Yes, he occasionally gets on my nerves. But when the great Mark Bittman says stuff like this, all is forgiven (if not forgotten):

I am the least impressive cook you will ever see. I am completely without knife skills, I screw things up all the time. When I'm in the kitchen I'm not obsessively trying to create the perfect dish; I'm trying to put dinner on the table. Comparing yourself to the people who cook on television is like comparing yourself to Andre Agassi. If you can drive you can cook.

If you can drive, you can cook. Yes!

But the converse isn't necessarily true. I cook pretty well (though, like Bittman, I'm not very impressive to watch in the kitchen). But I'm a horrible driver. I can manage a sharp knife on a cutting board (though with no special skill); but operating heavy machinery at high speeds among other rashly licensed incompetents just stresses me out. In other words, driving well is infinitely harder than cooking a decent meal. I much prefer to get around by my own two feet--and  leave long-distance transport to professionals, preferably train operators. In this country, we cede cooking to the pros (from burger flippers to celebrity chefs) and generally take care of our own transportation, in privatized little pods that cavalierly (and inefficiently) burn a titanically potent energy source.

Has anyone noticed that our preferred transportation mode is rather dangerous? In a typical year, there are more than 2 million car crashes in the United States, resulting in more than 40,000 deaths. If similar carnage occurred in the kitchen, the authorities would long since have banned home cooking.

So, um ... down with driving, and up with home cooking! And, uh, up with trains and down with highways! Damn it!

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Cop a ride to COP-15...Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist
So you’re going to Copenhagen to help save the planet. Splendid! This December the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, where international delegates will negotiate a post-Kyoto Protocol global climate plan. That’s the hope, anyway. Earlier we posted some tips and ideas for finding lodging the in Danish capital, but what about getting there?

Jet travel emits a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide, of course. And for non-European attendees, it’s pretty much the only option. So what’s a delegate/activist/NGO rep/journalist/gadfly to do?

Erik Nelson of environmental travel site Better World Club offered this insider tip: You pretty much have to fly. But! If you have the time, ships might be a low-impact alternative. See The Cruise People LTD for leads on both cruise and commercial ships. Even Nelson, whose site is sort of a green AAA, hadn’t heard of many folks doing this. But it’s possible.

For everyone else, the trip likely involves an arrival at Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup (CPH), the city’s main airport and Scandinavia’s busiest. The city is also well-connected to the rest of continental Europe by rail, if you find it more convenient to fly elsewhere.

More than 70 airlines fly to Copenhagen, according to Skyscanner.net. Most of the ones that fly from the U.S. are searchable on the usual flight search aggregators—Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak, Priceline.

Better World Club has its own flight-finder, powered by Orbitz, that makes it easy to buy carbon offsets when you book. It’s also got a carbon calculator to estimate the impact of flights, though finding the actual impact isn’t simple. For those (understandably) wary about the legitimacy of carbon offsets, check out this Grist guide to offsets.

And if you’re hell-bent against flying, a few other possibilities:

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Fortunately for your humble correspondent, Van Jones was so busy when the editors of the new book, Mandate for Change: Policies and leadership for 2009 and beyond, were looking for an author for their chapter about green jobs, that they turned to me instead.  This is part one of three posts that will serialize my chapter.  There are over 40 great contributors besides me, your humble ... well, anyway, buy the book!

We face several simultaneous crises—global warming, high oil prices, a brittle agricultural system and a major economic slowdown—all of which can be addressed at the same time by embarking on a program of creating millions of high-quality green collar jobs.

A green-collar jobs program can help create an environmentally and economically sustainable society that: drastically reduces its greenhouse gas emissions; encourages energy independence from oil; eliminates the worry of heating and cooling one’s home; and increases food security, all while providing millions of high-quality, well-paying, long-term jobs, thus bringing millions of people into a stable middle class.

The following eight initiatives could result in transportation, energy, building construction, agricultural and manufacturing sectors that would have very low carbon emissions, would be economically and ecologically sustainable for the foreseeable future, and whose workers and employees would all be green-collar.

First, the infrastructure of the United States is crumbling, which means that there is plenty of work to do even without worries about global warming, oil and food. We should build a sustainable infrastructure, not just maintain the one that we have.

Senators Chris Dodd and Chuck Hagel introduced a bill in 2007, the National Infrastructure Bank Act [PDF], which is a good starting point for a discussion about how to rebuild the country’s infrastructure. Infrastructure funding has been inadequate for decades, and we need an institution that can provide long-term stability of funding.

However, the federal government should go even further and create a bank that also develops human capital. The bank could be called an Infrastructure Capital Development Bank, one that would, in addition to providing funding for infrastructure construction, run a network of Training Institutes that would train the millions of people we need in order to build a sustainable economy. Green-collar jobs need green-collar job classes.

In addition, the Bank could help businesses start up or expand their green-collar activities, with financial help and/or by providing technical assistance. If desired, the Bank could help these firms become employee-owned-and-operated, thus increasing efficiency and insuring that jobs stay in the United States.

Second, our transportation industries are in trouble because the era of cheap oil is over, and at the same time we need to drastically cut our carbon emissions. For inter-city travel, our infrastructure has been built around airplanes, cars and trucks. In much of the world, however, trains of various kinds fulfill the roles of intercity passenger and freight transportation. In the United States, the incoming Administration has a chance to jump-start the construction of a national network of electrified high-speed passenger and freight trains.

At least initially, foreign companies will be the only ones with the expertise to produce high-speed trains. If domestic content legislation was passed, these companies and the hundreds of subcontractors that would be needed for such systems could employ a whole new generation of high-skill blue-collar, or blue-green-collar workers.

High-speed rail is the cutting edge of transportation technology, having been developed even more recently than air travel, much less the 100-year-plus old technology of the internal combustion engine. There are already several federally recognized high-speed rail networks “in waiting,” around Chicago, Ohio, Texas, Florida and California, in addition to the one between Boston and Washington, D.C., which could certainly be expanded.

A national system of high-speed rail could do in the twenty-first century what the Interstate Highway System did for the United States after World War II: create the infrastructure for a period of high-speed economic growth. In addition, if the rail system was powered by solar and wind-generated electricity, the United States would have the first carbon-free inter-city transportation system in the world.

Third, as oil prices increase, so does the demand for public transportation. Subways and light rail can be run on renewable electricity, and commuter rail systems can be expanded and electrified. In addition, many cities are contemplating bus rapid transit, pioneered in Curitaba, Colombia, which allow buses to move much faster and more comfortably.

Currently, as in the case of high-speed rail, there are no domestic primary contractors for subway construction, but in the case of New York State, domestic content laws have led to the establishment of many subway construction factories, and the same could be mandated across the country. Again, these are blue-green-collar jobs, jobs in industry that will help us move toward a zero carbon emission economy, while making us energy independent and more secure.

Another advantage to public transit is that it will encourage the development of dense, “mixed-use” city and town areas, that is, areas that are composed of apartment buildings, stores, offices and other kinds of buildings. Christopher Leinberger of the Brookings Institution calls for the construction of “walkable urbanism” that is, “the development approach that creates pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use and mixed-income places.” When there are fixed subway or light rail stops, then developers, prospective residents and store owners can be confident that there will be fast and easy transportation to any residence or store.

The construction of dense, mixed use buildings near transit stops will bring about a construction boom for decades to come. Building construction or reconstruction, not normally considered “green,” should be so categorized if new construction takes place near transit stops. There are two ways to make buildings “green”—make them energy efficient, and place them in dense areas next to transit stops.

Thus, public transit decreases carbon emissions, helps us achieve energy independence, and lays the groundwork for walkable communities. In addition, staffing, maintaining and building public transit will provide millions of high-quality jobs all across the country. Since the transit and construction jobs will be in urban areas, low-income neighborhoods can be targeted for recruitment into training and apprenticeship programs.

    While government can directly create networks of rail and transit, it can also indirectly encourage the replacement of gasoline-only automobiles and trucks with plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles. The first step in this process would be to mandate that all federal cars and trucks be plug-ins or all-electric by 2020. Eventually, if the entire transportation sector can run on renewable electricity, then all jobs in the transportation sector will be green-collar.

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Dear Umbra,

I have three choices in how I travel the 15 or so miles between my house and my job: car, light rail, and ferry. Each one, depending on the time and the day, has its advantage in terms of time, convenience, practicality, and enjoyability. If we assume that all the logistical factors are essentially equal, which is the most environmentally virtuous? As a follow-up, what would you consider the tipping point of cost or convenience (twice the time? half the cost?) in making the choice?

Freddy
Alameda, Calif.

Dearest Freddy,

Ah, the Bay Area life. Which pleasant mass transit option shall I take to work today? That's the kind of dilemma we all like to have. (No ferry over where I am, but I'm going to make a billion dollars and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions with my new Super Sled, a giant toboggan powered by cow farts. It carries 25 people, cuts down road plowing costs, and there are free maple candies with every fifth voyage. I'm still working on the frostbite problem.)

Biking to the ferry: now that's low-impact.

Photo: Slow Cycler

Happily, longtime Grist friend Clark Williams-Derry, genius that he is, has answered part of this question for you in a climate-focused transportation ranking for Sightline, the think tank where he works. Any of you who do have choices about how to get to work, including carpools, vanpools, intercity and transit buses, Amtrak, and biking, will have your questions answered by this simple graph. A car with a solo driver is the worst way to get anywhere, although the Prius does beat out a low-occupancy bus.

Unfortunately for both me and you, Clark did not add ferries to his chart. We will get some straight dope from Clark in a bit, but first I have some other information for you. Ferry emissions include your transport to the terminal, in addition to the emissions from the diesel engine of the ferry itself. I did find a few CO2-per-passenger-mile numbers that we could compare to Clark's chart, but they will certainly be less mathematically rigorous. One source gives us 0.047 kg of CO2 per person per km of ferry travel, which puts the ferry near the intercity bus on Clark's chart -- a good lower-carbon option. I would adjust this ranking, since we don't know the efficiency/fuel use of your actual ferry, and say that at best the ferry is equal to the (according to the chart, slightly less efficient) light rail -- but only if you access it via other mass transit or by foot or bike. So: a slightly higher-carbon ranking than the mostly full bus, but ferry and rail are still two good alternatives.

I also found an actual study [PDF] of your actual ferry system, from 2002, which directly addresses your car vs. ferry dilemma. For example, "Table ES-4: Percent Change in Emissions Due to Changing from On-Land Commute to Ferry Commute ..." Looking at the Alameda/Oakland route, the NOx emissions increase on a ferry commute, but all other emissions significantly decrease. So, given my mathematical limitations, I would say avoid the car and feel easy choosing ferry or rail.

This is somewhat borne out by Clark's own response to your problem, which I posed to him. And I quote, "Individual choices do matter, but less than we hope. It's the characteristics of the system that determine transportation CO2: total road capacity, average commute distance, characteristics of the vehicle fleet, etc." He also hammers home a point I too often forget to make: "The biggest impact that individuals have is on changing the system as a whole: e.g., lobbying for congestion charges that lower traffic volumes and reduce fuel waste from congestion, or parking charges that reduce the incentive to drive."

In other words, ride mass transit when you can, and support any municipal changes that render driving inconvenient.

I cannot answer the second part of your question, as those decisions are yours to make based on factors in your own life -- how much commute time you have, your budget, your patience, etc. Sorry.

Semi-helpfully,
Umbra

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