Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Climate Change

U.S. DOT Blows Chance to Reform the City-Killing, Planet-Broiling Status Quo

By Angie Schmitt | | 19 Comments
The Obama administration purportedly wants to use the lever of transportation policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx recently said he’d like to reverse the damage highways caused in urban neighborhoods, but you’d never know that by looking at U.S. DOT’s latest policy prescription. U.S. DOT has drafted new rules requiring state DOTs to track their […]

How San Diego Planners Spun the Press to Sell Highway Expansions

By Angie Schmitt | | 9 Comments
How far will transportation agencies go to spin public perception of their highway expansion plans? San Diego’s KPBS has produced a brilliant case study in this video and the accompanying report — a deep dive into the media operation mounted by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) to defend its slate of highway expansion projects. In late 2011, SANDAG passed […]

Can We Bike Our Way to a Stable Climate?

By Tony Dutzik | | 1 Comment
Crossposted from the Frontier Group.  Earlier this week, I had the chance to talk about the role of bicycling in addressing climate change at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists. The conversation was framed around the Paris climate agreement – the pact signed by 195 nations in December […]

Obama’s Politically Impossible Transpo Plan Is Just What America Needs

By Angie Schmitt | | 35 Comments
It may be “seven years too late,” as tactical urbanist Mike Lydon put it, but President Obama has released a transportation proposal that calls for big shifts in the country’s spending priorities. Obama’s proposal would generate $30 billion annually from a $10-per-barrel surcharge assessed on oil companies. More importantly, the revenue is linked to a substantial shift in what transportation projects get […]

The New Climate Villain Is Cheap Oil

By Charles Komanoff | | 32 Comments
Long-term climate prospects brightened somewhat in 2015. Pope Francis put climate care on the moral and political agenda. President Obama rejected the Keystone XL dirty-oil pipeline. Denialist heads of state were routed in Canada and Australia, and their brethren in the U.S. faced growing ridicule. To cap it off, nearly 200 nations signed the UN Paris […]
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