And yet, three years after the Paris agreement, when world leaders promised action, coal shows no sign of disappearing. While coal use looks certain to eventually wane worldwide, according to the latest assessment by the International Energy Agency, it is not on track to happen anywhere fast enough to avert the worst effects of climate […]
A married military couple who had to pay thousands of dollars to boot their tenants in order to move back into their Oakland home say the city law requiring the fee violates their rights. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian property-rights firm based in Sacramento, said Wednesday in a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of […]
On Wednesday, the California Business & Industrial Alliance (CABIA) representing hundreds of employers filed a complaint in Orange County challenging the Private Attorneys General Act’s (PAGA) constitutionality. The opening synopsis of the complaint asks: Are California business owners who inadvertently make a payroll error equivalent to the worst perpetrators of hate crimes? That’s the twisted […]
California is failing to meet its goals to reduce vehicle travel, imperiling efforts to achieve ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, according to a state report released Monday. The report by the California Air Resources Board, the state’s climate change regulator, found that carbon emissions per capita from vehicle travel in California were increasing. That’s despite […]
Butte County’s Camp Fire not only claimed a staggering amount of lives and property, it spewed out a whole lot of greenhouse gases – about as much as all of California’s cars and trucks produce in a week, according to new state estimates. This blast of emissions contributes negligibly to the planet’s overall warming, but […]
The dramatic drop in the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules, which has fallen by 99 percent over the last four decades, is often touted as a major success story for renewable energy technology. But one question has never been fully addressed: What exactly accounts for that stunning drop? A new analysis by MIT researchers […]
From New York to California, the nation’s agricultural workers are aging. They are also in short supply, as fewer immigrants are arriving to replace those who retire, and younger generations are finding less physically taxing work. In a 2017 survey of farmers by the California Farm Bureau Federation, 55 percent reported labor shortages, and the […]
Now automation affects the US workforce is largely a question of which jobs and activities can be most easily automated. At a macro level, change will take time to occur. It’s not likely that a million truck drivers will be thrown out of work in the next few years, because the technologies to automate these […]
California could be on the brink of one of its biggest corporate defections yet with the signs that McKesson Corp. – the pharmaceutical giant that is sixth on the Fortune 500 list – is preparing to move its headquarters from San Francisco to the Dallas area. Apple is the only California company that’s bigger than […]
How much of wildfire costs not covered by insurance should be paid by California’s giant investor-owner utilities has been a significant issue since at least 2007. That’s when wildfires ravaged northern and eastern San Diego County, killing two people and destroying more than 1,300 homes. San Diego Gas & Electric argued that it should be […]
In 2015, average household income before accounting for means-tested transfers and federal taxes was $20,000 for the lowest quintile and $292,000 for the highest quintile. After transfers and taxes, those averages were $33,000 and $215,000.
But much more than theory or haggling over technical details, we have excellent empirical evidence that a Green New Deal just does not work. It’s been tried, twice, on different sides of the world and it didn’t work either time. The first time it was Australia. The global recession hits, so as a nice bit […]
Tesla has presented the Buffalo operation as a sort of sequel to the Gigafactory, the company’s enormous battery plant near Reno, Nev. But where that factory employs more than 7,000 people and has helped Musk transform Tesla into a major automotive manufacturer, large portions of Gigafactory 2, as this place is known, resemble an empty […]
A labor force participation rate that is at or above its long-run trend is consistent with a labor market at or above full employment. In 2018, the estimated rate is at its trend of 62.8%, suggesting that the labor market is at full employment. Studying the population’s demographic makeup and labor trends for different groups […]
In 2009, mired in the depths of recession, Ohio’s unemployment trust fund went broke, prompting the state to borrow $2.6 billion from the federal government so it could keep sending checks to unemployed workers. Now, with the state unemployment rate down to 4.4%, the debt has been repaid and the trust fund has started to […]
