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May 03, 2007

Emissions and a new coal boom

One more note related to the week’s reflections on energy and the environment. This brief piece from Marketplace highlights coal’s newfound popularity, “Coal makes a comeback” (here’s an in-depth and more technical piece from the NYT. Continue Reading...
May 02, 2007

Free economies and the common good

Could the early socialists have envisioned an organization such as Wal-Mart or predicted the thousands of jobs created by such a firm? In this week’s Acton Commentary, Rev. Robert A. Sirico examines the “common good” and free markets in this excerpt from a recent speech at the first annual Free Market Forum, sponsored by Hillsdale College’s Center for the Study of Monetary Systems and Free Enterprise. Continue Reading...
May 01, 2007

Earth Day and the environment

Over the last week I’ve done a couple radio interviews related to my op-ed in the Detroit News, “U.S. must move beyond Earth Day slogans.” Thanks to The Bill Meyer Show out of Medford, Oregon, who had me on in the morning last Thursday. Continue Reading...
May 01, 2007

Global warming consensus alert!

Via Stephen Hayward at Planet Gore comes word of another scientist off the “consensus” reservation. According to David Evans (who, according to his bio, is a genuine rocket scientist – sweeeet…), “… in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. Continue Reading...
April 30, 2007

Google faces free speech resolution

Via Slashdot, news comes today that Google’s next shareholders meeting will feature a vote on a shareholder resolution to protect free speech and combat censorship by intrusive governments. According to the proxy statement, Proposal Number 5 would require the recognition of “minimum standards,” including, that “the company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. Continue Reading...
April 27, 2007

Global Warming Consensus Watch, Volume II

This week in the PowerBlog’s Global Warming Consensus Watch: A final pass at the Sheryl Crow/Toilet Paper controversy, just to ensure that the issue is wiped clean; The fight against climate change goes to 11; Global warming causes everything, and we’ve got professional athletes to prove it; and finally, what – if anything – are those carbon offsets offsetting? Continue Reading...
April 26, 2007

We’re doomed. Just accept it.

Whoever wrote this deserves an award for managing to keep all of the various threads together. It’s almost a perfect storm of public policy ineptitude: Just in case you lost track of the bouncing ball, here it is: Virginia has finally put the crisis-ignoring haters of truth in their place by passing a roads package to encourage the use of cars that are destroying the planet, so people can reach their sprawling subdivisions that Virginia is trying to keep in check with tax-subsidized conservation easements that will grow less popular as corn grows more expensive thanks to ethanol mandates from a federal government that is also mandating a cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay whose pollution will be made worse by corn farming. Continue Reading...