A few days before Gore's speech,  Rynn and I posted an Excel Spreadsheet over at Grist's blog analyzing costs for eliminating 95% of fossil fuel and chemical greenhouse emissions sources over the course of 30 years, including a 90% emissions cut over 20 years. We analyzed both costs for doing this with existing technology (no major breakthroughs) and doing this with modest and aggressive improvements in technology. We included both aggressive and moderate deployment of efficiency upgrades - using only existing technology. It contains no policy recommendations, because we want to it be a useful resource for anyone, regardless of whether they share our policy views.

It doesn't get much more visionary and ambitious than Al Gore's recent speech on energy and climate change, and this sentence in particular:

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

If you missed it, you can find the full text here or read a helpfully annotated version here.

My only quibble with this fantastic speech was that Gore said little about the transportation sector, which is the second largest contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Changing our transportation policies and funding priorities could greatly help us address the climate change emergency. More on that after the jump.  

Oilmen defending their "product" against militant environmentalists?  Interference from malefactors on the mainland?  Populist supporters of ballot initiatives slandering a "despotic" mayor?  Are we in Texas?  At a meeting of the UN? In California?!

Mayor Mufi Hannemann is at the center of a controversy exploding in paradise: whether to build light rail in Honolulu.

America: land of innovation, of the can-do spirit, of Yankee ingenuity.

Americans were the first people in the world to declare independence from an empire -- and get away with it. Americans dug the Erie Canal, reversed the flow of rivers, invented powered flight and the skyscraper, harnessed the power of the atom, sent men to the moon and brought them back alive. We supplied the world with an abundance of food and high-quality manufactured goods. We defeated fascism, take credit for having defeated communism, co-founded the United Nations, absorbed tens of millions of immigrants and made a single people out of many. We are one goddamn amazing country.

Or at any rate, we were. Something happened to us around 30 years ago. Suddenly, things seemed so awfully difficult. Preposterous, even. Reducing poverty? Building a 200-mpg automobile engine? Signing the Kyoto Protocols? Manufacturing consumer goods domestically? Fighting crime and terrorism without recklessly abrogating civil liberties? Forget it. It's too hard. Too inconvenient. Too unprofitable. Too much of a hassle. Or it might mean that we had to follow the same rules as every other country, that our specialness didn't render us exempt.

We've turned into Emo Nation, for crying out loud.

Before, after, but preferably not during  the Netroots Nation panel Energizing America:  Setting an Agenda for Progress, take the time to visit and explore a truly Energy COOL visitor.  

The Austin Independent School District will bring their Plug-In Hybrid Electric School bus (PHESB), one of very few in the nation, to outside the Convention Center and have people their to explain the bus, its successes, and the systems.  

NOTE: Coding problems kept me from post the full discussion at Daily Kos.  For a robust discussion of school buses see the full post at EENR and Docudharma.

Mike, Lynne and I yakked it up on today's podcast with bike experts Cara Seiderman and Ken Fields of Cambridge, who are bike policy experts representing both government and citizen organizations. Among today's topics, we discussed the importance of people using bikes to meet at least some of their transportation needs - most times people leave the house, they're going 5 miles or less. Why not pedal with your own two feet? It's good for your body, great for the roads, even better for your wallets and beyond fantastic for the environment. Seriously, we all complain about having no time to do things like exercise - why not exercise during your commute?

More below the fold.

About two weeks ago, Tesla Motors announced their new Model S electric vehicle. Unfortunately its still a ways off (production in 2010, possibly later if delayed), but there is a lot of hope on the horizon for the future of energy and electric vehicles. I just hope we can survive the oil crunch the next 5-6 years...

Like most of you, I struggle with the high price of gasoline. Personally I have been making changes to cope with the new economic reality. For a while I was able to absorb the increased expense by depleting my savings, but that is not sustainable. This diary will be a discussion on what bigger changes are in store for the global economy to deal with the imbalance between oil production vs demand. Please join me over the jump.

Some conservatives have been smart enough to embrace Wall-E as their own and some have not.  Similarly its easy from the Pickens plan preamble to have the idea that its a step in the right direction even though its a step here.  What Wall-E, which is garden of Eden for dyslexics, and Pickens plan have in common is a great statement of the issues and then an unwillingness to address the core problem.  This is conservative sustainability - intense anger at where we are but but little realistic thought to how we got there or how we can get out.

All over the United States, transit ridership is up for the first time since the seventies.  The long, slow decline in public transit ridership parallels the long, slow decline of the great American cities.  The recent rise in gas prices (oh, you hadn't heard?) has led people to search for other transportation options, only to find that they don't exist.

Long ignored transit systems are scrambling to add capacity to accomodate the new ridership, while sprawl apologists continue to tell us we can't afford it, that the people choose cars, that the gas tax is a highway user fee that shouldn't be used to fund public transportation.

Would you be willing to pay taxes that would drive gas to $7-8/gallon to fund public transportation?

Senators Obama and McCain plod along through political realignments, off-the-cuff slips of true feelings, and downright "disgraceful" remarks.  Congress balks at upholding even the most basic civil liberties, procrastinates on housing legislation, and puffs its chest with short-term fixes to a long-term oil problem.

Senator McCain's new energy plan proposes incentives for alternative energy.  How about some incentives for transportation alternatives?

In 1973, when OPEC imposed its oil embargo, U.S. oil imports composed 30 percent of our needs; today, they make up more than 60 percent, with a growing proportion of that crude coming from the world's least stable regions. At around $145 a barrel, the United States, by my calculations, will spend more on imported oil this year than it will spend on its own defense budget, and much of that money will flow into the coffers of those who wish us ill.

Okay, we know all that, don't we?  So why I am writing about Gal Luft's Washington Post piece Iran and Brazil Can Do It. So Can We.?  Look at the two countries in that title.  Both are in the midst of lots of oil. Israel is near oil-rich but hostile nations.  Iran produces lots of oil but has no meaningful refining capacity.  And both are moving away from gasoline as the primary means of powering transportation.  How they and other countries are doing it is certainly worth our exploration.

Call me an optimist.  Coal is king, tar sands oil is booming, the arctic is melting, tropical cyclones keep setting new records, and my own city is still flooded.  Yet, in these times, a revolution in both energy and electrified transportation is taking place right beneath our noses, and perhaps nowhere are we seeing the seeds of this being planted more than on the island of Oahu.

Read on to learn more about the world you may be leaving to your grandchildren and the role Hawaii's third largest island may play in bringing it about.

I'm fine with Obama's first salvo of national ads, but I'm also hoping for something different this year: I'd like to see an ad campaign that matches the 50-state strategy we've heard so much about.  In other words, let's see some ads that focus on the unique concerns throughout the country.

For example, there could be an ad just for Nevada slamming McCain for his pro-Yucca Flats position.  There could be an ad for Northern Virginia on Obama's plan for fixing the transportation crisis.  There could be an ad on fair trade for Michigan and Ohio.

Soon many workers won't be able to afford to drive a car:

And most of them don't have telecommute jobs:

And thanks in part to the great american streetcar scandal we can't count on public transportation filling the gap.  We need to subsidize electric cars in a big way and the money should come from redirecting our current oil policy:

crossposted from unbossed

Not just pretty good! Absolutely great! God's gift! According to Citi / Abertis Infraestructuras - the two companies who have formed a partnership to lease the PA Turnpike. And I am assuming that, given all the press releases and the hyper-aggressive marketing by these two, the benefit goes to Citi / Abertis.

It is just amazing what these guys are doing to sell the public on this lease!

Oil consumption per day still predicted to continue to increase one million barrels through 2009.  A price bubble is supposed to decrease demand:
Since demand is still increasing even though oil prices are going up our only hope of lower prices seems to be that oil producers both have spare capacity and are willing to step on each other's toes instead of colluding.  This contrasts with 1970 when price increases dramatically affected consumption:  
Obama understands the situation but he needs to come out and say the government will help subsidize electric cars:
So far even McCain's incredibly weak $300 million prize is competing with Obama's vague $15 billion a year "energy" policy.