Sat, Jan 23 2021

Transportation Secretary-designate Pete Buttigieg said the 'time is now' for the United States to invest in infrastructure, and has pledged action on how the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) can approach street design and the regulation of…

Bill Pugsley Buttigieg addressed the slew of issues facing transportation, including how new technologies like autonomous vehicles (AVs) and hyperloop should be regulated, and how the federal government can support the rollout of electric vehicles (EVs).

Trying to figure out the efficacy of carbon pricing in reducing greenhouse gas emissions involves designing and running complicated models that can make the average person's head hurt. Fortunately, we can turn to people like Columbia University…

Bill Pugsley Getting to net zero by 2050 requires a carbon price “in the ballpark of $50 a ton in 2025 and $100 a ton in 2030.”

In the American Southwest, birds fell dead from the sky by the tens of thousands, succumbing mid-flight to starvation, emaciated by climate change. Across the horn of Africa swarmed 200 billion locusts, 25 for every human on earth, darkening the…

Bill Pugsley thanks to the rapid death of coal, the revolution in the price of renewable energy, and a global climate politics forged by a generational awakening, the expectation is for about three degrees. Recent pledges could bring us closer to two.

The compact city – a crumbling consensus The policy consensus promoting compact, centralised cities cannot be sustained in a world ravaged by Covid-19. The current pandemic is accelerating the move to dispersed urbanism. Beyond the direct…

Bill Pugsley The potential for remote working appears to be a matter of scale: the large urban areas offer the greatest opportunities. 36% of Wellington’s jobs could be done remotely, The potential is lower among small provincial cities (28%),

I did a TV panel on Thursday night and of course we mulled the fallout from Julie Payette's resignation. I can usually be counted on to relish a good Trudeau scandal, but this one doesn't produce the usual thrill. The mistake was made in 2017, it…

Bill Pugsley A Prime Minister who had never been a cabinet minister, surrounded by advisors who had never worked for a Prime Minister, handled an important institutional appointment by managing to find a Governor General who had no curiosity about the job.