Jobs & Regs
The empirical evidence suggests that job loss from regulation is small.
It seems to be easy to make arguments one way or another about the effect of regulation on jobs. What does the evidence say? Those seeking an answer would do well to look at a recent book on the subject by Coglianese, Finkel, and Carrigan. Although the book is broader in scope, it provides a careful survey of the empirical literature. I'm going to forgo the opportunity to editorialize and just report what they found. A leading study by Michael Greenstone foun...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Will Driverless Cars Do To The Climate?
A Formidable Challenge for Policymakers and Modelers
It's no longer a question of whether driverless cars will appear on the market; it's when and how many. The answers so far seem to be: 1) soon; and 2) lots. German automakers are so confident of this that they are already negotiating with Nokia to compete to Google's self-driving cars. For Legal Planet, that means we should start thinking about how this would affect, well, the planet -- specifically emissions from vehicle miles traveled. And that presents quite a f...
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Requiem for a Bottom-Feeder
UCLA's Don Shoup Has Transformed Urban Planning
Every scholar wants to do good, productive, important work, but I suppose all us secretly would like to redefine our fields -- to go down in academic history, so to speak. Virtually none of us do. But UCLA's Don Shoup, who is retiring this year from the Urban Planning department, is one who has. And he has done so in an area that no one would have expected: parking policy. Shoup's key insight has been that urban form has been grotesquely distorted by the requirement f...
CONTINUE READINGIs Jeb Too Green?
GOP Primary voters may think so.
At this point, the GOP Presidential field looks like Jeb Bush versus Everyone Else. (Of course, there's a big fight over who get's to play Everyone Else when this particular play opens in Iowa and New Hampshire.) It's an open question whether Jeb will turn out to be too green for the average GOP primary voter. Jeb has already been attacked by the Club for Growth on this basis. The Club's communication director complains that "we did see hundreds of millions in...
CONTINUE READINGThe Climate Rides Again
Support the Emmett Institute in the California Coast Climate Ride!
Regular readers may remember Ted Parson’s Legal Planet post about his experience on last year’s NYC-DC Climate Ride. Ted described the ride as “beautiful, hard, and moving.” (Pun possibly intended.) Along with fellow riders Andy Sabin and Dan Emmett, Ted raised a ton of money for our program and brought attention to the work of the Emmett Institute and other excellent groups working on climate change issues. On May 17, the Climate Ride will be coming to Cali...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Sets 2030 Climate Emissions Target
And it looks like the right goal
Today, California Governor Jerry Brown signed an executive order setting a statewide greenhouse gas emissions target to be achieved by 2030, at 40% below 1990 levels. It's an historic announcement that puts California in the vanguard of jurisdictions who have committed to goals in this 2030 timeframe (it matches the E.U.'s). California's new 2030 target takes its place alongside, and fits nicely with, the state's existing 2020 and 2050 goals, which were set, respec...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Fatigue
You might be tired of climate change. But climate change isn't tired of you.
I gather that people are tired of hearing about climate change. I'm tired of hearing about climate change, too. Sadly, Nature just doesn't care that much about entertaining us. It's going to be climate change this year, climate change next year, climate change the year after that . . . But don't worry, it won't be as boring as it sounds. To begin with, although the global trends are reasonably predictable, there's more uncertainty about exactly how things wi...
CONTINUE READINGCulture Wars at the Supreme Court
A new book examines the roots of judicial conflict in environmental law.
Views on environmental issues are related to broader culture differences. According to social scientists, environmentalists tend to be egalitarian, believe in harmony with nature, and stress responsibility over autonomy. Their opponents, who are skeptical about regulation, tend to favor traditional hierarchies, believe in human mastery of nature, and stress autonomy over responsibility. Jon Cannon's new book, Environment in the Balance, extends this theory to the S...
CONTINUE READINGIs Jeb Bush Listening to Andy Sabin?
Position on Climate Change Evolving
Jeb Bush is now "concerned" about climate change. He also believes the U.S. needs to work with other countries to "negotiate a way to reduce carbon emissions." Though some environmental groups remain skeptical --largely because Bush also embraced natural gas as the primary tool to reduce U.S. emissions -- these statements strike me as worthy of praise. Most (though not all) of the Republican contenders for President are either outright den...
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