PeterB: Yes mass transit has problems in much of the US. I would love to see expansion of bicycle travel. I rode a bicycle through a crowded Chinese city with a guide once and it was one of my great experiences, though not a particularly safe one.
I think improving gas mileage and emmissions is critical. I did hear a good arguement from a libertarian sort of person that a big gas tax would be the most effective way because the market would decide the most efficient vehicles.
Rising gas prices has the most effect on what people drive.

The first step in my opinion would be to reconstruct all major non-highway road ways and create cycle paths on all of these major road ways and more rail trails. I witnessed this in Nagoya Japan, and I felt a whole lot more comfortable riding there…
There are some drawbacks of course. I know many people who drive over 15 miles or more to get to work… up and down hills and what not… As far as Massachusetts is concerned, I make a plan when I have summer classes. I drive from my house to the Bedford Bike Depot, and bike from there to either Alewife Station or Porter Square and lock my bike. Thats about 20 miles car + bike, and I use my bike for about 12 miles or so.

On this matter of bicycles- does anyone know a good store in Massachusetts that sells inexpensive bicycles? It seems that more and more stores are catering to the people who want to buy $800 bikes. I could buy a good bike in Japan for about $100 flat!

Mass transit is going to continue to be a dead proposition until the systems are made more competitive timewise with travel by car. I know the Sacramento area in California, gutted an excellent bus system to support light rail.

There is a proposal by Arnold in California to get solar panels on every roof, or at least that is the talk. It would certainly make sense. Thousands of acres are going under subdivisions, we could at least generate some electricity from the roofs. What about the parking lots at the big box strip malls? They could even provide shade.

Educate and make incentives for developers to orient houses with south facing windows with the proper overhangs. That’s passive solar gain. Its simple and it works.

What about some sort of wood burner that creates electricty and burns cleanly? I live on 100 acres with 80+ acres that need thinning to make it a healthy forest.

Falicies: We can ‘tech’ our way out of this; we can conserve our way out of this; we can win some cosmic lottery and get out of this….

While we consider what it is we are doing to the earth, we had better get ready for what it is doing to us, as we run out of the energy that drives the world as we know it. Capitalism/trade/transportation/business/life will look different is a post oil world. Everyone is encouraged to consider how they will offer value and community in the new world order.

All of this presumes that the bombs don’t drop. But hey, I am optimistic.

Speaking of words, today I heard the prez say: ‘ar-tick-you-late’. Din’t no he noo that 1.
Guess he dint get thru Yale completely uncantaminated, eh?
Leest you noo inglanders dint make him into a librel.

There is a common misunderstanding I believe that we are above nature, in ways that it is justified that we can do what ever we see fit to make our lives perfect. The environment, migratory birds and herds, other animals and what not, seem to get second rates, and Americans get a range of rates usually higher than nature, as if there is a caste and it is including nature (with humans at the top).

Maybe what we need is better, more intuitive technology that gives us energy without the hazards of disrupting nature. But in my opinion this is a multi-step process, one that involves finding inovations to get energy without ‘harming’ nature. I believe that wind turbines do not harm nature, though they do disrupt it. Oil, Gas and Chemical power plants on the other hand harm nature, and it would be best to tackle this issue first, while keeping in mind that there many issues on all sides of this debate (including social issues).

He’s just advocating a progressive approach to environmental politics, rather than a regressive one. He argues that human nature and the free market have rejected regressive approaches as being restrictive, and that a progressive approach based on innovation and progress is what we need to get people on board a sustainable environmental agenda.

That’s all.

For decades on American farms, small windmills pumped water from wells into cisterns. It’s likely we’ve all seen these rusty multi-bladed eyesores on drives through the countryside. Then, in the 50’s and 60’s, another kind of eyesore began defacing the (already ugly suburban) landscape where the farms once spread: TV antennas fixed to chimneys. What’s the connection?
Well, if we want to drastically reduce our fossil fuel consumption, why not provide an installment-cost tax write-off for power-generating wind-turbines atop the millions of American roofs?

And why am I the only person I’ve ever heard suggest this?
It can’t be unthinkable, can it?
Think of how satisfying it would be to generate your own electricity, for free. All you’d have to do is install some sort of bird (and bat) guard.

GreenTagGuru, can this happen?

My power company (I grew up in Oregon, live in Vermont now) offers optional “cow power” at slightly higher than its regular rates. This supports locally produced methane-generated electrical power, and helps keep our dairy farmers in business. I am an active supporter of the small windfarms currently being proposed in our state. I buy local food, often from the producer, at most one step away–and the supermarket in our village is starting to carry local, because people are asking for it. This means less fuel used to produce and transport food, and our community is becoming more interwoven. We have an active re-use network– keeping stuff out of landfills and providing materials to low income people and nonprofit organizations. I belong to a local credit union.

And yes, I am a capitalist in the smallest sense of the word, being partly self-employed, working at home using my investment in the very computer I am typing on. I work part-time, and am able to work at home some of that time. I walk to and shop at my locally owned bakery, bookstore, market, cafe, hardware store. I know my town officers by name. And they know me, because I go to meetings, and work with other members of my community to make decisions about what our community is going to look like and how it will function. I know what issues affect my community, and I know that they are part of my grandchildren’s future, whether they live here or on the other coast (some do).

These are personal choices about consumption and how I live that can make a difference. I think that is what this is about.

“Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the “environmentalist” view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.”