For the better part of the past century, the American dream was defined, in large part, by that “universal aspiration” to own a home. As housing prices continue to outstrip household income, that’s changing as more and more younger Americans are ending up landless, and not by choice. The share of homeownership has dropped most […]
The California Chamber of Commerce yesterday released its annual list of job killer bills and launched its new Capitol Insider Blog, which, in this first installment, provides details about the list and the 21 bills that have been identified as those that pose the greatest threat to California’s job climate and economy. Sign up to […]
Economic illiteracy has an astoundingly high cost. In Venezuela, children are dying of hunger but the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, has a bizarre new idea for making food affordable again. His latest plan is to simply shave three zeros off of the currency to control hyperinflation, so that a dozen eggs will cost 250 bolivars […]
In a world struggling to limit global temperature increases to below 2°C, we see a host of emerging technologies aiming to recycle CO2. They range from those nearing commercialization, such as electrocatalytic reduction, to technologies being explored in the lab environment, such as photocatalytic, CO2 polymerization, and biohybrids, to those only now being imagined, such […]
Our current urban “environment” continues to be dominated by single family homes in neighborhoods consisting of other single-family homes. A recent UC Berkeley study concluded that 62% of California households are single family homes, and another 9% live in town homes or duplexes.38 Changing single family home neighborhoods by adding more residents, more traffic, and […]
It is widely known that more than half of the world’s cobalt reserves and production are in one dangerously unstable country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. What is less well known is that four-fifths of the cobalt sulphates and oxides used to make the all-important cathodes for lithium-ion batteries are refined in China. (Much of […]
California wants 5 million emission-free cars on the road by 2030. China, with a far larger population, wants 7 million electric vehicles by 2025. California has a cap-and-trade program to limit emissions from power plants, factories and fuel suppliers. China is launching a cap-and-trade system to lower fuel consumption and cut reliance on oil imports. […]
Every year, the billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) we release into the atmosphere add to the growing threat of climate change. But what if we could simply recycle all that wasted CO2 and turn it into something useful? By adding electricity, water, and a variety of catalysts, scientists can reduce CO2 into […]
The International Energy Agency (IEA) issued its assessment, “Global Energy and CO2 Status Report, 2017” (Report) on March 22, 2018. The IEA reviews aspects of global energy use and greenhouse gas emission rates annually. This schedule has become even more important since the Paris Climate Agreement among virtually all nations of the world was concluded, […]
California ranks 49th in the nation for housing per capita, highlighting how seriously state policy makers need to take the state’s housing crisis, gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said this month. The ranking comes from a 2016 report from McKinsey Global Institute titled “A Tool Kit to Close California’s Housing Gap: 3.5 Million Homes […]
Hernandez relates the current “exclusionary zoning” effects of CEQA lawsuits to past practices of land-use discrimination – like when the City of Milpitas and Santa Clara County used zoning laws and high development fees back in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s to discourage African-American families from moving there after the Ford Motor Company relocated a Richmond-based […]
The governor and legislative leaders like to point out that market-based programs like cap and trade reduced emissions over the last decade while growing the economy. But, Borenstein found that “…the impact of variation in economic growth on emissions is much greater than any predictable response to a price on emissions, at least to a […]
NRG Energy announced last week it would close three gas-fired power plants: The Etiwanda plant in Ranch Cucamonga, the Ormond Beach plant in Oxnard and the Ellwood plant in Goleta. They were aging plants, built in the 1960s and ’70s. But plans for some new plants are also being sidelined. Last October, NRG asked the […]
The first fully autonomous ground vehicles hitting the market aren’t cars or delivery trucks—they’re robo-farmhands. The Dot Power Platform is a prime example of an explosion in advanced agricultural technology, which Goldman Sachs predicts will raise crop yields 70 percent by 2050. But Dot isn’t just a tractor that can drive without a human for […]
Ban-the-box (BTB) laws, which prevent employers from asking prospective employees about their criminal histories at initial job screenings, have been adopted by 25 states and the District of Columbia. Using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System, the Uniform Crime Reports, and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this study is the first to […]