This almost certainly will be the year that Congress finally passes global warming legislation. But when they do, they will be leaving out a huge chunk of the problem if they don't include a plan to reduce emissions from transportation - the source of roughly one-third of all carbon emissions in the U.S.
A proposal now in Congress called CLEAN-TEA would help clean up transportation by directing money raised through global warming legislation to the kinds of smart investments that will lower emissions. It would direct funding to clean transportation investments - like public transportation and passenger rail, affordable neighborhoods around transit stops, and neighborhood improvements that increase safety for cyclists and pedestrians.
http://action.smartgrowthamerica.org/t/3224/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1289
I know I want to see streets that are safe for pedestrians and cyclists, high-speed trains, and updated metro lines, and CLEAN-TEA will create the incentive - and some of the necessary funding - to make those things a reality.
This is one investment that really will pay dividends - please, join me and send a letter today.
Thanks so much for your help!
Thanks Snakeguy! This is one of the bills we were asking our legislators for support on 2 weeks ago on the Hill. Please, everyone, click that link and take action. And if you have a chance contact Senator Specter (http://specter.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm) and THANK him for his sponsorship of the CLEAN-TEA bill (S. 575) in the senate.
We would love to have Doyle, Altmire and Dahlkemper to co-sponsor the house bill (H.R. 1329)
Word. H.R. 1329
I know Jon Schmitz the Transportation writer for the P-G is looking into the cap-and-trade idea. I notified him of the CLEAN TEA after he wrote this:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09085/958457-84.stm
Buy some newspapers and maybe he'll write a nice piece about it 
Global warming is total bullshit... Don't listen to people who want to charge you a tax for the air you breathe for christ sake...
Even the founder of the freakin' weather channel says global warming is the biggest hoax ever pulled over mankind.
Don't confuse global warming with REAL pollution, which has made it so that you can't eat more than 7 fish per year out of the great lakes without risk of Mercury poisoning, or how the bee population is dying off... Or how RBGH growth hormone in our milk causes girls to sprout giant boobs at the age of 10 (well, I guess all pollution is not so bad eh)?
When you watch Al "I invented the internet" Gore's video, watch something stating the other side before you make up your mind. At least listen to both sides of the story first is all I am saying.
I guess since I am a cyclist I am supposed to believe in global warming, not eat meat anymore, and hug all the trees, yet since I go to church and believe in God I am supposed to be a "bush licker" and promote sending our troops off to bullshit wars, and think the Patriot Act was a good idea.
We have ONE political party in this country run by two factions... The communist faction, and the fascist faction. Take your choice, but in the end you will end up with the same thing Hitler and Stalin gave their people.
I'm sorry but cow farts, my breathing, and not even my car is causing the earth to heat up my friends...
According to your bullshit science Glaciers over a mile thick once covered the ground we are all cycling on in this city to this day... And are supposedly responsible for carving out the Finger Lakes in New York.
Did cow farts, automobiles, and too many people cause the glaciers to melt away?
Use some common sense before saying we should all pay even more taxes in a system where we are already completely over-burdened.
these same "scientists" are the same ones that say humans "evolved" from monkeys. well, if humans came from monkeys, how come i don't like bananas?
Erok, I don't think you are helping.
I like bananas.
I even have one of those banana cases to protect them when I bicycle.
I don't like bananas but my daughter loves them... But I love banana bread so when they start to go mushy its all good...
I don't personally believe any of my ancestors were monkeys.
I believe fully in natural selection in the wild, that is when the air is thick with smog, the black butterflies will thrive while the white ones get picked off... Then when the air is cleaned up the white butterflies thrive, or are less likely to stand out for predators...
But I don't think that a puddle of ooze turned into fish, then sprouted legs and started walking around...
If changes like that happened over eons and eons... How the hell did the half fish- half walking creature ever survive to reproduce? I can't imagine a fish with a gimp leg flopping around with its half-lung half-gills contraption would have had much of a chance to "evolve" into human beings someday.
Plus, evolution has been used as the "scientific" basis for some of the most horrible things people have done to each other in the past... Ie... Eugenics (which is still alive and well today), the discrimination of the Jews in Nazi Germany, the enslavement of Black people, various genocides now and in the past, the list goes on and on...
When you believe that we all came from the same place, and were created more or less in the same way, you tend not to look at people as being inferior from the color of their skin or other superficial crap like that...
But anyway, that has nothing to do with the climate or biking...
However I always have wondered why you don't see too many black guys racing the Tour De France... But one day on VS. they had a big bike race in Africa and there wasn't a white guy anywhere to be found... They were racing road bikes on dirt roads kicking up all kinds of dust and when they showed everyone at the rest stop, instead of filling up with a bunch of technological GOO bags and powerbars, and high-tech athlete food, they were eating... Bananas (and other fruit and natural foods), and I thought that race was one of the coolest things I had ever seen.
Let's see the Tour De France incorporate some dirt roads at least...
Oh boy.
sorry.
who cares if you beleive in global warming or evolution?
does anyone like cycling in smog? no! is anyone NOT in favor of better mass transportation or safer bike routes?
sheesh
i believe in long rants on the internet
who cares if you beleive in global warming or evolution?
does anyone like cycling in smog? no! is anyone NOT in favor of better mass transportation or safer bike routes?
sheesh
thanks.
Man, you guys sure are getting deep. The jury's still out on global warming in my opinion but on the other hand I'm in favor of reducing pollution of all sorts. I know one thing for sure my bike does not spew any carbon monoxide into the air so I'm doing my part every day. Everyone really needs to realize that they have the chance to make an impact everyday with the choices they make. We all share this planet and as of right now there is nowhere else to go if we destroy it with pollution.
p.s.
Bring a bag with you when you shop, plastic shopping bags are now the biggest contributor to landfills worldwide.
p.p.s.
nfranzen, I also have a special "banana" protector that I use when I ride but the thong in the back gets kinda' annoying after the first couple of miles!
Whoops lol... Didn't mean to start so much controversy...
I am all for clean air myself... Pittsburgh would have been one nasty ass town to ride a bike in with a giant black cloud hanging over it all day and night for sure. And you would have to get a black frame if you wanted to have any chance of it being clean.
They can pass laws requiring companies to clean up their act without taxing the crap out of everyone. All a company is going to do that gets taxed is pass that along to the last person along the chain... the person buying their product.
This whole "carbon footprint" garbage is just a bunch of elitists trying to squeeze the rest of us for everything they can get. Some people have everything in the world and it still isn't enough.
I am also in favor of better bike routes and transportation... All that money they spent digging a tunnel so that a bunch of fat asses won't have to walk across a bridge to see a ball game could have went much further in developing better bike routes which would allow some of those aforementioned fat asses to get in good enough shape to walk across a bridge!
Sorry about the long rants, the current economy is giving me too much free time it seems!
Adam, do you ever say anything that isn't negative?
Sometimes!
But yeah, point taken... I should be more tactful and less of an antagonist. We all see so much going on around us these days that we don't like. I tend to vent online much more than in person.
