By Mark Clayton

"At hearings last month, Maine environmentalists unveiled for state regulators what is being called a first-in-the-nation study of the greenhouse-gas emissions expected from a huge development planned for Maine's Moosehead Lake."

"At issue is not just the size of a development but the amount of driving it encourages. By being so far from major cities and accessible only by car, the Plum Creek project would produce, conservatively speaking, an additional 9,500 tons of emissions annually, according to the Environment Northeast study. That's the equivalent of putting an extra 1,850 vehicles on the road.

"'It's our belief that we can't meet the nation's transportation goals for climate change just by improving automobile technology,' says Alan Caron, president of GrowSmart Maine, an antisprawl group that lobbies for compact urban planning and public transportation systems and helped sponsor the Plum Creek study. 'You have to pay attention to where things are located.'"

"[L]aws that allow direct action are still limited. Only California, Massachusetts, and King County, Wash., have specifically incorporated climate-change analysis into the state environmental-review process as it applies to land development, experts say."

"'Climate change will be the defining issue for urban planning and land development in the years ahead,' says [Reid] Ewing [executive director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland]. 'It will trump everything.'"

Photo credit: Jessica Hoffman