It’s harvest season in much of America, and the nation’s houses of worship are filled with prayers of thanksgiving for nature’s bounty. Calls for commitments to honor God’s creation are highly appropriate. How can we best accomplish this rewarding but difficult environmental mission? A good beginning is to separate pious but unrealistic pronouncements from prudent…
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About the Liberty and Ecology Blog
This blog is about protecting the environment using the tools of economics. Your blog manager is Jane Shaw Stroup, a former senior fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). While the Liberty and Ecology blog is eclectic in the environmental topics it covers, its approach reflects the movement known as free market environmentalism. In…
Cap-and-Trade: Like Medieval Indulgences?
One of the proposed techniques for reducing carbon dioxide emissions is cap-and-trade. Companies would be allowed to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide. If they reduced their emissions further than that, they could sell the excess “right to emit” to companies that found it very costly to do so. Cap-and-trade is a form of…
Yes, There Are Trees in Downtown Washington, D.C.
R. J. Smith reports on the sylvan species outside his window: There are plenty of trees here. Can anyone identify the very tall but little-spreading tree across the street from my apartment? (See photo.) It’s 75′ to 80′ tall. The autumn leaves are never brilliant red. Or even red. Dirty brownish-yellow. The District’s Department of…
The Environmental Impact of Coronavirus
The World Meteorological Organization said the coronavirus pandemic is expected to push carbon dioxide emissions down by 6 percent this year, which would be the largest one-year decrease since World War II. WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a virtual briefing that the drop could be traced to the “lack of emissions from transportation and…
Links: Coronavirus, Climate Change, Single-use Plastic
How coronavirus affects climate change: ‘Like someone standing on the beach worrying about sea level rise suddenly spotting a Tsunami.’ Coronavirus brings back the single-use plastic bag. How to stop poachers: Hire them.