• TWILIGHT OF THE TOWN CAR?

    Rows of sleek, black Lincoln Town Cars idling along the Financial District's dark and narrow roads were an unavoidable sight in the run up to the financial crisis. Such chariots were necessary to shepherd home Wall Street's dealmakers after long evenings in the office. But with the deals dried up, out of work bankers have returned to New York's Subway system, and thousands of drivers have turned in their car keys.

    As director of transportation at Lehman Brothers, Donovan Wilson used to operate an in-house call centre to manage the dozen or so car-service vendors the bank employed. He now serves in a similar capacity for Barclays, a smaller bank (even with the additional units from Lehman's bankruptcy sale), which itself kept only two black car companies from its six-company stable during the boom.

    Companies that have managed to hold on to their corporate accounts have also struggled in the wake of the financial crisis. Berg Haroutunian is the owner of Vital Transportation Inc, one of the seven car vendors Merrill Lynch used before its ill-fated merger with Bank of America. Vital still works with the reconfigured bank, but he estimates that business has decreased by about 30%, and 120 of his 440 drivers (all independently contracted) have left "for one reason or another." Some had their cars repossessed, others have lost their homes.  read more »


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  • THE HOMES OF THE FUTURE

    The US Department of Energy (DoE) recently concluded its fourth “Solar Decathlon” in Washington, DC. The ten-event competition is a two-week contest between 20 of the world’s most energy-efficient houses. For the two brief weekends when the houses were open for viewing, the rows of futuristic abodes transformed the usually humdrum National Mall into the busiest and most high tech block in America. On the soggy final day of the contest, throngs of umbrella wielding architects and environmentalists replaced the standard assortment of tourists, protestors and ultimate Frisbee players on the nation’s quad.

    Like the last decathlon in 2007, this year’s gold medal went to Darmstadt University of Technology in Hesse, Germany. Their solar-panel-covered “Cube House” (pictured below) won by fewer than 11 points out of a possible thousand, yet it aced the critical net metering category, by which the competition's judges measured the energy a house produces or consumes over the course of the competition. (If only America had a robust smart grid capable of absorbing excess power, such  dwellings could actually generate extra juice to go around.) Germany's engineers and scientists have benefited from government incentives to make solar energy competitive with coal.  read more »


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  • WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

    Our friends at The Economist's Democracy in America blog make a convincing case for the Senate to pass cap-and-trade legislation:

    How warm were the oceans this summer? The warmest they've ever been since measurements started in 1880.

    How's that typhoon season coming along? In August, Typhoon Etsau killed 13 people in Japan. Later that week, Typhoon Morakot, Taiwan's worst in 50 years, killed 367 people. Last weekend, Typhoon Ketsana brought the heaviest rain in 40 years to the Philippines, where it killed over 300 people. In Vietnam, Ketsana dumped 3 feet of rain on one province and killed over 100 people. In a day or two, Typhoon Parma will hit the Philippines, and most likely Taiwan shortly thereafter. It is currently clocking winds of 120 knots, faster than Ketsana.

    Meanwhile, in Australia, where February's "Black Saturday" wildfires killed 181 people, the sky turned black last week, as a multi-year drought generated the largest dust storms in 70 years.

    Himalayan glaciers? Catch them while they last. Arctic sea ice? Third-lowest ever.  read more »


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