Fees to build “granny flats,” which are often nearly equal to construction costs, will shrink sharply under legislation the San Diego City Council unanimously approved this week. The goal is to help alleviate a severe local shortage of affordable housing by spurring construction of more granny flats, which are additional housing units on an existing […]
The Legislature’s dominant Democrats have bent over backwards to help unions organize workers in private and public employment, from those who work in the state’s agricultural fields to those who build electric cars for Tesla. And a substantial number of those legislators are former union members and organizers themselves. However, the Legislature’s own employees are […]
Over the last year, the media have published story after story after story about the declining price of solar panels and wind turbines. People who read these stories are understandably left with the impression that the more solar and wind energy we produce, the lower electricity prices will become. And yet that’s not what’s happening. […]
The corn-based ethanol industry could become a surprising leader in a technology that the world needs to fight climate change, an economic analysis published Monday suggests — a development that could scramble the intense environmental politics of the ethanol issue. The technology in question is carbon capture and storage, or CCS — widely believed to […]
None of this argues against global warming. The 1950s was the last decade cooler than the previous decade, the next five decades were all warmer on average than the decade before. Two year cooling cycles, even if they set records, are statistical noise compared to the long-term trend. Moreover, the case for global warming does […]
The latest report from the Environmental Protection Agency shows that the emission of so-called greenhouse gases declined by 2% in 2016 from 2015 and 11% from 2005. No major industrial economy on Earth has made as much progress as the U.S.
In a bid to reduce congestion in toll lanes on the 110 and 10 freeways, Los Angeles County transportation officials on Thursday opted to end a program granting solo drivers of zero-emission vehicles free access to the lanes. Drivers with state-issued clean-air stickers will be charged a toll starting in November or December of this […]
California voters this year will likely decide whether cities across the state should have more power to enact stronger rent control. Rent control proponents behind a proposed November ballot initiative that would allow cities and counties to pass strong rent control laws say they now have enough signatures to qualify the measure.
Los Angeles is ending its economic boycott of Arizona, which was launched eight years ago to protest a hotly contested law targeting illegal immigration and then repeatedly lifted as the city continued buying products from that state. The restrictions, backed by lawmakers in 2010, were supposed to curb purchases from Arizona and largely stop city […]
Taking a job as a manicurist in California requires more than filling out an application and receiving an offer from an employer. Manicurists have to have at least 400 hours of training, which can cost thousands of dollars. They must also take a written and practical exam. The government-created barrier to a career in hair […]
As predictability has gone down, governments and firms need to find ways to be more nimble. They need organizational forms that are flexible and flat. They need policies and business practices that can be adjusted quickly in light of new information. While the watchword is uncertainty, a few things are coming into focus. One is […]
Fossil fuels have similar inertia, he argues. Today, coal, oil, and natural gas still supply 90% of the world’s primary energy (a measure that includes electricity and other types of energy used in industry, transportation, farming, and much else). Smil notes that the share was actually lower in 2000, when hydropower and nuclear energy made […]
Half the results published in peer-reviewed scientific journals are probably wrong. John Ioannidis, now a professor of medicine at Stanford, made headlines with that claim in 2005. Since then, researchers have confirmed his skepticism by trying—and often failing—to reproduce many influential journal articles. Slowly, scientists are internalizing the lessons of this irreproducibility crisis. But what […]
Federal regulatory burdens can operate as a hidden tax. Unlike on-budget spending, regulatory costs are largely hidden from public view. This can make regulation overly attractive to lawmakers. For example, a new government job-training initiative could involve either increased government spending or new regulations that require businesses to provide such training. Just as firms generally […]
As governments, including California’s, join the electric vehicle (EV) crusade, new public policies are advancing that ultimately would ban the sale and registration of light-duty vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. . . . The unintended consequences of banning internal combustion engine cars is that manufactured aviation, gasoline and diesel fuels from crude oil are […]