Search Results for: feed

Waiter, What’s This Fly Doing In My Soup?

This is the sort of thing that gives environmentalism a bad name: The UN has new weapons to fight hunger, boost nutrition and reduce pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: edible insects. The Food and Agriculture Organization on Monday hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of …

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WARNING: Individual Research Findings and Economic Models May Not Be Fully Grounded.

A couple of weeks ago, a major paper on the economics of government deficits turned out to have huge flaws. Matt and Jonathan have already had something to say about this, but I’d like to add some thoughts about the implications for environmental issues.“Interesting,” you say, “But what does that have to do with the …

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Leave Agribusiness Lobbyists ALOOONE!!!

A few weeks ago, I posted about the Obama Administration’s effort to change outrageous and wasteful food aid rules that line the pockets of agribusiness and shipping companies.  The more you look at the absurd policy preventing USAID from purchasing food locally for famine relief, the worse it looks: it wastes money, it prevents getting food to people …

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California’s Unspent Water Funds: An Instinct for the Capillary

The AP reports today that California has failed to spend $455 million of federal money for improving the state’s water infrastructure, even though many of the state’s communities suffer from unclean water. The state has received more than $1.5 billion for its Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund over the past 15 years, but has failed …

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Obama Administration Releases National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan

Yesterday, the National Ocean Council released the Obama Administration’s much anticipated plan for implementing the National Ocean Policy.  The newly released National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan identifies practical, efficient, and responsible actions that Federal agencies will take to support healthy, productive, and resilient ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes waters, thriving coastal communities, and a robust, …

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US Food Aid Rules: If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not Paying Attention

The Obama Administration announced yesterday that it wants to change US food aid rules to allow for more “local procurement” of food aid in the countries that need it.  Predictably, the special interests are aghast.  But the administration is right: current food aid rules are among the most egregious special interest legislation in the world …

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Remedial Education for Berkeley Law Faculty

Or at least for John Yoo, who argues: Courts award damages based on the harm to the victim and the harm to society. Suppose you thought that the Iraq war was a mistake. If so, isn’t the proper remedy to restore Saddam Hussein’s family and the Baath Party to power in Iraq? If you are …

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Why I’m Boycotting Coke

Why Coke, you might wonder.  Why not Pepsi?  The answer is that diet coke is my soft drink of choice.  It’s easy for me to boycott other soft drinks since I don’t drink them anyway. I like diet coke, so that’s the subject of my boycott. But why boycott soft drinks at all?  Answer: Because …

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Waxman/Whitehouse carbon tax draft

On Tuesday, Representative Waxman, Senator Whitehouse, Representaive Blumenauer and Senator Schatz released their proposal for a carbon tax bill. They are currently seeking feedback on the draft proposal, which is accordingly short on details. The Waxman/Whitehouse proposal is to require downstream emitters (mainly power plants and other emitters) to purchase annual “carbon pollution permits” per …

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Climate Change’s Bipolar Personality

Climate change is literally bipolar, impacting both the northernmost and southernmost parts of the globe. But the pace and effects of warming differ at the two poles. At the northern end of the world, impacts are already dramatic. The Economist has a special feature on the Arctic, which provides an especially clear explanation of why the …

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