Matt Yglesias hypes some terrible environmental policy by way of Governor Richardson:

I particularly liked his insistence on the idea that most people underplay the role of transportation and land use policy in the energy puzzle…More fuel efficiency is good, and more renewable energy is also good, but we’re also going to need people to drive less. And that’s going to mean that we’ll need policies that make it realistic for people to do so — mass-transit, but also transit-friendly, high-density constructions.

Trying to jam high-density construction into local policy from a national initiative is a terrible, terrible idea. Communities oppose it, and nobody’s going to be too enthusiastic about drastically changing the American way of life (for the worse) out of fear of environmental collapse.

People moved to the suburbs because the convenience of cars allowed them to live better lives on less money. Nobody’s going to move away from that lifestyle unless that convenience is taken away from them (ie drastically higher gas prices) and doing so artificially will never fly with the electorate.

We’ve got to figure out a way to make money off of environmental innovation, such that American lives become more convenient through technological progress. That means renewable fuel and sustainable power. We don’t need to revert back to an urban American landscape with all the overtaxed school systems, high-crime, and crazy housing costs (for limited space) that entails.