An Investment In Public Transportation Is An Investment In The Future

Cognoscenti: "Route 128 may be America’s “high tech corridor” but the Red Line is arguably its main artery. That’s because public transit helps create vibrant, high density neighborhoods, teeming with creativity and innovation; the kinds of areas start-ups are drawn to. Economic growth experts say these urban hubs create a “bump factor” — places where people can easily bump into each other; where ideas can percolate and capital can flow freely; where ideas thrive and talent is plentiful."

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Growth advocates love #publictransit

This the beauty of free public transit. Growth advocates will support it, making it a politically feasible path to degrowth.

An Investment In Public Transportation Is An Investment In The Future | Cognoscenti: "This new stop will cost the state $39 million. But the payoff is huge: In our first phase, we’re unleashing $1.4 billion in private investment while creating more than 10,000 construction jobs and another 10,000 permanent jobs."

Massachusetts "Car-Free Week

WWLP: "The average American spends nearly 13 hundred dollars a year on gas on their commute alone, according to Mass.gov. "

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19 feedback loops that speed up climate change

Transition Voice: "This essay updates my earlier effort to tally and describe self-reinforcing feedback loops with respect to climate change. At that time, seven months ago, we had strong evidence of nine such catastrophic phenomena. The nineteen I currently know about are described below. Only the final one is reversible over a temporal span relevant to humanity."

Mayors at odds with interests of oil industry

The Boston Globe: "...One vivid example of the kind of cooperation Barber believes can empower the world’s mayors took shape after the United States withdrew from the Kyoto Protocols—an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—and more than 130 American cities pledged to meet the treaty’s targets anyway. In Los Angeles, that meant modifying the city’s ports. In New York, it meant insulating old buildings. Elsewhere it meant promoting public transportation. Today, more than 1,000 American mayors—from towns and cities whose population totals almost 89 million, more than a quarter of the country’s population—have signed on to the agreement.

To Barber, who founded a group called the Interdependence Movement to press his case, that cooperation amounts to a new era of global governance, one that offers a way through policy obstructions at the national level. “What’s happening in an interdependent world is issues of transportation, immigration, climate, and banking become global, and cities have been better at dealing with one another and talking about these issues than nation-states have,” Barber said. “Los Angeles and Shanghai talk a lot about common port problems with one another, while the US and China are still locked in ideological battles that make that much more difficult....”