Update: On March 16, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (in New Orleans) reversed the district court’s ruling. That means the chaos was just temporary. It’s back to $51 as the “social cost of carbon” (explained below). In February a Louisiana court rejected the Biden administration’s $51-per-ton estimate of the “social cost of carbon” (really,…
Search Results for: environmental management
Bureaucratic Delays Will Hinder Biden’s New Forest Restoration Plan
The Biden administration has issued a ten-year plan to manage the national forests to prevent future wildfires. It will include “the use of prescribed fire and thinning to reduce hazardous fuels,” says PERC’s Shawn Regan, writing in City Journal. “It’s a step in the right direction,” says Regan. However, the billions of dollars proposed by the…
The Latest Perils of Curbside Recycling
Advocates of curbside recycling are trying to get rid of contamination. Specifically, they are trying to combat “wishcycling.” This is a term for families’ tendency to put into the recycling bin such non-recyclable materials as plastic bags, Styrofoam, food waste, and clothing. Writing on The Conversation website, Jessica Helges and Kate O’Neill observe: “Contaminating the…
Yosemite and the ‘Balance of Nature’ Myth
The following photographic essay illustrates the changing landscape at California’s Yosemite Valley and undermines the myth of a static “balance of nature.” The author, Shawn Regan, is vice president of research at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). The photograph above shows Yosemite Valley in 1899 (left) and today (right). If it seems like…
‘Negligible’ Fishermen Sue to Stop New England Wind Project
The long-planned Vineyard Wind 1 Project, to be located south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket islands off the shore of Massachusetts, has hit turbulence again. In December, an arm of the Texas Public Policy Foundation sued the federal government on grounds that it was wrong to approve the project. The foundation is representing six fishing…
Is the Interior Department Leasing More Land for Oil and Gas than Trump Did?
An investigative report by Adam Federman in the Washington Post says that the Biden administration is issuing oil and gas permits at a rate faster than Trump did. “Between Jan. 20 and Oct. 31, the Bureau of Land Management [part of the Interior Department] approved 3,091 new onshore drilling permits—permits it could have deferred or…