Funds for offsets shouldn’t reward past environmental behavior

If you must buy carbon offsets, caveat emptor -- in particular, don't buy them from the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). That is the point of a terrific front-page article in the Washington Post: "Value of U.S. House's Carbon Offsets Is Murky, Some Question Effectiveness of $89,000 Purchase to Balance Out Greenhouse Gas Emissions."

Yes, it is nice to be quoted above the fold in any major newspaper -- the quote in the headline is from me -- but the reason I think the article is important is that the reporter took the time to track down the offset projects the taxpayer money went to. The results are not encouraging. I am not a fan of offsets -- and certainly wasn't a fan of the House buying offsets from the CCX in the first place.

But I was surprised by the overall lameness of the specific projects and utterly shocked to read the words of CCX CEO Richard Sandor (a man I have a fair amount of respect for):

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...

Can the Kansas governor show toughness under assault from Big Coal?

A certain faction of young progressive bloggers is fond of the notion of Barack Obama picking Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius...

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:

Forest Service official threatened with jail time over fish-killing fire retardant

Mark Rey, the undersecretary of agriculture in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, has been threatened with jail time or...

Warm in NH

Time has a nice little story on the "Eight Keys to New Hampshire." Number six: global warming. It may be...

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:

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...

With amusing results