[Editor's Note: The announcement December 27, 2018, by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that it is revising cost findings behind its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) ignited a firestorm of complaints on the ground that mercury is a known neurotoxin that can cause brain damage in infants and young people. While that is true, it's also true that the risk depends greatly on the degree of exposure---and there is compelling evidence that mercury emissions from coal-fired … [Read more...]
Monckton Writes to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on Clean Power Plan
We're delighted that our friend Viscount Christopher Monckton, one of the leading critics of climate alarmism, allowed us to publish this letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, with which we wholeheartedly agree. We encourage citizens to make their own opinions known to Administrator Pruitt. By the way, what comes out of the "smokestacks" in the photo below is not smoke but water vapor (the white condensing steam) and carbon dioxide, not a pollutant but an … [Read more...]
Is Capitalism Bad for the Environment? The Eighth Commandment Offers a Clue
A common charge by environmentalists is that capitalism is bad for the environment. Indeed, Christiana Figueres, former secretary-general of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, opined that climate negotiations in Paris in late 2014 offered the world its best opportunity to replace the reigning global economic order (capitalism, or free markets) with another (socialism, or government-planned economies). But is capitalism really bad for the environment? One of the Ten … [Read more...]
Answering Objections about Genetically Modified Organisms
Opponents of genetically modified (GM) crops raise a number of questions and objections to growing them and including them in the food supply. Although they cite scientific research to support their claims, a careful review of the literature suggests there is very little evidence to support any of the claims about harmful health effects of GM food. For this reason, combined with the many potential benefits, governments should not restrict the use of genetically modified organisms … [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...]
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...]
Judith Curry confirms: climate models can’t justify policy—ANY policy
For years we at the Cornwall Alliance have been saying that the disagreement between model predictions (or projections or simulations, call them what you will) of global temperatures and real-world observations means the models are invalidated and therefore provide no rational basis for predictions of future temperature and therefore no rational basis for policies meant to respond to such predictions. Now one of the world's leading climatologists, recently retired Professor Judith Curry, Chair … [Read more...]
What Will DC Circuit Do with Clean Power Plan?
Tomorrow the DC Circuit Court will hear, en banc, a case in which 28 states are suing the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), alleging that it lacked statutory authority to impose President Obama's landmark environmental regulation, the Clean Power Plan (CPP), on the states. EPA claims the authority under an obscure piece of the Clean Air Act, Section 111(d), but a straight reading of that section in context with the rest of the Act implies otherwise. Congress never intended to … [Read more...]
A Ground-Level View of the Cost of Unwarranted Regulation—and How to Reduce It
Many complaints of the costs of environmental (and other) regulations give us the view from 30,000 feet. In his new article "The Long Arm of the European Community," at American Thinker, Norman Rogers paints the picture at ground level---and it isn't pretty. It's not just that the regulations impose enormous costs but also that they often are based on complete, or nearly complete, ignorance of the activities being regulated. From his 25 years of experience heading a small electronics … [Read more...]
Can We Defend Liberty against a Militarized EPA?
Did you know that the federal Environmental Protection Agency spends millions of dollars on guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear, and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities? You read that right—EPA, not the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. Why? Because EPA regulations are so ubiquitous, so onerous, and so contrary to the spirit of our freedom-loving nation that ordinary Americans find … [Read more...]
