By ©2024 Sarah Becker

“There is no good reason why we should fear the future,” President Theodore Roosevelt professed in 1905…

Earth Day was first celebrated on April 22, 1970. The same year President Richard Nixon [R-CA, 1969-1974] signed the National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA]. According to leading environmental groups Nixon, a former Alexandria resident was “history’s second ‘greenest’ President, second only to Theodore Roosevelt” [R-NY, 1901-1908].

On January 28, 1969—eight days after Nixon’s inauguration—a California off-shore oilrig ruptured. It dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean. When President Nixon, a California Quaker “walked along the black-stained beach he knew things had to change.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] became operational on December 2, 1970. “EPA is an independent agency,” Administrator William Ruckelshaus [R-IN, 1970-1973] explained. “It has no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce; only the critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment. It does not have a narrow charter…[I]t has a broad responsibility…with regard to five environmental hazards: air and water pollution, solid waste disposal, radiation, and pesticides.” The Clean Air Act of 1970 became law on December 31.

On November 24, 2015, President Barack Obama [D-IL, 2009-2017] presented Ruckelshaus with the Medal of Freedom. The Obama administration’s environmental focus then: The U.N. Conference Of the Parties, COP-21’s Paris Climate Agreement. The impending goal: To reduce global greenhouse gases [GHGs], gases that trap heat in the atmosphere especially carbon dioxide CO₂ and methane CH₄. According to the U.N. COP 28-Report, most signatories—including the U.S. and China have fallen short of the Agreement’s 2021 goals.

“There’s a common narrative, especially in Congress, that the U.S. has cut emissions more than any other country: but that’s only true because our emissions were so high to start with,” Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson said. “On a per capita basis, U.S. emissions remain twice those of Europe and China, and eight times those of India.”

“I was privileged to lead the U.S. delegation in 2015,” Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said in December 2023. “At that time, the world was headed toward as much as 4 degrees of warming. As a response, Parties came together to try and limit warming to well below 2^oCelsius…Now it is crystal clear how important it is to limit to 1.5^oCelsius.” COP-28’s stated goal: “to achieve net-zero by 2050.”

In brief “the findings of the first global stocktake, as discussed in 2023, concluded that governments need to do more to prevent the global average temperature from rising.”

The amount of future warming Earth will experience depends on how much CO₂ and other GHGs humans emit. “Cars, trucks, commercial aircraft, and railroads, among other sources, all contribute to transportation end-use sector emissions,” the EPA wrote.

Alexandria city has more people per square mile than any other jurisdiction in Virginia. Rather than develop mass transit competitively city pols prefer piecemeal analyses: especially when discussing affordable housing.

Braddock’s “Massive U.S. Route 1 Samuel Madden redevelopment” [532 units] awaits construction. As does South Patrick Street’s Heritage at Old Town [598 units]. Add newly-completed developments like Henry Street’s Aidan Old Town [94 units and transportation problems intensify.

In 1989 Alexandria 20/20 Executive Director Denton Kent [RF&P/CSX Realty, Inc.] spoke often regarding development’s four T’s: “Tar (roads), Taps (water), Toilets (sewer) and—if you are working in an urban environment Transit.” A year later he announced “two metro stations…are planned for Potomac Yard.” Yet only one exists. Development, as per the under-analyzed PYED has serious traffic implications: U.S. Route 1, Glebe Road, and the GW Parkway included.

“CO₂ emissions have grown faster in the United States than in the rest of the world…reinforcing calls for unilateral U.S. curbs on the global-warming gas,” The Washington Post wrote in 1989.

In 1991 the EPA “declared Alexandria, Arlington; parts of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in violation of [upgraded] federal standards.” Governor Doug Wilder [D-VA], the first elected black governor in U.S. history responded by asking the state legislature “to place California restrictions on cars in Northern Virginia, the state’s most seriously polluted area.”

Alexandria’s transportation grid is little more than a particulate-covered window into the City’s segregated past. In 1993 there was growing evidence “that smog—most of it produced by cars—causes long-term lung damage.” It did: on Alexandria’s U.S. Route 1, the inner city’s Patrick and Henry Streets. Black home-owners housing setbacks, for reason of Jim Crow had changed. Front yards were lost to highway expansion, front doors and open windows a sidewalk’s width from auto-driven streets.

Do Alexandrians who reside in the U.S. Route 1 corridor adapt to climate change—as the new PYED proposal suggested—or do local, state and federal governments mitigate? Alexandria’s auto-emitted GHGs are up, not down.

“Over the past 30 years, researchers have unearthed a wide array of health effects which are believed to be associated with air pollution exposure,” the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences explains. “Among them are respiratory diseases (including asthma and changes in lung function), and cardiovascular diseases…While climate change is a global process, it has local impacts that can profoundly affect communities.”

From 1991-1993 Alexandria’s Inner City Civic Association, with the help of retired T&ES Director Tom O’Kane and City Attorney Philip Sunderland, monitored the U.S. Route 1 corridor for air and noise pollution; conducted carefully considered traffic counts. Unhealthy, discriminatory practices were discovered. Truck-related problems included smokestack emissions and noise [Jake Brakes]. It was the ICCA—then described as a determined biracial band who successfully shepherded the city’s 1993 Jake Brake Ordinance—to the American Trucking Association’s dismay.

Years later Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood, with the help of former T&ES Director Rich Baier designed the “new” U.S. Route 1 Monroe Street Bridge such that cut-through traffic is no longer permitted. Del Ray “is home to the mayor and the sheriff,” Michael Lee Pope wrote in 2019. Also to longtime leaders and low density advocates who, as Del Ray historian Leland Ness said “saw no irony in being progressive and racist.”

Bottom line: Del Ray gave the Inner City, now West Old Town/Braddock the cut-through traffic it did not want. Braddock transportation analyses pretty much stopped in 2012, with the completion of U.S. Route 1’s Henry Street Belle Pre Apartments. BIAG dissolved not long after.

As density continues to increase unchecked, so too do auto-related GHGs. “We still think of air as free,” President Nixon said on January 22, 1970. “But clean air is not free…Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.”

“There is no good reason why we should fear the future,” President Theodore Roosevelt professed in 1905, “but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.”

On March 27, 2024, the city Alexandria decided not to move the PYED proposal forward. Let the celebrations begin!

Sarah Becker started writing for The Economist while a graduate student in England. Similar publications followed. She joined the Crier in 1996 while serving on the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association Board. Her interest in antiquities began as a World Bank hire, with Indonesia’s need to generate hard currency. Balinese history, i.e. tourism provided the means. The New York Times describes Becker’s book, Off Your Duffs & Up the Assets, as “a blueprint for thousands of nonprofit managers.” A former museum director, SLAM’s saving grace Sarah received Alexandria’s Salute to Women Award in 2007. Email: abitofhistory53@gmail.com