Western water policies going back to 1922 are making it difficult or impossible to deal with drought in California, Arizona, and Nevada, says Shawn Regan, writing in National Review (behind a paywall). Regan is vice president of research at PERC (the Property and Environment Research Center). To begin with, says Regan, the Colorado River Compact…
Search Results for: habitat
President Biden’s Climate Plans Are Based on Fears, Not Facts
Standing on the site of a demolished coal-fueled power plant in Somerset, Massachusetts, on July 20, President Joe Biden said the world needs immediate action on climate change, and if Congress won’t act, he will. He announced a series of executive actions to prevent the so-called global catastrophe. Biden called climate change “an existential threat…
Back to ‘Shoot, Shovel and Shut Up’: Court Drops Trump’s Common-Sense Rules on Endangered Species
“With this change, we’re back to the ‘shoot, shovel, and shut up’ status quo.” (PERC Tweet). A federal district court in California has vacated Trump-administration rules designed to make the Endangered Species Act more fair and effective. The most important rule dealt with the treatment of threatened species, which are species that are not yet…
How to Turn a Bee into an Endangered Fish
A Sacramento, California, court has ruled that bumble bees are included in the definition of “fish” in California’s Endangered Species Act. The court’s May 31, 2022, said: “The issue presented here is whether the bumble bee, a terrestrial invertebrate, falls within the definition of fish, as that term is used in the definitions of endangered…
Did You Know a Debate Is Brewing over Conservation Easements?
They are more popular than ever but also controversial, writes Alex Brown for Stateline, a journalistic initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts: “[T]he growing interest in preserving privately held land has sparked a fierce debate between supporters who say such efforts guarantee environmental protections and critics who say they take away individual property rights.” Conservation…
What Earth Day Has Become
Kent Lassman, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, thinks it is time to retire Earth Day. Writing in the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Tribune-Democrat, he says: “Despite the positive effects Earth Day may have had in the past to raise awareness and rally the grassroots, today we have a global class of professional activists committed to campaigning…