One of the central elements of Mayor Bloomberg's plan for a sustainable New York City is to improve mass transit and get people out of their cars and into busses and subways. In addition to better and more frequent transit service, the city also needs to ensure that the price of mass transit is kept under control. In the aftermath of the defeat of congestion pricing, we see that mass transit in this region is under greater financial stress than at any time since the fiscal crisis of the mid 1970's.

State and local tax collections are in decline, and the MTA bears the burden of the Pataki philosophy of borrowing to fund transit infrastructure.  read more »

Last Thursday, former Vice President Al Gore joined the many voices that have been calling for a crash program-a "moon-shot" national effort to get us off of fossil fuels. Senator Obama applauded the speech saying "For decades, Al Gore has challenged the skeptics in Washington on climate change and awakened the conscience of a nation to the urgency of this threat."

At the moment, neither Senator Obama nor Senator McCain are taking as aggressive a position as Gore is taking. The energy industry doesn't know how to deal with this newest energy crisis. At the heart of the discussion is the impact of our current energy practices on our economic well-being and on national security.  read more »

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of reading Peter Applebome's wonderful piece in the New York Times about the new River Pool at Beacon a swimming "pool" in the Hudson River that Pete Seeger and some friends dedicated last week.

Many people know the story of Pete Seeger, who brought American folk music to the hit parade with the Weavers in the 1950's and was then blacklisted and banned from TV for refusing to cooperate with the communist-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). When brought before the committee in the mid 1950's, he asserted that testifying against his will was a violation of the first amendment's protection of free speech and refused the protection offered by the 5th amendment protection against self-incrimination.  read more »

New York City produces a lot of garbage. Over 36,000 tons of solid waste is produced every day by the city's 8,300,000 residents and millions of workers and visitors. While New York still has not developed an effective waste management system, and the Bloomberg Administration made some unfortunate changes in recycling rules in their first term, there seems to be a growing awareness that we have a major problem on our hands. The solution to our waste problem has four key dimensions:

1. Waste reduction.
2. Better waste transport.
3. Better waste disposal.
4. Increased recycling.

A small, but symbolically important part of the recycling puzzle is recycling waste in public spaces.  read more »

I made the mistake of watching some of the T.V. coverage of the Presidential campaign last night—I guess that's what happens when the Yankees have the night off and I'm too tired to do anything else. Listening to the commentary is mind numbing and most of it ranges from misleading to out and out inaccurate.

As I watched these candidates move around in the security and media bubble of the modern Presidential campaign I was thinking that they must feel as if they've been abducted by aliens. Poor Barack Obama-he's going to travel to Iraq so he mentioned that while he was there he might listen to what the military folks have to say.  read more »

On March 17, 2008, Lieutenant Governor and former State Senator David Paterson was suddenly placed in the center of Albany's storm and assumed the Office of Governor. While it may seem premature, we decided to review the environmental record of his first 100 days. New York State's League of Conservation Voters is known for their thoughtful representation of the electorate's interest, so we asked them for their view of our accidental governor's environmental record. Marcia Bystryn, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters observed that:

"In the course of his first 100 days, Governor Paterson has shown that he can work effectively with the Legislature and that he understands the importance of an environmental agenda.  read more »

I'm on vacation this week, enjoying the sun, surf and sand here in Long Beach New York, where we've had a small summer home since 1987. I'm on the West End of town, where the biggest problem over the last few years has been the proliferation of second and third cars and the difficulty of parking on the narrow and crowded streets: Until this summer. This summer the big news is the price of gasoline. In the last year and a half, the price of gasoline has doubled. In January, 2007 gasoline was less than $2.20 a gallon, today it is well over $4.  read more »

According to the June 25, 2008 edition of the DesMoines Register, many of the people who have lost their homes and farms in the recent flooding there do not have federal flood insurance:

"David Maurstab, an assistant administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency whose duties include overseeing the flood insurance program, conceded Tuesday that few Iowans have purchased coverage. FEMA reported that as of September 2007 there were 10,649 policies in force statewide.

"That is troubling to all of us," Maurstab said. "We have a remarkably low number of insureds in the affected areas."

The state of Iowa is in excellent fiscal condition and has a $620 million reserve fund that the state government appears reluctant to send on emergency relief.  read more »

In 1990, the first Bush Administration banned off shore oil exploration and yesterday the current President Bush decided to ask Congress to end the ban. This is the same policy now being pushed by Senator John McCain in his effort to show he cares about rising gasoline prices. According to Sheryl Stolberg in The New York Times on June 18:

The Congressional moratorium was first enacted in 1982, and has been renewed every year since. It prohibits oil and gas leasing on most of the outer continental shelf, 3 miles to 200 miles offshore. Since 1990, it has been supplemented by the first President Bush’s executive order, which directed the  read more »]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/we-cant-drill-our-way-out-energy-crisis#comments Green George W. Bush Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:30:07 -0400 Steve Cohen, Executive Director, Columbia University’s Earth Institute 70962 at http://www.observer.com