The breaking news is there’s been a breakthrough on the climate change bill. The “partial deal” would trim CO2 emissions 17% (from 2005 levels) by 2020. The compromise is, take inadequate steps to meet an inadequate target. The gloss is, it’s at least something after eight years of denial and stonewalling.

It’s passing strange that our leaders are failing to connect the largest things we build – our cities – to the largest problems that we’re facing: the energy crisis (peak oil in particular) and global warming. The stark reality is, sooner or later we’re going to run out of fossil fuels. In the process, returning all that carbon to the atmosphere several orders of magnitude faster than it was removed is already producing profound changes to the biosphere.

We are failing to connect the dots, to see how our cities are contributing to our energy and climate crises. Not surprisingly, we have not yet begun to see that rethinking our cities is the key to addressing those problems.

Over two thirds of our energy consumption and our greenhouse gas emissions come from powering our buildings – almost all of which are in cities – and from moving people and stuff around, again mostly within, and to and from, cities. Most of the rest of our energy consumption and emissions comes from making the infrastructure (i.e., cars, trucks, and roads) necessary to move people and stuff around.

Richard Register explains in an article titled “Cities can save the Earth” at Foreign Policy in Focus:

The whole organism of the city we’ve been constructing for the last 150 years has been built on the basis of linking functions through ever-lengthening strands of connection. First, there were rails and trains and streetcars, then much more massively, highways, cars, and trucks. After World War II, a wildfire of enthusiasm for consumerist development swept the world. The United States emerged from the war the only industrialized country that wasn’t pounded into the dust in direct warfare on its own territory. Assessing the results, the United States noticed it had about 5% of the world’s population and half its resources at its disposal. We were the Saudi Arabia of oil in the 1950s and had half the world’s cars. The United States spent that victory bonus building its freeway system and low-density housing, blasting off into the age of consumerism. Each house was a big, prosperous shell in the suburbs, accessible only by automobile and demanding to be filled with consumer products. This consumerism was as internationally contagious as the flu and spread everywhere. Today, perhaps the ultimate expression of this consumerism is the Chinese development model.

It’s hard to remember that cities used to be built for pedestrians. Not so long ago, all cities were 100% car free.

The key to changing our cities involves getting rid of the car. Not making cars more efficient. Not replacing gas and diesel cars with electric cars. Eliminating cars. Re-learning how to get by without them.

The problem is, cars have increasingly influenced urban design for 100 years. The cities we now live in have been designed for cars rather than people.

The New York Times last weekend touted German “suburban pioneers” who have given up their cars. In an experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, street parking, driveways and home garages are (generally) forbidden. Vauban’s streets are completely car-free, except for the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park, two large garages at the edge of the development. A space costs about $40,000, on top of the home price. 70% of households don’t own cars.

Not owning a car doesn’t mean sacrificing. On the contrary. Owning and operating a car is really expensive. Letting go of that burden can free up money for enjoying life’s pleasures and cut the chains of the commute.

But the answer isn’t building new car-free cities or suburbs. We’re stuck with what we’ve got. Our challenge is to re-make the cities we already have. That task seems overwhelming. Where to start?

Maybe the first question should rather be, where to stop? First, do no harm.

No more sprawl-inducing roads like the “Grand Parkway” around greater Houston, one of a plethora of nasty “shovel ready” projects slated to get stimulus funding.

No Columbia River Crossing. Oregon – and especially “green” Portland – should be ashamed of even thinking of such a monstrosity.

But we aren’t yet ready to let go and admit that “progress” as we’ve known it is over. Suzanne Duarte has a most touching piece in Culture Change that talks about our reluctance to wake up to the end of an age.

The way of life we’ve taken for granted – the glamour, ease and convenience of the industrial age – can never, ever be repeated, because our civilization has stripped the Earth of the resources that are accessible through the use of fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are going away.

The reality is, we have to recognize our responsibility for living beyond the limits of Earth’s systems, and then we have to change the way we live.

We will give up cars that have become a token of our way of life. But not without working through the stages of grief for a dying civilization: denial, anger, bargaining, depression.

And finally, acceptance.

Only then will we be ready to begin building life anew.