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This is the sixth in a short series of posts that explain some important but often overlooked policy issues in the Western Climate Initiative—the West’s regional cap-and-trade system. Although there is tremendous urgency to reducing climate pollution in the near-term, it can be time-consuming to fire up a cap and trade system. The Western Climate Initiative is no exception. Policymakers have to sort out a number of details—about scope, offsets, reporting protocols, allowance distribution, reduction...

The new draft proposal is here. Just the major points. First off, the proposal is basically pretty good. We should keep in mind that what the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) is doing represents a big—gigantic—step in the right direction for the climate. So I’ll raise a glass to everyone who’s worked so hard on the WCI proposal so far. But there’s room for improvement. Below, I highlight the core areas of the...

From the Beehive State, a gratifying way to reduce energy use (and carbon emissions): taking Fridays off. And it’s mandatory. In part to deal with rising gas prices, Utah’s republican governor John Huntsman introduced the measure for state employees. The move, of course, instantly reduces commutes by 20 percent. The remaining four work days get longer — state offices will now stay open from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m.—so that the total number...

I’ve become a bit obsessive about oil prices—I check them online several times each day, just out of habit. But most other commodities remain something of a mystery to me.  I keep hearing, for example, about the tremendous increase in corn and soybean prices, along with other grains and oil seeds.  Still, until last night, I’d never taken the time to find out just how steep that increase has been....

Fascinating:  sales of highway fuels are tanking in Idaho.  The latest figures from the state Tax Commission shows a 6 percent year-over-year decline in gasoline sales.  In the first quarter of 2007, Idaho’s gas stations sold 151.6 million gallons of gas; in the first quarter of 2008, sales totaled just 142.7 million gallons.   That’s quite a change, especially considering that the state’s population has been growing at a clip of...

The director of the US Congressional Budget Office talks sense about how to make climate policy fair to low- and middle-income consumers.  They’ve got a long version (pdf) and a short version on their blog. If you care about this issue at all, you really should read these.  Seriously. The CBO note clearly shows that putting a price on carbon emissions will have a greater impact on the poor than...

Eric alluded to this in his last post, but I think it bears repeating:  a major global review of petroleum industry trends found that worldwide oil production fell last year. Of course, the decline was so small—0.2%—that it may fall within the margins of error of the measurements. You might think that oil production figures would be pretty rock-solid, but apparently there’s always a bit of slosh in the data....

I’m sort of piling on at this point, but I can’t help myself. Last week, the Seattle Parks Department set off a small firestorm when they announced a possible ban on beach bonfires. For whatever reason, the press ran the story as a global warming policy. (I’m told that Parks marshalled a number of reasons for the potential ban, only one of which was that bonfires contribute to global warming.) The...

Here’s an interesting argument, regarding transit service in Vancouver, BC: The planned SkyTrain subway spur along Broadway and out to the University of British Columbia campus will cost taxpayers 15 times what it would take to build a tram line along the same route. In fact, for the $2.8 billion cost of the single 12 kilometre SkyTrain tube from Commercial Drive to UBC, Vancouver could build 175 km of tram...

One in three Northwest households makes less than $35,000 a year, before taxes. That’s about 1.6 million households. Now, $35k ain’t bad—and it’s far, far above the federal poverty line, even for a family of four — but most households below that level feel $4 gasoline as a major blow. And especially when fuel costs are sending the price of everything from cat food to a handyman visit into double-digit inflation. One in...