“In the daunting math of climate action, people’s choices and government policies aren’t adding up…. If it sounds downbeat, that’s because it is.”
“Climate scientists and policy experts realize that they walk a fine line between jolting consumers and policymakers into action and immobilizing them with paralyzing pessimism about the world’s ability to hit climate targets…. [MIT scientist John] Sterman said the world has missed the chance to contain warming without huge disruptions.
– Stephen Mufson, ‘A kind of dark realism’: Why the climate change problem is starting to look too big to solve.’ Washington Post, December 4, 2018.
Oh, how the free-market climate realists (science, economics, politics) feel vindicated. The mainstream press has (belatedly) announcing the Carbon Tax politically dead and a distraction for the whole climate debate.…
Continue Reading“Mr. Pickens’s original vision had something for everyone. First he would build a wind farm in Texas with 2,700 turbines costing upward of $10 billion. That would pump power into the national grid, allowing huge amounts of natural gas to be diverted from power plants to newly equipped cars and trucks. The result, he promised, would be a sharp reduction in the country’s dependence on Middle East crude.”
“‘This to me is like a war without guns,’ says Mr. Pickens….”
– Neil King, Pickens’s Windmills Tilt Against Market Realities, Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2009.
A decade ago, a rent-seeking, vainglorious Texas oil man named T. Boone Pickens spent tens of millions of dollars to promote what today might be called the Little Green Deal. It was nicely summarized in the Wall Street Journal at the time by Neil King, Pickens’s Windmills Tilt Against Market Realities.…
Continue Reading“Earth stewardship isn’t easy. Sometimes we make the wrong decisions. Sometimes whatever we do has both positive and negative consequences. One wrong decision is The Ocean Cleanup (TOC) project.”
“TOC’s plan … is not manual plastic removal, which allows most creatures to escape. It will instead use purse seines with a minimum mesh size of ⅛ inch (3 mm), capable of trapping microplastics—but also an untold number and variety of sea creatures.”
On a recent boating adventure in the open Pacific, my friends and I came across a section of abandoned fishing net. My first thought was, “Let’s remove it.”
But as I started to pull the net in, I saw a huge mahi-mahi resting in its shade. Also known as dorado or dolphinfish, the mahi-mahi (spooked by my activity) disappeared in a flash.…
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