One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn't belong. Can you tell me which thing is not like the others, by the time I finish this song? Steven Chu, Lisa Jackson, Carol Browner, Ray LaHood.
Who? Incoming Secretary of Energy Steven Chu led renewable energy research as director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, while commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, introduced a plan to reduce state carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050. The president's new climate czar, Carol Browner, is an ardent environmental protector and lawyer who oversaw the EPA for eight years under President Clinton.
Ray LaHood, newly ordained secretary of transportation, is a representative from a mostly rural part of Illinois where people tend to get around just by driving cars. On mass transit he has a thin and mixed record, giving Amtrak lukewarm support but opposing high-speed rail in his own state.
Well, it's too late; Congress just wrapped up the confirmation song, and it isn't clear that President Obama could answer my question any better than Cookie Monster. Or that he gets the inextricable connections between climate change and transportation.
Brown students might not fully realize how good we have it on College Hill. From dorm rooms at Brown, we can walk or take a short bus or bike ride to restaurants, bookstores, grocery stores, the mall, the train station and the bus depot. From the train station we can reach all the cultural amenities of a major city in an hour and a half.
When we graduate, some of us may move to cities that developed when feet and horses were still the dominant modes of transportation. But others will wind up in areas where it is nearly impossible to enjoy a comfortable life without at least one car. Even many of those who embrace city life will later want to join the suburban masses in the land of highways, strip malls ... and safe streets and good public schools.
Unfortunately, this car-centric means of geographically organizing and transporting ourselves is utterly unsustainable. The fastest-growing category of emissions is those from cars, SUVs and other gas-burning vehicles, which cause nearly a third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
What should be screamingly obvious to anyone who hasn't forgotten the price of gas last summer or worries about climate change is that we need a massive federal investment in public transportation.
Your choices of transportation are among the most environmentally consequential decisions you make. When it requires almost as much energy to recycle as to make products out of entirely new materials, keeping one more bottle out of a landfill may be a laudable gesture, but it won't save the earth.
Burning a few gallons of gas every day instead of riding, biking or walking, though, is a significant contributor to climate change. It's no wonder Manhattan residents, few of whom own cars, emit less than one-third as much carbon as average Americans.
But where there is no decent alternative to the automobile, the latent environmental concern shared by many future Brown alumni is wasted. Higher gas prices, either caused by the market or created by deliberate policy, are more likely to bankrupt working families than bring about vast changes in driving behavior. People will combine a few errands or think twice before taking a discretionary trip, but they still have to commute to work every day.
So, short of taking wrecking balls to the suburbs and forcing everyone into new high-rises, the only way in the short term to dramatically reduce car usage is an enormous expansion of intra-city and regional light rail, intercity high-speed rail and clean-operating local buses.
Light rail is particularly effective within metropolitan areas. Much less expensive than subway or elevated rail lines, it runs at ground level so tracks can be installed into existing streets. Many U.S. cities, even those as small as Spokane, Wash., are beginning to install light rail systems.
High-speed rail is widespread in Europe and Asia but absent here. For intercity travel, high-speed rail is cleaner than airplanes and often as fast. If California can avoid implosion amid its current budget crisis, the state plans to lead the way by connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles in two and a half hours.
Local buses, though mundane, are less expensive and easier to implement than any rail system. Upgraded and expanded bus lines can provide the most immediate and comprehensive transit options on a neighborhood level.
Less than one percent of the current $819 billion stimulus bill is directed toward mass transit. Public transportation must be a top priority if we are to maintain our long-term standard of living and avoid environmental catastrophe. Let's hope either Secretary LaHood decides to hop on board, or that President Obama intends to single-handedly turn Sesame Street into Sesame Station.
Nick Hagerty '10 isn't really from Portland, Oregon - just a nearby suburb. But it does have light rail! He can be reached at nicholas_hagerty (at) brown.edu.
