Energy

By Richard Reep

Some say it took Mrs. O’Leary’s cow to make Chicago the city of great architecture that it is today: after the fire of 1871 that destroyed many of its buildings, leading citizens recognized the critical importance of their built environment. Today, we have a city that boasts some of the world’s best architecture. If BP’s oil disaster is a new millennium cow starting another conflagration, the nation may ironically benefit from seeing the ominous oil slick spreading across the gulf, spelling the end to our dependence on oil as the dominant energy source for the nation.  read more »

The debate over the repeal of California’s global-warming regulation, AB32, has degenerated into a shouting match, each side claiming economic ruin if the other side wins. A couple of long-dead French economists can help us think about the debate.

The great French economist Leon Walras (1834-1910) showed that perfect markets result in an allocation of goods and services that can’t be improved on, in the sense that no one could be made better off without someone else being made worse off.  read more »

Paul Krugman devoted a recent lengthy New York Times Magazine article to the promotion of a disastrous “cap and trade” regime for reducing carbon emissions. Though he doesn't outright endorse it, he strongly suggests that the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House would be acceptable to him. Krugman then proceeds to pooh-pooh the carbon tax idea, one that I believe has far more merit.

Cap and trade would be a debacle for a slew of reasons. The most important is that it won't even reduce carbon emissions.  read more »

The Obama Administration has recently been shining a spotlight on the need to eliminate barriers to telework and its growth. Now Congress has legislation before it that would abolish one of telework's greatest obstacles, the risk of double taxation Americans face if they telecommute across state lines. The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act (H.R. 2600)would remove the double tax risk.

H.R. 2600 can and should be enacted as a stand-alone measure. However, Washington is also currently developing or considering a variety of other legislative packages, any one of which would be significantly strengthened if the provisions of H.R. 2600 were added to it. These packages include energy/climate legislation (expected to be unveiled later this month), transportation legislation and small business legislation. Each of these packages, we have been told, would double as a jobs bill.  read more »

Greece and Los Angeles are up against a financial wall. Los Angeles had its bond rating cut on April 7. Greece managed to hold out until April 9. Greece has endured public employee strikes as it has attempted to reign in bloated public payrolls. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa drew the ire of the city's unions and city council opposition in proposing two-day a week furloughs for city employees.

A Bankrupt Los Angeles?  read more »

By Richard Reep

Well into the last decade, green design and smart growth operated as two separate and distinct reform movements. Both were widely celebrated in media, academic and planning circles, seeing themselves as noble causes albeit underdogs in the struggle against the mighty capitalistic enterprise of real estate development. Starting in 2009, the frozen credit market has kept private development moribund, and these two movements are somewhat moot as development takes a cease-fire.  read more »

The 20-year effort by environmentalists to establish climate science as the primary basis for far-reaching action to decarbonize the global energy economy today lies in ruins. Backlash in reaction to “Climategate” and recent controversies involving the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 2007 assessment report are but the latest evidence that such efforts have evidently failed.

While the urge to blame fossil-fuel-funded skeptics for this recent bad turn of events has proven irresistible for most environmental leaders and pundits, forward-looking greens wishing to ascertain what might be salvaged from the wreckage would be well advised to look closer to home. Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy.  read more »

Remember when President Obama declared that insulation was sexy? In the wake of the global economic downturn, a “green jobs” formulation has been launched, not just here, but in every major world capital. While the White House’s financial and rhetorical commitments to the creation of green jobs are significant, no administration has made these policies as central to their government as that of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Australia. The results there should provide a cautionary tale for President Obama, whose trip “Down Under” is currently scheduled for June.  read more »

Latching onto Kevin Rudd’s call for “a big Australia” and forecasts that our population will grow by 60 per cent to 35 million in 2050, urban planners are ramping up their war against suburbia. In paper after paper, academics across the country have been pushing the same line. Climate change, peak oil and the financial crisis mean we can’t go on driving and borrowing for low-density housing.  read more »

By Richard Reep

Florida’s era of hard times continues. Last week we held a "Jobs Summit " here in Orlando but heard little but self-congratulation by politicians like Governor Charlie Crist. He praised the Legislature’s budget cuts but had little to claim when it came to reviving the economy.  read more »