News and Updates

UNH Professor John Carroll teaches in the UNH Department of Natural Resources.

Link to the article appearing on the 24th of September, 2007.

He reported the New Hampshire Department of Transportation will be cutting its maintenance budget by 30 percent because it is too costly to maintain roads when oil is $81 a barrel.

A couple of towns in New Hampshire have decided to revert to de-paving, or returning to gravel or dirt roads, because paving is so expensive, he said. While there are many alternative energy sources available such as wind, geothermal and solar, Carroll said combined they would only produce roughly half the amount of energy that is currently fueled by oil.

For the United States to move beyond its complete dependency on oil, Americans will have to make big changes, he said. Carroll touts localization, direct marketing, supporting and buying from local farmers.

He also said halting suburbanization and focusing on the rail system will alleviate the reliance on cheap oil.

Carroll promotes public transportation and would like to see bus lines increase in New Hampshire that are partially subsided while they build ridership.

At the lecture he handed out a schedule for the Amtrak Downeaster, to encourage people to use the train rather than drive.

“Actions speak louder than words,” he said. “The way you bear witness is better than what you advocate.”

the ideas of some areas of infrastructure not being maintained to the level that we all may except raises some serious questions for sustainability of small rural towns in New England. As the new, service based economy has moved to the urban areas - many rural communities have been left to fund their infrastructure on their own. As this article highlights the decisions are becoming difficult - such as not-paving roads and deferring needed infrastructure work.

These decisions affect the economy of the area by limiting the ability for trucks (the dominent mode of freight in rural areas) to reach communities and raising the costs of goods in the community.

article from Env. News Network
Regulation key to greener buildings

this is the news of the Day - Vermont has the ability to set Emissions Targets!

Article - Courtesy of the Union of Concerned Scientists

September 12, 2007

Federal Court Rules Automakers Have Technology to Makes Cleaner Cars
Court Upholds State Tailpipe Standards to Curb Global Warming Pollution

WASHINGTON (September 12, 2007) - A federal judge in Vermont today ruled that states can regulate vehicle global warming pollution, rejecting U.S. automakers claims that they don’t have the technology to meet the new standards and that they are pre-empted by federal law.

Related Links

UCS Vanguard

UCS Vanguard Brochure (pdf)

Technical Report (pdf)

The judge, William K. Sessions, reviewed analysis by Union of Concerned Scientists when making his deliberations. Earlier this year, UCS unveiled a vehicle design, dubbed the Vanguard, which would exceed the state standard by cutting global warming pollution by more than 40 percent using conventional, off-the-shelf technology.

Below is a statement by Michelle Robinson, director of the Clean Vehicles Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“This stunning ruling will be seen as a turning point in the fight to protect Americans from the worst consequences of global warming. Judge Sessions affirmed what we at the Union of Concerned Scientists have been saying for years: Automakers have the technology today to meet this global warming pollution standard in a cost-effective way. Vermont and 11 other states have been leading the way by adopting this standard that originated in California, and now the federal government should adopt a standard that is at least as stringent.

“Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency now has no excuse to stand in the way of state implementation. If the agency granted the necessary waiver, the dozen states that have adopted the standard would be able to cut as a much as 100 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2020.”

Melinda Moulton interviewed David Sellers an architect in the Waitsfield area on her live TV show on Channel 17 in Burlington, vermont. You can check out all the shows here: http://www2.cctv.org/rss/index.php?cat=1.Live@5:25Shows

David Sellers -

what can we do to reduce sprawl and improve?

“Citizen’s Group (that can gather some identity) to lobby Montpelier to put a moratorium on some things such as the ‘Circ’, put in passenger rail, put pressure on new high-tech connections between Cities.”

David has an interesting view of sustainable living - be sure to check him out on his blog -

Check out his blog at http://sprawlfreevermont.blogspot.com/

The Douglas administration has formed the Vermont Climage Change Commission tasked with evaluating a number of alternatives meant to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted by the State of Vermont. The Commission has been instructed to prepare a Climate Change Action Plan to the Governor no later than September 1, 2007. However, based on the recent updates to the site, it looks as if the Commission will not meet their target deadline.

This is all well and good if it means that a solid Climate Change Plan can emerge!
One of the sections of analysis include: Transportation and Land Use.

Thus far the section includes an initial evaluation of a number of scenarios that were developed that can reduce the amount of GHS’s emitted. The Commission has prepared a .pdf that highlights the initial drafts of these scenarios.

Thus far the two with the most significant potential to reduce GHG emissions are: Compact and Transit-Oriented Development Bundle and Vehicle Emission Reductions Incentives, which are estimated to reduce Million Metric Tonnes of CO2 (MMtCO2) between 2008 and 2028, 10.88 and 7.73 respectively.

You can read more about the Commission here.

This post will include a follow-up as more information becomes available. However, The Grist has published a great article today about the interesting effects of globalization on the US Fruit market - rather than exporting our subsidized corn and cotton out to developing counties - we are experiencing the reverse effect - Cheaper foreign goods changing our markets.

Once piece of this of direct interest and concern to me is the question: - How can we maintain a rural landscape that can either (1) support working farms to provide a source of local, sustainable, and reliable food; and (2) support a diversity of environmental resources important to our long-term survival as a species.

The Grist states the following:

What happens when farmers can no longer work their land profitably? They generally sell it to developers, and land under cultivation succumbs to low-density sprawl. Again, that’s already happening in California. In the state’s lush Central Valley, home to probably the nation’s most valuable territory for growing fruits and vegetables, developers bulldozed 100,000 acres of prime farmland in the 1990s alone, according to American Farmland Trust. If present trends continue, AFT warns, another million acres of farmland could vanish within a generation.

Now, I am very opposed to using subsidies to skew the market for US Fruit to a point of being able to compete with foreign fruit because the true cost of growing our US fruit just IS that much higher and should not a burden on the US taxpayer. However, with appropriate buy-local economic programs, readily available labor force, and land use regulations in place - we should be able to maintain our working landscape and prevent the sprawlification of our landscape.