Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) (Photo: AP)

The environment panel's chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had offered Republicans several days to abandon their walkout, promising time to consider GOP amendments and a complete Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) modeling of the bill before it comes to the Senate floor.

But environment committee Republicans were unmoved, insisting on an immediate five-week delay for EPA analysis despite testimony from the EPA that such work would produce little new information. Boxer's GOP counterpart on the panel, Sen. Jim Inhofe (OK), seemed to delight in forcing the chairman's hand as he labeled the no-amendments move the "nuclear option."

The question now becomes whether the specific proposals added by Boxer's panel -- including grant programs for transit and clean transportation that nearly triple the funding approved by the House -- can survive a long slog through as many as five other committees.

Boxer insisted this morning that "many things in this bill ... are going to be part of that comprehensive bill" that ultimately reaches a full Senate vote. But others on the committee acknowledged that the bill's one-party approval would not bode well for its political prospects.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the chief sponsor of efforts to boost the climate bill's clean transportation provisions, described himself as "very, very, very disappointed," particularly given the loss of a chance to amend the legislation.

Carper submitted an amendment that would have added more than $400 million to the bill's annual set-aside of climate money for transit, inter-city rail, local land use planning and other projects.  "I don't like this process," Carper said this morning. "I don't think any of us do."

The question now becomes whether Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), the lone Republican who has shown willingness to work with Democrats on the climate bill, can provide the momentum needed to overcome the Senate's molasses-slow pace.

Even if Graham's work produces an end result that can win over liberals and centrists, the billions of dollars that the environment committee devotes to transportation is not guaranteed to survive that process.

The lone vote against the environment committee's climate bill came from Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the Finance Committee -- which has asserted jurisdiction over the apportionment of valuable climate "allowances" to various sectors of the economy, including transportation.

Update: While the environment panel was finishing up its work on the bill, Inhofe was giving an interview to Fox News (which mistakenly labeled it the "energy committee"). Inhofe called Baucus' no vote a sign that the bill is "dead" and claimed that this summer's conservative protests at town-hall meetings were driven as much by concern over the climate bill as over the health care bill. Check out the video below:

Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the climate bill's authors. Photo: Intercon.

And the release brought good news for clean transportation: The Senate has largely tripled the share of allowances set aside by the House for transit, inter-city rail, and other efforts to trim transport-based emissions.

While the lower chamber of Congress gave states the option of using 1 percent of climate revenue on transit, the Senate measure would set aside more than 3 percent of allowances in the first two years of the cap-and-trade system for limiting pollution from the transportation sector.

The Senate's beefed-up transportation language comes after a strong push by sponsors of the so-called "CLEAN TEA" bill, which set a high-water mark of a 10-percent climate set-aside for transit, local land-use planning, and other sustainable development projects. Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), a chief author of the "CLEAN TEA" measure, hailed the Senate's move in a weekend statement.

My CLEAN TEA bill is a common-sense solution to the problem that we use a gas tax to fund our nation's transportation system. My language in the [Senate climate bill] directs cities and states to determine how much they can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their transportation systems by investing in driving alternatives, public transit, intercity passenger rail, transit-oriented development, sidewalks and more. States and cities with more ambitious plans will receive more federal funds -- finally rewarding local governments for doing the right thing.

According to the environment committee's weekend release, the share of Senate climate allowances reserved for clean transportation would total 3.21 percent in 2012 and 2013, before dipping to 2.35 percent in the two subsequent years and returning to a share that ranges between 1.9 percent and 3.5 percent in future years.

But not all emissions allowances are created equal; 1 percent of the total amount going to clean transportation would be reserved in the early stages of the program, thus increasing the value of those allowances relative to the ones distributed later on. These early set-aside allowances would also go towards reducing the federal deficit and supplementing other high-priority programs.

Though it falls short of the "CLEAN TEA" mark, the 3-percent set-aside represents a victory for clean transportation advocates as well as the nation's cities. The allowances would be split between grants to states for reducing transport-based emissions and transit grants -- with 80 percent of the latter going to urban areas, 10 percent going to rural areas, and 10 percent to growing states.

However, it's important to note that the transportation section of the Senate climate bill is not written in stone. The environment committee, chaired by climate bill co-author Barbara Boxer (D-MA), will begin holding a series of high-profile hearings on the legislation tomorrow, and months of intense horse-trading are sure to follow.

A final vote on the bill could come as soon as the winter, particularly with global climate talks in Copenhagen drawing near, but is likely to be pushed until next spring. In the interim, look for industries to lobby fiercely to protect their share of the climate pot -- and to try to siphon off the allowances set aside for other industries.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) (Photo: GOP Lounge)

How did Hutchison and Bond get to their $3.6 trillion total, which their report calls "relatively simple and straightforward to calculate"? They simply multiplied their estimate of how much fuel the U.S. would consume between now and 2050 by their estimate of the per-gallon gas price increase that would result from an economy-wide emissions cap.

Hutchison and Bond got their numbers from the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), a business group that released projections on the cost of the House climate legislation at around the same time it joined the official astro-turf lobbying campaign against the bill. The NBCC's analysis, produced by consulting firm CRA International, is one of many competing cost estimates for the climate bill, each of them relying on different assumptions and models that claim to predict the future price of carbon under the pending legislation.

In fact, the NBCC analysis states (in Appendix C) that it has assumed higher CO2 allowance prices than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analysis of the same House climate bill, thus resulting in higher estimates for the plan's impact on real-world carbon prices.

What does the EPA say about the House climate bill's likely effect on fuel prices? Its analysis found a 25-cent per-gallon increase by 2030, or less than three pennies per gallon per year -- small potatoes compared to the oil price swings of recent years, as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change pointed out.

Center for American Progress senior fellow Joe Romm has delved further into the claim, promoted by the oil industry, that a cap on carbon emissions would increase gas prices. Using the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's estimate of allowance prices, Romm found a per-gallon gas price increase similar to the EPA's.

Still, it's unlikely that Hutchison and Bond would be fazed by economic models that discredit their case. Although they told reporters at today's event that they support cutting carbon emissions, the first page of their report makes clear that they dislike the very idea of more moderate energy consumption:

Advocates of climate change legislation want to increase the price of traditional forms of carbon-based energy, such as coal and oil, so that consumers are forced to respond by using less of those forms of energy. Policy-makers call this putting a price on carbon. Economists call this sending a price signal. The bottom line is that the price of energy will go up.

More expensive energy from climate legislation can be seen as a new national energy tax on American consumers and workers.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA), the lead sponsor of the upper chamber's climate bill, came out swinging in response to Hutchison and Bond's report.

"Let’s actually have a debate based on reality,” he said in a statement that accompanied a rebuttal from his office:

Gas tax? More like a $700 rebate…
-          Let’s get one thing clear: There is no tax increase anywhere in the bill. Plain and simple.
-          To get these astronomical numbers, the rightwing assumes there will be no innovation or progress in the next 20 years — now that’s simply un-American. Our most efficient cars today are 20 to 70% more efficient than the most efficient 20 years ago.
-          If you assume that progress continues as our fuel standards improve, every American household actually gets more than $250 in savings from this bill.
-          And if you combine that with the programs this bill creates to improve energy efficiency in our homes, every American household will receive over on average $700 in savings, every year.   

Photo: MetroDCLiving.com

In its report on the "unpriced consequences of energy production and use," the NRC was acting under a congressional mandate to map the health impacts of various energy sources. Climate change was not factored into the NRC's conclusions, but the report nonetheless had a grim tale to tell about transportation fuel consumption.

The NRC found that the manufacture and burning of fuel for U.S. cars and trucks produced $56 billion in external costs in 2005, the year that the report was requested. That hidden cost averaged between 1.2 and 1.7 cents per vehicle mile traveled, depending on the type of fuel used.

In discussing the relatively small difference between the external costs of conventional gas-burning autos and the costs of hybrids or electric vehicles, the NRC wrote:

Although operation of the [electric vehicles and grid-dependent hybrid vehicles] produces few or no emissions, electricity production at present relies mainly on fossil fuels and, based on current emission control requirements, emissions from this stage of the life cycle are expected to still rely primarily on those fuels by 2030, albeit at significantly lower emission rates.

In other words, hybrids and electric vehicles are still likely to consume serious amounts of coal -- at least until the nation adopts an effective renewable electricity standard. The NRC notes that "further legislative and economic initiatives to reduce emissions from the electricity grid could be expected to improve the relative damages from electric vehicles substantially."

Given that cleaner electricity is a significant priority for transit and freight rail as well, perhaps it's worth mentioning: transportation reform is also electricity and energy reform.

The Congress for the New Urbanism will meet in Portland, Oregon, in early November for the annual Project for Transportation Reform, a summit to further define emerging policies that embrace entire urban transportation networks, rather than disjointed transportation segments, and that seek to balance modal splits and reduce overall vehicular miles traveled (VMT).

Summit attendees and partners, including Streetsblog, will participate in discussions on emerging network planning and develop a strategy for informing the national transportation infrastructure debate, of particular significance as climate and transportation bills move forward. As the draft CNU Statement of Principles on Transportation Networks [PDF] notes, climate change and infrastructure problems in the U.S. continue to intensify:

The US now has the world's highest level of VMT per capita, while simultaneously experiencing the highest traffic fatality rates of any developed nation. Per capita traffic delay has more than doubled in the United States since 1982. This deterioration in transportation system performance has occurred in spite of an ongoing public investment of more that $200 billion per year in transportation infrastructure."

CNU President John Norquist said the current focus by transportation professionals on road capacity gives us cities like Detroit, where consistent spending to widen roads has destroyed communities.

"Federal and state DOTs don't understand how cities work. They still want to take rural forms and jam big roads into cities." he said. "Rather than measuring projected traffic flow, they should be measuring how much value it adds to a neighborhood. The U.S. can't afford to be energy-wasting and spending money on projects that destroy the value of neighborhoods."

U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer will kick off the summit and representatives from Oregon Metro will showcase the many innovative transportation and design policies they have implemented in the region that have given Portland one of the highest walking, transit, and bicycle mode shares in the country.

Summit organizers hope to develop the language around network-wide transportation reform so the CNU can persuade lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to incorporate this new urban vision into upcoming climate and transportation legislation.

Marcy McInelly, co-chair of the CNU's transportation reform initiatives and principle of Sera Architects, said, "Reform is about giving more latitude to use highway funds for pieces of the network that may not be for highways. Right now the federal funds have to increase vehicular mobility, which raises VMT. If you had a funding formula that allowed you to count benefits to cost, it would almost always [result in] the other modes besides cars coming out [as] more beneficial. It would balance consideration of other modes."

Norquist said the CNU is working with the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE), the most significant body of professional transportation engineers in the country, to develop transportation standards that raise the profile of urban streets to match that of rural roads and freeways in guides like AASHTO's Green Book for highway and street design.

According to Norquist, reform initiatives should focus on altering "the functional classification system. The current regulatory framework tries to feed future traffic demand, instead of trying to facilitate the network."

Referring to the traditional advocacy position that tries to chip away at the 80-20 funding formula (80 percent of federal funding for freeways, 20 percent for transit), Norquist said a more fundamental change is needed.

"We're completely for the idea of changing the 80-20 split. But even if the environmental community wins and gets 25-75, you're still spending 75 percent of the money on road capacity. They should focus on creating roads that are useful and pleasant and create a place where people actually want to be."

Norquist also promised the conference would be fun. "This conference will have the most dynamic and exciting traffic engineers in the world," he said, with a laugh. "These are the reform traffic engineers, the recovering traffic engineers."

The Project for Transportation Reform with take place from November 4-6 and registration is still open. Streetsblog will be covering the summit with regular stories and tweets, so stay tuned.

Flanked by fellow Democrats, members of the military, and a crowd hoisting signs with buzzwords like "clean energy" and "green jobs," Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) today released the first draft of their legislation to curb U.S. emissions and combat climate change.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), center, and John Kerry (D-MA), left, at a 2008 rally. Photo: NWF/Flickr

But environmental groups are already lamenting that scientific consensus has urged a 40 percent pollution reduction below 1990 emissions levels in order to effectively forestall the negative effects of climate change, making the Boxer-Kerry bill "woefully inadequate," in the words of Center for Biological Diversity executive director Kieran Suckling.

And the Senate bill's transportation provisions, as Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported yesterday, offer only a marginal improvement over the House version, which gave transit and other clean transport just 1 percent of the proceeds from any cap-and-trade carbon regulation system.

The Senate bill's section on allocations -- the amount of aid provided to state governments and various industries to help meet emissions-reduction goals -- is subject to change as the environment committee, which Boxer chairs, and other panels attempt to amend the legislation.

As it stands, however, the Senate would require states to use 10 percent of their allocations to reduce transportation-based emissions. The House climate bill, by contrast, allowed states to use up to 10 percent of allocations on transportation but did not make it mandatory.

Boxer and Kerry's draft also includes a "set-aside," in Washington parlance, for transit grants to help states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) meet national standards for cutting transport-based emissions.

Those transit grants, distributed according to existing federal formulas, would be funded by auctioning a still-undetermined amount of emissions allocations and depositing the proceeds in state Climate Change Response and Transportation Funds (CCRTFs). After 10 percent of CCRTF funds went to coastal states, to help cope with the risk of climate-induced floods, and 1 percent went to Indian tribes, 50 percent of the rest would go toward transit.

Electric vehicles, including electrified transit, fares better under the Senate bill. The Department of Energy would have full control over a still-undetermined share of allocation auction proceeds, with the dual mission of establishing reliable infrastructure to fuel electric vehicles and developing "a national transportation low-emissions energy plan."

Also noted yesterday: The Senate climate draft features a provision that allows states to set higher fuel-efficiency rules for taxicabs than the national standard, which will hit an average of 35.5 miles per gallon in 2016. The taxis language would allow New York City, represented by environment committee member Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, to press on with plans, derailed in federal court, to transition to an all-hybrid taxi fleet. Rep. Jerrold Nadler has introduced a companion taxi bill in the House.

Meanwhile, transportation reform groups are already strategizing about how to increase the bill's focus on their area -- which currently accounts for one-third of U.S. emissions but stands to receive far less than the 10 percent of total climate revenue that is mandated in the so-called "CLEAN TEA" legislation.

The fate of transit and other clean transport may rest with Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the upper chamber's lead sponsor of "CLEAN TEA." Carper, who was not present at today's Boxer-Kerry press conference, released a statement that notably withheld an endorsement of the current climate bill:

Senators Kerry and Boxer have worked hard to produce the bill they released today and I congratulate them for their efforts so far. It is now time for the Senate committees to get to work examining the bill's provisions and considering any changes necessary. ... I expect there wil be some important changes made as this effort advances and we build consensus around how to address this vitally important global energy and climate challenge.

Few on the Hill expect the Senate to be able to meet its initial goal of voting on a final climate bill before United Nations climate change talks begin in December in Copenhagen. Still, Senate passage next spring remains a distinct possibility -- which makes the Boxer-Kerry bill's relative alignment with the House version one of its biggest political selling points.

As one of the House climate bill's lead sponsors, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), put it: “Given the Senate draft’s structural similarity to the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill, a legislative solution that can pass both chambers of Congress is finally within sight."

The question is, how much of a solution will the final product turn out to be?

The secret of European eco-friendliness? Maybe not. Photo: romerican/Flickr

Rosenthal attributes much of this difference to behavioral factors relating, it seems, to Europeans' unique tolerance of inconvenience. She writes:

But even as an American, if you go live in a nice apartment in Rome, as I did a few years back, your carbon footprint effortlessly plummets. It’s not that the Italians care more about the environment; I’d say they don’t. But the normal Italian poshy apartment in Rome doesn’t have a clothes dryer or an air conditioner or microwave or limitless hot water. The heat doesn’t turn on each fall until you’ve spent a couple of chilly weeks living in sweaters. The fridge is tiny. The average car is small. The Fiat 500 gets twice as much gas mileage as any hybrid SUV. And it’s not considered suffering. It’s living the dolce vita.

She later adds:

Also, in Europe, the construction of most cities preceded the invention of cars. The centuries-old streets in London or Barcelona or Rome simply can’t accommodate much traffic — it’s really a pain, but you learn to live with it. In contrast, most American cities, think Atlanta and Dallas, were designed for people with wheels.

What makes this particularly remarkable is that she opens the essay by discussing an experience she has in Stockholm, in which she insists on taking a taxi from the airport, which ends up being much slower and more expensive than the train.

Brad Plumer frames the piece as a fascinating read in light of the "lifestyle taboo," writing:

It's not considered the height of political savvy here in the United States to point out that European lifestyles are greener than our own. Don't expect that line in an Obama speech anytime soon. Too many facets of European life—the cramped apartments, the clotheslines for drying laundry—would likely strike suburbanites as inconvenient, burdensome, or even downright primitive...

Rosenthal wonders whether similar measures could fly in the United States: "I believe most people are pretty adaptable and that some of the necessary shifts in lifestyle are about changing habits, not giving up comfort or convenience." Maybe so, but this sort of talk still tends to be taboo in mainstream U.S. green circles. Josh Patashnik wrote a terrific piece for TNR last year on Arnold Schwarzenegger's brand of "pain-free environmentalism" in California—it's all just peachy to talk about swapping out coal-fired plants for solar-thermal stations, but ixnay on trying to rein in suburban growth or coax people into smaller homes.

I see several problems with Rosenthal's essay and with Brad's framing of it. One is that it's not really correct to attribute the huge gap in per capita emissions between America and Western Europe to the charming European habit of drying their clothes on clotheslines.

As Brad notes, power sources play a major role, whether one is talking about greater use of natural gas, the French nuclear industry, or Iceland's geothermal capacity.

Climate is extremely important. Western Europe is fairly temperate relative to much of America (and especially compared to the dirtiest parts of the country). In the same way, Californians are much greener than Texans, thanks to the moderate conditions along the heavily populated Pacific coast, which reduce the number of days on which home heating or cooling is needed.

But there are lifestyle issues involved, particularly where transportation and land use are concerned. And contrary to Rosenthal, it isn't that Europeans have opted for inconvenience. Rather, they have chosen different conveniences, as her Stockholm air train anecdote makes clear.

It is incorrect to say that an overabundance of land drove America to sprawl, and to drive. The Netherlands is dense of necessity, of course, but in Britain and France and Germany there is ample countryside, which might easily be home to sprawling subdivisions.

But Western Europeans have largely chosen not to encourage such growth, opting instead to tax gas at high rates, invest in transit, and protect center cities from the threat of urban freeways.

I think it is very difficult, objectively, to demonstrate that their choices have produced ways of life that are clearly less convenient than American lives. It is clear that Europeans tend to have better health outcomes than us, and they die in car accidents at much lower rates, and of course they're enjoying levels of wealth similar to our own while producing half as much carbon.

The obvious retort to this line of thinking is that perhaps that's all true, but like it or not America is now sprawling, and any effort to make the country greener by pursuing European land use and transportation options would be very difficult. In a similar vein, it is argued that attempts to push Americans into such a life via gas taxes or carbon prices would wind up being very painful.

But this is not quite right. As I have pointed out before, America will more or less need to build itself all over again by 2050 in order to accommodate population growth. Just because most of America is currently sprawling doesn't mean that most of the America built between now and mid-century has to look the same.

It's also not clear that increasing the push factor on households has to be especially painful. Taxes on drivers can be levied in a progressive fashion, if some revenues are used to fund transit options while others are refunded to lower and middle income households to help offset the added cost of driving.

Congestion tolling would mean higher government revenues and reduced driving, but it would benefit rich and poor alike. As with tax revenues, tolls could be used to provide a cushion against the increased cost for lower income families and increased investment in transit. Higher income households (which will tend to place a greater value on work hours lost to congestion) would enjoy a speedy ride into the office.

If the federal government worked to address limits on urban growth in green cities like New York and San Francisco -- limits which also serve to make housing in such places extremely expensive -- then America could grow denser and greener by improving access for middle-income households to some of the most dynamic metropolitan economies in the country.

Perhaps not all of the policy changes needed to reduce America's carbon footprint will be a walk in the park, but efforts to improve land use and transportation decisions are likely to be some of the most benefit-rich aspects of the climate change fight (as you'd think most people would realize, given the obvious pain of congestion, high gas prices, driving fatalities, and isolation among those unable to drive, among other things).

This storyline -- that changing lifestyles to enhance walkability will be painful -- makes it harder to pass good metropolitan policies and easier for politicans to fall back on the lame argument that Americans simply won't tolerate anything other than the sprawling suburban patterns which have dominated new development in recent decades.

And by reinforcing the idea that some of the most promising and least painful policy changes that can be made are unlikely to "work" here in America, writers and politicians alike ensure that more of the hard job of cutting emissions will fall to the parts of the economy where there are no good alternative options, and where change will be painful for households.

Rosenthal's essay is odd yet revealing. She instinctually attributes European greenness to practices Americans would dub backward, while pretending that the very convenient and green transport options she finds are built, and presumably used, by Europeans based on some peculiarity in their culture that we lack.

But we could build trains! In any given legislative sessions bills are introduced that would move the country toward the level of convenience Rosenthal enjoyed in her train ride to the Stockholm airport. It's just that they don't pass, because "it's not considered the height of political savvy" to embrace those policies, because Americans seem to think that their American-ness will render such conveniences inconvenient.

"Trains won't work here," because "Americans love their cars," and so high quality rail lines aren't built, and so Americans continue to drive. And then we sit around wondering what it is about the European character that makes them enjoy using clotheslines so much.

A 10 percent annual increase in U.S. transit ridership would reduce CO2 emissions by 180 million tons each year, taking the nation halfway to the target set by the House climate change bill within three years, according to a report [PDF] released today by Environment America and the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

The report, timed to coincide with the growing debate over transit's role in the final version of the congressional climate bill, includes a wealth of useful and surprising data about how last year's much-discussed rise in transit use translates into reduced driving and environmental benefits.

For example, that 10 percent increase in transit ridership is already happening in five states, all of which also saw a notable drop in vehicle miles traveled last year. And guess which five saw double-digit rises in ridership? Not New York or Massachusetts -- but Louisiana, Idaho, Utah, Delaware, and Maryland.

"A lot of [transit] growth that we're seeing isn't in typical big cities," Environment America transportation advocate Rob McCulloch, a co-author of today's report, said in an interview. "It's in suburbs and smaller communities where people are opting in. We think that's really where the opportunity is."

The report describes a 10 percent increase in transit ridership as a "high but realistic target," but it goes on to make a clear case for setting such a goal:

[I]n 15 years such an approach could reduce transportation oil consumption by 20 billion gallons per year — equivalent to what we currently import from the Persian Gulf. This would also result in an annual reduction of 180 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution — more than four times the current benefit conferred by public transportation.

That annual cut of 180 million tons of CO2 would amount to 3 percent reduction below 2005 emissions levels every year. The climate bill passed by the House in June aims to reduce emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels over the next 11 years, making a national transit-ridership target a key weapon in the arsenal of climate policy-makers.

McCulloch and his co-authors make several policy recommendations to lawmakers now working on transport and energy proposals, but their most powerful message comes in the framing department.

At this month's University of Virginia infrastructure conference, one popular lament was that transportation lacks a national "story," a coherent and catchy appeal to Americans from all walks of life. Bicycle and transit advocates may well disagree, as may state DOT officials who think of more roads as the be-all, end-all of infrastructure policy.

Yet it's easy to see a "story" emerging from today's transit report, one that's focused on flexibility -- for transit agencies to use federal money to keep operating and for officials to use funds on different modes of transport -- as well as a common goal of reducing the nation's expensive, crippling oil dependence. The more that lawmakers and environmental groups use those themes to make transportation a bigger part of the climate debate, the better.

The latest production of the Yes Men hit the streets and the Web today: an Onion-esque "Special Edition" of the New York Post devoted completely to climate change, released ahead of this week's global summit at UN headquarters. Coming in at 32 pages in print, there's a lot here to digest -- including a fun take down of livable streets skeptic Steve Cuozzo, whose alter ego sees the error of his auto-centric ways.

It may be a fake edition of the Post, but it isn't fake news, says the group:

Everything in it is 100% true, with all facts carefully checked by a team of editors and climate change experts.

"This could be, and should be, a real New York Post," said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men. "Climate change is the biggest threat civilization has ever faced, and it should be in the headlines of every paper, every day until we solve the problem."

Take, for example, the city's own climate change report [PDF], which warns of a future New York beset by extreme heat waves, flooding and drought unless "all nations" reduce their carbon emissions.

The bright side, inasmuch as there is one, is that most New Yorkers are already committed to a relatively low-impact lifestyle simply by residing in a city where over 80 percent of the population gets around by walking, biking and taking transit. Hopefully copies of today's faux-Post will make their way into the hands of oblivious politicians like Bill Thompson, for whom urban carbon-cutters like bike lanes and pedestrian spaces are only as valuable as the next faux-populist sound bite.

Update: Daily Finance (via Gothamist) reports that NYPD detained three volunteers who were distributing fake Posts outside the News Corp. building in midtown.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) (Photo: DTI)

We use a gas tax to fund our nation's transportation system. That means that we pay for roads and transit by burning gasoline. It also means that when Americans drive less, transportation funds dry up.

How, then, can we in Washington ask cities and states to help combat climate change by reducing the amount their residents drive, when doing so will deprive them of federal transportation dollars? We would be punishing local governments for doing the right thing, and that is not acceptable.

Carper also offered an answer to skeptical rural officials, such as the South Dakotan who testified at a field hearing last week that less-populated areas would be better off decreasing emissions from agriculture than trying to tackle cleaner transportation:

Our legislation directs cities and states to determine how much they can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their transportation systems by investing in driving alternatives, public transit, intercity passenger rail, transit-oriented development, sidewalks and more. States and cities with more ambitious plans will receive more federal funds -- finally rewarding local governments for doing the right thing.

This aspect of Carper's proposal, also known as "CLEAN TEA," is pivotal. Setting emissions targets would be up to states and metro areas, not forced upon them by federal policy-makers. A state that determined its ability to cut transport-based pollution was limited could propose a lower emissions target and accept less of the 10-percent pot.

But wouldn't that penalize South Dakota and other states that have less transit potential? No more than the current guarantee of 92 cents' return for every gas-tax dollar sent to Washington has penalized states such as New York, where less driving has come to mean less aid available for transport.

In fact, the White House's high-speed rail effort offers proof that the promise of federal funds can get almost every state interested in green transportation. Forty out of 50 states have begun the process of competing for $8 billion in rail, according to the U.S. DOT.

NRDC's depiction of how hard states are hit by gas costs, ranked by percentage of income spent.

An attempt to answer that question was released Tuesday [PDF] by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has ranked the "oil vulnerability" of the 50 states for three years running.

On its face, the list is unsurprising: Mississippi remains in first place, with the average driver spending more than 9 percent of annual income on gas, while Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut were rated the least oil-dependent states. Yet NRDC's analysis also offers some instructive tidbits:

• New York is the overwhelming leader in transit -- but not much else. The state dedicated 41 percent of its federal transportation money to transit as opposed to roads in 2007, making it the benchmark by which NRDC measured all others. Yet that was only enough to hit No. 6 on the overall scale of sustainable energy use, thanks to the state's lack of a low-carbon or renewable fuel standard, action on smart growth, and incentives for hybrid vehicles.

• New Jersey's transit spending may not be getting through to some of its drivers. The state ranked second behind New York with 30 percent of transport cash used on transit, but the state's average driver spent $2,286 on gas last year compared with $1,654 in New York. It's not due to a high state gas tax; New Jersey's is one of the lowest in the nation. 

• Capitol Hill can set the pace for reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Only six states have set targets for shrinking their VMT, a goal that Transportation Secretary LaHood has called essential to fighting climate change. Without congressional passage of legislation making VMT reduction a national priority, it's difficult to see a majority of states taking action individually in the near term.

• Reputations may be deceiving. Georgia, where all but 23 of 5,400 DOT employees focus on roads, saw its federal transit grants frozen this month due to financial mismanagement and spends less than 7 percent of its transport budget on transit. But the state ranked 17th on NRDC's list, just ahead of Minnesota -- the progressive-leaning home of House infrastructure committee chairman Jim Oberstar.
  

Photo: CowCar

It's not simply that meat is a contributor to global warming; it's that it is a huge contributor. Larger, by a significant margin, than the global transportation sector.

Really? Klein cites a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which found that the livestock industry -- the process of bringing meat from farm to table -- generates 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions "measured in CO2 equivalent."

Transportation, according to the UN report, generates 13.5 percent of global emissions measured by the same method.

And that's an important caveat. Two gases produced in large quantities by livestock are methane and nitrous oxide, which have 23 times and 296 times the "global warming potential" of CO2. Measuring methane and nitrous oxide in "CO2 equivalent," then, pads the climate impact of livestock versus CO2 emitters such as cars and power plants.

The 2006 UN report's comparison rings hollow in another way as well. Measuring the movement of feed to factory farms, not to mention the movement of packaged meat to supermarket shelves, means that livestock is part of the world's transportation sector, not a separate and distinct source of emissions.

Later in his column, Klein also cites a University of Chicago study that found adopting a vegan diet would be healthier for the environment than driving a hybrid car. As Dan Lasher of the Natural Resources Defense Council discovered, however, the Chicago researchers drastically underestimated the amount of CO2 released by one gallon of gas, among other "generic calculations."

So what's the lesson? Cutting down on burger consumption could be a positive choice that also helps the environment. But setting up false dichotomies that suggest gas-guzzlers can be mitigated by salads, that's pretty unhealthy.

But that doesn't mean the proposal, otherwise known as "CLEAN TEA," is losing momentum.

The bill, introduced by Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE) and Arlen Specter (D-PA), picked up three new co-sponsors in the Senate yesterday. Its five supporters all sit on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which will get first crack at climate legislation in September.

So who's still dragging their feet on giving 10 percent of the climate bill's funding to green transportation? (The House-passed climate bill, by comparison, allows only 1 percent of revenue to pay for transport improvements. Meanwhile, transportation generates about 30 percent of U.S. emissions.)

Find out after the jump.

The Senate environment committee has 19 members, five of whom have already signed on to "CLEAN TEA": Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Carper, and Specter.

Given that even Republicans who acknowledge the threat of human-caused climate change are lining up to oppose a cap-and-trade system, it's reasonable to expect that no one on the GOP side is prepared to back "CLEAN TEA."

That leaves seven senators who have not signed on to the bill; if Carper and Specter can sway five of them, that would theoretically give the bill a 10-9 advantage. Here are the seven:

• Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), an avowed transit booster
• Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has long recognized transit's role in fighting climate change
  
• Tom Udall (D-NM), another transit fan
  
• Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Senate's voice for "sustainable communities" legislation
  
• Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who helped the White House tout her home state's transit in March
  
• Max Baucus (D-MT)
• Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
  

Transportation Secretary LaHood said today he'll weigh in later on climate-change money for transit. Photo: HillBuzz

Asked by Streetsblog Capitol Hill today about the so-called "CLEAN TEA" plan, which would set aside 10 percent of the revenue from any carbon cap-and-trade system for sustainable modes of transport, LaHood said the administration would wait until the House and Senate began merging their climate bills before expressing a view.

"We're going to let the Senate have their debate," LaHood said. "I believe you will see the administration weigh in during the conference report [stage] rather than me trying to tell the Senate what they should be doing."

In a sense, this approach is consistent with the "let Congress work its will" strategy that's been regularly employed by a White House stocked with congressional veterans. But a strong show of support for "CLEAN TEA" by LaHood, who often talks about his desire to expand transport options and transit-oriented development, could make the difference as the Senate works its way towards a first draft of climate legislation in September.

Indeed, the House-passed climate bill did not include "CLEAN TEA" and ultimately devoted just 1 percent of its cap-and-trade revenue to green transportation.

The climate-money-for-transit plan is sponsored in the House by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and in the Senate by Tom Carper (D-DE), who yesterday urged his colleagues to add it to their version of cap-and-trade legislation:

When Americans drive less, our transportation dollars dry up. So states and seeking to cut oil use, to lower greenhouse gas emissions and to reduce their constituetns' gas costs end up getting less federal transportation funds. This is punishing them for doing good.

Instead, we ought to reward state and local governments by sending federal dollars based on how much they reduce dangerous emissions.

Whether Carper can sway Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who gave more to transit in her 2008 climate bill than this year's House measure does, remains to be seen.

Senate environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) (Photo: AP)

As Reuters reports this afternoon:

[Environment committee chairman] Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said her self-imposed deadline of early August for finishing writing a bill to combat global warming has been put off until after Congress returns from a recess that ends in early September.

"We'll do it as soon as we get back" from that break, Boxer told reporters. Asked if this delay jeopardizes chances the Senate will pass a bill this year, Boxer said, "Not a bit ... we'll be in (session) until Christmas, so I'm not worried about it."

But Boxer did not guarantee Congress will be able to finish a bill and deliver it to Obama by December, when he plans to attend an international summit on climate change in Copenhagen.

Just two weeks ago, Boxer advised supporters of transportation reform to "work with me on my global warming bill" as she called for a quick rescue of the nation's highway trust fund.

The highway account is expected to run dry in mid-August, sending Congress and the Obama administration scurrying to find $20 billion to keep state-level road projects funded until the end of 2010.

Boxer's postponement of a climate debate in her committee may well be an acknowledgment of the challenge lawmakers are facing to rustle up that $20 billion by month's end -- especially given that House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) is refusing to budge on his commitment to a new transportation bill this year. The delay in climate may also be driven by the uncertainty surrounding a global pact on emissions reduction.

No matter what, however, the environmental news out of the Senate today is not good.

Cato Institute fellow Randal O'Toole testified in the Senate today. Photo: Cato

O'Toole aside, the witnesses largely agreed in their recommendations: New transit investments are absolutely necessary for economic and environmental reasons, but most of the benefits from such investments will be missed without tight integration between transportation investment and land use planning.

It was a message almost perfectly tailored to rebut O'Toole before he ever spoke.

As is his habit, O'Toole began by noting that 40 years' worth of transit investments have not produced significant reductions in driving or greenhouse gas emissions. A good talking point, perhaps -- but as previous testimony had made clear, this was largely due to 40 years' worth of disregard for the importance of land use rules.

O'Toole continued by criticizing smart growth in his home state of Oregon, declaring that efforts to change land use patterns were failures and falsely alleging that transit ridership in Portland has declined since 2000. He cited his own analyses, which attempt to demonstrate that transit is actually dirtier than personal automobile use. And he railed against the evil of transit subsidies, a market-distorting abomination in his view.

The performance earned dismal reviews. One by one, the other witnesses pointed out that failure to adequately examine land use effects rendered O'Toole's analyses worthless.

Mode choice isn't just about direct energy use, they explained; it's about how increased driving or transit use affects development patterns and broader economic activity. Moreover, increased transit use improves the efficiency of driving by reducing congestion.

Mayor Cabaldon pointed out that a one percent increase in transit ridership in his city corresponded to a 10 percent decline in congestion, saving millions of dollars in lost time and wasted fuel.

Neither were the witnesses the only ones to hit back at the Cato fellow. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) icily noted that the last transportation bill included some $200 billion for highways. "That's a subsidy," he said.

Replogle piled on, noting that the failure to toll crowded roads appropriately or charge for "free" parking constituted yet another massive subsidy to drivers, encouraging auto-oriented land use patterns.

O'Toole fired back, arguing that those touting the benefits of transit investment overwhelmingly cited New York City. In his view, it appeared, transit is vital to New York but irrelevant to all other metropolitan areas in the country.

This seemed to irk Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), whose Northern Virginia constituency is part of a Washington metro area in which over 1.2 million trips are taken on transit every weekday. He countered O'Toole's negative assessment of transit's success rate in shifting land use patterns, citing Arlington County. There, an effort to build densely around Metro's Orange Line has led to population and jobs growth and massive private investment, all without an appreciable increase in congestion.

Ultimately, O'Toole was left complaining that attempts to build private transit systems were illegal -- illegal -- in most cities in America. He was seemingly oblivious to the irony: that sprawl, which O'Toole considers a perfect expression of consumer demand, has flourished thanks to the fact that for decades it has been illegal to build dense, walkable neighborhoods in most of America's big cities.

O'Toole was without friends in a room of leaders that finally seemed to grasp how planning had gone wrong in the last half century. At this moment -- with vehicle miles traveled falling, with central city population growth rates increasing as suburban growth rates fall, and with central city housing prices showing resilience as exurban neighborhoods continue to experience rapid decline -- Cato's myth of sprawl as the American dream seems more hollow than ever.

Happily, legislators -- at least those who attended today's hearing -- increasingly seem disposed to acknowledge reality.

Total U.S. emissions in 2007. (Chart: FHWA)

Under questioning from Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), who lamented that "transit hasn't gotten the attention it needs in America," both Energy Secretary Steven Chu and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson agreed that climate legislation should help promote alternatives to single-passenger car travel.

Jackson even low-balled the carbon footprint of the nation's transportation choices, describing cars, trucks, and aircraft as "about 20 percent" of total U.S. emissions when the total number is closer to one-third (see above chart).

Many of those fuel-burning trips, Jackson said, are commuters who drive alone "often because they have no choice," making transportation reform a "quality of life" issue as well as an environmental one.

Chu seconded his fellow Cabinet member: "Increasing public transportation use, especially in urban areas, would do a lot in terms of decreasing our greenhouse gas emissions." Moreover, Chu added, rail is not just a way to move people more sustainably -- moving goods via freight rail can achieve fuel efficiency greater than 400 miles per gallon, blowing trucks out of the water.

The nod to transportation during today's hearing signals that the Senate may not relegate transit and smart growth to the third- and fourth-fiddle roles that they played in the House climate bill. Indeed, Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who will take the lead on Senate climate legislation, recently advised transportation reformers to "work with me on my global warming bill."

Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE) revisited that theme, asking Chu and Jackson to "think differently" on transportation in order to avoid political missteps made after the energy crisis of the late 1970s prompted the nation's first fuel-efficiency rules. The query to focus on, as Carper put it, is "how do we get ourselves to drive less?"

Of course, the biggest unknown in the Senate climate debate is whether enough centrists from both parties can be won over to break an all-but-certain GOP filibuster of the final legislation.

Climate change denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (OK), the environment committee's senior Republican and Boxer's erstwhile ally on transportation, seemed to warn his California colleague that his party would throw the kitchen sink at the climate measure. GOPers on the panel released a joint letter to Boxer requesting a series of hearings on actual legislative language, an attempt to cut short the intense negotiating that sparked numerous last-minute revisions to the House climate bill.

"When will we see the bill that you intend to mark up?" Inhofe asked Boxer rhetorically as the hearing opened. Advocates and ordinary voters across the country may well be asking the same question.

And Al Gore and the folks at Repower America say call your U.S. Representative today because you can be sure the guys from fossil fuel-funded advocacy organizations like Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future have made their calls. Here's Al...

Update: The bill passed by a vote of 217 to 205. More later.

The climate bill gives the states 10 percent of its carbon emissions allowances, the total worth of which is projected to hit $70 billion by 2010, to invest in energy-efficiency projects such as solar power or "smart" electricity grids.

Today's agreement allows 10 percent of those state allowances -- yes, 10 percent of 10 percent -- to help pay for transit expansions, new bike trails, or any other transportation efficiency project.

The climate bill already asks states and localities to meet targets for transportation emissions cuts, so the funding pact would back up that mandate with new money.

Energy and Commerce chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) just announced the change alongside transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Anthony Weiner. Here is Oberstar's statement:

I commend Chairman Waxman for working with me to ensure that a portion of allowances are available for projects that will expand options for public transportation, bicycling, walking, and other green transportation alternatives for our citizens.  This legislation provides only a small portion of the funds needed to address surface transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, but is a very good first step.

House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), his climate legislation co-author. Photo: Washington Independent

In a report released Friday, the Center for Clean Air Policy (CCAP) quantifies the benefits of setting tangible goals for reducing the carbon footprint of transportation, which currently accounts for about one-third of total U.S. emissions.

Using smart growth policies to reduce per-capita VMT by 10 percent below 2005 levels would achieve emissions reductions equivalent to taking 35 large coal plants off-line or taking 30 million cars off the road by 2030, according to the CCAP analysis.

The report, viewable in full here, offers some interesting examples of how smart-growth proposals can pay environmental dividends. For example, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Energy Agency -- hardly known as bastions of the environmental movement -- have found that emissions reductions of up to 14.5 percent can be achieved at a cost of less than $3 per ton of CO2 simply by encouraging carpooling, telecommuting and eco-driving.

Perhaps the most politically relevant conclusion in the CCAP report, however, deals with a topic very much on the minds of Congress these days: how to push regionally favored industries, from Rep. Collin Peterson's (D-MN) agriculture producers to Rep. Gene Green's (D-TX) oil refiners, to accept their share of the emissions-reduction burden.

After noting that better fuel economy means a 15 percent rise in per-capita VMT over the next two decades would achieve a 14 percent decrease in CO2 (relative to 2005 levels), the CCAP notes that the target needs to be more than double that 14 percent. From the report (emphasis ours):

If we fail to pursue cost-effective GHG reductions from the transportation sector, other sectors of the economy will need to implement more expensive solutions, ultimately costing the public more money. There is compelling evidence that we can achieve significant, and inexpensive, transportation GHG reductions.

(h/t Kaid Benfield at NRDC)