The Nation: Green Politicians, Real and Fake

[marmar]

Green Politicians, Real and Fake
Nicholas von Hoffman


Red Ken Livingston, the mayor of London England, is making trouble again. What makes him so likable is the uproars he creates. Several years ago he started a doozie that is still ricocheting around the world.

Red Ken, so dubbed for his alleged Bolshevist propensities, began charging cars $16 a day for the privilege of driving into the financial center of the city. Now he has expanded the zone that drivers must pay to enter. The hullabaloos of protest are ear-splitting and perhaps election-losing, but Red Ken is not backing down.

Since levying prohibitive charges on cars driving into central business districts is hardly a new idea, one might have thought that in this moment of environmental awareness American cities might be doing the same. They are not, even as the Washington Post reports, "The White House estimates that in 2003 American motorists in the 85 most-clogged metropolitan areas wasted 3.7 billion hours and 2.3 billion gallons of gasoline--about $63 billion worth--stuck in traffic. Every year, drivers in the ten most-congested cities pay between $850 and $1,600 and use the equivalent of about eight work days on jammed highways and streets." The paper did not estimate how many millions of tons of carbon the wasted billions of gasoline put into the atmosphere.

It is quite amazing. No major politician these days would think of giving a speech without the obligatory three or four paragraphs on global warming and energy. They tell us that it is a crisis, which is a laugh since we have been telling them it's a crisis for the past twenty years. ....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070312/howl

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. I do like that Mayor. And well he should worry about

global warming since his city is so very low-lying and thus at risk should the sea level rise.

[marmar]

2. I do too....

I was in London in November and the congestion tax does seem to have made a difference. The city center is still too congested, but travel on the buses seemed a lot more pleasant than when I was there before.

[Forkboy]

3. Hunter S. Thompson had the best idea when he ran for Sherriff of Aspen,Co.

He wanted to rip up all the pavement and force people to park on the outskirts of the city and ride bikes in :)

[marmar]

4. I'm all for that...

:)

[OxQQme]

5. That was Portland, Oregon

in the book, "Ecotopia".
My mini-rant a couple of days ago in an ethanol thread included inner city restrictions.

[Selatius]

6. Many cities in the US are in desperate need of mass transit overhaul

Most major American cities have subways and some heavy rail lines, but the light rail lines where street trolleys used to go were ripped up by the auto companies 50 years ago in favor of more cars for people. It may no longer be sensible to restore all those light rail lines, but it is possible to construct a fleet of city buses.

Perhaps some of the costs of constructing these fleets of buses could come from levying a fine for cars that drive into the business district or several other districts in the city at the same time. For instance, 16 dollars like Red Ken has done. You can either do this, or you'll end up with another Los Angeles or Houston.