Neighborhood Effects blogger Bob Nelson had an op-ed in Friday’s Salt Lake Tribune arguing that Utah should offer to take control of federal lands in the state:

The largest area of Utah public land, 22.8 million acres, is managed by the Bureau of Land Management in the Interior Department. Another 8.1 million acres is in the national forest system managed by the U.S. Forest Service in the Agriculture Department. On these lands, the most important decisions concern matters such as the number of cows that will be allowed to graze, the levels of timber harvesting, the leasing of land for oil and gas drilling, the prevention and fighting of forest fires and the areas available to off-road recreational vehicles.

Except in Utah and other parts of the American West, where the federal government still holds about half the total land area, such matters are the responsibility of private land owners and of state and local governments. It is time to end this antiquated system which has failed the test of time. Despite the possession of hundreds of millions of acres of land, and vast oil and gas, coal and other valuable mineral resources, the federal lands proved to be a money-losing proposition.

Read the whole thing here.

In 2008, Bob wrote about how local control of federal lands in California can lead to more effective fire management. And, of course, Bob is the author of one of Neighborhood Effects’ all-time most-read posts, wherein he argued that the US Senate is obsolete.

Ed Glaeser writes in City Journal on his latest study, which suggests that cities emit less carbon than suburbs. (Full NBER paper with Matthew Kahn can be found here.) The top five cities (by emissions) are in California.

This sounds counterintuitive at first blush. But, Glaeser suggests, people who live in the suburbs drive more and consume more housing. The policy implication is make cities more affordable by loosening building restrictions:

If climate change is the major environmental challenge that we face, the state should actively encourage new construction, rather than push it toward other areas. True, increasing development in California might increase per-household carbon emissions within the state if the new development, following the current model, took place on the extreme edges of urban areas. A better path would be to ease restrictions in the urban cores of San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego. More building there would reduce average commute lengths and improve per-capita emissions. Higher densities could also justify more investment in new, low-emissions energy plants.

Similarly, limiting the height or growth of New York City skyscrapers incurs environmental costs. Building more apartments in Gotham will not only make the city more affordable; it will also reduce global warming.

Here’s Glaeser’s write-up at the New York Times Economix blog. Here’s Tyler Cowen on a previous, related study.