Fresh Loaf

The departure of Atlanta City Council President Lisa Borders from the Atlanta mayor’s race earlier this week has, by political strategists’ calculation, left behind a large window of opportunity for the right candidate.

Specifically, we mean someone backed by the Atlanta business community – anointed by the Chamber of Commerce, as it were. Borders, a protege of mega-developer Tom Cousins, had been that person, but now she’s out.

Therefore, the buzz of the moment has concentrated on a well-known and universally respected chief executive, a man of unique achievement who’s arguably done more than anyone since Ted Turner to restore the vibrancy of Atlanta’s downtown business district.

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The growth of the Atlanta metropolitan area is finally slowing. Not so for Atlanta proper, though. This is coming from the Atlanta Regional Commission.

First the bad news (or, depending on your opinion of sprawl, the good news):

The population of the 10-county region increased by 70,200 people between April 1, 2007 and April 1, 2008, the smallest increase since 2003 and 16 percent lower than the annual average increase of this decade.

Now, the part that really gets Gwinnett’s goat:

Despite the slowdown in the rest of the region, growth in the City of Atlanta remains robust with its largest single-year population gain in almost 40 years, up 13,100 people. The City’s annual growth also marks the first time in at least four decades that the City added more new residents than Gwinnett County.

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 — The good news is that the Shelbinator appears to be back from writing some dissertation or another. And what’s he brought back with him? An “Obama Energy Plan” tire pressure checker, courtesy of the McCain campaign. Send in a $25 contribution to his “four more years of Dubya” campaign, and you can get one, too.

— Speaking of petroleum, Tondee’s Tavern has some ideas on how the Dems can turn the off-shore drilling debate to their favor.

– The Daly Briefing lets fly with some inadvertent military humor in his dispatch from Iraq. Watch out for Foxx, the little kitten who thinks the world is his toy.

— The underground supper club Rogue Apron threw a dinner bash with a Mediterranean theme, and Disposable Income was there to give us a pictorial account. Yum. I want an invite to the next one.

— Delta has announced it will add in-flight WiFi on its entire fleet of planes by 2009, which makes Clayton over at Peach Pundit cry with joy.  Me, too. Nothing like a coffee shop with wings; one more place I can work.

— Over at Pecanne Log, Christa has extracted the Netflix list of favorite Atlanta movies. And even though Atlanta is the gay Mecca of the South, judging from the list it would seem straight people here no longer use Netflix.

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The pro-gun group GeorgiaCarry.org filed suit in federal court yesterday claiming the city of Atlanta cannot ban state firearms license holders from carrying weapons in the Hartsfield-Jackson terminal.

Last night I spoke to the group’s president, attorney Edward Stone, who revealed one of the group’s possible legal strategies against the city.

As you might (not) have read, yesterday Mayor Shirley Franklin and Hartsfield-Jackson General Manager Ben DeCosta said Atlanta is entitled to ban guns from the airport terminal, despite a new state law allowing firearms license holders to carry weapons while on public transportation.

Franklin and DeCosta say the new law does not apply to the airport because the airport is covered by state code 16-11-127 which restricts possession of weapons in public buildings and at public gatherings. (more…)

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Mayor Shirley Franklin and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport General Manger Ben DeCosta held a press conference at the airport’s atrium this morning to say that Georgia’s new gun law, which as of today allows state firearms license holders to carry weapons on public transit, in restaurants that serve alcohol, and in city and state parks, does not apply to the airport.

“There is no change at this airport,” said DeCosta, who explained that the airport is a city building and thus covered by state law 16-11-127 prohibiting people from carrying weapons in public buildings. “Hartsfield-Jackson is a gun-free zone” said DeCosta.

DeCosta’s statements were reiterated by City of Atlanta attorney Elizabeth Chandler and by Mayor Franklin, who added that no one needs to bring a gun to the airport for protection.

“You can come to the airport and be safe because there is law enforcement here,” said Franklin.

As for the rest of Atlanta, with its soaring crime rate and chronic police shortage, it’s every man for himself!

She didn’t actually say that last sentence. I’m inferring.

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Gather ’round, Atlanta, Marietta, Sandy Springs — according to the Brookings Institution, your carbon footprint is shrinking. Everybody gets a gold star.

The Washington, D.C.-based think tank has released a study of the carbon footprint from transportation and residential energy uses of 100 metropolitan areas. The three-city survey conducted from 2000 to 2005 in our neck of the woods shows that our impact has decreased 4.75 percent while that of the average metropolitan areas and nation has increased 1.1 percent and 2.2 percent during this time, respectively. In all the rankings, the three cities hovered in the middle.

Hard to believe, eh? I know what you mean. That could be chalked up to the fact that the areas are more-or-less near one another, that a lot of other metro Atlantans travel from as far off as Gwinnett and Hall County to work in the city core, etc. The output surely hasn’t reduced because of public transit. With how sprawling metro Atlanta is, the three cities selected may not be suitable samples.

The study also doesn’t take into account our food supply, which according to a consultant with Mayor Shirley Franklin’s Sustainable Atlanta initiative, makes for up to a quarter of our carbon footprint that’s often overlooked.

What are the solutions? Researchers say:

Federal policy could play a powerful role in helping metropolitan areas—and so the nation—shrink their carbon footprint further. In addition to economy-wide policies to motivate action, five targeted policies are particularly important within metro areas and for the nation as a whole:

• Promote more transportation choices to expand transit and compact development options
• Introduce more energy-efficient freight operations with regional freight planning
• Require home energy cost disclosure when selling and “on-bill” financing to stimulate and scale up energy-efficient retrofitting of residential housing
• Use federal housing policy to create incentives for energy- and location-efficient decisions
• Issue a metropolitan challenge to develop innovative solutions that integrate multiple policy areas

Marilyn Brown of Georgia Tech, considered one of the leading researchers in energy policy, co-authored the study. After the jump, feast upon the numbers. To view the full study, click here.

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