Did you know the federal government regulates dishwashers? Trump wants to change the rules. Guess who wants to keep things exactly like they are? Dishwasher makers!
Search Results for: energy
War on Plastics: A Waste
Long gone are the days when (as in the award-winning movie The Graduate) a future father-in-law would tell his future son-in-law there is a great future in plastics.
Over the past decade several cities and states have considered or imposed bans on so-called “single use” plastic bags. Recently, some jurisdictions have considered or imposed restrictions on Styrofoam carry-out containers, drinking straws, and plastic utensils.
The assault on convenient plastic started in California nearly a decade ago and has spread across the nation. Some cities and states, with legislators who respect freedom of choice, have resisted the siren call to ban plastic. Indeed, some states have even gone so far as to bar cities from banning or otherwise restricting, taxing, or penalizing the use of plastic bags.
Is Recycling Useful or Just Garbage?
From Michael Munger’s paper for AIER.
Should we recycle aluminum cans? Probably, because the price of recycling aluminum compares very favorably to using virgin materials, the mining and smelting of which are expensive in terms of energy and harmful to the environment.
Should we recycle toilet paper? We could, at some price. But it’s likely not worth it, because it can be composted, it would be awfully hard to clean and sort, and in any case paper products are actually a renewable resource, rather like wheat. You rarely hear someone saying, “Save the wheat! Give up bread!”
Joseph Bast on Climate Hysteria
By Joseph Bast
Reading Dick Lindzen’s comments (summarized above) just makes me feel even more tired and cynical than usual . . . which is saying quite a bit.
Dr. Lindzen is a brilliant and courageous scientist. Like so many others he laments that global warming skeptics aren’t better organized or, if practicing scientists, didn’t rally against the invasion of their respective scientific disciplines by environmental activists and socialists. He knows why they didn’t—the other side was unified in seeking an end (ending reliance on fossil fuels) to which climate science was just a means. Skeptics agree on a question of means—that science ought not be weaponized in a political debate, that “climate science” isn’t really science at all—but disagree on the end (libertarians think it’s about preserving energy freedom).
Experience demonstrates that agreement on ends is a stronger organizing tool than agreement on means.
Their side tapped hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from liberal foundations and raised from “crisis of the month” direct mail campaigns, plus the nation’s universities, already captured by the left, for an almost bottomless pool of free manpower, venues, and more funding. Our side could barely afford to hire any staff or even pay for travel expenses to bring our wide-flung alliance together a few times to share ideas.
Authors
John A. Baden is founder and chairman of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), located in Bozeman, Montana. Baden, who received his Ph.D. in political science from Indiana University in 1969, was a leader in developing the New Resource Economics, an incentive-based approach to environmental and natural resource management. He has…
John A. Baden
Founder of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), located in Bozeman, Montana. Baden and his wife, Prof. Ramona Marotz-Baden, are skiers and cyclists. They manage a productive ranch in the Gallatin Valley of Montana and enjoy active and happy lives.