When will the NYT start to link?

Air Quality Guidelines Face Unexpected Critics

...some environmentalists and city planners fear that the new set of guidelines being considered by the region's air quality regulators could have an unintended consequence, making it more difficult and more expensive for developers to construct buildings within already urbanized areas.

That would run counter to the notion that builders should be given incentives to shift future population growth from the car-dependent outer suburbs to places where public services are already available and public transit is a more viable option to get people out of their cars.

I wish the NYT was a bit more blog-like and used links so that one could go back to the original source document. Obviously there is a problems with the regs. 

But the way the NYT describes leaves me confused:

If a new project appears to exceed its allowance, it would trigger an environmental impact report to look for ways to reduce it. Guidelines suggest that a typical condominium development with more than 77 units would go over the threshold, as would a single-family housing project with 56 homes.

Wouldn't the determination be more likely to be done on a "carbon output per dwelling?" After all, location, siting and design make a huge difference in the carbon-impact of a dwelling. 

It doesn't make sense for laws to discriminate by size of project when the goal is to decrease the impact per unit. A huge 1000 dwelling project might be far more carbon-efficient per dwelling than one of 10 dwelling units. Of course the only way to check the reporters (uh...do you think that they don't really want to encourage people looking over their shoulders?) is to go back to the source materials to see if they have read it correctly. 

That's my primary point: I wish the NYT would link directly back to its sources and on a page basis.

via The Volokh Conspiracy