Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Oil

Senate’s Next Climate Hearing to Feature Big Oil-Backed Critics

By Elana Schor | Nov 6, 2009 | No Comments

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) may have voted against the Senate environment committee’s climate bill yesterday, but The New Republic picked up on some pretty optimistic (for Washington) rhetoric from him on the issue this morning: (Photo: Baucus ’08) "There’s no doubt that this Congress is going to pass climate change legislation," he […]

Bridging the Local-National Message Divide: The Climate Bill is the Answer

By Ryan Avent | Oct 9, 2009 | No Comments

Urban areas have a lot to contribute to the congressional climate change debate. (Photo: SDOT Blog) This week, I was fortunate to attend the Open Cities conference in Washington (along with fellow Streetsbloggers Elana Schor and Aaron Naparstek), on the ways in which new media is shaping urban policy. The takeaway, for me at least, […]

A Last Word on ‘Cash for Clunkers’

By Ryan Avent | Sep 2, 2009 | 1 Comment

One thing the government’s CARS program — a.k.a. "cash for clunkers" — has clearly stimulated is commentary. For a policy involving a shade under $3 billion in federal spending, it has enjoyed no shortage of media coverage. (Photo: Newsday) In part this is because the program looks like a big success, and certainly congressional leaders […]

The Times’ Thickheaded Train Tag Team

By Ryan Avent | Aug 14, 2009 | 1 Comment

The New York Times has now turned loose writers at two of its economics blogs to make weak arguments against the construction of high-speed rail lines. Eric Morris of UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies (Photo: ericandrewmorris.com) I have been following Ed Glaeser’s attempt to do a back-of-the-envelope assessment of the costs and benefits of a […]

A Progress Report on State-Level Oil Dependence

By Elana Schor | Aug 11, 2009 | 1 Comment

NRDC’s depiction of how hard states are hit by gas costs, ranked by percentage of income spent. America’s oil addiction is readily acknowledged, even by its biggest enablers. But what is the nation actually doing to kick the habit and embrace a safer, healthier, more realistic energy future? An attempt to answer that question was […]

Americans Still Use a Lot of Gas

By Ryan Avent | Jul 21, 2009 | 3 Comments

The release of the Department of Energy’s Transportation Energy Data Book is a transportation stat geek’s dream — 300-plus pages of numbers detailing the way the country burns this or that moving people and freight from city to city. Of course, not everyone gets a thrill from poring through data tables for hours at a […]

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