In the past there was a debate over whether cloth diapers were really environmentally better than disposable diapers. The answer: not in areas where water and energy are scarce, because rewashing cloth uses more resources (water and heat) than do plastic and cellulose production and landfill disposal. Now the New York Times poses another environmental…
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Search for Profits Will Spur Adaptation to Climate Change
Let’s suppose that global temperatures keep increasing. Can we adapt? Yes, says UCLA professor Matthew E. Kahn, writing for PERC Reports. “As millions of U.S. households and billions of people around the world seek new solutions to adapt to climate change, there is a huge market for firms that can devise products that help people…
Cold, Not Heat, Caused the Most Deaths
Did you know that the number of temperature-related deaths went down between 2000 and 2019 despite rises in global temperatures? That finding appeared in a study in The Lancet: Planet Health, part of the prominent Lancet medical journal chain. Cold-related deaths declined while heat-related deaths increased just barely, saving tens of thousands of lives as…
Prosperity Improves the Environment (We Knew That but Many Don’t)
The 2020 Environmental Performance Index shows a close relationship between environmental success and a country’s GDP. This annual index, developed jointly by the Yale Center for Environmental Policy and Law and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, ranks 180 countries. Writing on HumanProgress.org, Ethan Yang finds that wealth and environmental…
‘Wild Horse Annie’ Rides Again
Once again, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is faced with opposition to its way of dealing with wild horses on public rangeland. For many decades, wild horses and burros have proliferated on public lands—descendants of escaped horses going back as far as the years of Spanish exploration, plus horses lost or abandoned by settlers…
The White Supremacy of Birds?
The Washington Post has collected an amazing number of reasons to stop being a birder—all reflecting the fact that many birds are named after people deemed to be racists. “The Bachman’s sparrow, Wallace’s fruit dove and other winged creatures bear the names of men who fought for the Southern cause, stole skulls from Indian graves…