Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Environmental Stewardship

January 20, 2006

Feel-good hybrid hype

Richard Burr has an excellent commentary in the Weekly Standard on the growing — and for some reasons puzzling — popularity of hybrid vehicles. Puzzling because these things don’t get the promised gains in fuel economy and don’t seem to work very well. Continue Reading...
January 13, 2006

Unintended consequences

There’s interesting news on the global warming front in today’s Financial Times: Everyone knows trees are “A Good Thing”. They take in the carbon dioxide that threatens our planet with global warming and turn it into fresh, clean oxygen for us all to breathe. Continue Reading...
January 12, 2006

‘A superb butler’

Continuing the discussion of energy usage from yesterday, check out this review in the New York Sun of Children of the Sun (W.W. Norton), by Alfred Crosby, emeritus professor of history, geography, and American studies at the University of Texas. Continue Reading...
January 11, 2006

All wet

Jeffrey Tucker at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute: You might say that water needs to be conserved. Yes, and so does every other scarce good. The peaceful way to do this is through the price system. Continue Reading...
January 11, 2006

Speaking of oil

Arnold Kling at the excellent EconLog says that “the government should empty its strategic petroleum reserve and buy energy futures contracts instead. At some point, the futures market has to be taken seriously.” Continue Reading...
January 11, 2006

Apocalypse now (and forever)

Check out this review of James Howard Kunstler’s new book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Atlantic), which describes it as a “litany around the increasingly fashionable panic over oil depletion.” Continue Reading...
January 11, 2006

Beating back the socialists

There are two good articles out there in today’s press about socialist thinking, which alas is all too prevalant, especially in issues concerning the environment. The first is a tribute to Arthur Seldon in the Daily Telegraph. Continue Reading...
January 06, 2006

The population bomb (myth) explodes

Topping today’s Science/Nature section at BBC News, “Population size ‘green priority'”, by Richard Black. The article focuses on the thoughts of Professor Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, who contends that the “current global population of six billion is unsustainably high.” Continue Reading...
December 30, 2005

Prayer for the future

O God our heavenly Father, you have blessed us and given us dominion over all the earth: Increase our reverence before the mystery of life; and give us new insight into your purposes for the human race, and new wisdom and determination in making provision for its future in accordance with your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Continue Reading...
December 29, 2005

Timber!

Today’s Wall Street Journal has yet another example of what happens when good intentions fail to connect with sound economics (or in this case, sound science). Thanks to the nation’s housing boom, business has been good for the West’s sawmills for the past three years. Continue Reading...