Green

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent announcement that he would seek a third term as mayor brings back the issue of term limits and its connection to good government and long-term planning. I am against term limits anywhere, including the American presidency. The 22nd amendment was an anti-democratic, anti-government mistake, just as the term limit mandate in New York is a bad idea. The argument against term limits is simple and has two parts:

1) People should be able to vote for anyone they want (this is a concept known as democracy).
2) Term limits extend an elected official’s “lame duck” period from about a year to four.  read more »

From the Journal's breakdown of what a green roof is and how to get one: "The amount of green roofing in New York more than doubled to 123,074 square feet from 2004 to 2007, according to surveys by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities-North America Inc. That is an area roughly equal to about 10 Olympic-size swimming pools."

As Congress desperately tries to pass legislation to bail out Wall Street and restore confidence in the American economy, it is also managing to allow tax credits for renewable energy to expire at the end of the year. According to Robert Pear's recent New York Times article: "The House and the Senate conceded Monday that they were in a stalemate over proposals to provide tax incentives for the production and use of renewable energy, leaving the future of the nascent industry in limbo."

Unfortunately, this tax incentive has gotten caught up in congressional tax policy gridlock - no one thinks this policy is a bad idea, but it's basically the hostage of a broader debate on the budget and tax policy.  read more »

As the financial markets continue their roller coaster ride, the issue of government’s role in our society returns to the front pages. While Congress considers a massive buyout of poorly thought out investments, many are arguing that if we are going to provide these subsidies we need to impose rules to prevent future crises. It’s time to re-examine the way we regulate our economy and hopefully develop a more sophisticated approach to regulation and a more sustainable basis for our economy.

Regulation is a set of rules or directives intended to cause specific behaviors in target populations. The goal of regulation is to influence individual or organizational behavior.  read more »

This week, I'll spend some time liveblogging from the Clinton Global Initiative—the remarkable annual event where, between celebrity sightings, hundreds of smart and knowledgeable people discuss big problems and practical ways to solve them.

At this year's C.G.I., there will be a major pre-debate appearance by John McCain and Barack Obama, virtually together. On Thursday morning, at a conference plenary titled "Integrated Solutions: Water, Food & Energy," Senator McCain will deliver the opening remarks in person—and Senator Obama will make the closing presentation (reportedly via satellite).

In between, the plenary panel discussion will feature NBC News special correspondent Tom Brokaw, oil and gas tycoon T.  read more »

All spring and summer gas prices soared and the debate over energy policy played out on the front pages of newspapers across the country, with the Republicans unquestionably getting the better of it.

They deserve some credit for their strategic craftiness, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as successful in reducing so complicated an issue to the catchy slogan “Drill, baby, drill!” had it not been for the ample cooperation they received from tone-deaf and incoherent Democrats, who first failed to recognize the power of the G.O.P.’s message and then, upon realizing their error, disastrously overcompensated with a slogan of their own – one that they still can’t seem to believe never caught on.  read more »

Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici is reporting that the former vice president and poster boy for eco-living may make an announcement that he's buying Plenty, the New York-based environmental lifestyle magazine.

Mr. Gore is on the cover of the current issue as part of their Plenty 20 list of environmental leaders and thinkers. Maybe Mr. Gore liked the magazine so much, he decided to pull a Victor Kiam and buy the whole company. Expect an update when something is officially announced.

One of the simplest things we can do to improve our productivity and economic well being is to increase the efficiency of our use of energy. We are so wasteful that there is an enormous amount of low hanging fruit. As New York state begins to get serious about this, we should look west to California, for a place that really knows how to make the most out of a kilowatt.

Since 1981, I've taught public management at Columbia, and I am not one of those people who believe that government is incompetent and only the private sector is efficient and effective. Some work is best performed by government, some by nonprofits and some by the private sector.  read more »

At the end of June, when parts of Iowa were underwater, I wrote that the United States needed to develop a rainy day fund and do more to routinize emergency response and reconstruction. In that piece I mentioned that, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration: "The U.S. has sustained 78 weather-related disasters over the past 28 years in which overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total normalized losses for the 78 events exceed $600 billion."              

Now, we are all horrified by the impact of Hurricane Ike on the Gulf Coast and on Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city. The financial impact of this latest disaster is still being calculated, and even though the impact was not as great as it could have been or as devastating as some predicted, the financial cost will be huge.  read more »

For the moment, New York City is among the few places where a supply of drinking water to a major population center is not filtered. But drilling for natural gas could change that.

For the first time, because of rising energy costs, drilling in upstate New York's vast Marcellus Shale reserves is economically feasible, and for months now, landowners and energy companies have been scrambling to secure leases and begin exploration.  read more »