Climate Change

As part of its "Steal This Idea" series, Good magazine has a suggestion for a way to move toward a more sustainable New York: offering subway riders the chance to pay a little extra for a wind-powered ride.

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:

Robin Chase is the co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar and the founder and CEO of GoLoco, a ride-sharing service that uses social networks like Facebook to connect people who want to carpool. A Harvard University Loeb Fellow, Chase is an authority on the use of wireless and mesh network technology as it applies to transportation. She'll be giving a talk at Baruch College, 151 E. 25th St., Room 759, at 9:30am on October 19th. There she'll discuss some of the ways wireless technology can facilitate near-term reduction of CO2 emissions. What follows are some excerpts from a telephone conversation last week with Sarah Goodyear.

Writing in this month's Reader's Digest, Matthew Kahn, an environmental economist at UCLA's Institute of the Environment, analyzed data from 141 nations and ranked the planet's greenest, most livable places.

From the people at Smart Growth America comes word of a new book, Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, just out from the Urban Land Institute. In the book, researchers argue that more compact development (such as Atlantic Station, a mixed-use complex in Atlanta built on reclaimed industrial land, shown at right) must play a key role if this country is to reduce emissions:

Detroit car makers lost another battle in their fight against stronger emissions regulations last week, this time in Vermont.