Daily Score Blog

We've been talking about green collar jobs for a long time. More recently, we've been following Van Jones, who's been busy pushing the concept of green jobs into  common political parlance (and action) -- from Nancy Pelosi's introduction of the Green Jobs Act of 2007 to John McCain's presidential stump speeches to Vice President Job Biden's Middle Class Task Force.

Jones been a tireless champion for fairness in energy policy. The idea is that a new, clean, green energy economy shouldn't be designed to shut out the very same people who've been left behind by the old, dirty, gray economy. In other words -- you can save polar bears and the planet but you've got to make it work for poor kids too.

So, it's good news that Jones will advise the White House on green jobs, enterprise, and innovation.

From the New York Times:

Jones, 40, will work within the Council on Environmental Quality, which coordinates President Obama's climate, energy and other environmental policy initiatives with federal agencies.

Jones will now help shape the administration's energy and climate initiatives, with special emphasis on improvements and economic opportunities in vulnerable communities, CEQ officials said.

Jones has said: "We have a chance to connect the people who most need work with the work that most needs to be done." Now he has the chance to shape policy that can see that it happens.

Update 3/13/09: See also -- or rather "listen also"... YES! Magazine's interview with Van Jones about going to DC.

US News & World Report says:

"General Motors posted a $9.6 billion net loss in the fourth quarter, a period in which its sales plunged and it needed a federal bailout to avoid filing for bankruptcy."

The Detroit Free Press adds, "GM is seeking additional money, as much as $16.6 billion, from the U.S. government. Of that amount, GM has said it needs $2 billion in March and $2.6 billion in April."

Sure, automakers will be happy to take a big pile of cash off our hands. But just because they're on the public's dole doesn't mean they're going to start acting in the public interest. That's crazy talk.

See, for instance, Time magazine:

GM and Chrysler, given the need for federal assistance, have kept a low profile in the fight over the California [fuel economy] rules, and are still hoping that the Obama Administration won't grant California the waiver. In a show of Detroit's political savvy, the Big Three have also outsourced much of the current fight over the California rules to the National Automobile Dealers Association, long-time critics of legislation.

Environmentalists are insisting that one of the conditions of continuing federal assistance to the automakers is that they withdraw their support for the federal lawsuit filed by the Alliance for Automobile Manufactures in California...

Is dropping the lawsuit really so much to ask, guys?

Maybe I'm just touchy, but I don't usually give handouts to people who are suing me. And if we're just dying to give money away, perhaps we can sprinkle the next $16 billion on the nation's cash-strapped transit agencies where it will do some long-term good.

Bonus: Definitely take a look at the accompanying photo gallery in Time. It's drawn from a project called The Ruins of Detroit by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

I wrote yesterday about the new study that found major declines in traffic congestion in 2008.  But to me, there's an even more interesting point hiding in the data:  population size is the best single predictor of a city's traffic congestion.  It's a fact that often gets lost in discussions of a congestion, but it's true nonetheless: all else being equal, the more people there are in a metro area, the more congestion it has.

Take Portland.  As INRIX reports, Portland was the 23rd largest metro area in the country in 2008 -- and its congestion ranked 23rd worst in the country.  Similarly, the two largest US cities by population, New York and LA, ranked second and first, respectively, in total congestion. 

Looking across all 100 cities that INRIX studied, the correlation is clear:  the larger the urban population, the greater the congestion.  No matter how I sliced the data, the size of the urban population explained between 80 and 90 percent of the variation in urban traffic backups.  The chart below excludes a few well-correlated outliers -- Chicago, LA, and NYC, which all have lots of people and lots of traffic congestion.  But even without them, I still find a strong connection between metro-area population and metro-area congestion.