McKinsey just published this series of interviews with European Economists about the possibilities of creating a global approach to climate change.

The White House also just released this fact sheet on our clean energy future.

No matter how many Republicans bang tables, there are clear indications of change in Washington and they were on full display in the Senate Banking Committee hearing Lionheart full movie yesterday

Chairman Sen. Dodd provided the first evidence by saying that the transportation, housing and energy departments should share information and coordinate efforts because they presently stovepipe efforts in what are really overlapping and interdependent areas.

Activists have long championed this wisdom but when was the last time you heard a Senate Committee Chairman say it?  We are closer to rational national planning than we have been in 50 years. The auto industry is no position to push people around.  Even Republicans say we need to get off foreign oil and Democrats have gotten over their fear of talking about climate change.

These are truly different times.

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Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood provided the next evidence when he called for Congress to end the highway bias in transportation funding.  Applying for highway funds is very streamlined and efficient but when a city or state seeks public transportation funding they face a daunting bureaucratic process that can take months, years and even decades to complete.

For example, Minneapolis/St. Paul began building its very successful light rail system in the early ’70s.  A quick 32 years later, it was complete.

The last big piece of evidence was when Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper spoke persuasively about public transportation as an engine of economic development.  85% of our jobs and 90% of GNP is generated in urban areas that grow more congested and expensive each year.

He said that when you consider performance metrics and take into account externalities, such as congestion, fuel cost and environmental impact, the choice for public transportation is clear.

But transportation funding decisions often get made by representatives from low density areas whose citizens don’t see the benefits.  But taking people off the roads and improving the efficiency of society and lowering our environmental impact directly benefits everybody.

A Western politician championing the city over the country?  The changes are withering.

Perhaps most interesting,  Mayor Hickenlooper said that the process of building the train taught local cities and towns how to work together. The collaborative nature of fast track rails gave traditionally separate municipalities the skills to share resources. The same towns are now starting to share fire, police, sewage and water systems, resulting in tax savings of up to $250 millions a year in Denver alone.

This is clear evidence that America can rebuilt itself in new, cleaner ways that benefit all residents. It also suggests that the blustering denials of the oil, car and coal industry really are just self-interested whining.

And the fact that this is finally happening in our government means that real change is occurring.  None of us should be fooled by Senator McCain’s myopic focus on 2% of budget.

I just submitted the above 3-D rendering to the Treasure Island Bike Rack Design contest. This concept is based on re-purposing old car parking meters to be used for bike parking.

This idea is particularly relevant to Treasure Island due to the redevelopment plan’s focus on sustainability, car independence, and pedestrian access. The out-of-context use of parking meters (i.e. in parks, on pedestrian walkways) serves as a constant reminder to Treasure Island’s residents and guests that we, as a society, need to get over our addiction to the automobile - and that biking is a viable option for transportation that is healthier and more environmentally conscious. Re-using our car parking infrastructure for bike parking makes an elegant statement about not only this shift in mindset about our mobility, but also about the potential to creatively re-use our waste.

As a San Franciscan who bikes everywhere, parking meters are already my preferred bike rack. I get frustrated with over-engineered bike parking solutions (i.e. the bike racks at GG Park’s Botanical Gardens and at the Legion of Honor) - so, with this contest, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel too much. My original idea was simply to create a grid of parking meters. However, this does not meet the contest’s requirement of being able to secure bikes using all types of locks. If someone only had a loose cable lock, the bike could slip over the top of the meter.

I ended up with two complementary no-nonsense designs, both based on old parking meters and both designed to be functional/durable in demanding urban environments. The first is simply welding, or otherwise fastening, a cross-bar between two old parking meters to create a variation on the popular and functional U-rack design. This design allows both wheels to be securely locked to the rack. The second design is to fasten a closed metal loop to the parking meter pole, which allows a cable lock to be threaded through. While this design does not allow both wheels to be fastened directly to the rack (as the contest rules stipulate), most bikers don’t lock their bikes this way currently. From my observation, it’s more common to lock both wheels by running a cable through the front wheel and securing that cable with a single U-lock fastened to the frame/back wheel. These single meter/racks have a smaller footprint and could more easily stand-alone at various places throughout the island.

The 3-D rendering was created with Google Sketch-Up. The quality of this rendering was limited both by my novice Sketch-Up skills (first ever!) and my computer’s processing power - but I think it conveys the idea pretty well.

(Or, referencing the top-notch Treasure Island music festival, they could go with David Byrne’s sweet bike rack designs for NYC: http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/bike_racks/index.php)

McKinsey Quarterly just published this interview in which Economist Nicholas Stern says that we should use the economic crisis to address climate change.

“We need to have a reflationary package, which lays the foundation for future growth. And if we look into the future, it’s actually quite exciting. Because what we see is the biggest technological opportunity that we’ve had for a very long time: as big as the railways, as big as electricity, as big as the motorcar, and, most recently, information technology. It’s the opportunity to go for low-carbon growth.”

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The blogosphere’s theme for the remainder of 2009 should be the Rahm Doctrine. Clearly we are in the middle of a pretty major economic crisis. Hopefully it won’t last much longer than 2009.  I also think we are in the middle of a more subtle social crisis that will likely go on for much longer. Don’t believe me? Think about the climate, income inequality, healthcare, increasing global conflict, rising food prices.

With so much in the way of crisis going on right now, according to the Rahm Doctrine at least, there should be plenty of opportunities. Especially for entrepreneurs.We’ve already highlighted a few of these opportunities, and will continue to do so.  Other bloggers are doing the same (everyone from Gary Vaynerchuk to Paul Krugman)

President Obama in his weekly address this morning confirmed this belief. What we’re going to see in the coming months is a global willingness to try new ideas out, mostly because many of the old ideas are broken. And we’re already seeing signs of it.  Americas workforce is switching sectors. We are investing in our homes to increase their efficiency (and stave off loss in value). For a great article on what some of the coming changes could be, check out this months Atlantic.

And if you have your own ideas of opportunities within crisis please share them with us. One of our favorites is here.

The country got a glimpse of the coming battle over the proposed carbon cap and trade system (a carbon tax would be better) during Secretary Tim Geithner’s testimony to the Senate Finance Committee yesterday .

Senator Grassley (R, Iowa) called the cap and trade system a “tax” and asked if President Obama is breaking his promise to not raise taxes on people making less than $200,000?

Sec. Geithner did a great job of responding directly to the question and explaining why it is important to address climate change.

I applaud the Secretary’s forthright answers and especially his statement that the impact of this system will depend on individual behavior.  The country has been waiting for leaders to tell us the truth about the challenges we face.

Cutting taxes while fighting wars on hidden budgets (full of borrowed money) sounded great - but crushed our economy.  We need leaders willing to tell us things we may not want to hear - like we need to pay our own way.

Which why, even though I would prefer a direct carbon tax, I support the Obama Administration attempt to change our energy habits. Geithner said it well, “we need incentives to change the way we use energy.”  Most Americans want to get off oil and know that it won’t be easy.  We can handle cost increases if  we have a leader who keeps us focused on the endgame (and our sacrifices result in a actual change.)

The is refreshing to have an Administration that is not trying to snow us with easy answers that don’t really address the problem.  Obama is taking the high road and providing vision for how we build a new energy economy.

The challenges is that his well-funded opponents get to  yell “raising taxes”, “hurting the middle class” and “breaking promises.” Their sound bites will work better on TV and they will come from both Republicans and Democrats.

The President will need our help responding to the gas, coal and oil spokesman. One of the things we can do is stomp on the false populism.

Senator Grassley wielded populism yesterday, saying cap and trade will hurt working families and the unemployed.  Since when has he fought for the middle and working classes?

The AFL-CIO says he has voted with labor only 14% of the time and MiddleClass.org says scores him only slightly higher at 20%.  Senator Grassley is working for the richest and most powerful forces of status quo.  If he is really worried about coal companies, then our job is to make him say so.  He doesn’t get to hide behind us.

The contrast between the Administration and the Senate could not be clearer.  Sec. Geithner told us the hard truths while the Senator used our struggles to protect the lining of his friends pocketbooks.

Sensitive information about President Obama’s helicopter (Marine 1) was found on a hard drive in Tehran. Evidently, someone at “a defense contractor in Bethesda, Maryland” installed a file sharing program that comprised their hard drive.

Oh, the games we play. Some poor smuck wanted a Britney Spears song and ends up getting himself fired, maybe bringing his company down and possibly endangered the President.

Before we rush to judgement, a few more details would be nice.  For instance, what company was breached and what else was on that hard drive?  And how about the owner of the hard drive in Tehran? Did it belong to Khameni or some sixteen year old kid in that Internet savvy country?

Answers to those questions will help us decide on the level of this like particular breach, but it reminds us all how easily - and seriously - our systems can be corrupted.

This BBC produced show, which aired as an episode of PBS’s series NOVA, is in no way fringe science. Yet somehow this huge subject is still not part of our environmental debate.

Global Dimming argues that the planet has been experiencing both global warming and global dimming. Particulate matter from air pollution rises into the atmosphere where it attracts water. The water crystallizes on the particulates and reflects sunlight back into space.

The amount of sunlight reaching the earth has dropped approximately 22% between 1950 and today. This dimming has likely kept global temperatures much cooler.

Many countries have made significant reductions in particulate pollution, which means that the amount of sunlight reaching the earth is likely to increase.

If we do not also immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we could see a steep rise in global temperatures - as much as 10 degrees. Even a rise half that high and we can kiss the polar ice caps good bye.

I have to admit that the kid in me feels vindicated. Through out my school years, many of us kids worried about the soot and smoke pouring out chimneys - only to be told that just the invisible greenhouse gases mattered.

Now it seems that both do. Great.

My sixth-grade earth-science-self is happy. The rest of me is looking for property on a hilltop.

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Branding a city

Brian Lehrer had a fascinating piece today on how the public sector took on a private sector strategy to save New York during the 1970’s. The city invested in Branding. Faced with a failing economy, rising crimes rates and a bad reputation New York officials created the iconic campaign “I Love NY”.

My main takeaway from the piece was the comment Miriam Greenberg made about branding. She said that branding is a combination of both marketing and material, that you need more than just a great message. I completely agree.

There’s a lot of discussion about what companies and governments should invest in during these times. There’s healthcare, or education, or infrastructure. If anyone said branding, I bet the suggestion was widely dismissed.  But if you take Ms. Greenberg’s use of the term, its really not such a bad idea.  Branding helps people identify with products and if anything needs support of the people right now, its the economy. Its our cities and local businesses.  Its going to be the new products.

So for every project that we are launching, stimulus or not, lets make sure we put a solid branding effort into it too.

A lesson for the public and private sector alike.

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Fast Company’s piece on Marine Energy is a good introduction to an area that’s often overlooked in our search for renewable energy.

Check it out here http://tinyurl.com/b9v4y4