The Unbroken Window

This WSJ Editorial talks about how the Obama Administration, for all its yacking about domestic energy production, has tightened the screws on oil and nuclear here in the US:
Congress’s ban on offshore drilling expired in September 2008, and a Bush Administration plan for leasing the energy-rich Outer Continental Shelf was due to begin this year. [...]

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The states are also eroding the tradition of respect for private property, just like their Uncle Sam has been doing for centuries. This Mitchell Ditch case in Montana just came to my attention:
The Montana Supreme Court ruled here recently that the 16-mile-long stream, Mitchell Slough, is open to the public and that the landowners are [...]

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A popular argument in the “environmentalist” community is that pollution is a moral wrong. By extension this belief holds that using “market-type” instruments such as taxes and tradable permits to control pollution are no different than allowing burglars to pay for the privilege of burgling houses. What is wrong with this analogy?
Pollution is a COST, [...]

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From a 1998 paper looking at the (to then) effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act: There have been just over 1,400 listings of species under the act. Only 27 species have been taken off the list since, some of which have subsequently gone extinct.
How many species have actually recovered according to the ESA? How about [...]

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So you think the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act guarantee that the air and water are cleaned?
One goal of the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation’s sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste. During [...]

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Remember that climate activists want us to reduce global CO2 emissions by 80% (from 1990 levels) by 2050. They argue that if we all just used a few squiggly light bulbs and carpooled a few times a week we could get there. I suppose it is possible.
However, the CBO just released its study of the [...]

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The problem with Bjorn Lomborg is that he somehow thinks that the global warming debate is about how to take care of people and to mitigate the damage that people might suffer if the planet continues to warm. He is wrong. I used to think Global Warming policy was about people. Now I know better [...]

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This AP Piece heralds the new ruling by the EPA (its Endangerment Finding) that greenhouse gases endangers human health. Count how many times in that article we see evidence of the relationship between a warming planet and health and mortality outcomes?
Keep looking …
Keep looking …
You think the Greenpeace banner in the nearby picture provides this [...]

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Home security systems, door locks, cement walls, fences, spotlights and guard dogs (unfriendly ones) represent waste. They are a symptom of something bad going on in an economy. Why?
Well, why do we lock our doors and otherwise take measures like these? It is to protect our property from being looted, damaged or otherwise violated. In [...]

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“To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem.”
-Lamont Cole
“If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
—Prince Phillip
“I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
—John Davis
Read more here. And if you think [...]

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