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When it comes to regional climate policy, things are not moving as fast as we’d like. But as my colleague Eric de Place pointed out last week, the regional conversation about energy policy—and cap and trade in particular—has leapt forward at an astonishing pace. A year ago—even a few months ago—cap and trade was a relatively unfamiliar concept among NW legislators and journalists. Today, a range of leaders—from faith organizations...

As regular readers know, we’ve done a bit of cheerleading for the “cap and dividend’ concept—which is also called “Cap-and-Cashback,” since it would hand cash receipts from government-run carbon auctions right back to consumers.  Cap-and-Cashback strikes us as a fundamentally fair climate policy, since it protects low- and middle-income families from the effects of rising energy prices. Yet some people criticize cap-and-dividend as being unfair, because they think it could...

Here’s President Obama, in his state of the union address on Tuesday, asking Congress to send him legislation that puts a cap on carbon emissions: And his budget fleshes out exactly what sort of carbon cap he’s looking for: Today, the White House will unveil a budget that assumes there will be revenue from an emissions trading system by 2012. Sources familiar with the document said it would direct $15...

A hopeful sign:  it looks like President Obama really is going for a “cap and auction” system for combatting climate change.  The Wall Street Journal reports that the administration’s proposed budget includes revenues from selling carbon emissions permits to emitters… Mr. Obama will unveil the budget blueprint that tips his hand on long-term tax, entitlement, energy and health-care policies…[The budget] would include revenue from a planned greenhouse-gas-reduction effort in which...

Hot off the presses: these popular charts are now updated to include final energy price data for 2008. Take a look: Americans are falling behind—most of us anyway. We’re working longer than ever before to maintain a standard of living that once we took for granted. With respect to gas prices, average Americans are much worse off than they were in 1970. The working poor, in particular, are getting absolutely crushed. Their...

Happy New Year! 2009 is upon us, leaving 2008 by the wayside. It’s been a busy year, from national attention to cap-and-trade systems to a historic election season to the economic tumble. We thought we’d remember and celebrate the past year by revisiting some of our most memorable posts from 2008 (and there were a lot of them—423 to be precise).     Most popular posts (in order of popularity):...

Last time, I described a non-profit bank’s program for financing building energy retrofits, as a way to speed the green-collar recovery. Here, I describe two new, innovative approaches to financing efficiency upgrades in buildings—meter loans and local improvement districts—and one old-school, utility-run approach that may be the best bet of all. First, though, a couple more points about the challenges of financing energy efficiency improvements in buildings. One big challenge...

Sightline’s greatest achievements over 15 years.

A few weeks ago, Canadian resident Rachel Perks sent me an email puzzler. Why is it that apparently identical cars—same make, model, engine size, specs, etc. — are advertised with drastically better fuel economy in Canada than in the United States?  To see what I mean, compare the official government fuel ratings in the US versus Canada. Or take my car as an example. It’s a 2003 Honda Civic with a 5-speed manual transmission and...

There were plenty of winners and losers in last week’s election.  But perhaps the biggest loser of all was conventional wisdom. Consider the national election.  As of late 2007, conventional wisdom asserted that Hillary Clinton had the Democratic nomination sewn up, and that McCain ought to pull the plug on his faltering, underfunded campaign.  Conventional wisdom went 0-for-2 on that one.  If anything, political prognosticators in Washington State fared even...