Good morning, RVA! It's 28 °F, and that's cold! Expect a chilly morning and highs around 50 °F later in the day. Warmer weather returns tomorrow, and we could see temperatures in the 70s on Saturday—classic middle-of-December stuff.
Water cooler
Earlier this week, I didn't link to Sarah Vogelsong's reporting in the Virginia Mercury on the Commonwealth's first year in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative because, well, to be honest, sometimes it's hard to get excited about carbon markets. That said, the State "took in $227.6 million for flood protection and low-income energy efficiency programs during its first year of participation," and "results from RGGI’s last quarterly auction of 2021...show the largest chunk of carbon change yet for the commonwealth: $85.6 million." In just one quarter! That's a lot of cash to use specifically on programs to help mitigate the effects climate change will have on communities that see the largest impact—because of racism, that's mostly Virginia's Black and Brown communities. Then, this morning, Vogelsong reports: "Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin is pledging to use executive action to pull Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative." It's unclear whether the Governor-elect even has the authority to do such a thing, but this is the type of action we should expect from the incoming administration. RGGI brings in hundreds of millions of dollars to the State to both encourage Dominion Energy to move towards a carbon-free future and to equitably invest in infrastructure that will help our communities survive the impacts of climate change. It's unsurprising that the incoming Republican administration wants to do neither. Get used to it: If there are opportunities to enrich the wealthy at the expensive of the poor, they'll do it. We'll have to wait on the lawyers to weigh in on if our climate-change-denying Governor-elect can pull Virginia from RGGI on his own, but, in the meantime, our federal legislators have already started to weigh in with Rep. McEachin saying, "I oppose the Governor-elect’s decision and will not stand idly by while he threatens the hard work of Virginia Democrats before even entering his office."
You've probably figured it out by now, but Governor Northam is taking this week to travel around the state announcing pieces of his final budget as part of a "Thank You, Virginia" tour. Yesterday's announcement took place at Brown's Island and featured "nearly $245 million for outdoor recreation and Virginia's world-renowned natural lands." Lucky for folks living in the Richmond region, a huge chunk of this funding will go towards the Fall Line trail, which will connect Ashland to Petersburg in a safe and car-free way. I haven't seen final funding numbers on the Fall Line yet, but it feels like with the CVTA investment last week and now with this potential state investment...maybe it's fully funded? Or at least close? As with the previous two announcements, Governor-elect Youngkin and the new General Assembly can do whatever they want with this proposed budget, so I'm keeping my hopes at realistic levels at the moment.
Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on shiny new redistricting maps produced by the Supreme Court of Virginia's Special Masters. Here's the juice: "The maps appear to give Democrats good odds of having majorities in the congressional delegation, House and Senate — in line with recent state trends, according to the special masters. Achieving the maps, they said, came at the cost of ignoring incumbents." Locally, that means Rep. Spanberger no longer lives in her district—oof. Leonor does a great job at explaining how each of the maps should impact various Virginia races, and I suggest you tap through to read the whole thing!
My favorite new genre of posts on /r/rva is "there's a train honking its horn in the middle of the night!" This morning, we've got, "Train 2: The Train's Revenge", "The train is back...", "Damn train!", "Another broken train horn?", and "Well, guess they still haven't fixed that horn".
Also via r/rva, a picture of crews removing the first block from the Robert E. Lee plinth. I think I underestimated how long this whole process would take.
This morning's longread
Perfecting the New York Street
I love this piece in Curbed which points out, explains, and then improves on all the little (and big!) things that can make a street better for humans. It all starts, of course, with taking away some space from cars.
An aerial photograph became a platform on which to overlay a possible future city. The result is a real-life I Spy book, filled with details that accumulate into a livable, equitable, safer, and more pleasant place to live. This is no futuristic fantasy of self-sweeping sidewalks or robot-controlled Tesla taxis gliding up at the touch of an app. Instead, we imagined a makeover that could happen now, given urgency and determination. To execute it in permanent, handsome materials would be slow and expensive; a recent project to renovate a stretch of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn cost $2.2 million per block. But the DOT has already shown many times that some of this work can be achieved with paint, planters, and boulders. Getting the first draft done matters more than making it perfect and perennial.
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