On June 30 the Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, decided that the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, a major change in the way carbon dioxide from power plants would be regulated, had exceeded the agency’s authority. (The plan had not gone into effect, partly because of multiple legal challenges, which ended on Thursday.)…
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Stanford’s New Sustainability School Gets Heat for Welcoming Funds from Fossil Fuel Companies
John Doerr, a venture capitalist who made billions of dollars in the tech industry, is giving $1.1 billion to Stanford University to set up a school for sustainability. It is the largest-ever gift to Stanford. Wrote David Gelles in the New York Times: “The school, to be known as the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability,…
How Not to Cool the Earth: Make Air Conditioning Too Expensive for Tropical Regions
Air conditioning has saved thousands of lives, writes Ben Lieberman for HumanProgress, but global emphasis on high-efficiency air conditioning is likely to keep its benefits from many developing countries. In some tropical regions fewer than 10 percent of the population have air conditioning. Lieberman writes: “Despite the public health benefits of air conditioning, its expanded…
Biden’s Plans for Infrastructure Ring Hollow, Thanks to New NEPA Rules
President Biden is tightening up the environmental reviews for major projects—thus weakening the infrastructure act he appears to be so proud of. The White House Council of Environmental Quality has just issued new rules for assessing major projects under the 1969 NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act). The rules end President Trump’s relaxation of regulation and…
Are You Paying to Save a Forest that Won’t Be Cut Down Anyway?
This blog has long raised questions about carbon offsets. And now the New York Times is ruminating over them, too—in particular, over the amounts of money that airline passengers pay to “offset” their use of jet fuel. Some airlines (such as Air Canada and KLM) allow you to get rid of travel guilt by paying…
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…