Friday, 11 Nov 2005

Start Spreading the Dues

Charging cars to enter city could loosen New York's traffic jams

Charging drivers a fee to enter the city center succeeded in ameliorating traffic woes in London -- but can the concept make it on the mean streets of New York, N.Y.? 'Cause if you can make it there ... oh, never mind. The Partnership for New York City, an influential business association, thinks "congestion pricing" for Gotham is just the ticket, and it's been working quietly for months to sell Mayor Mike Bloomberg (R) on the idea. A new report from the group suggests charging $7 per car during peak hours to encourage folks to use mass transit or car pool. In London, where the daylong flat fee is $14, car congestion has lessened by one-third, some bus routes are running twice as fast, and there have been significant drops in air pollution. Bloomberg's office says congestion pricing isn't on his second-term agenda, but a NYC traffic commissioner backs the idea.


There's nothing like a natural disaster to get the collective American public to sit up, yawn, stretch, and say, "Hey! Maybe things should change around here!" The recent pernicious hurricane season whipped up a flurry of environment-related schemes from politicians and activists, some of them green and some, um, un-green. Sarah van Schagen reports on the status of notable post-Katrina proposals put forward by politicians and activists -- from green-building sprees to oil-drilling plans -- and assesses their likely impact.

Let Freedom Sting

Thousands of sites in Iraq contaminated with chemicals, uranium, more

Donald Rumsfeld wasn't kidding when he said freedom is messy. More than 20 years of war and neglect have left Iraq with serious chemical spills, heavy-metals contamination, and widespread pollution from depleted uranium -- and the cleaning bill could run up to $40 million. The U.N. Environment Program examined five sites near Baghdad for environmental hazards, part of a program training Iraqis in toxic cleanups, the agency reported on Thursday. Among the grim results: At the Al-Qadyissa metal-plating plant, demolished in 2003 after being bombed and looted, UNEP found several tons of cyanide pellets scattered about the unsecured site -- now used by children as a playground. It's not clear how remediation will be funded. "There are hundreds, probably thousands of other sites with the need of assessment," said Mural Thummarukudy, UNEP's manager in Iraq, who asked for donations to help with cleanup efforts.


As a sixth-grader in New England, Steve Blackmer led fellow students in a letter-writing campaign to prevent a local wetland from being plowed under to make way for a road. The wetland was saved. If not for those meddling kids, cried the developers! Actually, Blackmer doesn't know whether those letters made the difference, but nonetheless he's now committed to full-time activism on behalf of New England's wild spaces and the people who live nearby. As this week's InterActivist, he chats with readers about making communities sustainable, why creating national parks and reintroducing wolves might not be great ideas, and more.

The End of the End of the Affair

SUV sales regaining strength in the U.S.

Showing characteristic signs of short-term memory loss, the American public is apparently renewing its love affair with the SUV. When gas prices spiked to over $3 a gallon following Hurricane Katrina, demand for hybrids was in the headlines and chatter about fuel-efficiency standards was all the rage. Now gas prices in the U.S. have fallen to an average of $2.38 a gallon, and Americans on a cheap-gas buzz are making booty calls to SUVs. Prices for used SUVs have started to rise in recent weeks, after plummeting for most of the year. And a recent survey of new-car shoppers found that 20 percent are looking at buying an SUV, up from 14 percent during the first 10 days of September. Nearly a third of these folks are considering the biggest SUVs on the market. Have some self-respect, people.