration’s advances in natural gas, much of which is extracted through an extremely dangerous and dirty process known as fracking. All this means oil imports are down to 45 percent of U.S. consumption, from 57 percent when Obama took office. That’s not so exciting when you realize what it’s being replaced with.

The blueprint update includes a section on transportation, which mainly focuses on clean fuels, long the focal point of the president’s green jobs agenda. Obama tightened fuel economy standards for trucks, supported research into electric-car technology, and invested in biofuels and, again, natural gas as alternatives to oil. All of these innovations, of course, aren’t enough to make up for the wastefulness of car dependence.

The report does include a section on livability, which mostly focuses on building efficiency but also discusses TIGER and other administration efforts to improve transit options. President Obama has recommended permanently authorizing TIGER with an allocation of $3.4 billion over the next six years, as well as doubling transit funding over the last reauthorization. The report boasts about the administration’s increased capital construction grants for transit agencies, its State of Good Repair funding, and its investment in zero-emissions buses.

The administration is justifiably proud of its call for the elimination of $4 billion of fossil fuel industry subsidies. But the report exaggerates U.S. leadership on international climate efforts, gives a cringeworthy shout-out to the domestic nuclear industry, and includes an embarrassingly short shout-out to high-speed rail and Amtrak’s skyrocketing ridership.

The section on the future, meanwhile, is notably short on transit and smart growth. It’s mostly about ARPA-E’s research into new, “clean” technologies. It even seeks to emulate “the concentration of brainpower and resources that defined the Manhattan Project.” What if we already have all the technology we need and we just need the will to switch to a healthier, more sociable, more sustainable lifestyle?

Meanwhile, in a companion infographic extravanganza, the White House is emphasizing that its policies don’t actually impact gas prices – contrary to Gingrich’s claim. The price of oil is set on the world market, dictated by world events like the Arab spring and the financial crisis, the White House asserts – and is driven up further by greedy oil companies. And domestic drilling – while a cornerstone of the administration’s “energy security” policy, as shown by the blueprint – “will never meet our energy needs.” Check out the infographic here.

Americans favor transportation policies that would address climate change, such as increased transit and bike lanes, according to a new poll. Photo: Green Chip Stocks

A representative survey of 1,010 adults found that 71 percent think that global warming should be a “very high,” “high” or “medium priority” for the president and Congress. Americans overwhelmingly support policy changes that would help address the issue, the poll found. Participants favored developing clean energy sources by a more than 9-to-1 ratio.

“We find very strong bipartisan support for a variety of climate and energy policies in this country,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change. “It runs contrary to what you might expect looking at, for instance, the current make up of Congress and the Republican candidates for president.”

Transportation and planning policies to avert global warming also enjoyed wide approval among survey participants: 77 percent said they support adding bike lanes to roads, and 80 percent said they support expanding public transportation service.

This was true even among self-identifying Republicans. Some 74 percent of Republican respondents said they supported bike lanes and 80 percent signaled their support for increased public transit availability.

Majorities also supported expanding mixed-use zoning, reducing sprawl and promoting energy efficient apartments over single-family homes.

Republicans were more evenly split on issues of zoning and sprawl; 59 percent said they opposed zoning for mixed-uses in order to reduce the need for a car. However, Republicans were split 50-50 on using zoning to reduce sprawl and commute times.

While Americans were generally supportive of climate change policy fixes, their commitment did not go as far when their wallets entered the equation. For example, poll respondents generally favored expanding public transit options. But when asked if they would be willing to support a 10 cent fee per gallon of gas to support transit, they were overwhelmingly opposed, Leiserowitz said. Americans are also diametrically opposed to tax increases of all types. Those polled rejected the idea of a carbon tax, even if the revenues would be returned in the form of income tax reductions.

But that doesn’t mean Americans are entirely unwilling to bear some costs to support clean energy, Leiserowitz said. For example, when asked if they would support a a 20 percent renewable energy requirement for utility companies, Americans sign on, even if they are told such a regulation would cost them an additional $100 annually in energy costs.

“There is some element of wishful thinking here.” Leiserowitz said. “It’s not that they’re just against paying more; people support increased energy costs. For whatever reason there’s a taboo around paying at the gas pump that people just don’t like. They also don’t like the word ‘tax.’”

Another interesting finding was that public prioritization of federal action on global warming has been declining since 2008, when Yale began its poll. That is mainly due to the public’s increased concern about the economy, Leiserowtz said.

“People are much more worried about losing their job or their house,” he said. “The threat of climate change just can’t compare.”

You spend your life looking climate apocalypse in the eye and knowing that human behavior needs to change to avert catastrophe. But are humans changing their behavior? Not fast enough.

And why not? You’ve started carpooling and weatherized your house and it wasn’t so hard. So why don’t your neighbors get it? Why aren’t they doing anything?

Pictures of polar bears on melting ice floes may tug at the heartstrings but they won't change people's climate-damaging ways, according to behavioral scientists.

These questions have unleashed a new field of climate change-related behavioral science. I write now from its epicenter: the Garrison Institute symposium on Climate, Cities and Behavior in New York’s Hudson Valley. The idea is to figure out what mental processes are at work when people decide to change something in their own lives for the greater good – specifically, for the environment. After all, cities can set emissions reductions targets all they want but they need people to actually reduce their emissions to meet their goals. And no one can force your neighbors to turn off their air conditioners. They’ll have to make that decision themselves.

Here are some strategies, from the behavioral scientists to you:

Attitudes follow behavior, not the other way around.

Here’s what we wish would happen: Joe Schmo stumbles upon a brilliantly researched and written article in, oh I don’t know, Streetsblog, for example, that convinces him that climate change is real and dangerous and that he needs to do something. So he ditches his car and starts riding a bike to work. That’s an unlikely scenario, sadly. Maybe it’s because people get defensive when their lifestyle is criticized before they’re ready to give it up. Anyway, the more likely scenario is that Joe Schmo already rides a bike, maybe for exercise, maybe because he lives in a compact city that doesn’t require a car. When someone comes around trying to gather support for green cities, he gets on board – he already feels like he’s got skin in that game.

People aren’t scared enough yet by climate change.

We’re wired to feel real fear and urgency around threats that are present right now. Though the effects of climate change are being felt already all around us, from extreme weather to damaged crops, it still lacks the urgency needed to catalyze immediate and dramatic action.

When people do get scared, they get overwhelmed.

Once they do comprehend the magnitude of the crisis, people often feel the problem is too big and they’re too powerless, and anything they do will be a drop in the ocean, so why bother? Advocates have been able to turn this around by focusing on local climate initiatives with achievable goals that will impact public health and the environment at the local level — and will give those feeling powerless a sense that they have, indeed, made a difference.

People only want to make a change if they stand to lose something.

You can tell people they’d save $774 a month by taking transit instead of driving and they’ll be unmoved. But if you tell people they’re losing $774 a month by driving instead of taking transit, they’ll pay attention. Home energy auditors won’t just tell you that your home could be more efficient, they’ll tell you the leaks in your walls are like having a basketball-shaped hole in the side of your house where cold air comes in (and money goes out).

People cling to the status quo.

You know this already. They complain about changes to their street infrastructure when cities put in bike lanes and other safety measures that might slow traffic down or repurpose parking spaces. Elke Weber of Columbia Business School said there was initially huge public opposition to indoor smoking bans in New York and elsewhere, but people quickly grew to appreciate the bans once they were in place – and were the new “status quo.” There’s also something known as “query theory,” which says that people tend to generate more arguments in favor of the first option put before them – the way the top name on the ballot gets an unfair advantage – and the status quo is always the first thing.

People go along with the default option.

This dovetails with the love of the status quo, of course, but it goes beyond that. Weber said that when people registering for a drivers license have to check a box saying that yes, they want to be an organ donor, about 70 percent opt in. But if the default is that you’re an organ donor unless you check a box saying you opt out, the organ donor rate rises to 93 percent. So if the standard apartment comes with its own parking space, with the price included, it makes it easy for people to have a car. But if someone needs to pay separately for the space and he feels the cost, he’s more likely to decide having a car is a hassle.

Pick your venue carefully.

Studies show that people vote differently if the polling place is a public school or a church. The two venues activate very different values. In Las Vegas, where casinos are sometimes used as polling places, voters are surrounded by images and symbols of risk, self-interest, and materialism, and those are the values they’ll more likely vote for. Behavior also changes depending on whether people are making decisions in a group or alone. In a group, they’re reminded that their actions have an impact on others, and they’re reassured that they’re not the only ones deciding to make a personal sacrifice for the greater good. They’d feel like a sucker if they were the only one – but if the whole group is doing it, they feel like part of a team.

People love tracking their efficiency performance on the dashboard of their Priuses. Photo: Nova Geoblog

Be careful with buzzwords.

Studies found that people reacted much more favorably to the idea of carbon offsets than carbon taxes. While about 60 percent of people agreed to pay for a carbon offset when buying a plane ticket, the number dropped precipitously, especially among Republicans, when asked to contribute a voluntary tax. And perhaps if the offset fee were included in the price and consumers had to opt out of paying it, payment rates would go up.

Give people goals.

People love competing, even with themselves. Weber calls them “mental accounts” – personal carbon footprint calculators or smart metering technology that gives you a smiley face when it’s a good time to do the laundry. Fuel efficiency displays on hybrid cars make drivers positively obsessed with maximizing their efficiency – it almost becomes a video game (which they play, unfortunately, while they’re driving, creating its own set of hazards). Many urban sustainability directors spoke at the Garrison program about their own efforts to reduce their cities’ carbon footprints by encouraging more efficient behavior among the businesses and residents of their cities, and many of them spoke to the effectiveness of certification programs that help people set and achieve goals. They also said that it becomes a game, with people reaching to get those last ten points to get their certification.

Peer pressure is your friend.

If your friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you? Of course not. But if they’re all zipping around town on their bikes and you’re dragging your beast of a car around with you, you might start re-thinking your choices. Even more persuasive, perhaps, is if the people you wish were your friends are zipping around on bikes. Weber said that when people know that the majority of their peers feel a certain way, they’re heavily swayed in that direction.

I’d add to that my own belief that the best way to get people to make a change is to show them that by making that change, they’ll be part of a community they want to be a part of – whether an actual group or an identity. If they think the community of the car-free is all losers who never got their drivers license, they won’t want to join that community. If they think the car-free are hip, independent urbanites with active lifestyles, they’ll be more likely to consider it – but that’s not an identity that works for everyone either. Maybe you think riding to work in spandex and an aggressive stance on your racing bike is awesome, but lots of people aren’t going to feel comfortable until they see other people in work clothes riding around in upright cruisers with a basket on the front.

People like to be told what to do.

They hate rules, laws and regulations trying to control their behavior – that’s the fastest way to get on a libertarian’s bad side – but they like having people they respect make clear what’s expected of them. It’s more effective than showing them data to convince them of the rationality of your position or trying to scare them into acting to avert climate disaster. It’s the “What Would Jesus Do” method, says Weber – or what would the Green Party do, if that’s a more apt model – or what would Angelina do? It needs to be concrete and be modeled by someone they respect.

These aren’t tricks for social engineering – they’re not much more than marketing tools. Effective political movement leaders and Madison Avenue have known these things for decades. They’re useful tools for sustainability advocates and transportation reformers to deploy too, in being more effective communicators with people. And to make the changes we need to make for the sake of our cities and our planet, we’ll need to be a lot more effective and change a lot more minds – and behaviors.

While fuel saving technologies are expected to reduce emissions from passenger vehicles by 12 percent over the next 20 years, emissions from freight trucks are expected to rise 20 percent over that time. The CEC says this presents not just an environmental problem but an economic one: how can the NAFTA countries stay competitive when they’re spending so much money on fuel?

Photo: Trek Freight Services

The best practices on North American rail and roadways come down to efficiency — largely fuel efficiency. In its report, “Destination Sustainability: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Freight Transportation in North America,” the CEC cautions the US, Canada and Mexico against failing to adopt fuel-saving innovations. Regions such as Europe and Asia threaten to erode North America’s competitive advantage if immediate and sustained action is not taken to streamline and green the flow of goods across the three nations.

The current fuel performance of North America’s freight fleet is cause for concern. According to the CEC, freight-related emissions grew 74 percent between 1990 and 2008, compared with 33 percent from passenger vehicles.

The CEC’s advisory council, representing stakeholders from industry, academia, the environmental sector and government, produced the following recommendations, among others:

• Introducing carbon pricing
• Integrating land use and transportation decisions
• Providing incentives to promote fuel-saving technologies
• Training drivers in fuel-efficient practices
• Reducing waiting periods at borders
• Promoting fuel efficient modes
• Improving collaboration and data retention among the participating governments
• Developing a robust funding mechanism for infrastructure improvement
• Promoting better alignment of existing infrastructure

CEC Executive Director Evan Lloyd urged the US, Canada and Mexico to act swiftly to develop an “integrated, intelligent freight transportation,” otherwise there could be dire consequences.

“Without such a vision, and the transformational investments that go with it, emissions from freight transportation will continue to increase and the NAFTA countries will risk losing their competitive edge,” Lloyd said. “But the report identifies clear opportunities, especially in light of infrastructure-related stimulus investment, to get this right.”

Image © Peter Calthorpe & Marianna Leuschel

Editor’s note: Today we are very pleased to begin a five-part series of excerpts from Peter Calthorpe’s book, “Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change.” Keep reading this week and next to learn how you can win a copy of the book from Island Press.

I take as a given that climate change is an imminent threat and potentially catastrophic—the science is now clear that we are day by day contributing to our own demise. In addition, I believe that an increase in fuel costs due to declining oil reserves is also inevitable. The combination of these two global threats presents an economic and environmental challenge of unparalleled proportions—and, lacking a response, the potential for dire consequences. These challenges will in turn bring into urgent focus the way our buildings, towns, cities, and regions shape our lives and our environmental footprint. Beyond a transition to clean energy sources, I believe that urbanism—compact, diverse, and walkable communities—will play a central role in addressing these twin threats. In fact, responding to climate change and our coming energy challenge without a more sustainable form of urbanism will be impossible.

Many deny either the timing or the reality of these challenges. They argue that global demand for oil will not outstrip production and that climate change is overstated, nonexistent, or somehow not related to our actions. Setting aside such debates, my book, “Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change,” accepts the premise that both climate change and peak oil are pressing realities that need aggressive solutions.

Responding to climate change and our coming energy challenge without a more sustainable form of urbanism will be impossible.

The two challenges are deeply linked. The science tells us that if we are to arrest climate change, our goal for carbon emissions should be just 20 percent of our 1990 level by 2050. That, combined with a projected U.S. population increase of 130 million people,¹ means each person in 2050 would need to be emitting on average just 12 percent of his or her current greenhouse gases (GHG)—what I will call here the “12% Solution.”² If we can achieve the 12% Solution to offset climate change, we will simultaneously reduce our fossil-fuel dependence and demonstrate a sustainable model of prosperity. Such a low-carbon future will inherently reduce oil demands at rates that will allow a smoother transition to alternative fuels—and the next economy.

In addition to these twin environmental challenges, the United States has two other systemic forces to reckon with in the next generation: an aging population and a more diverse middle class with less wealth. We are now a country in which a third of the population are baby boomers or older and less than a quarter are traditional families with kids. And for the past decade, median income has actually fallen; in fact, “the typical American household saw its inflation-adjusted income decline by more than $2,000 between 1999 and 2008.”³ So, at the same time that we must respond to climate change and rising energy costs, we must also adjust our housing stock to fit a changing demographic and find a more frugal form of prosperity.

Such a transformation will require deep change, not just in energy sources, technology, and conservation measures but also in urban design, culture, and lifestyles. More than just deploying green technologies and adjusting our thermostats, it will involve rethinking the way we live and the underlying form of our communities. The good news is that our environmental, social, and economic challenges have a shared solution in urbanism. Shaping regions that reduce oil dependence simultaneously reduces carbon emissions, costs less for the average household, and creates healthy, integrated places for our seniors: one solution for multiple challenges.

The urban solution involves both technology and design. For example, we will need to dramatically reduce the number of miles we drive as well as develop less carbon intensive vehicles. It will mean living and working in buildings that demand significantly less energy as well as powering them with renewable sources. It will involve the kinds of food we eat, the kinds of homes we build, the ways we travel, and the kinds of communities we inhabit. It will certainly involve giving up the idea of any single “silver bullet” solution (whether solar or nuclear, conservation or carbon capture, adaptation or mitigation) and understanding that such a transformation will involve all of the above—and, perhaps most important, that they are all interdependent.

In fact, the viability of new technologies and clean energy sources will depend on the success of our conservation efforts at the regional, community, and building scales, which in turn will be determined by our basic lifestyles and the urban forms that support our changing demographics. The key will be designing the right mix of strategies, a “whole systems” rather than a “checklist” approach to climate change, energy, and economics.

There are three interdependent approaches to these nested challenges: lifestyle, conservation, and clean energy. Lifestyle involves how we live—the way we get around, the size of our homes, the foods we eat, and the quantity of goods we consume. These depend in turn on the type of communities we build and the culture we inhabit—degrees of urbanism. Conservation revolves around technical efficiencies—in our buildings, cars, appliances, utilities, and industrial systems—as well as preserving the natural resources that support us all, our global forests, ocean ecologies, and farmlands. These conservation measures are simple, they save money, and they are possible now. The third fix, clean energy, is what we have been most focused on: new technologies for solar, wind, wave, geothermal, biomass, and even a new generation of nuclear power or fusion. These energy sources are sexy, they are relatively expensive, and they will be available sometime soon. All three approaches will be essential, but here I focus on the first two—lifestyle and conservation—because they are, in the end, our most cost effective and easily available tools.

Perhaps just as important as greenhouse gas reductions and oil savings is the fact that urbanism generates a fortuitous web of co-benefits—it is our most potent weapon against climate change because it does so much more.

The intersection of lifestyle and conservation is urbanism. Consider that in the United States industry represents 29 percent of our GHG emissions; agriculture and other non-energy-related activities, just 9 percent; and freight and planes, another 9 percent. This 47 percent total represents the GHG emissions of the products we buy, the food we eat, the embodied energy of all our possessions, and all the shipping involved in getting them to us. The remaining 53 percent depends on the nature of our buildings and personal transportation system—the realm of urbanism.⁴As a result, urbanism, along with a simple combination of transit and more efficient buildings and cars, can deliver much of our needed GHG reductions.

Perhaps just as important as greenhouse gas reductions and oil savings is the fact that urbanism generates a fortuitous web of co-benefits—it is our most potent weapon against climate change because it does so much more. Urbanism’s compact forms lead to less land consumed and more farmland, parks, habitat, and open space preserved. A smaller urban footprint results in less development costs and fewer miles of roads, utilities, and services to build and maintain, which then leads to fewer impervious surfaces, less polluted storm runoff, and more water directed back into aquifers.

More compact development leads to lower housing costs as lower land and infrastructure costs affect sales prices and taxes. Urban development means a different mix of housing types—fewer large single-family lots; more bungalows and townhomes—but in the end provides more housing choices for a more diverse population. It means less private space but more shared community places—more efficient and less expensive overall. Urbanism is more suited to an aging population, for whom driving and yard maintenance are a growing burden, and for working families seeking lower utility bills and less time spent commuting.

Urbanism leads to fewer miles driven, which then leads to less gas consumed and less dependence on foreign oil supplies, less air pollution, less carbon emissions. Fewer miles also leads to less congestion, lower emissions, lower road construction and maintenance costs, and fewer auto accidents. This then leads to lower health costs because of fewer accidents and cleaner air, which is reinforced by more walking, bicycling, and exercising, which in turn contributes to lower obesity rates. And more walking leads to more people on the streets, safer neighborhoods, and perhaps stronger communities.

The feedback loops go on. More urban development means more compact buildings— less energy needed to heat and cool, lower utility bills, less irrigation water, and, once again, less carbon in the atmosphere. This then leads to lower demands on electric utilities and fewer new power plants, which again results in less carbon and fewer costs. As Bucky Fuller exhorted us, urbanism is inherently “doing more with less.” Or, as Mies van der Rohe famously asserted, “Less is more.”

But for the past fifty years, our economy and society have been operating on the premise that “more is more” and “bigger is better”: bigger homes, bigger yards, bigger cars with bigger engines, bigger budgets, bigger institutions, and, finally, bigger energy sources. In contrast, urbanism naturally tends toward a “small is beautiful” philosophy. This then involves trade-offs: less private space but perhaps a richer public realm; less private security but perhaps a safer community; less auto mobility but more convenient transit. Compact development does mean smaller yards, fewer cars, and less private space for some. On the other hand, it can dramatically reduce everyday costs and leave more time for family and community. The question is not which is right and which is wrong or that it must be all one way or the other—urbanism works best with blends. The question is how such trade-offs fit with our emerging demographics, our desires, our needs, our economic means—and perhaps our sense of what a good life really is.

From Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change, Chapter 1, by Peter Calthorpe. Copyright © 2011 Peter Calthorpe. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.

Notes:

1. U.S. Census Bureau Population Division, “2008 National Population Projections: Summary Table 1,” U.S. Census Bureau. (accessed February 10, 2010).

2. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990–2007” (Washington, DC: EPA, 2009), ES-17.

3. The State of Metropolitan America, Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. (accessed June 22, 2010).

4. Author’s analysis of data from the World Resources Institute, “US GHG Emissions Flow Chart.” (accessed April 1, 2010).

Compact urbanism can work in the suburbs, like Bethesda, Maryland. Image: Maryland Sierra Club

“Growing Wealthier: Smart Growth, Climate Change, and Prosperity” starts with the simple assertion that accessibility – “bringing origins and destinations closer together” – is, after all, “the very reason that cities exist.”

“You want to have your choices nearby so you can meet your daily needs as efficiently as possible,” said report author Steve Winkelman.

By separating residential areas, commercial services, and places of employment, suburban planning requires that people travel long distances to meet their needs. All those miles used to be viewed as a measure of economic progress.

“[Vehicle Miles Traveled] and GDP have grown concurrently since World War II and in lock step for much of that time,” the report states. But around 1996, GDP began growing faster than VMT, and, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “the importance of travel as a component of the U.S. economy has been declining since the early 1990s.”

Indeed, CCAP’s research shows that states with lower VMT per capita tend to have higher GDP per capita.

Excessive travel is more likely to be an economic detriment than a benefit. Ironically, GDP counts as economic productivity many of the counterproductive aspects of motorized travel, such as fuel consumed waiting in traffic jams, oil spills, vehicle repairs and medical treatment resulting from collisions, costs of air pollution, and defense operations to protect U.S. petroleum interests around the world. In fact, many costs of sprawling land use patterns (particularly increased infrastructure) themselves boost GDP figures.

The authors also urge us to distinguish between economically productive travel and what they call “empty miles.” It’s like differentiating between empty calories and nutrition.

“A lot of driving that most people are doing nowadays is not helping them economically,” said report author Chuck Kooshian. “Although the VMT has been going up per capita, as we’re making trips to the grocery store five miles to get some milk, and we’re taking the kids out driving to go trick-or-treating, and driving to the park to walk our dog, this is not helping the average household economically. It might be helping the Saudis.”

From the Center for Housing Policy's 2006 report, “A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families.” Is the strangulation of the suburbs by rising transportation costs really contributing to GDP?

Economic benefits from walkable, bikable neighborhoods aren’t calculated by GDP alone. They’re also calculated in the drop in health care costs when people get more exercise. The authors cite a study in Seattle, where researchers found that with every five percent increase in the overall level of walkability, there was a 32 percent increase in walking or biking, and Body Mass Index was reduced.

Not to mention the economic impact of the real estate boom in compact urban areas, relative to the suburbs. The authors say that in Denver, homes within a half-mile of stations on the Southeast light rail line rose in value an average of 17.6 percent between 2006 and 2008, while home values in the rest of Denver declined by an average 7.5 percent.

Will driving 2.93 trillion miles again next year help us become healthier and wealthier? Not likely.

The CCAP report focuses largely on economic benefits of compact development, but it also addresses climate change – and comes to the opposite conclusions that Pew came to in its report touting clean car technology as the only viable avenue toward carbon reduction.

If the U.S. is to meet the goal of reducing emissions by 80 percent by 2050, CCAP says clean car technologies like those lauded in the Pew report won’t be sufficient. Public transportation can help: mass transit produces, according to a study by APTA, about 45 percent less carbon dioxide per passenger mile than travel by private vehicles. But in the end, we have to give people the option to drive less. And not even that much less: “The actual drop in miles driven per person that is required is relatively modest: We calculate that a 9 percent reduction in per capita VMT (roughly equivalent to each person driving 2.5 miles less per day) will be sufficient.”

A few weeks ago, we linked to a New York Times article about Republican candidates who want to kill high speed rail plans in their states. Exhibit A: Meg Whitman, running for California governor.

Jerry Brown holds a 10-point lead over Meg Whitman heading into the final week of the election. Image: CBS Los Angeles

Her Republican predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, spearheaded the plan to build a high speed line from San Francisco to Los Angeles. He wants it so badly he even shrugged off accountability and killed a provision that would have tied funding for the rail program to improvements in its business plan.

And he cheered earlier this week when the Federal Railroad Administration granted the rail project $902 million, on top of $2.3 billion in stimulus money California was awarded in January. California voters already approved $10 billion in bonds for the project, but the state is still a long way away from raising the entire $45 billion budget for the rail line.

But the Governator is on his way out, and this is the part where you get to Choose Your Own Adventure. Will it be eBay CEO Meg Whitman? Or the man with the longest résumé in California politics, Attorney General Jerry Brown?

Whitman has let it be known that she’d axe the high speed rail program. In July, a campaign spokesperson put that issue to rest: “Meg believes the state cannot afford the costs associated with high-speed rail due to our current fiscal crisis.”

Meanwhile, Brown is on record supporting high speed rail from as far back as 1982, when, as governor, he signed the law creating a high speed rail project (which never came to fruition.) His campaign website makes clear that he “support[s] high speed rail as a clean, fast, accessible alternative to air transportation and long in-state automobile trips.” Governor Brown also appointed a woman as Caltrans director who was two decades ahead of her time in supporting HOV lanes – to the horror of California drivers.

Brown also supported transit-oriented development as mayor of Oakland (I told you he’s held every job in California!), successfully increasing density in that city. He still wants to offer incentives to developers for building near transit hubs. And he says the state – and the feds – are going to have to pony up to fill in the cash gaps of municipalities, like Los Angeles, that are building transit systems.

And funding, as we know, is always an issue. Whitman opposes a gas tax increase. Brown hasn’t committed one way or another, and Whitman has tried to remind voters that he raised the gas tax by two cents 30 years ago. It’s true – the LA Times said the move was designed to “keep the state’s highway system from going broke.”

Are these high speed trains in California's future? Depends what happens November 2. Image: LA Visions

And this is California, after all, so there are always a couple Props circulating around at election time. This time there’s Prop 22 and Prop 23, both with serious consequences for transportation and the environment.

Prop 22 would bar the state form raiding county and city budgets to balance its own. Transit funding is one of many important programs that get starved when these raids happen. Whitman says she supports the ban. Brown hasn’t stated a position one way or another, as far as we can tell.

Prop 23, meanwhile, is an initiative funded by oil companies that would effectively put the brakes on California’s landmark climate change law, AB 32 which would bring the state’s emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020. Prop 23 would stop implementation of AB 32 until unemployment had been below 5.5 percent for at least a year. (The state’s unemployment rate, now 12.4 percent, hasn’t dipped below 5.5 for three years.)

Oil companies seem to be the only backers this initiative has (except Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, who’s running against Environment Committee Chair Barbara Boxer, who looks like she’s going to keep her job, but it’s been a nailbiter.) Brown has come out squarely against Prop 23, and Whitman has tried to carve out some middle ground, saying she’s against it but she does want to delay implementation of AB 32 for a year. She’s called AB 32 a “job killer.”

They’re both for wind and solar power – how could you live in California and not see the value in harnessing sunshine? – but Whitman’s support for oil drilling soured only after the BP spill. Meanwhile, Brown launched his campaign at a solar energy factory.

Perhaps Brown’s most significant position, though, is his strong track record of trying to curb sprawl. His own father, as governor of California, oversaw the building of massive new highway projects, part of the 1960s migration to suburbia. But Governor Brown, Junior, has tried to bring people back to the urban core. In a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal, he said:

No thoughtful person can really question the fact that we must grow smarter, with more efficient and less polluting transportation. Nor, in a time of escalating food prices, can we afford to wantonly plow over irreplaceable farmland. That is why I make no apologies for promoting efficient building standards, renewable energy, and communities that work for people and businesses, not just oil companies.

He’s in favor of restricting highway funds to communities that promote sprawl, and as Attorney General he’s gone so far as to sue them. In 2007, “Brown joined an environmental law suit against fast-growing San Bernardino County because its general plan didn’t take into account the greenhouse gas emissions that result from sprawl development,” Planetizen reported. And this year, he’s taken on the town of Pleasanton, which has put a cap on housing construction despite the fact that job growth is high. Forcing people to live far from work has meant a 46 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled.

These positions make Brown a hero to many urbanists (and a villain to some who think he’s “waging war on the suburbs.”) But the winds seem to blowing in his favor. After a hard-fought, neck-and-neck race, Brown has amassed a 10-point lead over Whitman in the final week.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Photo: LV City Life

What happened to the idea of including language to support smart growth and invest in transit? After Reid said last week that the Democrats didn’t have the votes for a comprehensive energy bill, advocates expected a watered-down version. But some still hoped for a chance to offer amendments drawn from the Oil Independence Bill introduced by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and others last month.

Transit advocates are less sanguine now. “It seems likely that Senator Reid will probably not allow amendments to the bill,” said Smart Growth America policy associate Stephanie Potts. “We’ll wait and see.”

Her comment was echoed by Colin Peppard, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s deputy director of federal transportation policy. “It’s a pretty limited package,” he said. “It seems like the opportunity for moving something broader and more meaningful has been closed off for the time being.”

But “there are still plenty of opportunities” to introduce legislation for transit support this year, said Peppard. “It’s a full schedule, but it’s our job to put pressure on” Congress for those issues.

Merkley’s spokesman Mike Westling hedged his bets. “I’m sure it’s something we’ll look at,” he said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

A source on Capitol Hill said the likelihood is low that transit provisions will make the final cut in the energy bill, because Reid wants to get it passed before Congress leaves for its August recess. But Merkley and Delaware Senator Tom Carper are still hoping to push elements of the CLEAN TEA legislation -- which tied climate goals to smarter transportation and land use planning -- perhaps as part of the eventual overhaul of the national transportation bill.

With those seven words last Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dashed hopes for a comprehensive climate bill. Prospects also dimmed for a transportation component in the final energy legislation that emerges from the Senate. Reid is expected to announce that plan later today.

Harry Reid indicated last week that he won't address the nation's oil-dependent transportation system in legislation expected to be unveiled today. Photo: atwatervillage/Flickr

Instead, Reid indicated that his bill will likely contain language dealing only with the Gulf oil spill and some energy efficiency provisions.

"The package that Reid announced [Thursday] doesn’t address climate change at all,” said Colin Peppard, deputy director of federal transportation policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "What we were hearing from staff on the Senate side is that basically up until pretty close to Reid’s announcement, there was still consideration for pieces of the Merkley bill."

Reid’s announcement “took the entire environmental community off-guard,” said Stephanie Potts, a policy analyst with Smart Growth America.

While the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe became an emblem of the need to wean the nation off oil, it did not stiffen many spines in Congress. In fact, said Potts, the Gulf spill may have worked against a broader climate bill by narrowing the avenues for compromise and horsetrading. Without expanded offshore drilling as a bargaining chit, there were few lures to win the votes of some recalcitrant Senators, especially those from coastal states.

In the end, the globs of brown in the Gulf of Mexico didn't overcome the absence of will to raise revenues. "The biggest obstacle is lack of funding," said one source close to the legislation, who said some transportation component may still surface in the final bill. "[Reid's bill] has not been released. There are opportunities to effect influence on that legislation, that bill, via amendments."

The source said that as a standalone measure, however, the Merkley bill is a “very difficult prospect.”

Some advocates also described the climate bill as a casualty of the Obama administration's decision to focus first on health care legislation and then the recently-passed financial reform bill. “I think it’s been a timing issue in large part," said Matt Mayrl, policy director for the California-based Apollo Alliance, which works toward “a green energy revolution.” “In terms of oxygen the Senate has to operate, the time is not there.”

There are still opportunities to reform U.S. transportation policy this year. Potts pointed to a lame duck period in late fall and early winter as the next best opportunity to push through another version of Carper or Merkley’s bills. She also said it is important to continue to explain the benefits of transportation reform.

“We’re trying to work with Congress to educate them on how smart growth works around communities,” Potts said. “It’s not all transit... it really works in communities of all sizes.”

And components of the Merkley bill will re-surface in the fight to encourage alternative energy use and more transit options. “We think that the Merkley bill is great place to start,” Peppard said. "We are working with the House and Senate this year into next year and we are making a big push to build support for those initiatives."

For now, all eyes are on the bill that Reid will introduce later today. Despite the seeming finality of last week’s announcement, there is still a chance some components of the Merkley bill will be included. One source close to the legislation said simply, “All hope is not lost.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley projects that his legislation would allow the United States to almost completely stop importing oil, primarily by reforming our transportation system. Image: Office of Sen. Merkley [PDF].

The Oil Independence Bill for a Stronger America, co-sponsored by Colorado's Michael Bennet, Delaware's Tom Carper, and New Mexico's Tom Udall, sets an ambitious goal: completely halting imports of oil by 2030. Since transportation accounts for a full 70 percent of our oil use, that requires changing how the nation moves around.

Based on principles laid out last month, Merkley's bill has four main components. First, it looks to improve the fuel efficiency of the transportation system we currently have. That means providing incentives for buying electric vehicles and charging infrastructure and setting ambitious new fuel efficiency standards for all vehicles.

Second, the Oil Independence Act would try to rebalance our transportation system away from reliance on the automobile. The bill includes Carper's proposed CLEAN TEA program, which would require state Departments of Transportation and metropolitan planning organizations to set goals for how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and establishes a competitive grant program to fund exemplary projects.

Because Republicans are expected to filibuster a cap-and-trade system that includes transportation, however, the revenues that system would generate aren't available to fund CLEAN TEA. Merkley's bill only authorizes the spending for the grant program; it doesn't actually allocate the funding, potentially leaving the program greatly weakened. 

The bill would also make transit tax benefits equal to parking benefits, permanently index them to inflation, and help shift freight movement onto trains and ships.

Third, the legislation offers support for the development of non-oil-based fuels, whether a next generation of biofuels or natural gas.

Finally, Merkley's bill would try to lower home heating oil use by helping to provide financing for energy-efficient home retrofits.

Merkley's legislation isn't expected to move forward as a stand-alone bill. "It's very much a marker for broader energy legislation," explained Stephanie Potts, a policy associate with Smart Growth America. As the Senate Democrats try and put forward a reworked energy bill, she explained, Merkley's bill provides a way of airing new ideas and measuring their support. 

Because transportation accounts for a full third of American greenhouse gas emissions, serious climate legislation needs to tackle it in some way. Even so, said Potts, "it seems pretty certain that transportation fuels won't be in an overall comprehensive cap at this point." If any sort of cap-and-trade scheme is included at all, she said, it will only cover utilities.

The Oil Independence Act, said Potts, includes policies that could significantly reduce the environmental impact of the transportation sector even in the absence of a price signal. Merkley's office estimates that the bill could save 8.32 million barrels of oil each day by 2030, or 96 percent of our total imports.

Whether the Senate leadership embraces these policies will become clear very soon. An energy and climate bill is likely to be released on the week of July 26, according to Potts. 

The consequences of our transportation policy. (Photo: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency via Flickr)

Last week, President Obama delivered his first speech from the Oval Office on the single greatest challenge our nation faces: how we supply and consume energy.

The searing images we’re seeing from the Gulf Coast -- of the families who lost loved ones, of people out of work and of oil-coated birds and dolphins -- are daily reminders of what’s at stake when we drill, baby, drill.

The truth is that we are drilling 150 miles offshore and one mile below the earth’s surface because we have run out of accessible oil. Most shocking is how small a difference this oil makes to our energy needs. The 35-60,000 barrels spewing daily from the Gulf floor would be enough to power our nation’s cars for just four minutes.

Whether from the Gulf of Mexico or Persian Gulf, we cannot meet our nation’s energy needs by drilling. We are at a precipice, and I stand firmly with President Obama when it comes to Congress passing legislation that arms the nation with clean energy.

But frankly, we need to do more on these issues, especially by addressing transportation and how we build in our communities.

The transportation sector accounts for almost three-quarters of U.S. oil consumption and one-third of our carbon emissions. If we really want to break our dependence on oil and improve our global competitiveness, we must focus on the way people commute and move goods.

Being truly aggressive about where and how we build can save even more money and energy -- with the potential to cut carbon pollution 12-16 percent by 2030 and save more than a million barrels of oil a day.

This is not the first thing that comes to mind for most people, but to ensure our energy security, we need a comprehensive approach. I hope this becomes part of the future message and, more importantly, a key focus of Congressional action.

Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), center, and John Kerry (D-MA), right, with onetime climate bill cosponsor Lindsey Graham (R-SC) at left. (Photo: CSM)

"This is one of those cases where we really can't even talk about the merits of any portion of the bill because the fundamental position is flawed," Millar said.

Referring to the legislation's promise of funding for the clean transport and land-use grants known as "CLEAN TEA" and TIGER, he added, "Many of those are very good ideas … but you can't make those ideas work if there's no significant funding to make them work, and this bill would aggravate the funding situation for public transit."

John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), was more direct in outlining where state DOTs want to see the Senate climate bill's fuel revenues directed. "Channel[ing] every dollar through the highway trust fund," he said, would help the industry break through a congressional stalemate and win passage of a new six-year federal transport bill.

Stephen Sandherr, CEO of the Associated General Contractors, and Pete Ruane, president of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, echoed Horsley's interpretation of the new fuel fees in the climate bill -- which are imposed on oil companies and refiners but are likely to be passed along through higher gas prices -- as a de facto "user fee" on drivers.

The climate proposal, Ruane said, does "nothing more than finance a lot of goals, which are enviable in part, on the backs of transportation users."

It remains to be seen whether the transportation industry's combative stance against the partial diversion of the bill's transportation revenue, billed as a "call for a rewrite" of the climate legislation, will help force senators into restructuring the measure. Ruane said he "like[s] the odds" facing the four groups.

But a spokesman for Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said that APTA, AASHTO, and 25 other industry groups mis-estimated the amount of revenue set aside for transportation in a letter outlining their concerns that was sent today to Kerry and his chief climate bill co-sponsor, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT).

“Let’s get the facts straight," Kerry spokesman Whitney Smith said via email. "This bill invests more than $6 billion annually in transportation infrastructure, which is more than any other comprehensive energy and climate bill and more than twice what's claimed in this letter. In effect, the letter advocates a policy that would accelerate emissions from the transportation sector and increase our dependence on foreign oil. That's not good for anyone, especially consumers."

One congressional source was befuddled by APTA's move to "bit[e] the hand that feeds them" by criticizing a climate bill that stands to give broad, lasting benefits to rail and bus systems.

“Perhaps these groups are confused about the purpose of the climate bill: It’s to reduce emissions, not increase them," the source told Streetsblog Capitol Hill. "The Kerry-Lieberman bill invests more money in transportation than any of the previous climate bills. Instead of working constructively to increase that investment, they are biting the hand that feeds them. Why is APTA advocating for a strategy that will decrease the amount of climate money going to transit? Transit makes out like a bandit in the Kerry-Lieberman bill.”

APTA's alignment with AASHTO and the construction industry groups marks a split of sorts from the Transportation for America (T4A) infrastructure reform coalition, which has praised the upper-chamber climate bill's focus on investing in clean transport projects while taking no official position on the legislation as a whole.

The Senate climate plan provides "a new source of revenue" for transportation, T4A spokesman David Goldberg said in an interview. "This is not a gas tax, and it's not conceived of as a supplement to the highway trust fund, for whatever the business-as-usual, run-of-the-mill highway trust fund projects are."

How big would that new source of transportation revenue be, relative to the total amount raised by the Senate climate bill's new fuel fees? APTA and AASHTO claim in their letter that more than three-quarters of total fuel fees would be used for non-infrastructure purposes:

In 2013, fees from on-road fuel consumption [under the climate proposal] would generate at least $19.5 billion.  Instead of returning revenue from these fees to improving the transportation system, the bill diverts at least 77 percent of the funds away from transportation infrastructure investment. As carbon prices increase, the bill diverts as much as 91 percent of fuel revenues.  Of particular concern, the bill limits new investment in the Highway Trust Fund to $2.5 billion per year, far below the amount the bill raises from system users. 

As Kerry's office pointed out, however, the industry groups' math appears to lowball the amount of funding set aside for transportation. The 77 percent estimate would yield an annual pot of less than $4 billion, while Kerry and Lieberman have estimated that transport would receive upwards of $6 billion during the first several years after their legislation takes effect.

(ed. note. This post was updated to add comment from Kerry's office.)

In a release previewing its joint press conference with AASHTO, scheduled for tomorrow morning, APTA said the Senate bill's use of new fuel fees for purposes beyond infrastructure, such as paying down the federal deficit, "would harm efforts to pass a new surface transportation bill and would also greatly impair the ability of states, counties, cities and transit systems to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce transportation-related emissions."

Does the Senate climate bill include a user fee? That depends on how the term is defined. (Photo: Pop and Politics)

"Congress can ill-afford to consider any legislation that" siphons off money from the trust fund, which has required more than $30 billion in replenishment from the general Treasury over the past 18 months, Horsley said.

Stephen Sandherr, chief of the Associated General Contractors -- a backer of the Senate effort to bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions in the absence of congressional action -- echoed that sentiment in his own statement on the upper-chamber climate proposal.

"[B]y taking funds raised through the proposal’s new transportation fees and committing all but a small percentage to unrelated spending, the legislation leaves our aging and inefficient roads, airways and transit systems vastly underfunded," Sandherr said.

But does the Senate climate bill impose a user fee on transportation fuel consumers? The text of the measure specifically requires "each refined [fuel] product provider" to purchase emissions permits from the EPA on a quarterly basis at a fixed price, with no permit trading allowed. Horsley's depiction of those charges as a "user fee" relies on the considerable likelihood that oil companies and refiners would pass on the cost of those emissions permits to consumers in the form of higher gas prices.

In the meantime, how much of the revenue raised by the bill's new fuel permits would infrastructure receive?

The American Road and Transportation Builders Association estimated last week that the Senate plan would raise $20 billion from the new charges on oil producers and refiners, with about $6.25 billion of that divided into equal parts -- one-third for the highway trust fund, one-third for competitive federal grants similar to the TIGER program, and one-third for local land use projects, in the style of the so-called "CLEAN TEA" proposal.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), left, Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), center, and John Kerry (D-MA), right, began their climate talks in December. (Photo: Getty)

That money for infrastructure would be divided into three equal parts, according to the legislation. One-third would go into the nation's cash-strapped highway trust fund – with a mandate to set aside the funding for projects that decrease greenhouse gas emissions – while another third would go towards competitive federal grants in the style of the stimulus law's Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program. 

A final third would go towards local land-use planning, as envisioned in the so-called “CLEAN TEA” bill championed by Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE).

“We want to make this the Senate where we finish the job and cast the decisive vote for the future,” Kerry told reporters at a packed Capitol Hill press conference where veterans' groups and industry representatives lent their support to the legislation.

The climate bill also takes a step towards requiring a set of national transport objectives – a longtime goal of reform groups – by giving the U.S. DOT and Environmental Protection Agency one year to propose “national transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions goals” as well as unified strategies for states and metro areas to measure their compliance with those goals.

State and local transportation planners would then have two more years to draft plans for emissions reduction, using a variety of strategies named in the bill, including transit-oriented development, high-speed rail, zoning changes, and promotion of biking and walking. Any areas that do not propose plans for reducing transport emissions would be declared ineligible for the proposed “CLEAN TEA” grants.

The bill states that emissions allowances set aside for the highway trust fund “shall be used to promote the safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of transportation,” specifying that the money should be used in accordance with the principles of the “CLEAN TEA” package. But the legislation did not specify how such a firewall surrounding highway trust fund money would be enforced within the U.S. DOT.

Nonetheless, transportation reformers hailed the bill as a step forward. "The authord deserve high praise for ensuring that revenues generated from the transportation sector go in part toward meeting the growing demand for more, better and cleaner travel options," Geoff Anderson, co-chairman of the advocacy group Transportation for America, said in a statement.

Carper, in a statement on the bill's release, said the addition of "CLEAN TEA" language "puts us on the right path to reduce transportation emissions and oil consumption and improve our nation's crumbling transportation infrastructure ... I hope we can continue to build bipartisan support for infrastructure investment as part of the comprehensive climate bill as we move through the legislative process."

Even as lawmakers, aides, and advocates picked through the substance of the nearly 1000-page bill, its political future remained very much in doubt.

An aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) warned recently that the measure may not reach the upper-chamber floor this year unless Democratic leaders see a path to reaching the 60-vote threshold necessary to break a certain GOP filibuster. The onetime Republican cosponsor of Kerry and Lieberman's effort, Lindsey Graham (SC), did not appear at today's unveiling, though he vowed in a statement to consider the legislation.

We should move forward in a reasoned, thoughtful manner and in a political climate which gives us the best chance at success,” Graham said, reiterating his previous conclusions that the Gulf oil spill and simmering immigration debate “have made it extremely difficult for transformational legislation in the area of energy and climate to garner bipartisan support at this time."

Answering the perception among many Hill observers that the climate bill's odds of passage are slim at best, Kerry decried what he described as an attitude inside the Beltway that assumes a broad climate bill would be “dead on arrival, replaced by a watered-down energy bill or nothing at all.”

Nonetheless, Reid indicated earlier this week in an interview with Univision that he would be open to moving forward with a smaller energy bill this year that did not include broad emissions cuts.

The two senators replaced their initial plan for a linked fee on carbon-based motor fuels, which became politically toxic for the White House and Graham after critics branded it a new gas tax, with a fixed price for emissions permits that oil producers and refiners would have to purchase at the end of each quarter. Those permits could not be traded among businesses or “banked” for later use, and any over- or under-supply would count against the next quarter's allocation.

We took refiners and fuel providers out of the market,” Kerry and Lieberman's offices said in a summary of the bill's transport section. “Instead of having them participate in the market for allowances, we made sure the price of carbon was constant across the industry.”

(ed. note. This post was updated to add comment from Carper's office.)

The legislation no longer includes its originally conceived "linked fee" on motor fuels -- which was quickly branded as a gas tax increase, alarming Graham and the White House while catching many members of the transport industry off-guard. But how does the Senate climate bill address the 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that come from transportation?

The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin has an early look, reporting that the transportation section makes room for a "cap" on emissions but eliminates the "trade" aspect of the House-passed climate bill:

The transportation sector will not have any allowance trading, sources said. Instead, companies will have to buy quarterly carbon allowances that would be based on the average price in the previous quarter; the fee would be tacked on at a stage known in the industry as "the rack," which is after the fuel has left the refinery but before it reaches gas stations.

The bill would put electric utilities first in line for a sector-specific emissions cap, with other fossil fuel-using industries to follow, according to a report in National Journal that also includes a link to a leaked four-page summary of the measure. That summary suggests that the transportation industry may be pleased with the measure, referencing annual funding of "over $7 billion" for infrastructure.

For more details on how the legislation would affect U.S. infrastructure, check this space tomorrow ...

(ed. note. This post was updated to add a link to the bill summary.)

(Photo: The Weekly Driver)

The political and legal jockeying that ultimately led the White House to a deal on higher U.S. auto fuel standards began in California, where stronger efficiency rules were adopted, shut down by the Bush administration, and later embraced by 13 other states. 

Now, as the Golden State sets to work on its fuel standards for the year 2017, the endpoint of the current White House efficiency rules, clean energy advocates are vowing to push California officials for the strongest possible auto emissions limits. If California can set the stage for nationwide progress on fuel-efficiency once, the theory goes, it can easily happen again.

But not every California lawmaker is convinced that the state should be a pioneer. At today's House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing, Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) openly wondered whether California should continue prodding the rest of the nation towards greater energy efficiency -- a question equally applicable to the state's law limiting broader carbon emissions.

After noting that she spoke as "a proud Californian," Bono Mack asked Jackson, "If California changes their standards, are you saying we all have to agree with their standards?"

Choosing her words carefully, Jackson told Bono Mack (one of only eight Republicans to vote in favor of last year's House climate change bill) that the Obama administration's new fuel-efficiency rule "was the way to achieve smart legislation.

"I don't think I can simply say" whether California's environmental moves are certain to pave the way for national action on emissions caps, Jackson added, "because the trick of legislation will be to put [regulatory] authorities together in ways that get you [deals like] the clean car rule."

Jackson's cautious response came as she continues to beat back bipartisan efforts in both chambers of Congress to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas pollution in the absence of legislative progress on the issue. Yanking the EPA's formal "endangerment finding" on the public health effects of the changing climate, Jackson told the House panel, "would forfeit one quarter of the combined EPA-DOT program’s [auto] fuel savings and one third of its greenhouse gas emissions."

While state DOTs marked Earth Day by depicting roads as unsung heroes of livability, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the transit industry celebrated in their own ways by releasing reports on local rail and bus systems' roles in reducing U.S. transport emissions.

The FTA's updated report [PDF] on transit's value in combating climate change includes average emissions for various modes of transportation (see above chart), calculated using the government's National Transit Database. The emissions totals, which reflect average ridership estimates, show that transit averages about half the CO2 poundage per passenger mile of a single-occupancy vehicle.

But the FTA also breaks down individual transit systems' average emissions, illustrating how much of a difference high ridership -- and cleaner-burning sources of electricity -- can make when it comes to the energy efficiency of local rail.

Take the San Francisco metro area's heavy rail system, known as BART, which achieves average emissions of just 0.085 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile. That rock-bottom total is made possible by electricity generated largely through hydropower. Washington D.C.'s Metrorail, meanwhile, comes in at an average of 0.347 pounds of CO2, making it four times less efficient than BART.

The emissions numbers get worse in less trafficked rail networks, such as the Baltimore Metro (0.919 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile, an average comparable to a car) and Cleveland's rapid rail transit (0.805 pounds of CO2/passenger mile).

Fortunately, the average emissions-cutting power of heavy rail is skewed by New York City, where nearly 60 percent of the mode's U.S. passenger miles are traveled. New York's subway gets an average of 0.147 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile, bolstering the local transit authority's new estimate that it saves 17.4 million metric tons of emissions every year.

The FTA report found similar variability in the average emissions of local light rail, which ranged from uber-efficient in Los Angeles (0.219 pounds of CO2/passenger mile) and San Francisco (0.299 pounds of CO2/passenger mile) to middling in Dallas (0.534 pounds of CO2/passenger mile) and higher than the average single-occupancy auto in Pittsburgh (1.371 pounds of CO2/passenger mile). The weighted average for all American light rail, however, came in at 0.36 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile.

On the transit industry's end, Earth Day brought a statement of support from President Obama that was echoed by American Public Transportation Association (APTA) chief William Millar. "Everyone who cares about the environment should care about public transportation," Millar said in a statement that accompanied a lengthy list of efficiency improvements underway at transit agencies across the country.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) (Photo: Getty)

As Sen. John Kerry (MA), the climate bill's chief Democratic author, told Reuters late yesterday:

"There is not even a linked fee. There's not a tax, there's nothing similar."

Pressed for clarification about the fee, Kerry then said, "certainly not the way it was described previously, nothing like that." The Massachusetts Democrat refused to elaborate.

Kerry was more direct in a response to the Houston Chronicle, stating: “The gas tax is 18.4 cents today, and it'll be that when this bill is passed.”  

His comments do not rule out the possibility of some charge on carbon-based fuels remaining in the bill, but they cast significant doubt on the scenario that Washington transportation watchers had feared most: extra fees that oil companies would pass on through higher costs at the pump, amounting to a de facto gas tax hike without guaranteed revenue for road and transit projects.

The oil and gas industry had responded favorably to the prospect of a predictable fee they could market as a response to climate change, effectively shifting any negative consumer response onto Congress rather than fuel producers. American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard predicted last month that a carbon charge would "soften the reaction" among his member firms to a national cap on greenhouse gases.

The challenge of addressing transportation emissions, which account for about one-third of the nation's total output, could end up pushing the release of the Senate climate bill beyond its original Monday deadline. Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), the measure's sole GOP backer so far, told CongressDaily that Monday remains "the hope" but is not set in stone.