Last week, federal Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt issued a directive aimed at reducing “sue-and-settle” lawsuits. For those who like voters to have input in the creation of environmental regulation, this is a great move. For decades, environmental advocacy groups have exerted outsized influence—and profited financially—from “friendly” lawsuits against the EPA. These lawsuits have been a conduit for activists inside and outside the EPA to get new regulations in … [Read more...]
Time to End Ethanol Mandate and Subsidies
Seven years ago Indur Goklany, an economist formerly with the U.S. Department of the Interior and associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its inception in 1988 as an author, expert reviewer, and U.S. delegate to the organization, concluded a thorough analysis of the effect of American biofuels policy on the world's poor with these words: ... the production of biofuels [in the U.S.] may have led to at least 192,000 additional deaths and 6.7 million additional lost … [Read more...]
Why do Ranchers Grouse about Federal Regulations to Protect Sage Grouse?
One of the basic principles of environmental stewardship is that the people closest to a problem are likely to understand it best. Yes, there might be exceptions when experts from outside can come to understand it better, but what really happens in those instances is that the outsiders get up close. If they don't, they won't. A great illustration of this is the unintended consequences of federal regulations meant to protect sage grouse, an allegedly endangered species in some of the American … [Read more...]
What Unintended Consequences Accompany Mandatory Evacuations for Hurricanes?
While Hurricane Irma was making its way through the Caribbean as a Category 5 storm, the National Hurricane Center predicted that it would veer north before reaching Florida; then that it would veer north a little later, skirting Florida's Atlantic coast and bringing devastation; then that it would veer north still later, plowing right into Miami and then working its devastating way north; then that it would veer north later yet, skirting the Gulf coast and spreading devastation all along … [Read more...]
WHILE THE WEST BURNS, NO ONE NOTICES
Twenty-nine years ago record drought and fires hit the West and no one seemed to notice. Frustrated, I sent query letters to the three largest East Coast newspapers, and to my surprise, The New York Times answered. My article on the West’s drought and fires ran in August 1988 in the New York Times Magazine and was syndicated and distributed world-wide. Here we are again. In many areas of the Northern Great Plains the 2017 drought and fires are worse. And again, the news media is hardly … [Read more...]
Dear Media: We Don’t Have to Agree to Have Intelligent, Friendly, Discourse
If you search the Web for my name and Cornwall Alliance, you’ll see that we’ve been the target of vicious attacks over the years, including several just in the past couple of months. They’re built on fallacies like guilt by association, post hoc, ad hominem abusive, ad hominem circumstantial, straw man, hasty generalization, and more, and thoroughly misrepresent our position and our reasons for it. (Ah, but who cares about logic nowadays? They don’t teach it much in school anymore.) That … [Read more...]
Repairing, updating, and expanding infrastructure: The Trump infrastructure permitting order is a good start, but there’s room for strengthening
One of the biggest barriers to investment in infrastructure all across the United States is the long, costly, and unpredictable permitting process. If you have any doubts, just consider the Keystone XL pipeline extension. Proposed by TransCanada in 2008, approved by the Canadian government and the State of South Dakota in 2010, it floundered around in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Interior Department, and State Department for another five years before President Barack Obama … [Read more...]
Got Some Expertise on Climate Change? Here’s Your Chance to Bring some Balance
The U.S. Global Change Research Program is calling for nominations of review editors for the fourth edition of the National Climate Assessment. Qualified scientists, economists, and other experts who aren't committed to global warming alarmism (a view pushed by past editions, as illustrated by the screen shot of the USGCRP's NCA web page above---because everybody knows that anthropogenic climate change will bring more and stronger hurricanes???) should consider taking the opportunity to have … [Read more...]
Should America Subsidize the Coal Industry?
For the record: The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation opposes all subsidies---corporate and individual, at federal, state, and local levels, regardless of their rationale. Not even national security justifies subsidies. If the nation needs bombers or computers or fuel for its security, let it buy them, plain and simple. But let it not say, "We're going to subsidize this industry because its health is important to national security." No, its health isn't important to national … [Read more...]
Why Should America Expand its Nuclear Energy Sector?
I've long thought the primary obstacle to the great expansion of nuclear power's contribution to America's energy needs is excessive regulation imposing safety standards that go far beyond what's necessary and thus pushing costs prohibitively high. I still think so, and one of the challenges Republicans in Congress should take on is revising bringing those rules into conformity with the reality: that nuclear energy generation as practiced in the United States, in both military and civilian … [Read more...]
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