environment

NYC’s “Flawed” Traffic Plan Brought to You by… Toyota

CBS 2’s award-winning political reporter tells us that "Londoners are now cloning license plates to avoid congestion fees" (note they’re not copying license plates — they’re cloning them. Terrifying). She doesn’t tell us how widespread the practice is, how many people might be doing it or how it may be impacting a system that has reduced traffic congestion by 70,000 vehicles per day and is raising $250 million a year for mass transit (You’d think it would be easy for an award-winning investigative reporter to find this sort of information). Rather, Kramer gives some airtime to Westchester obstructionist Assembly member Richard Brodsky, incorrectly referring to him as "head of the Congestion Mitigation Commission."[Oy.]
Source: StreetsBlog

Russianoff and Schneiderman Map the MTA’s Road to ‘Ruin’

Russianoff and Schneiderman Map the MTA’s Road to ‘Ruin’: Spitzer has a lot on his plate, but ending Albany’s systemic abuse of our 7.5 million straphangers should be at or near the top of the pile. He must work with the Legislature and the MTA board, both to avoid a fare hike in 2008 and to set a new agenda for our state’s mass transit program – an agenda that breaks with the unsustainable and inexcusable policies of the last 12 years. [What a mess…]
Source: StreetsBlog

Google hopes to undercut coal with cheap, renewable energy

Google hopes to undercut coal with cheap, renewable energy: The company itself is also trying hard to reduce its drain on the environment. Google is working to reduce the energy expenditure of its data centers across the world, all of which need power and cooling for the servers, and plans to be carbon neutral by the end of the current year. It has also been developing an array of solar cells to power its California headquarters, the Googleplex, and is involved in an initiative to arrive at more energy-efficient computers.

Presumably, the idea behind this move is as follows: if you can’t persuade people that burning coal is a bad idea ecologically, providing them with a cheaper, cleaner alternative makes it more expensive to pollute than not, and even if shareholders don’t care about the trees, they’ll care about the bottom line. At a time when report after report highlights the growing damage done to the planet through the use of fossil fuels, this move by Google to spur renewable energy uptake ought to be applauded.

[Excellent. Git’er done! The flip side of evil.]