World’s largest banks ranked on their climate commitment

The world’s banks are starting to recognize the threat of climate change, but could certainly do more, says a new...

Urban issue virtually absent from campaign; mayors speak up

Ed Glaeser asks the presidential candidates: "What about the cities?" Last month, Clyde Haberman wondered the same thing. It’s a...

As the feds bail out Wall Street, here’s a food-related fix for Main Street

“The current financial crisis in the U.S. is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the...

More on B.C.’s carbon tax shift

On February 19, one of my colleagues at Sightline applauded British Columbia's new carbon tax shift. I've now had time to digest the plan. It's even better than we said, and the province could tweak it to make it better still.

This policy is the purest instance of a tax shift that I've ever seen. It's an exceptionally faithful implementation of tax shifting -- a policy innovation Sightline has been promoting since 1994 and especially since our 1998 book. (A small brag: Gordon Campbell read the book that year and told me he was going to shift taxes in his second term as premier. I didn't hold my breath, but now he has delivered.) The carbon tax shift (as opposed to the larger government budget it's wrapped in) is almost entirely untarnished by handouts to special interests. It is built on four principles:

Scientist says biofuel boom endangers world’s largest rainforest

A fifth of the Amazon rainforest — the world’s biggest carbon sponge — has disappeared since the 1970s. The Brazilian...

ILSR, spinning like a top

This is really, really sad. A group, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which has done stalwart work on relocalizing the economy, has let their pro-local passion overcome their principles.

Now they simply embarass themselves, beating the drums for corn ethanol, using flackery techniques that would do any corporate PR shop proud. Let's start in:

Yes, global warming can boost the most severe tornadoes

I am not saying the "unusually ferocious winter tornado system" that hit five southern states Wed. was caused by global warming. I am saying -- or rather NASA is saying -- we're probably going to have to get used to it:

NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth's climate warms.

So did John Kerry go too far on MSNBC when he said:

[I] don't want to sort of leap into the larger meaning of, you know, inappropriately, but on the other hand, the weather service has told us we are going to have more and more intense storms," Kerry said. "And insurance companies are beginning to look at this issue and understand this is related to the intensity of storms that is related to the warming of the earth. And so it goes to global warming and larger issues that we're not paying attention to. The fact is the hurricanes are more intensive, the storms are more intensive and the rainfall is more intense at certain places at certain times and the weather patterns have changed.

That sounds about right to me, though it wasn't the "weather service" really, it was NASA. The conservative Business & Media Institute said Kerry was using the tragedy, which killed over 50 people, "to advance global warming alarmism." But BMI embarrasingly undercuts its credibility by quoting one meteorologist from last year who obviously isn't very good at forecasting:

Reflections on death by SUV

It was just a matter of time before a World Trade Center survivor became a victim of a different sort of terrorism: death by automobile.

It finally happened last month, in lower Manhattan, when a speeding sport utility vehicle struck and killed a woman who had fled the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Florence Cioffi was leaving a dinner celebrating her upcoming 60th birthday when a Mercedes-Benz SUV slammed into her on Water Street at 60 miles an hour, according to a Manhattan assistant district attorney.

Six years, four months, and thirteen days earlier, Ms. Cioffi narrowly averted death when she ducked out of her office on the 36th floor of the North Tower to get a coffee minutes before the plane struck.

Growing solar industry depends on key tax credit that will expire this year

Advocates talk a lot about how renewable energy is not just good for the environment, but good for the economy as well. And here is some real-world proof: New Mexico, with strong leadership by Gov. Richardson, PRC Commissioners Lujan and Marks, and many others, has done more than most to establish the full suite of policies necessary to build a solar market. And the reward? Schott AG is investing $100 million in a new manufacturing facility outside of Albuquerque. It will initially employ 350 people, which could grow to 1,500. Good stuff, and congrats to New Mexico.

But lookie here at what Schott has to say about what it will take to get to the higher end of the projected jobs numbers: