Deregulate Parking, Says Obama Administration

Great to see the Obama administration come out in favor of housing for people over storage for cars:

“Parking requirements generally impose an undue burden on housing development, particularly for transit-oriented or affordable housing,” the paper states. “When transit-oriented developments are intended to help reduce automobile dependence, parking requirements can undermine that goal by inducing new residents to drive, thereby counteracting city goals for increased use of public transit, walking and biking.”

The anti-parking stance came from a “Housing Development Toolkit,” a broadside against zoning. The report says zoning “reduced the ability of many housing markets to respond to growing demand,” making affordable housing hard to find in high-price areas.

Nixing off-street parking is not the paper’s only recommendation. It also advocates taxing vacant land, making it easier to get permits and making cities more dense.

This is the opposite of a big government mandate - it's the Obama White House urging communities to get rid of local regulations that restrict new housing and smart growth.

Gary Johnson Wants to Watch the World Burn

Libertarian Party candidate for president Gary Johnson says we should do nothing about global warming.

That means Gary Johnson isn't a libertarian on global warming. Libertarians aren't in favor of letting one party (the coal, oil and gas industries) harm everyone else with no consequence. They're in favor of minimal government intervention, sure - say, a carbon tax - but actual libertarians aren't any more in favor of letting polluters run rampant than they are in letting murders walk free.

Johnson is a climate nihilist, saying the world's going end someday anyway, so why bother trying to protect our children? As with his Syria ignorance, Johnson seems like a dim bulb with no interest in serious policy.

I'm voting for Hillary Clinton, the strongest pro-science candidate with a strong climate policy.

Investment Advice From The Green Miles: Exxon Mobil Edition

If they're frauding you on climate science, they're probably more than willing to fraud you on all sorts of other important things:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how Exxon Mobil Corp. has valued its assets in the face of the current plunge in oil prices—and how it estimates theirfuture worth in a world of increasing climate change regulations, according to people familiar with the matter.

The SEC sought information and documents in August from Exxon as well as the company’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. The federal agency has also been receiving documents that the company submitted as part of a continuing probe into similar issues begun last year by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the people said.

The formal investigation is examining Exxon’s longstanding practice of not writing down the value of its oil and gas reserves when prices fall. Exxon is the only major U.S. energy producer that hasn’t taken a write-down or impairment charge since oil prices plunged two years ago. Peers including Chevron Corp. have lowered valuations by a collective $50 billion.

Learn more about Exxon's climate science fraud at ExxonKnew.org.

Watch Wind Turbine Blades Being Tested

I recently had a chance to visit the Wind Technology Testing Center in Charlestown, a project of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. I got to watch huge wind turbine blades being twisted and bent, over and over, always springing right back into shape.

Wind opponents like to make it seem as though a stiff breeze could knock them over - seems plausible, right? They're so tall and thin! But they're incredibly well made with cutting edge technology and built to last. That thinness allows the blades to be feathered to let the wind go right past. Turbines most often survive the strongest of storms and are right back to generating electricity the next day.

In fact, one study showed wind turbines have a better chance of beating a hurricane than the other way around. Build an absurdly high number of offshore wind turbines and they could slow both the wind and the coastal flooding from of a monster storm, according to Stanford University researchers.

Amazing to watch these massive #wind turbines being tested. Wind opponents like to make it seem like a stiff breeze might splinter them. In reality, wind turbines are designed to survive hurricanes & be back to producing power the next day. #massachusetts #energy

A video posted by Miles Grant (@thegreenmilesgrant) on Sep 15, 2016 at 3:42pm PDT

Fight Garbage Cable Boxes: Ask the FCC to Unlock the Box

Cable boxes are garbage - slow, expensive, and huge power vampires.

Led by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler and supported by Congressional leaders like Sen. Ed Markey, there's an effort to "unlock the box" - to let your cable channels run through third-party boxes like Roku and AppleTV. Those third-party boxes are much cheaper, faster, and better than cable company boxes.

The FCC is set to vote Sept. 29. Please take a moment right now to urge the FCC to unlock the box.

Hermine, With Global Warming's Fingerprints, Smacks East Coast

Hurricane Hermine hitting Florida ended a historic 11-year drought of hurricanes making landfall in Florida. Climate science deniers had grabbed onto that lull to claim global warming wasn't worsening storms. But storm trackers say the drought was a total coincidence - there were plenty of storms around, hitting the Caribbean, Mexico and elsewhere, they just happened to miss us.

Meanwhile, Hermine has provided new evidence that global warming is fueling tropical storms.

Conservative Media's New Lie About Obama and Coal Jobs

Conservative media keeps saying there have been 83,000 coal mining jobs lost under President Obama. The problem is that there were barely that many coal mining jobs total when President Obama took office.

Total U.S. coal mining jobs, according to the Energy Information Administration:

• 2009: 86,859
• 2014: 74,931 (most recent year available)

If you believe the historic trends, the war on coal began under President Reagan and has had only modest success under President Obama:

The truth is that mechanization has been killing coal jobs for decades. As the Center for American Progress reports, in recent years, cheap fracked gas and competition with foreign coal have done as much to hurt coal as clean air regulations.