Cars -- who needs 'em? (Photo by André-Pierre Bodson.)

Cross-posted from Sightline Daily.

In a story about the decline of youth car culture, The New York Times quotes an advertising exec on the feelings of today’s youth toward the auto:

“They think of a car as a giant bummer,” said Mr. Martin. “Think about your dashboard. It’s filled with nothing but bad news.”

True dat. I’m not young anymore, but looking at my gas gauge is one of the biggest downers of my day. Though as I’ve argued before, a big part of waning interest in cars among young people stems from economics rather than cultural shifts: Gas and cars are expensive, youth unemployment is high, and young peoples’ wages are down. And besides, new licensing laws have made it more difficult and costly for many teens to get a license, while making driving a lot less appealing. (When I was 16, the lure of cruising around with friends was a major impetus for getting my license -- but today licensing laws in many parts of the country forbid teens with new licenses to drive with a bunch of friends.)

Regardless of the reasons, the latest figures show that driving is continuing to decline -- not simply among young people, but across the board.

Photo: Cyril PlapiedCross-posted from Sightline Daily. Tuesday's news carries a story that I've been expecting for a while: Connecting Washington, a task force convened by Washington's governor, has called for $21 billion in new transportation investments over the next 10 years. I haven't seen the recommendations themselves, only the news report. But it looks like the money would get spread around a bit -- with some for ferries and some for transit -- but from what I can gather, most of the money would be slated for roads. So in the upcoming months, I expect we'll be hearing a lot …

Photo: Joost J. Bakker IJmuidenThis post originally appeared on Sightline Institute's blog. Here's an interesting study (not free, unfortunately) by University of Washington engineering professor Stephen Muench, reviewing the literature on the energy and CO2 impacts of road construction. His study looks mostly at the construction phase itself, rather than the use of the road. In a nutshell: Manufacturing roadway materials generates somewhere between 60 and 90 percent of the CO2 emissions associated with road building. Transportation of equipment and materials to the job site accounts for 10 to 30 percent, and construction activities at the job site itself account for …

How do the Leaf's emissions stack up?Finally. If you don't like being dependent on oil -- but find that you do need to drive -- you've got at least one decent option. The Nissan Leaf is the first mass-produced, mass-market electric vehicle to hit the U.S. sales floors in ... well, essentially forever. (Yeah, I know about the Tesla and the EV1. But the former is too expensive to be in the range of most families, and the latter was never really offered for sale -- you could only lease it.) The Leaf's a bit pricey, but for many families …

Don't be confused, we've got some good news.Photo: Corie HowellCross posted from Sightline's Daily Score blog. Great Scott, how did I miss this? Late last month, the EPA released a draft greenhouse gas inventory, showing that net climate warming emissions from the U.S. fell by a whopping 15 percent from 2000 through 2009 [PDF]. A 15 percent decline? Wow. Just wow. But the story gets even more dramatic. Over the same period, the U.S. population grew by about 9 percent. Combining the two trends, net per capita greenhouse-gas emissions fell by 21 percent over the decade. And most of that …

Photo: Steve RhodesCross-posted from Sightline Daily. [CORRECTION: As mentioned in the comments under this post on Sightline, this discussion of the "Coase theorem" contains several errors -- most notably, that Coase himself did not present his arguments mathematically. In fact, according to a number of sources, there really is no single "Coase theorem" -- instead, there are several different and somewhat conflicting notions that followers and interpreters of Coase have presented as theorems. For more, please read the comments on Sightline.] Those inclined to be uncharitable might see the phrase "free-market environmentalism" as somewhere between oxymoronic and greenwashing. But I'm …

Cross-posted from Sightline Daily. You might think that vehicle safety studies are all about the crash dummy tests you see on TV, with simulated collisions. But those kinds of tests don't tell you how often collisions occur. A car that does well in a simulated crash test might not actually be all that safe in the real world, particularly if it's bulky and hard to maneuver on on the road.  And that's what Dr. Tom Wenzel of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has pointed out repeatedly over the past decade: Bigger vehicles like SUVs aren't always safer vehicles.  There's a …

This Advertising Age article discussing the massive decline in driving among young Americans is a bit old now. But it's both fascinating enough, and aggravating enough, to be worth some attention.  The basic facts are the fascinating part: Young people simply don't drive as much as they used to. Between 1978 and 2008, for example, the share of 17-year-olds with a valid a driver's license fell by a third. Likewise, the share of total miles logged by 20-somethings fell from 20.7 percent in 1995, to just 13.7 percent in 2008. All the evidence points in the same direction: younger people are …

As happens with stock charts, this one is likely to be out of date even before I get this post published.  But here's Google Finance's chart comparing the stock price of British Petroleum (in red), an energy-stock index fund (in blue) and an S&P 500 index fund (in yellow). Since the oil spill in the Gulf in late April, BP's stock has tanked.  Meanwhile, the broader stock market has inched downward; and the energy mutual fund, dominated by big oil and gas companies, has done only a wee bit worse than the broader market. But remember, BP (in red) is …

Researchers at George Mason University and Yale broke down U.S. public opinion into six different categories [pdf], based on people's belief in, and concern about, global warming.  For the nickel version, see the graphic below: Of course, I'm sure there are more than six ways of slicing this pie. It seems likely to me that public opinion lies in a continuum, rather than in six discrete groups. Still, the authors' analysis yields some interesting findings. My favorite is this: folks who are convinced that global warming is a hoax -- the "Dismissives" -- admit they haven't thought all that much …