Hybrid Cars + Smart Growth = Carbon Knockdown

http://globalwarming.change.org/blog/view/hybrid_cars_smart_growth_carbon_knockdown

A car built in 2009 belches out 90 percent less tailpipe pollution as
one built in the 1960s, according to Georgia Tech's Brian Stone. But
the net benefits to the atmosphere have not materialized, because the
average "vehicle miles" driven per person has tripled. So transforming
what cars burn and how they burn it isn't enough: To amplify the
impact that more efficient, cleaner cars may have on curbing air
pollution and human-propelled carbon dioxide emissions, we also need
to get smarter about how we plan our cities and other communities.

Creating more densely-populated cities and towns, providing them with
good public transportation, and designing them to be bicycle- and
pedestrian-friendly, would lower the number of vehicle miles we
travel, and magnify the positive impacts of greener cars.

Stone is co-author of a new study that looks at the long-term benefits
of combining smart-growth measures and hybrid electric cars.
Considering several metropolitan areas across six states in the
midwestern U.S., Stone and his colleagues projected auto vehicle
emissions levels for a hybrid electric fleet between 2000 and 2050,
and then looked at three scenarios of development:

Business as usual (using census tract data on population,
socioeconomic, and land-use changes from 1970 to 2000);

A smart-growth scenario along the lines of the existing plan being
used in Portland, Oregon;


A hypothetical, more aggressive smart-growth scenario with an even
larger population concentrated into urban and suburban areas.

Stone and his team found that if the only change between 2000 and 2050
was conversion to an all-hybrid  fleet, average emissions of CO2 could
be scaled back to 2000 levels.

Emissions could drop another 4 percent if we combine the all-hybrid
fleet with the first smart-growth scenario.  Combined with the second
smart-growth scenario of denser urban and suburban populations,
emissions could drop another 6 percent -- adding up to 25 percent
fewer emissions by 2050 than under the "business as usual" scenario.

“We show that it’s critical to have both technology and land-use
policies to deal with CO2because we won’t be able to reach Kyoto
[Protocol]-like targets without [both],” Stone told Environmental
Science and Technology News.  (Under Kyoto, industrialized countries
are supposed to have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990
levels by 2000, and lower them about 5 percent more by 2012.)

The study is not trying to tell the future, but it offers some
guideposts for policy makers and community planners to follow towards
effective action on curbing global warming. “We’re not predicting this
is going to happen" Stone said." But if it did happen, then how much
would vehicle travel and CO2 [emissions] change?”

In a way, this loops back to the Smart Growth Manifesto by Umar Haque
that I posted a couple days ago, which looks at economic systems and
behaviors, and argues for prioritizing outcomes over income,
connections over transactions.  Stone's study considers community
planning and design, but it's also assessing possible outcomes, and
how taking a collective, multi-dimensional approach could create a
positive, transformative outcome for the atmosphere -- which is to
say, for us.

Image: New Columbia, a redevelopment in the Portsmouth neighborhood of
Portland, Ore. Winner of the EPA's 2007 National Award for Overall
Excellence in Smart Growth

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