The vehicles attracting the most attention these days are hybrids-cars that combine a gasoline engine that is used for highway driving and an electric motor operated by an electric battery for slower speeds as well as for sudden acceleration. Although hybrids still represent a small part of the market, Toyota’s Prius has “won someContinue reading "Letters to the Editor"
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Green building has come in for some hard knocks in recent years as some high-profile projects have proved to be both inefficient and costly. Yet in some areas beneath the radar, green building is creating structures that fulfill their promise. The Building Industry Association of Southwest Washington has designed a program called builtGREEN to helpContinue reading "Letters to the Editor"
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This discussion is an edited version of comments made in December 2004 on the Free Market Environmentalism (FME) Roundtable list-serve. Jonathan Adler prodded his colleagues to forget, for just a minute, the debate over the impacts of warmer temperatures or whether humans are contributing or not. He asked the list-serve members to assume that burningContinue reading "Letters to the Editor"
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In laboratories around the country, scientists are working to alter the genetic working of trees in order to increase their ability to store carbon, absorb toxins, and resist disease. Most recently, the city of Danbury, Conn., deployed 160 Eastern cottonwood trees to clean a 35-acre site contaminated with mercury that was once used to cureContinue reading "Letters to the Editor"
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A new technology could make use of excess heat and at the same time produce millions of gallons of fresh water from power plants. The novel idea originated with two professors at the University of Florida, James Klausner and Renwei Mei. What the two academics saw was power plants using huge amounts water for cooling.Continue reading "Letters to the Editor"
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In many instances, litigation has been the tool of choice for environmentalists seeking to halt everything from logging to subdivisions. But times are changing and more battles are moving from public to private lands. In these cases, environmental crusaders are choosing to wage their skirmishes in corporate boardrooms armed with PowerPoint presentations. They call theirContinue reading "Letters to the Editor"
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The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is broken. Indeed, it was born broken. Enacted in 1973, the act is based on the myth of the balance of nature and, in particular, on a flawed understanding of the biological state of the Americas at the time of Columbus’s arrival. It is not even an endangered speciesContinue reading "Letters to the Editor"
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Shortgrass prairie, which once extended across vast stretches of the western Great Plains, is largely gone. A Nature Conservancy-owned ranch in Kansas and several National Grasslands on the High Plains, managed by the U.S. Forest Service, preserve remnants. But most has disappeared. Working rancher Dale Lasater is bringing it back. The shortgrass prairie co-evolved withContinue reading "Letters to the Editor"
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With his 2006 budget, President Bush appears to be championing fiscal responsibility. For environmental policy, this change offers hope for new directions. PERC’s Report Card 2004 on Bush’s environmental policy, issued last fall, evaluated the administration on its success in adopting free market principles such as reliance on markets, support for decentralization, and greater accountabilityContinue reading "Letters to the Editor"
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A rise in seat belt usage, combined with campaigns against drunk driving, helped reduce highway fatalities in the United States by about 20 percent from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. But since 1998, highway fatalities have been rising. Recent research suggests that some of this rise is due to the proliferation of light trucks onContinue reading "Letters to the Editor"
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