Every red-blooded American turns green at the gills at the mention of taxes, yet any public transit system is NOT self-supporting. It can't be, unless ticket prices were so unreasonably high that no one would ride it. We don't have the notion that roads and bridges should pay for themselves (a few have tolls, but most don't). Why do we expect that public transit should? Yet that opinion seems to prevail, at least in my own city.

The Europeans pay far higher taxes than we do. They have awesome public transit. They see public transit as a priority. I'd guess that in most cities across the US, most taxpayers see public transit as a necessary evil, or a way to get poor people around.

When more and more people up the economic ladder are forced into public transit, will those people actually be willing to pay for improvements to it?

I agree with a previous poster, that we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the personal automobile, and of suburban sprawl. But it will take a while to get from here to there. In the interim, which cities/counties/states will actually pony up and pay for public transit?

is still alive and well in Germany. Quoting my German friend (I asked if kids had school uniforms in Germany), she said an emphatic "no." Because kids in uniforms, any uniforms, looks too much like the Hitler Youth. The German society's across-the-board turnaround into a peaceful, hardworking, non-militaristic country in the Post WWII years has helped them convince the rest of the world that the Holocaust won't happen again. At least not from them.

Unfortunately, I don't see any such movement coming from us. Perhaps the universal sorrow and guilt comes from not only being guilty of such atrocities, but from being militarily obliterated by the rest of the world.

Hopefully it won't take that before we come to our collective senses, own up to our actions, and say "never again." For, just like the WWII Germans, we are all at fault for allowing this to take place with our names on it.

I'd been kinda formulating in my mind what the future might look like... sort of "froggy's future" where more people would ride bikes and public transit, where locally-grown food would actually be more economical than produce flown in from Central America... envisioning this in a far-distant future (maybe together with the Jetson's flying cars).

Here it is in a matter of months. Wow.

Wal-Mart buying locally. My local paper writing stories about my state's delegation fighting in congress for public transit funding. Standing room only on rush-hour buses and light rail trains. Public outcry over rising public transit fares.

In less than six months.

Wow.

Writing.

Editing manuscripts of arcane material into a state where even my mom can understand them.

Teaching lawyers, software engineers, and other varieties of geeks to write in clear English.

Software usability research.

Raising whole ecosystems of dust bunnies behind the couch.

Teaching children to ride a bike, tie shoes, ski, pack a lunch, wrap a present, write a thank you note, and innumerable other tasks.

Fabulous chapter about abortion in there. The "wave" of lowered crime in the 1990s came exactly as all those unborn babies in 1973 would have turned 18, and didn't. In the states where abortion was legal before 1973, the "wave" came earlier.

The author's conclusion is that the babies born into poverty, into less than ideal circumstances are the ones who grow up to be criminals. The permanent underclass who can never get ahead. That women have a pretty dang good idea when they're in the wrong place to raise and support a child. When those children are not born, they don't grow up in disadvantaged circumstances.

These are statistics which are uncomfortable, but true.

Read the book.

... investing in public transit, pedestrian infrastructure, and bike lanes than in biofuels.

But biofuels are sexy. They give the illusion that we can keep on driving our individual private cars into the future.

Public transit, pedestrian crossings, and bike lanes are boring. They also mean getting out of the beloved car, even if it's small, even if it's a hybrid, even if it plugs into the wall.

So what if the feds took those biofuel subsidies and poured them into transit agencies large and small? What if they helped towns without transit form bus systems? What if they helped do boring ordinary things like build park and ride garages across the suburbs so people could more easily take the bus? But again, parking garages are boring.

I know about pounds of carbon per mile. I really do. And yet it changes little about how and what I do.

Just this morning, I'm driving a carpool of kids from one suburb to another for a summer day camp. At least it's a carpool, not two cars. But to make the same journey by bus (going from suburb to suburb is feindishly difficult) would take about an hour and a half. And schlepping four kids ages 6-10 on the bus. In the car, it's about 25 minutes.

Time wins over carbon every time. I know I'm not the only one this way.

A few minor things change. I'm spending the morning in a coffee shop to work rather than driving home and back. I'm trying to bike more. But the changes I'm making in my life are miniscule compared to what we ought to do.