Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Looks like Chrysler has figured out a novel way to move their 2008 model gas guzzlers off the lot. Sign up for their new "Let's Refuel America!" credit card and they'll lock in the price of gas at $2.99/gallon for three years.

That's right, it's a 36-month guarantee that you don't have to think about moving over to a more fuel efficient car, commuting by bus, lobbying your elected officials for a national passenger rail system or the fact that Chrysler is essentially writing checks to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria and Vladimir Putin on your behalf.

Before you rush out to purchase yourself a new, 13 mpg Dodge Durango and set up shop at the nearest pump as a gasoline reseller, you'd better read the fine print. The program caps the number of annual "price-protected gallons" that Chrysler will actually pay for. If I understand their "gallon allotment calculation" correctly (Charlie Komanoff, feel free to step in here and do some math), Durango owners get a maximum of 2,400 discounted gallons over three years. As for global warming, oil war, suburban sprawl and American economic disintegration, Chrysler is offering a lifetime guarantee.

"If you were to design the ultimate system, you would have mass transit be free and charge an enormous amount for cars."

So said Mayor Michael Bloomberg last April, right about the time he unveiled his plan to charge motorists a fee to drive into Manhattan's central business district. Eight months later, as the mayor's original proposal mutates for better or worse, the MTA is hours away from raising transit fares. Neither idea has exactly caught fire with the public, and the fare hikes could actually end up a foil for congestion pricing -- a plan originally intended as a sustained financial boost for the transit system.

And then there's Theodore "Ted" Kheel. The environmentalist, philanthropist, and renowned labor attorney has lobbied for free transit in New York for over 40 years. Last February he commissioned a $100,000 study that, as it turns out, could put the city's money where the mayor's mouth is. A summary of findings released late last week shows that if the city were to impose a $16 congestion fee ($32 for trucks) below 60th Street in Manhattan, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, along with higher curbside parking fees and a taxi surcharge, the MTA could remove its turnstiles and fareboxes forever.

Read more...

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will
declare his support today for a national carbon tax, according to a
report posted this morning on the New York Times City Room blog by
metro reporter Sewell Chan:

Mayor Bloomberg plans
to announce today his support for a national carbon tax. In what his
aides are calling one of the most significant policy addresses of his
second and final term, the mayor will argue that directly taxing
emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute
to climate change will slow global
warming, promote economic growth and stimulate technological innovation
— even if it results in higher gasoline prices in the short term.

Mr.
Bloomberg is scheduled to present his carbon tax proposal in a speech
this afternoon at a two-day climate protection summit in Seattle
organized by the United States Conference of Mayors. (A copy of the speech was provided to The New York Times by aides to the mayor; the full text is available here, along with the complete Times story.)

Needless to say, Charles Komanoff at the recently spiffed-up Carbon Tax Center, thinks this is a big deal (worthy of an Oscar or a Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps?):

With his speech today, Mayor Bloomberg joins former Vice-President Al
Gore as the nation’s leading advocates of a carbon tax to cap and
reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

And consistent with the Mayor’s local transportation policy push:

Bloomberg’s support of a U.S. carbon tax is philosophically consistent
with his big current local initiative, a congestion pricing plan to
improve mobility, economic activity and the quality of life in the
Manhattan Central Business District by charging an entry fee for motor
vehicles. A carbon tax and congestion pricing both embody the principle
that safeguarding “the commons” — our air, water and public space –
requires that we exact from ourselves a commensurate price for uses
that damage or deplete it.

Congressional debate on climate change has revealed division among politicians on how to best regulate carbon emissions. From NPR's Marketplace, we get a report on the sharp difference between leading Democrats in both houses, Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA) and Rep. John Dingell (MI)

Boxer is quoted as preferring cap and trade, which seems to be most favored among politicians and big corporations as a way to leverage market forces to address climate change.

"I think cap and trade makes the most sense. When we pass legislation to combat global warming, we will not be hurting this economy. We will be helping it."

Dingell, however, favors a carbon tax as a more direct, visible and predictable means of reducing carbon emissions. He says,

To be fair, the economic pain must be shared all the way down to the consumer. And he says the way to do that is to tax anything that produces too much CO2. "This is going to be tough. And it's gonna cost, and its gonna hurt. In my view, probably the only thing that will really work. In all honesty, I'm not convinced that if you don't change people's behavior, you're going to change the way they behave."

The Carbon Tax Center has a page that explains why it thinks a carbon tax is the way to go. CTC co-director and Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff recently published a piece in favor of a carbon tax over at Gristmill. On the other side of the issue is the US Climate Change Action
Partnership, a group of major corporations and environmental
organizations in favor of a cap and trade system. Environmental Defense chief scientist Bill Chameides, wrote a piece in Gristmill as well laying out the case for a cap and trade system.

The debate between Carbon Tax and Cap and Trade is an important one that could lead to new federal legislation by the end of the year.

(Editor's note: Why do I always want to write it, "Cap'n Trade?")

The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook is the official companion volume to today's Live Earth concerts, 24 hours of nonstop concerts broadcast from around the world on 7/7/07. It's a fun little book, meant to connect with a younger audience via tongue-in-cheek suggestions, practical advice, factual information, and imaginative, bluesky solutions for climate change.

Each of the book's 77 articles is presented as a brief instruction or command. I contributed a few pieces that Streetsblog readers might appreciate. They were: Ride a Bike, Decongest Downtown, Ride the Train and Fly Right (which, more accurately would have been titled "Fly Less," but that's not very snappy). It was a fun project and, I think, a great opportunity to inject some of the progressive ideas that we talk about here on Streetsblog into the mainstream.

The book was edited by Duncan Bock and produced on a ridiculously short timeline by Melcher Media. Charles Komanoff also helped to research and fact check some of the book's carbon emission calculations.

Here is the Ride a Bike chapter...

Quebec will become the first Canadian province to impose a carbon tax on energy producers. Bloomberg reports:

The provincial cabinet approved the tax in Quebec City yesterday, according to a statement on the Natural Resources Ministry Web site. Refiners including Valero Energy Corp.'s Ultramar unit and Royal Dutch Shell Plc's Canadian unit will start paying a tax of 0.8 cent a liter on gasoline and 0.9 cent on diesel on Oct. 1. Power producers such as state-owned Hydro- Quebec and gas companies will also be taxed.

"Everyone is talking about the environment; everyone wants to play their part," Natural Resources Minister Claude Bechard told reporters in Quebec City yesterday. "Well, the oil companies too have to play their part."

The province will direct proceeds from the tax to a "green fund" that will invest in commuter rail networks and other forms of mass transit.

Bechard said he expects that the companies will absorb the higher costs, though he "can't guarantee" that producers and refiners won't pass them on to consumers. The tax is based on the "polluter pays" principle. "That is not negotiable," the minister said.

Charles Komanoff of the Carbon Tax Center (and Streetsblog), while hailing the tax as a positive step, notes that it's extremely small, equating to little more than 1% of the tax level that CTC proposes the U.S. phase in over a ten-year period.

Photo: _EM/Flickr

The Independent reports that European CO2 emissions are rising not falling, casting doubt on the EU's touted Emissions Trading Scheme:

Europe's big polluters pumped more climate-changing gases into the atmosphere in 2006 than during the previous year, according to figures that show the EU's carbon trading system failing to deliver curbs. Critics said the data underlined the gap between the rhetoric of European leaders, who have promised to cut C02 emissions by one-fifth by 2020, and the reality of delivering reductions.

Yesterday's figures relate to the carbon produced in 22 nations by big industrial users that accounted for almost 93 per cent of emissions reported in 2005. The European Commission said that carbon output from these sources rose between 1-1.5 per cent in 2006 over the previous year. The statistics suggest the EU is still allocating too many carbon permits to enable the system to work properly.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that an unlikely coalition is coming together in the US to support carbon taxes over emissions trading:

As lawmakers on Capitol Hill push for a cap-and-trade system to rein in the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, an unlikely alternative has emerged from an ideologically diverse group of economists and industry leaders: A carbon tax. A coalition of academics and polluters now argues that a simple tax on each ton of emissions would offer a more efficient and less bureaucratic way of curbing carbon dioxide buildup.

This same argument in favor of carbon taxes was recently put forward by Charles Komanoff of the Carbon Tax Center in a debate on Grist.org with "Dr. Bill" Chameides of Environmental Defense, who favors a cap and trade regime.

Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff, along with Daniel Rosenblum, today announce the foundation of their new organization, the Carbon Tax Center. The Center's mission is "to educate and inform policymakers, opinion leaders and the public, including grassroots organizations, about the benefits of and critical need for significant, rising and equitable taxes on carbon emissions from fossil fuels." My favorite part so far? The title of their e-newsletter, "An Inconvenient Tax." Check out their presentation above.

Why carbon taxes? Why a Carbon Tax Center?
Charging American businesses and individuals a price to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential to reduce U.S. emissions quickly and steeply enough to prevent atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from reaching an irreversible tipping point. It's a basic economic principle that prices of goods and services should reflect ("internalize" as the economists say) all of the societal costs (such as pollution) that production of the goods or services imposes on society. Yet the prices of gasoline, electricity and other fossil fuels don't include many of these societal costs, particularly their impact on global warming. The necessary transformation of our fossil fuels-based energy system to reliance on energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable fuels simply won't happen without carbon taxes sending accurate and powerful price signals into every corner of the economy and every aspect of life.

Charles Komanoff, flanked by Marquez Claxton and Norman Siegel, at City Hall this morning.

Time's Up took its campaign for safe bicycling into the economic arena this morning with release of a report documenting the Bloomberg administration's squandering of New Yorkers' tax dollars in suppressing the Critical Mass bike rides.

With the City Hall steps as backdrop, the grassroots environmental group released a report I helped prepare, estimating that police and other agencies spent $1,320,000 harassing and arresting Critical Mass riders from September 2004 through August 2006.

This figure comprises:

• $1,000,000 spent by the NYPD policing the rides and processing arrestees (calculated by prorating officer's salaries and costs of scooters, police transport vehicles, helicopters and other equipment for the hours deployed)
• $150,000 spent by the Manhattan District Attorney's office charging arrestees and trying cases
• $170,000 spent by the NYC Law Dept. bringing and settling lawsuits against Critical Mass (the "Bray" and "Time's Up" cases)

During the same two-year period the city spent less than $700,000 planning, engineering, and installing bike lanes in the five boroughs. Thus, over the past two years New York City spent twice as much suppressing two dozen bicycle rides as it spent creating a safe bicycling infrastructure that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers could be using every day.

At the City Hall event, Marquez Claxton, who does public relations and political affairs for 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, called the NYPD's suppression of Critical Mass a "personal campaign" by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. "When you see such illogical allocation of police resources," Claxton said, "you have to conclude that the impetus is personal vindictiveness rather than dispassionate analysis."

Noted civil rights attorney Norman Siegel called on NYC Comptroller William Thompson to verify the dollar estimates in the Time's Up report. "Auditing use of tax dollars is your job as comptroller," Siegel said. If you're serious about running for mayor in 2009, the people of New York City will see to it that this is an issue you can't duck."

Another speaker, Mark Taylor of Assemble for Rights, urged New Yorkers to speak out against the NYPD's proposed parade-permit rules at a November 27 public hearing. Letting the police write the law in addition to enforcing the law is something that happens in a police state, Taylor warned.

For more information on this issue, here is my 2004 report (PDF file) documenting the trivial traffic impacts of Critical Mass rides on New York City traffic congestion and mobility.

Photo: Fred Askew

In his weekly radio address yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg discussed some steps his administration is taking toward a sustainable future, including the creation of an Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, and a Sustainability Advisory Board, which held its first meeting last week.

Long-term sustainability is of course right up Streetsblog's alley. Correspondent Charles Komanoff donned his policy-wonk hat last week and came up with an Economist's Agenda for a Sustainable NYC. These recommendations draw heavily on the concept of creating financial incentives and disincentives to encourage people to make the right choices as they consume energy and natural resources. We're hearing through the grapevine that the advisory board is paying close attention.

Komanoff's recommendations:

• Price Peak Power
• Unbundle Electricity
• Price the Roads
• Price the Curbs
• Abolish Privileged Parking
• Universal Bottle and Bag Deposits
• Tax Carbon, Not Commerce

Details are on the other side of this link.