Green Roofs – I have seen the future and it works. (Well, in the case of the Soviet Union, it didn’t, but with green roofs, it definitely does and will.) I’ve written before on this unbeatable approach to lowering the urban heat island effect, diminishing the troublesome problem of stormwater runoff, and providing a stunningly effective insulating layer, among other felicitous outcomes, here and, more recently, here, for instance.
The excellent “GreenerBuildings.com” has an encouraging article, Green Roofs Show Big Growth in U.S., Canada. Some big news includes the fact that Toronto has “…adopted a mandatory green roof law yesterday, requiring 50 percent of the area of all new roofs be covered with greenery.” See more at the article and from Green Roofs for Healthy Cities.
More Inside Baseball – The “Washington Post” had this about how Barack Obama really started to zero in on energy policy and climate change last summer. How has he framed the issues to get some positraction? He and his team have “…made them pop by packaging them as ways to create ‘green’ jobs and reduce U.S. dependence on imports of foreign oil.” He’s also blitzed the Congress and industry with diplomacy to marshal some of the critical political backing that’s necessary for the breakthroughs that are needed. For instance, the article reports that “…many environmentalists and corporate executives have praised the White House for taking a pragmatic approach to negotiations over the cap-and-trade bill. Duke Energy chief executive James E. Rogers, who promoted free allowances for local electricity firms, said Obama understands the need to protect key industries, states and consumers, and he praised energy and climate czar Carol M. Browner for marshalling congressional support without dictating terms.” (See also next item immediately below.)
I’ve written about the Obama Administration a fair number of times in the past six months, so it’s good to get a little look inside how they’ve operating and how they’ve come to their thinking.
The Wonk Zone – Here is a slightly difficult bit of political economy from Harvard’s Robert Stavins: The Wonderful Politics of Cap-and-Trade: A Closer Look at Waxman-Markey. As he says at the outset: “The headline of this post is not meant to be ironic.” Why? Because “…the political process of states, districts, sectors, firms, and interest groups fighting for their share of the pie (free allowance allocations) serves as the mechanism whereby a political constituency in support of the system is developed, but without detrimental effects to the system’s environmental or economic performance. That’s the good news, and it should never be forgotten.”
Professor Stavins also makes clear that the deal on allocating allowances that was struck in the Energy and Commerce Committee is certainly not the corporate free lunch that many have characterized it as being. He says “…the totals become 79.9% for consumers and public purposes versus 20.1% for private industry, or approximately 80% versus 20% – the opposite of the ‘80% free allowance corporate give-away’ featured in many press and blogosphere accounts. Moreover, because some of the allocations to private industry are – for better or for worse – conditional on recipients undertaking specific costly investments, such as investments in carbon capture and storage, part of the 20% free allocation to private industry should not be viewed as a windfall.”
The economics are the wonky bit here, not so much the politics, but it might be worth it for you to work through the article. As is so often the case, the comments – and the responses by Stavins – are quite informative.
