They're both covered in the new issue of The New Colonist, now in its
11th year!

Bingo, the Gentle Madness
No matter the irresistible appeal of attempting to create something
new in Las Vegas, there's an apparently even greater appeal found in
bingo, as evidenced by the game's longevity. Having survived one
Great Depression--and certain to last through this nation's latest
economic downturn--this game clearly isn't just a fad that's going
away soon.

Foreclosed!
It's July 2008 and my landlord ("Mr. Potter," in homage to It's a
Wonderful Life) is waking me at 7 a.m. by banging on my window.
Potter, who attempts to offset late middle-age by dyeing his hair an
improbable shade between pink and orange, informs me, "Appraisers are
coming soon to assess the building. Will you tell them your rent is
higher than it really is?"

High Price of Oil May Be Boon
Not only is China, the country that produces a large portion of the
goods sold at these retailers, trying to refocus its economy on high-
tech and the like, which means higher wages for Chinese workers (they
see the writing on the wall too), but the increasing price of oil,
and thus shipping, will mean that it's more efficient to produce
goods close to where they are consumed. So, the potential for the
return of manufacturing and production to the U.S. could be in the
cards.

Eggleston's "Democratic Forest"
"The Democratic Forest," explores what I call "blandscapes," those
emotionally-hollow spaces that constitute James Howard Kunstler's
"geography of nowhere." Graceless architecture, bleak streets,
junkpiles and trashheaps, parking lots, odd ends of cars and traffic
signs, elements of control and disorder jumbled together....



Plus, don't miss Vox Civitas posts http://www.newcolonist.com/vox/
vox.html

Join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-New-Colonist/
49187823630?v=wall

Best wishes (supplemented with action) for a more sustainable 2011.

--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Published on Tuesday, January 4, 2011 by The Independent/UK
Tax on Carbon: The Only Way to Save Our Planet?


He first warned about climate change 30 years ago. Now James Hansen wants us to
get serious about a tax on carbon. He tells Phil England why it's our last
chance

Professor James Hansen's last formal engagement was delivering a keynote paper
to the American Geophysical Union Autumn meeting. After that, he spent the
holidays not enjoying wintry walks or taking advantage of the sales, but doing
something altogether more industrious. "I'm writing a paper to provide the
scientific basis for [law] suits against the government - just to make them do
their job," he says.

Hansen, director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the
world's leading climate scientists, has not always been as politically engaged
as he is now. He had hoped that politicians would respond to the scientific
community by taking action to minimise the risks from climate change. But over
the course of 30 years advising US administrations from Jimmy Carter to George W
Bush, he has seen how the influence of the energy companies has corrupted the
political process. Now with just a small window of opportunity left in which to
stabilise our climate before it slips out of our control, he has been busying
himself with writing to key heads of state around the globe, advocating civil
resistance against the coal industry and getting himself arrested while
campaigning against mountain-top removal coal mining.

After his famous testimony before a Congressional committee in 1988 that
human-induced global warming had begun, Hansen spent the next 15 years turning
down most requests for talks and interviews, preferring to focus on research. He
overcame his reticence in 2004, when he became angered by the Bush
administration's political interference in climate science. He was seized by the
need to ensure the public had the facts about the risks posed by climate change,
but he also became outspoken on policy issues, crossing a line that many
scientists steer clear of.

"I realised that if we [scientists] don't help to connect the dots from what the
science says to what the implications are for policy, then those dots get
connected by people who have special interests," says Hansen, explaining his
decision. "I think scientists are able to be objective. Governments just don't
face the facts clearly. And it's scary because as scientists we can see what the
implications are for our own children and grandchildren."

At a time when many scientists are on the back foot after the pre-Copenhagen
attack on the climate science initiated by the release of internal emails by
researchers based at University of East Anglia, it's a brave position to take.
It's also one that was recognised in 2006 when the American Association for the
Advancement of Science honoured him with its Scientific Freedom and
Responsibility Award for "his courageous and steadfast advocacy in support of
scientists' responsibilities to communicate their scientific opinions and
findings openly and honestly on matters of public importance".

In 2008 he published a landmark paper along with some ten co-authors, "Target
Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?" which redefined our understanding
of what constitutes dangerous climate change. Its conclusion that we need to
reduce the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 390 parts per million
(ppm) to below 350, set the stage for a global campaign to put the number 350 at
the heart of international climate policy. By the time of the UN climate talks
in Copenhagen in December 2009, a majority of more than 100 countries had signed
up to the target. But the weak agreement that emerged from the UN talks in
Cancun does not endorse the 350 figure and instead refers to the outdated
threshold for average global temperature rise of 2C.

"Two degrees Celsius is guaranteed disaster," says Hansen scornfully. "It is
equivalent to the early Pliocene epoch [between 5.5 and 2.5 million years ago]
when the sea level was 25m higher. What we don't know is how long it takes ice
sheets to disintegrate, but we know we'd be starting a process which then is
going to be out of control. Because the way it works - the planet is out of
energy balance, most of the additional energy is going into the ocean, which
melts the ice shelves, which then allows the ice sheets to discharge ice more
rapidly - if you want to stop that and you've pushed it up to two degrees, then
you've got to cool off the ocean. Well that's going to take hundreds of years.
So you would have a situation which can't be fixed except with some
geo-engineering, which is a pretty awful inheritance to leave for our children."

For Hansen, the recent UN talks were doomed to failure since they did not
address what he calls "the fundamentals". The starting point should be
recognising the physical boundary constraints of the Earth's climate system and
working out how to live within them.

"We've reached a point where it's clear we can't burn all the coal or
unconventional fossil fuels [such as oil from tar sands, deepwater drilling and
sources revealed by melting ice]. We've got to phase them out. The large pools
of oil and gas that are readily available to Russia, Saudi Arabia and the Middle
Eastern countries is enough to get us well over 450ppm."

At the UN talks, the rich countries still had high expectations that markets in
carbon dioxide would play a central role in the final deal agreed in Durban,
South Africa at the end of 2011. Carbon markets, or what's often called "cap and
trade", provide access to "offsets" for rich countries which allow them to buy
in carbon reductions from developing countries instead of reducing emissions
within their national borders. However a 2008 Stanford University study found
these supposed carbon cuts to be largely illusory.

For some time Hansen has been on record slamming this approach. He says that in
talks with officials in the UK, the US, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Japan and
Netherlands, government representatives all say they will bring down emissions
by using carbon markets. "You can prove that this is horseshit because they're
building more coal plants. The fossil-fuel industry wants to continue with
something close to business as usual and that is what they get with cap and
trade and with offsets. But governments are supposed to be operating for the
benefit of citizens not for the benefit of powerful industries that have money."

Hansen's solution is a framework built around the introduction of a carbon tax
in both the US and China, and he has recently turned his attention to focusing
on the benefits to China from adopting this approach.

"It's as certain that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, we will
just keep burning them. So we have to put a tax on carbon which rises over time.
China has said flat out that they will not accept a cap. However, China has
every reason to tax carbon because they have invested a lot in carbon-free
energy. They're now number one in production of solar, wind and nuclear. But
clean energy is not going to take over from dirty energy if fossil fuels remain
the cheapest. So they need to put a price on carbon within their country and
they're now actually thinking about that. They can see that economically they
will be better off if the world starts to move towards clean energy, as they
will be in a great position to sell these technologies to the rest of us.

They want to solve their air pollution and water pollution problems; they don't
want to have the fossil-fuel addiction that has the United States sending
soldiers all around the world; they don't want to suffer the climate damages
because they are much more vulnerable than most countries."

Hansen's idea is that 100 per cent of the revenue collected from a carbon tax is
returned in equal amounts to citizens, which means that those with lower carbon
footprints are likely to be better off. In his latest book, Storms of My
Grandchildren, Hansen says that Congress liked cap and trade because "it thinks
the public will not figure out that it is a tax" and a tax in which energy
companies and financial speculators reap the dividends.

Daphne Wysham, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies think tank, is part
of a growing coalition that supports the idea of a carbon tax. With cap and
trade legislation a dead duck in the new Republican-dominated House of
Representatives, Wysham figures that campaigners in the US have two years to
start educating the public about the benefits of "tax and rebate" before the
political complexion of Congress shifts again. In the meantime she's bullish
about the potential for US action. "We may exceed the targets that the US has
put on the table through a switch to natural gas from coal and a ramping up of
wind energy; in addition, there's a major pushback from the grassroots against
existing and proposed coal-fired electricity plants based on their mercury and
other emissions." But however the political climate changes, and despite the
shifting sands of globalisation, Hansen will be using his expertise to try and
avert a toxic timebomb for our descendants and their planet.


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                    .                    Carfree Cities
mailbox@...              .            http://www.carfree.com

Well-done demolition of the O'Toole/Cox axis's balderdash about roads
"paying for themselves" while all other modes--transit, cycling, even
walking--are improperly "subsidized."

http://tinyurl.com/27f4j2e

Big PDF, sorry. And, US numbers only. But these arguments are being
used to oppose bike lanes, light rail, high-speed rail, and just
about everything except more lane-miles of asphalt for cars and
nothing else.

Rick
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Staggering statistic: 1/4 of US cropland is used
to convert petroleum to alcohol for cars:

"Some short-term fixes are possible. If the US government ended the subsidies
for growing maize (corn) for "bio-fuels", it would return about a quarter of US
crop land to food production. If people ate a little less meat, if more African
land was brought into production, if more food was eaten and less was thrown
away, then maybe we could buy ourselves another fifteen or twenty years before
demand really outstripped supply."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/10-1


The travesty is that this only occurs because of subsidies
for alcohol. There is essentially zero actual increase
in the fuel value of the feedstocks for alcohol production.

J.


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                    .                    Carfree Cities
mailbox@...              .            http://www.carfree.com

Hi All,

Forwarding this to the list.

Best,

J.


>Hello,
>
>I was recently forwarded a recent copy of your newsletter Car Free Times by a
friend.  I noticed your "Revolting Quote of the Decade" was by none other than
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.  We happen to be running a contest to deal with Mayor
Ford's ridiculous stance on bike lanes and cycling and we're hoping you can help
up to promote it.
>
>Tour d'Afrique is a Toronto based bike tour company that hosts long distance
bike tours all over the world.  In 2011 our very first North American Tour will
pass through Toronto and we want to use the tours arrival to lauch a campaign to
combat Rob Ford's stance on cycling.
>
>So we've been running a contest, in cooperation with blogger Bike Snob New York
City (BSNYC) to generate ideas for the campaign.
>
>You can read the contest details here: 
<http://tourdafrique.com/blog/news/facebook-contest-save-cycling-in-toronto>http\
://tourdafrique.com/blog/news/facebook-contest-save-cycling-in-toronto
>
>And you can view the Facebook contest on our page here: 
<http://www.facebook.com/tourdafrique?v=app_95936962634>http://www.facebook.com/\
tourdafrique?v=app_95936962634
>
>So you think you could help us promote the contest to your followers?
>
>The contest runs through Jan 21st and voting ends two weeks later.
>
>Please let me know if you think you can help or if I can provide you with any
more information,
>
>Thank you for your time,
>
>Paul
>
>Paul J McManus
>1.850.519.6401
>Tour Director
>Foundation Director
>Tour d'Afrique Ltd.
>
>5 Continents, 9 Adventures.  Bike the World.
>Website: <http://www.tourdafrique.com/>www.tourdafrique.com
>Visit our <http://www.facebook.com/tourdafrique>Facebook Page
>Follow us on <http://twitter.com/#!/tourdafrique>Twitter
>Sign up for our <http://tourdafrique.com/newsletter>Newsletter
>



-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                    .                    Carfree Cities
mailbox@...              .            http://www.carfree.com

Begin forwarded message:

>
> There's some good stuff out today from the Center for Clean Air Policy
> on the economic dividends of smart growth. I'm still making my way
> through their report, but I think some of the more interesting points
> are that economic growth is not dependent on growth in driving, and
> that the trend in American economic output has "de-coupled" from the
> trend in driving.
>
> Money quote: While travel is essential to economic productivity, many
> of the additional miles we are
> forced to drive simply because of the layout of our cities and a lack
> of options might be
> dubbed “empty miles”
>
> Full report here:
>
> http://growingwealthier.info/docs/growing_wealthier.pdf
>
> Short summary here:
>
> http://growingwealthier.info/docs/gw_summary.pdf

--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

A short article at Treehugger about Masdar:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/01/masdar-2-billion-clean-energy-city-grows\
-desert.php

And another, with video, about the basement PRT vehicles planned for the city:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/01/test-riding-personal-rapid-transit-masda\
r-city-video.php

Christopher Miller
Montreal QC  Canada

Beijing to broadcast live first ever car license lottery
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-01/23/c_13703026.htm

BEIJING, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- Beijing is ready to kick  off its first ever car
license plates lottery, to be broadcast live  both on TV and over the Internet
on Jan. 26, said officials with the  allotment office Saturday.
A total of 17,600 car license plates will be allocated to qualified  individual
applicants through the lottery, in keeping with the  principles of openness,
fairness and equity, according to the office.
Validation for the first batch of 210,178 individual applicants has  been
completed, and the office will make public the results, as well as  lottery time
and rules, on Tuesday.
Applicants can check out the validation information at bjhjyd.gov.cn.
The first group of car license plates for institution and company  applicants
will also be allocated through the lottery on the same day.
The Beijing municipal government put in place the lottery mechanism  at the end
of last year in an effort to curb the capital city's fast  growth of
automobiles, which resulted in worsening traffic jams.
The new mechanism seeks to reduce new car registrations by allowing  only
240,000 in 2011, or about one-third of new cars registered in 2010.
Data from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport (BMCT) shows  there were
only 78,000 cars in Beijing in 1978 and 200,000 in 1985.
However, the number of cars soared after the country entered the 21st century
amid fast economic growth and urbanization.
Within 13 years, the number of cars in Beijing more than quadrupled  to 4.76
million in 2010 from 1 million in 1997, according to the BMCT.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.newcolonist.com

The January issue of The New Colonist is online now, featuring
articles on:

*Pipers Scottish restaurant on Pittsburgh's South Side
*A superstar pawn shop in Las Vegas
*Chip Haynes's predictions for 2011 (Chip is the author of "Ghawar is
Dying," one of the earliest articles to foreshadow the course that
Saudi oil production has taken since it was published in 2003)
*Winter Games, Amy McNeal's suggestions for avoiding cabin fever in
our current confining winter weather

Plus, of course, our blog and our extensive archive on life in the city.

Find it all at The New Colonist!

http://www.newcolonist.com
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

> *Pipers Scottish restaurant on Pittsburgh's South Side
http://www.newcolonist.com/

=v= Interesting.  I'm a devotee of Over The Bar, which is a few
blocks east of there.  It's bicycle-themed, with bike parking,
furniture, objects, and room dividers made from bike parts, and
bike posters here and there.  What's more, the annual delivery
of Pedal Pale Ale from the East End Brewery to OTB is done with
bike trailers. ;^)

=v= Mind you, it doesn't have that homey Scottish pub feeling,
it's more like a sports bar, for one particular sport.  (Though
I'm sure both Pipers and OTB will have a big TV screen up for
folks to watch the Steelers win the Super Bowl.)
     <_Jym_>

Not all of Oregon looks like Portland...in fact, not much does.
Here's alink to a video from Beaverton, a Portland suburb that
presently looks much like many Los Angeles suburbs.

What they envision is better but still kind of half-assed compared to
what we're used to discussing here, or what is on the ground in
Portland a few miles away, but the presentation is extremely well done.

http://www.beavertoncivicplan.com/2011/01/finding-downtown-beaverton/

Rick
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I know, in Internet time that's an epoch--but everything it says is
still current, and all its rational ideas remain unrealized. Well
worth reading--or reading again:

http://tinyurl.com/ybdck2h

Rick

--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Beautiful paean to cities and the social and economic benefits of
density and public culture, and civic intimacy....

One good quote:

> As Glaeser notes, cities that rely on big businesses wither. Those
> that incubate small ones grow.
>
Read it here:

http://tinyurl.com/6g3tkwu

Rick
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi All,

The following message was sent to Detroit Mayor Bing
this morning. If you want to send an expression of
support for this idea, please contact Mayor Bing:

City of Detroit
Executive Office
Coleman A. Young Municipal Center
2 Woodward Ave., Suite 1126
Detroit, MI 48226

313 224 3400


Best,

Joel


-------------------------------------------------

Dear Mayor Bing,

I read today's article in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/07/AR2011020705338.\
html?hpid=artslot&sid=ST2011020705726

with great interest.

I would like to propose what would be an ironic solution to Detroit's problems:
take out the cars.

I am the author of two books on carfree cities. While there are a great many
advantages to this approach, the ones that may interest you the most are the
huge savings in infrastructure development and maintenance costs. Your plan to
basically abandon large swathes of the city and rededicate them to other uses is
entirely consistent with the approach I have proposed. Your plan to build a
light-rail system, presumably centered on downtown, is essential to my vision.

The huge reductions in operating costs come precisely from the increase in
density that you propose. Obviously, it costs a lot less to collect garbage,
pave streets, and keep the lights on in a city where the utility runs have been
dramatically shortened, the street widths cut by more than half, and a great
many streets torn up.

The technology required is all off-the-shelf with the exception of the container
delivery system, which is not essential and which is simply an extension of
well-proven automated container handling systems.

Aside from the cash savings, the carrot for this is better street safety, the
return of beauty to a once-beautiful city, and the chance to grow a sense of
community in a long-battered city.

Considerable information can be found on my web site:

http://www.carfree.com

This information is not entirely up to date, but is adequate for now. If you
need full information, please consult my books, which are mentioned prominently
on the web site.

If I can be of any service whatever, please call on me. And best of luck
whatever you may decide to do.

Sincerely,


Joel "J.H." Crawford



-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                    .                    Carfree Cities
mailbox@...              .            http://www.carfree.com

I working on building a carfree Detroit and I've got to say, I think it's
more likely to happen here than anywhere else.  I'll avoid any long drawn
out explanations here--it seems like shouting at the night sky to me--but if
anybody on this list is curious or would like to help, I'm always happy to
chat and would certainly appreciate any aid.

-Jon
spauldingcourt.com

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 2:33 PM, J.H. Crawford <mailbox@...> wrote:

>
>
>
> Hi All,
>
> The following message was sent to Detroit Mayor Bing
> this morning. If you want to send an expression of
> support for this idea, please contact Mayor Bing:
>
> City of Detroit
> Executive Office
> Coleman A. Young Municipal Center
> 2 Woodward Ave., Suite 1126
> Detroit, MI 48226
>
> 313 224 3400
>
> Best,
>
> Joel
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> Dear Mayor Bing,
>
> I read today's article in the Washington Post:
>
>
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/07/AR2011020705338.\
html?hpid=artslot&sid=ST2011020705726
>
> with great interest.
>
> I would like to propose what would be an ironic solution to Detroit's
> problems: take out the cars.
>
> I am the author of two books on carfree cities. While there are a great
> many advantages to this approach, the ones that may interest you the most
> are the huge savings in infrastructure development and maintenance costs.
> Your plan to basically abandon large swathes of the city and rededicate them
> to other uses is entirely consistent with the approach I have proposed. Your
> plan to build a light-rail system, presumably centered on downtown, is
> essential to my vision.
>
> The huge reductions in operating costs come precisely from the increase in
> density that you propose. Obviously, it costs a lot less to collect garbage,
> pave streets, and keep the lights on in a city where the utility runs have
> been dramatically shortened, the street widths cut by more than half, and a
> great many streets torn up.
>
> The technology required is all off-the-shelf with the exception of the
> container delivery system, which is not essential and which is simply an
> extension of well-proven automated container handling systems.
>
> Aside from the cash savings, the carrot for this is better street safety,
> the return of beauty to a once-beautiful city, and the chance to grow a
> sense of community in a long-battered city.
>
> Considerable information can be found on my web site:
>
> http://www.carfree.com
>
> This information is not entirely up to date, but is adequate for now. If
> you need full information, please consult my books, which are mentioned
> prominently on the web site.
>
> If I can be of any service whatever, please call on me. And best of luck
> whatever you may decide to do.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joel "J.H." Crawford
>
> ----- ### -----
> J.H. Crawford . Carfree Cities
> mailbox@... . http://www.carfree.com
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

See this from yesterday's Guardian:

J.


WikiLeaks cables: Saudi Arabia cannot pump enough oil to keep a lid on prices

US diplomat convinced by Saudi expert that reserves of world's
biggest oil exporter have been overstated by nearly 40%


     * John Vidal, environment editor
     * guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 February 2011 22.00 GMT


The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not
have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from
its embassy in Riyadh show.

The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning
from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil
reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.

The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than
$100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts
expect that the Saudis and their Opec cartel partners would pump more oil if
rising prices threatened to choke off demand.

However, Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration at the
Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, met the US consul general in Riyadh in November 2007
and told the US diplomat that Aramco's 12.5m barrel-a-day capacity needed to
keep a lid on prices could not be reached.

According to the cables, which date between 2007-09, Husseini said Saudi Arabia
might reach an output of 12m barrels a day in 10 years but before then –
possibly as early as 2012 – global oil production would have hit its highest
point. This crunch point is known as "peak oil".

Husseini said that at that point Aramco would not be able to stop the rise of
global oil prices because the Saudi energy industry had overstated its
recoverable reserves to spur foreign investment. He argued that Aramco had badly
underestimated the time needed to bring new oil on tap.

One cable said: "According to al-Husseini, the crux of the issue is twofold.
First, it is possible that Saudi reserves are not as bountiful as sometimes
described, and the timeline for their production not as unrestrained as Aramco
and energy optimists would like to portray."

It went on: "In a presentation, Abdallah al-Saif, current Aramco senior
vice-president for exploration, reported that Aramco has 716bn barrels of total
reserves, of which 51% are recoverable, and that in 20 years Aramco will have
900bn barrels of reserves.

"Al-Husseini disagrees with this analysis, believing Aramco's reserves are
overstated by as much as 300bn barrels. In his view once 50% of original proven
reserves has been reached … a steady output in decline will ensue and no amount
of effort will be able to stop it. He believes that what will result is a
plateau in total output that will last approximately 15 years followed by
decreasing output."

The US consul then told Washington: "While al-Husseini fundamentally contradicts
the Aramco company line, he is no doomsday theorist. His pedigree, experience
and outlook demand that his predictions be thoughtfully considered."

Seven months later, the US embassy in Riyadh went further in two more cables.
"Our mission now questions how much the Saudis can now substantively influence
the crude markets over the long term. Clearly they can drive prices up, but we
question whether they any longer have the power to drive prices down for a
prolonged period."

A fourth cable, in October 2009, claimed that escalating electricity demand by
Saudi Arabia may further constrain Saudi oil exports. "Demand [for electricity]
is expected to grow 10% a year over the next decade as a result of population
and economic growth. As a result it will need to double its generation capacity
to 68,000MW in 2018," it said.

It also reported major project delays and accidents as "evidence that the Saudi
Aramco is having to run harder to stay in place – to replace the decline in
existing production." While fears of premature "peak oil" and Saudi production
problems had been expressed before, no US official has come close to saying this
in public.

In the last two years, other senior energy analysts have backed Husseini. Fatih
Birol, chief economist to the International Energy Agency, told the Guardian
last year that conventional crude output could plateau in 2020, a development
that was "not good news" for a world still heavily dependent on petroleum.

Jeremy Leggett, convenor of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy
Security, said: "We are asleep at the wheel here: choosing to ignore a threat to
the global economy that is quite as bad as the credit crunch, quite possibly
worse."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/08/saudi-oil-reserves-overstated-wik\
ileaks


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                    .                    Carfree Cities
mailbox@...              .            http://www.carfree.com

New Colonist contributor Chip Haynes on Peak Oil & new Wikileaks
revelations on Saudi reserves:

http://tinyurl.com/45zs7ph

Rick
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi All,

See video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12417515


The Prince of Wales has warned that ignoring environmental concerns will damage
the ability of countries to maintain economic growth.

Speaking to an audience of MEPs and other policymakers in Brussels, he said, "a
'business as usual' approach... offers only short term relief and not a long
term cure".

He hit out at climate change sceptics, asking how they could ignore "all the
clear warning signs by passing them off as merely part of a cyclical process".


Best,

J.


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                    .                    Carfree Cities
mailbox@...              .            http://www.carfree.com

Military leaders, CEOs support transit, trains, control of fossil
fuel externalities for nat'l security:

   http://tinyurl.com/4dbbsxl

R
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I've noticed that every now and then a story pops up about the US military's
viewpoints on these policy matters. Interesting how – though any inherent biases
they have more likely than not tend toward the right end of the political
spectrum – they can't afford to pretend things away. You don't last long if you
do in their profession, so you have to deal with facts as they are, no matter
how unpalatable.

Chris Miller
Montreal

On 2011-02-10, at 3:43 PM, Richard Risemberg wrote:

> Military leaders, CEOs support transit, trains, control of fossil
> fuel externalities for nat'l security:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/4dbbsxl
>
> R
> --

Very interesting:

The City of LA has been wanting to lease off some parking garages
that offer currently subsidized rates to private operators, in an
effort to cut costs and plug a budget gap.

Amusing how the same groups that want costs cut raised a hue and cry
over the end of tax subsidies for parking for private drivers!

And when the city responded by stipulating in the contract  that
rates had to be kept low, the private companies backed out--all
twelve fo them.

In other words, one more sign that private driving is not only
environmentally unsustainable--it's also economically unsustainable.

Makes you wonder why so many conservatives are still gung-ho for
cars.  ("American Conservative" magazine excepted.)

Story:
http://tinyurl.com/49ur3tz

Rick
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi All,

Has anyone read the book? Want to do a review
for Carfree Times?

Best,

J.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/books/review/Silver-t.html?_r=1&nl=books&emc=b\
ooksupdateema3

NY Times book review:

Up, Up, Up

By DIANA SILVER

Published: February 11, 2011

TRIUMPH OF THE CITY


How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, ­Greener, Healthier, and
Happier

By Edward Glaeser

Illustrated. 338 pp. The Penguin Press. $29.95.

Related

Excerpt: ‘Triumph of the City’ (Google Books)

Glaeser’s essential contention is that “cities magnify humanity’s strengths.”
They spur innovation by facilitating face-to-face interaction, they attract
talent and sharpen it through competition, they encourage entrepreneurship, and
they allow for social and economic mobility. Glaeser takes us on a world tour of
urban economics, collecting passport stamps in Athens, London, Tokyo, Bangalore,
Kinshasa, Houston, Boston, Singapore and Vancouver. Along the way, he explains
how urban density contributed to the birth of restaurants, why supermarket
check-out clerks demonstrate the competitive advantage such density confers and
how the birth of Def Jam Records illustrates the way cities spur artistic
innovation. Here, his enthusiasm for cities is refreshing.

Glaeser’s got some tough words for poorly reasoned public policies that feed
suburban living: federal highway programs, the mortgage tax deduction, low gas
prices. While he understands the lure of big houses and lush lawns, he’s against
subsidizing them. And he chastises city planners in Paris and Mumbai, making a
passionate argument for building up ­ and up and up.

Though he admires Jane Jacobs’s insights into the virtues of mixing residential
and retail together, he thinks her prescription for small-scale neighborhoods is
wrongheaded. He’d much rather see neighborhoods of skyscrapers than acres of
suburban developments. Greater density is the goal: more people means more
possibility. Even when writing about the developing world, Glaeser is unfazed by
threats of overwhelmed sanitation systems, unsafe housing or impossible
congestion. These, he suggests, are problems more readily solved than the
environmental consequences of sprawling suburban life.

Glaeser is scathing in denouncing local conservationists for their devotion to
“leafy suburbs,” which he sees as being at odds with true environmentalism.
Reminding us that even Thoreau benefited from association with a circle of urban
intellectuals, he insists that suburbanization is producing an ecological
disaster. Growth that’s restricted in temperate areas like coastal California is
pushed into intemperate ones like Las Vegas, where air-conditioning is leading
to a carbon emissions nightmare. What will happen, he asks, if China and India
emulate us? Paradoxically, fighting for local green space in the Bay Area
undermines our ability to be global environmental activists.

Clearly, Glaeser loves an argument, and he’s a wonderful guide into one.
“Triumph of the City” is bursting with insights and policy proposals to debate.
Sometimes that’s a bit of a problem: there’s a lot of policy in this book, but
not a lot of politics. It’s about ideas, not implementation. Some of those ideas
may strike you as problematic: the increasing density he credits Atlanta with
has been accompanied by an explosion of suburban sprawl. Others, like tilting
the benefits of the tax system away from suburbanites and toward city residents,
may sound absolutely unrealizable. And still others, like his advice to cities
in decline to “shrink to greatness,” seem a little tone deaf, especially since
those cities are steadily losing the skills and talent to find that greatness.

No matter though. If separating ideas from implementation can leave you a little
lightheaded, you’ll still walk away dazzled by the greatness of cities and
fascinated by this writer’s nimble mind.

Diana Silver is an assistant professor of public health at the Steinhardt School
of New York University.


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                    .                    Carfree Cities
mailbox@...              .            http://www.carfree.com

Hi All,

Helsinki's underground utility infrastructure,
by CNN's Richard Quest.

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2011/02/14/qmb.fc.helsinki.undergroun\
d.cnn?hpt=C2

Best,

J.


-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                    .                    Carfree Cities
mailbox@...              .            http://www.carfree.com

Excellent article in Canada's National Post exposing how car-
dependence and violent crime make suburban and rural living much more
dangerous for children than city life:

http://tinyurl.com/4gxjqd2

Rick
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Paris may ban large, high-emissions vehicles from its city center:

http://is.gd/EfpcrP

Rick
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

This page was sent to you by: rickrise@....

More impetus for cycling, carfree cities....


OPINION | February 23, 2011
Op-Ed Columnist: If Not Now, When?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Any road to democracy in the Arab world will be long and rocky.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/opinion/23friedman.html?emc=eta1




----------------------------------------------------------

ABOUT THIS E-MAIL
This e-mail was sent to you by a friend through NYTimes.com's E-mail This
Article service.  For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help@....

NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2011 The New York Times Company


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

This just came in from Brazil:

>Hi all,
>
>Last friday on Porto Alegre's Critical Mass, a driver hit dozens of cyclists:
><http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRgiIrHRoHM&feature=player_embedded>http://www.\
youtube.com/watch?v=KRgiIrHRoHM&feature=player_embedded
>
>We are all still shocked but many groups throughout the country are already
planning something to respond to that hideous crime.
>
>The Porto Alegre CM blog has more info and videos (in portuguese):
><http://massacriticapoa.wordpress.com/>http://massacriticapoa.wordpress.com/
>
>Luis Patricio
><http://transportehumano.com.br>transportehumano.com.br
>"Mais importante que o veículo que você usa, é a mensagem que você veicula"
>@luis_patricio
>
>--
>You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>Groups "World Carfree Network" group.
>To post to this group, send email to carfree_network@googlegroups.com
>Replies are sent to the author of the message.
>To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>carfree_network-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
>For more options, visit this group at
><http://groups.google.com/group/carfree_network?hl=en?hl=en>http://groups.googl\
e.com/group/carfree_network?hl=en?hl=en




-----                           ###                            -----
J.H. Crawford                    .                    Carfree Cities
mailbox@...              .            http://www.carfree.com

Hi Everyone



I'm dropping a line to let you know that my book, Slow Motion - a collection
of essays and interviews about walking, is now available from Amazon.



http://www.amazon.com/Slow-Motion-Stories-About-Walking/dp/1770098704



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Slow-Motion-Andie-Miller/dp/1770098704



I think it will be of interest to all those concerned with the issues that
are discussed on this list.



Best regards

Andie



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The March issue of The New Colonist is online now at:

http://newcolonist.com/

This month we feature articles on:

*Pittsburgh's new light rail extesnio
*The Clean Eating movement
*The Lure of Luxury
*Reagan and Immigrants

Plus our vast archives and our actives blog.

Thank you,

Rick
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.com
http://www.newcolonist.com
http://www.rickrise.com







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Interesting analysis of the automotive "costs" of sprawl for the poor.  (the
intersection of urban design and planning on poverty)

http://www.originalgreen.org/OG/Blog/Entries/2011/2/28_Automobile_Poverty_-_Part\
_1.html