This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Finally, the chattering class in Washington DC is making the connection between climate change, transit, and land use patterns:
In their recent book, Growing Cooler, Ewing and four co-authors calculate that if the number of miles we drive remains constant, the increase in fuel-efficiency standards Congress mandated in 2007 would cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions from cars and trucks by nearly one-quarter through 2030. But, in fact, they project that emissions won’t decline at all over that period, because an expected increase of nearly 50 percent in miles traveled will offset the efficiency gains. The same dynamic could prevent better fuel efficiency from reducing our reliance on foreign oil. “If we don’t change the way we live, the way we build our communities … we are going to fall way short of our goal of energy independence,” says Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del.
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