On Trains as Alternatives, Complex Math Equations, and Glimmers of Hope
There are no simple answers to our climate-transportation quandary.
The place where I feel the most intense misanthropy and lack of faith in the human project lately is the car. And yet—like most of you—I drive just about daily.
I’ve also been experiencing added resistance to driving recently as I’ve been learning more about the massive quantity of greenhouse gases that are emitted while we drive. It’s not new information as much as it is a more granular view on a familiar story. And, as a result, I’ve been thinking anew about—to use the wonkiest phrase ever—how to reduce “vehicle miles traveled” or VMT, in my own life and on a larger scale.
Just having that descriptive little acronym, VMT, in my back pocket helped me realize that not commuting an hour each way to a faraway job every day doesn’t mean that the miles I am driving don’t add up. Now I find myself strategizing much more often about carpooling and riding public transit.
The best part of this phase has been re-acquainting myself with trains. I’ve taken two longer train rides to other parts of the state recently and both made me feel surprisingly different than I do in my day-to-day car-attached life. Both times I tried to put my finger on what exactly it was that appealed to me about riding on a train. Was it the fact that I could nap or read or listen to someone else read? The unbroken movement and the way things look a little different as they go by outside out a train window? Or the fact that the train corridors tend to be situated alongside waterways, marsh lands, and wildlife corridors? (I had to stop counting birds on my way down to Fresno in May — there were so many!) Or maybe it’s the specific view you have of a town as you slide in on a train—catching glimpses of the backyards, warehouses, and public parks no one else gets to see? I unabashedly like all those things. But last week, as I was riding back from the Sierras with my child after a weekend visiting a friend, I was also reminded that train travel is an inherently more collective experience than driving a car.
It's the autonomy that has gotten most of us hooked—and keeps us hooked—on driving. The freedom to be an individual, separate from the rest. And the pandemic has made the instinct to stay isolated from others much more appealing. One study conducted in Germany found that among drivers there, cars have shifted from being status symbols to “cozy cocoons” that are “part of an overall trend towards protecting oneself instead of protecting the environment, i.e. an individualized sensory response to an omnipresent collective threat.”
I have certainly seen my car that way in recent years. And I also wonder if there might be value in the conscious and subconscious sense of the “we” that can creep in when we travel by train.
I should be clear: trains aren’t the holy grail from a climate perspective. Unlike in many other parts of the world, trains in the U.S. aren’t always much more energy efficient than cars. It depends on how many people are on the train, and how many in the car. And unlike in other parts of the world, US trains haven’t electrified, so they’re still mainly running on dirty diesel energy. (According to an April New York Times piece, train trips that are longer than 700 miles may actually burn more fossil fuels than flying, much to author Hiroko Tabuchi’s surprise!)
There is some positive change on the horizon for trains however and they promise to make them a clearly and consistently better transportation option across the board. A rail tech company unveiled the first battery-powered long-haul locomotive in Pennsylvania; parts of the popular northeast corridor—which runs from Boston to Washington D.C. and recently received 176 billion in federal funding to expand its service—are also electrified; and here in the Bay Area, CalTrain is about to complete a newly expanded $2.4 billion electric track SF to San Jose. The infamous California high-speed rail system, which has been in the works since 2011, has also received $3 billion in Federal funding to electrify. Brightline, a private company, has also broken ground on an all-electric high-speed rail system that will between Southern California and Las Vegas and received $3 billion from the Biden Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure bill. It also already has a line up and running in Florida.
“For Boston to New York, an electrified route, taking the train generated less than a fifth the emissions of flying or driving,” wrote Tabuchi in the NYT article I mentioned above.
According to Canary Media, which covered the new locomotive in Pennsylvania last fall, an electric battery rail system in the US is worth envisioning. “If widely adopted, battery-electric trains could slash the U.S. industry’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by more than half, while also avoiding roughly $ 6.5 billion in yearly health costs linked to air pollution,” wrote Canary’s Maria Gallucci.
I like to think about the potential of trains when I could use a positive vision of the future of transportation in this country. One that helps people feel a little less isolated while — just maybe? — relying less on individual vehicles. After all, we know that the move to all-electric vehicles will likely cause a great deal of harm to ecosystems and Indigenous communities due to lithium mining, so anything we can do to cut down on VMT in a meaningful way, and reduce that harm, seems worth holding out a little hope for.
Climate news you might have missed
Will heat protection for workers arrive in time to make a difference this summer?
As triple digit days have become much more common in many parts of the country, and scientists have had to come up with a new way to talk about the dangers caused by combined heat and humidity (stickiness), many workers —particularly Black and Brown workers— are at an elevated risk of heat stress, illness, and even death.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been working on federal heat standards for indoor and outdoor workers since 2021. Now, the rule may finally be getting close to being finalized. In May, the agency announced that it “moved closer to publishing a proposed rule.” Then, on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the rule had gone to the White House for review.
OSHA acknowledges on its website that, “excessive heat exacerbates existing health conditions like asthma, kidney failure, and heart disease, and can cause heat stroke and even death if not treated properly and promptly.” And for those reasons, the rules could make a life or death difference to workers in agriculture, construction, and manufacturing — especially in states like Arizona (which has no formal heat standards of its own) and Florida (where Ron Desantis signed legislation in April that will blocked counties efforts to protect workers.)
In New Jersey, where lawmakers have been working to pass a state-level standard, business has been pushing back, claiming that allowing workers shade and time to rest will slow them down.
“On hot days, I get calls all day from drivers or warehouse workers who were struggling in the heat,” Gerry Cortez, a UPS driver and union worker said during public testimony for the NJ legislation. “I tell them to find a shady spot, drink water, and rest. But too often the managers are calling them or me, asking when they are going to get back to delivering packages and we have to collectively push back.”
All of this raises larger questions about what is — and will be — reasonable to expect in the new era of summertime heat.
New York’s congestion price fight
In May, New York Governor Kathy Hochul spoke excitedly at the Global Economic Summit about the way congestion pricing in Manhattan would change New York City for the better. She said:
…The average New York City driver spends 102 hours a year stuck in traffic. Those hours add up to more than four days of your life—every year. There has to be a better way. So, starting next month, New York City will become the first city in the U.S. to implement congestion pricing. We’ll charge people $15 every time they drive into New York’s Central Business District. London, Milan, Stockholm, and Singapore have all implemented similar plans with great success. In New York City, the idea stalled for 60 years until we got it done earlier this year.
Then, last week, Hochul reversed course and paused the program, citing “too many unintended consequences.” Exactly why she made that call remains an open question, although many have since speculated that it has to do with NY House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries’ electability in the upcoming race and a general move toward the center by many Democratic lawmakers in anticipation of the November election. And climate advocates across the spectrum have called foul, claiming that the decision set back the movement for congestion pricing across the country and dispels the vision of a New York no longer “held hostage” by a constant flood of cars—many of which come from the surrounding suburbs.
Now that the dust has settled a bit, advocates are exploring legal responses, citing the fact that the change was due to take effect this month but was actually put into law in New York back in 2019. “Governor Hochul does not have the power to reverse that state statute,” Michael Gerrard, a Columbia University law professor who’s pursuing multiple lawsuits on behalf of mass transit advocates told the local NBC affiliate.
The pushback
A new section to help us keep track of those who are making waves, making noise, and standing up for the climate in various (unorthodox) ways.
A group of over 750 scientists recently signed and hand-delivered a letter to Citi Bank asking it to stop fossil fuel expansion, and “rapidly adopt new policies that align with a safer climate future.” According to the letter, Citi is the second-largest financier of fossil fuels since the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement, and it has poured $396 billion into the industry since 2016.
Many of the scientists also showed up to block the entrance to the Citi Bank Headquarters in Manhattan as part of a two-day protest. Some were dressed as Orcas, and many were arrested, including noted authors and spokespeople, Genevieve Gunther and Sandra Steingraber.
In a recent op-ed, Bernadine Jones, a member of the Havasupai Tribe, based at the bottom of the Havasu Canyon—a tributary on the south side of the Colorado River and Grand Canyon—spoke about the threat of uranium mining in and around the canyon. The Havasupai people joined the Hopi Tribe and Navajo Nation to intervene against a group of elected Arizona officials and others who sued the federal government for establishing the new Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument and banning new uranium mines in the area.
“As a young woman, I learned from my elders that Havasupai people are the Guardians of the Grand Canyon,” she wrote. “These places are and always will be sacred. We mustn’t reopen the Grand Canyon’s doors to more uranium mining and contamination. The costs are too great.”
Members of the Oil and Gas Action Network gathered and blocked the entrance to Chevron’s global headquarters as the company held its annual shareholders meeting recently. The group urged consumers to boycott the oil giant, which it said supplies Israel’s military efforts in Gaza “with light and power via the operation and co-ownership of deep-water gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.” Chevron plans to invest $24 million to bolster natural gas production capacity from the Tamar gas field in the Mediterranean sea off the coast of Israel.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given the Equitrans Midstream Corp., the company behind the highly contested Mountain Valley Pipeline, permission to begin transporting fossil gas from Appalachian West Virginia to Pennsylvania and Ohio. Climate and community activists responded in anger and dismay.
“This pipeline snakes through steep, unstable terrain, and heaven forbid an incident occurs because schools, churches and community centers are within the blast zone,” said Autumn Crowe, interim executive director of West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “We will continue to advocate for the safety of impacted communities and the protection of our lands and waters in hopes that no other community experiences the unjust approval of a project like the Mountain Valley Pipeline.”A group of activists from Climate Defiance wearing “End Fossil Fuel” rushed the field at the annual congressional baseball game in Washington DC, which this year was sponsored by Chevron. They were promptly arrested but received national coverage from several outlets.
Eight Alaskans aged 11 to 22 are suing the state of Alaska, arguing that the constitution includes a right to a livable climate. They’re asking the court to block the state-backed proposal for a massive natural gas pipeline, known as the Alaska LNG project.
On the brighter side
The American Climate Corps is putting thousands of young people to work around the West this summer. According to High Country News, They will work as wildland firefighters, “lawn busters,” urban farm fellows and traditional ecological knowledge stewards. The outlet found that “30% of jobs listed across the West have explicit justice and equity language, from affordable housing in low-income communities to Indigenous knowledge and cultural reclamation for Native youth.”
Native sea otters are making a comeback in Oregon, after a period of near extinction and a great deal of work by conservation organizations and wildlife managers. Sea otters are key to preserving kelp forests in the Pacific, as they eat the invasive sea urchins that have been overgrazing the kelp, preventing it from providing habitat for diverse marine life and allowing the ecosystem to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
New research confirms that a biologically diverse approach to farming has community-building benefits alongside the ecological ones. Researchers looked at data from over 2,600 farms across 11 countries and five continents and found that “farmers can achieve more environmental and social benefits if they use several diversification strategies together rather than just one at a time.” They also found that the ways farmers must support each other through communal labor in order to establish and maintain diversified farms has the benefit of “community cohesion.”
In 2023 Michigan voters passed a law aimed at reducing local governments’ authority to block wind and solar projects. Then the measure sat in limbo as opponents tried to organize a repeal vote. This week, Inside Climate News reported that the campaign for the referendum had failed to qualify for the November ballot. A University of Michigan professor who studies such conflicts, told the outlet, “I’m hopeful that the state will reaffirm the importance of thoughtful community-level planning and in so doing be a national model in how you can advance statewide climate priorities without sacrificing local priorities, and see host communities as a partner in the energy transition rather than an obstacle.”
Efforts to reintroduce native food forests in the Amazon are gaining traction. The hope, says those involved, is that growing native fruit—like the camu camu, which has 100 times the vitamin C of lemons—will allow small land owners to avoid clearing the forest to bring in cattle and palm oil orchards.
A judge in Vancouver found that the federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s eight-month delay before recommending an emergency order for the Spotted Owl violated Canada’s Species at Risk Act. And while spotted owls are still losing habitat at a rapid rate due to logging, but the larger implications are heartening. As the group Ecojustice put it, “[the decision] will serve as a useful precedent for all at-risk species, such as the Southern Resident Killer Whales, which also face imminent threats to their habitat and survival.”
907F, the notorious one eyed wolf living in Yellowstone National Park has given birth to her 10th litter of pups—a feat the Wildlife Society says was not previously documented in the park.
A year into producing this newsletter, I remain committed to keeping it accessible for everyone. And yet, it also takes me a great deal of time to put together. If you’d be so kind as to kick in a few bucks and/or share The Window with others who you might appreciate it, I’d be grateful.
Take care and stay cool,
Twilight