SECTION 1. The General Laws, as appearing in the 2016 Official Edition, are hereby amended by inserting after chapter 25C the following chapter:- CHAPTER 25D. 100 Percent Renewable Energy Act Section 1. The purpose of this chapter is to steadily transition the commonwealth to 100 percent clean, renewable energy by 2050 in order to (1) avoid pollution of our air, …
Amory Lovins in Arizona – 2017
Transcript from a talk by fellow Coloradan Amory Lovins, 2017, in Arizona. See youtube. …before we get into the conversation part of the evening, is summarize for you the results of a year and a half of effort by 61 of us at the Rocky Mountain Institute to figure out American energy solutions. It’s a business book called Reinventing Fire. …
MnDOT measures financial return on taxpayers’ investment in biking infrastructure
Cycling in Minnesota creates thousands of jobs and cuts health-care spending, state report concludes By Josephine Marcotty, Star Tribune, 28 March 2017 . For many Minnesotans cycling is nothing more than a Sunday frolic, but a new report finds that the state’s bike industry produces $780 million in annual economic activity, 5,519 jobs and millions of dollars in health care savings …
HBR: Focus on anti-trust, boost low incomes through tax policy, attend to all dimensions of inequality
By Nicholas Bloom, excerpt from HBR – March 2017 In 1980, the top 1% of adult earners in the U.S. made $420,000 a year, on average (before taxes and measured in 2014 dollars) — 27 times as much as the average for the bottom 50% of earners. Today the top 1% of earners make an average of $1.3 million a …
Building jobs while building bike share – Corps Logistics shows the way, in Baltimore
By Stefani Cox, on Better Bike Share, March 2017 Image courtesy of Jim Duffney. Perhaps the grandest vision of bike share is one in which the system acts not only as a transportation service, but also as an essential community resource. That’s exactly what First Sergeant Jim Duffney, CEO and Founder of Corps Logistics, is hoping to achieve through his …
Significant increase in hospital admissions for mental illnesses seen during periods of heatwaves, especially during longer periods of heat exposure
A mental hospital-based study in Hanoi, Vietnam looked at if there is a relationship between heat exposure and mental health problems. The results showed significant increase in hospital admissions for mental illnesses during periods of heatwaves, especially during longer periods of heat exposure. This is according to a doctoral thesis from Umeå University. The study, which looked at admissions data …
Transit ridership falling everywhere except cities with redesigned bus networks; CityLab says: stop asking whether Uber and Lyft are the enemy
Seattle offers protected bikeways. Houston launched a totally redesigned bus network in 2015. The new system is designed to increase access to bus service that arrives at least every 15 minutes, as well as expand service on weekends and evenings. According to the FTA data, bus ridership in Houston grew 3.3 percent year over year. Seattle was one of the few …
$67 billion of damage from Hurricane Harvey is directly attributable to climate breakdown, the costs of which have been severely underestimated. Also update from Heede and the Climate Accountability Institute
Houston Chronicle, June 2020 Climate crisis to blame for $67bn of Hurricane Harvey damage – study. Exclusive: new figure far higher than previous estimates of direct impact of global heating https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Coronavirus-costing-oil-gas-1-8-trillion-data-15327990.php Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, Fri 12 Jun 2020 At least $67bn of the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 can be attributed directly to climate breakdown, according to …
Solar roads for bikes expanding in the Netherlands, improving pavement
By Rogier van Rooji on Clean Technica, 12 March 2017 Bike paths: The Netherlands is covered with them, connecting more or less every destination a person might wish to go to and greatly increasing the convenience of cycling as a sustainable mode of transport. In the densely populated country, where space is scarce, a consortium of companies and research labs called …
Porterville, CA makes bus fleet fully electric
By James Ayre, 12 March 2017 Originally published on EV Obsession. The City of Porterville in California has entered into a sales contract with GreenPower Motor Company for the purchase of 10 EV350 40-foot zero-emission, all-electric, transit buses. The purchase will see all 9 of Porterville Transit’s routes go fully electric. Accompanying the purchase, 11 charging stations are to be …