Recently, I had the good fortune to encounter some folks who may well be the next generation of great environmental storytellers: Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele. They're producing short multimedia pieces that are just riveting. My favorite is a five minute story about the ways that climate change is affecting reindeer herders in Norway, but there are other gems too that are closer to home: snow-making at Snoqualmie Pass in Washington, fire-fighting in the Cascade Mountains, and sustainable job-training in a Puget Sound prison. It's not as if Drummond and Steele invented multimedia -- in fact, high-quality multimedia is getting cheaper and easier to produce all …

My cries have been answered. In Canada, at least, there is such a thing as a free market think tank with a free market perspective on parking policy. The Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy recently published a concise little position paper, "How Free Is Your Parking?" by Stuart Donovan. It makes three points, briefly: 1. Parking regulations suppress economic activity: Parking regulations suppress economic activity in a number of ways. Most importantly parking regulations tie up large areas of urban land and reduce the space available for other, potentially more-productive, uses... The Toronto Parking Authority estimates the costs for constructing parking in the …

*** This is a preliminary summary of a huge bill, so it's not Sightline's final answer. Look for a more thorough and polished analysis next week. *** Weighing in at 821 pages, the Kerry-Boxer climate bill introduced into the US Senate yesterday is officially a whopper, though it's certainly more svelte than the companion House bill that it substantially mirrors. (Apparently, it's Kerry-Boxer, not Boxer-Kerry, despite what you may have heard.) Update, 1:20: quick aside on the price ceiling: Lots of folks asking what I think about the "price collar" approach in this bill, especially the price ceiling that appears to be a …

Once the pending climate legislation gets active in the Senate, Americans can look forward to another outpouring of concern about low-income families. What's especially fun is that we'll get to hear it from political players who aren't usually too concerned about equity -- from record-breaking profiteers like Exxon to the same elected officials who slash social services. Now personally, I'd be delighted if Exxon really did take a genuine interest in poor consumers. And I'd be thrilled if the self-styled deficit hawks wrung their calloused hands with worry over energy bills and tight family budgets. But mostly -- and sadly -- it will be a ruse to defend the …

Congressman Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) on the radio last week: You have to believe in a tooth fairy to believe that we can regulate a cap-and-trade system. Say what?! That's an odd thing to say. Cap and trade markets have been in existence for well over a decade -- and the programs have worked quite well. There are already two operational carbon cap and trade systems: the EU's ETS and the northeastern states RGGI program. Neither system has exhibited evidence of gaming or market manipulation. (The previous problems with the ETS were much hyped by carbon-pricing opponents, but these were largely …

Washington's Congressman Jim McDermott just released a new climate plan, but I can't quite wrap my head around it. It gets some things right, but it may cause some relatively serious problems too. Here’s how he described it in a recent blog post: In brief, here’s how it would work: Producers of products and resources that emit greenhouse gases would be required to purchase a Federal Emission Permit. We establish a cap through permits that would be available in an increasingly limited supply. The price for a permit would be established by the Secretary of the Treasury and periodically calibrated …

Over the last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of hand-wringing about the state of climate policy in the Northwest. Washington's citizen-backed renewable energy standard is in jeopardy and neither Oregon nor Washington appears close to implementing the Western Climate Initiative. Even British Columbia's pioneering carbon tax is taking fire. Freak out! Everybody panic! Or not. If you take a sober look at regional climate policy, you'll see that it's still percolating. Yes, it's true: things are not as good as we would like. Legislative prospects for regional cap and trade this year look dim. For the past six …

Innovation -- a business model we can believe in. McKinstry Company is perhaps the most dynamic and interesting company in the Northwest right now. They're earning high-profile attention from President Barack Obama. And even in this economy, they're adding jobs and expanding. Check it out: SEATTLE -- Mayor Greg Nickels today presented McKinstry Company with a permit and approved plans for an expansion of its Georgetown facility in south Seattle. The company expects to hire an additional 500 people, a combination of professional and union craftsman, in the next two to three years. But how can anyone prosper right now? …

As cap-and-trade legislation gets debated in Oregon and Washington, a worrisome lightbulb seems be going off for a number of folks. (Congressman DeFazio from Oregon, for example.) It goes like this: Instead of "cap-and-trade" how about just "a cap without the trade?" Under this idea, we'd meet the terms of the cap through command and control regulation. There wouldn't be permits or a trading system (and hence no auctioning). To be sure, this will reduce emissions, which is a very good thing. But in terms of fairness and inexpensiveness, let me be completely clear: This is a horrible idea. For …

One of the problems with carbon taxes is that they're static. Let's say you set a tax at $20 per ton of CO2. It's going to stay at $20 when the economy is hot, even if the tax rate doesn't do much to reduce emissions. Conversely, when the economy goes south, the carbon tax will persist at $20, even though emissions may be dropping fast on their own -- and companies may need some breathing room. The first scenario is bad for the climate. The second scenario is bad for the economy. If only there were a way for carbon …