Culture & Ethics

Stephen Colbert is a National Treasure

Like Tom Tomorrow.   Click here for his must watch clip from Monday’s show.   http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/423268/january-28-2013/the-word—the-new-abnormal Colbert nails conservative views on climate change.  First, deny.  Second, when the facts belie denial, accept but refuse to acknowledge human contributions.  Finally, throw up your hands and say that even if it’s human-caused we can’t do anything about it …

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D.C. Circuit’s biofuels mandate ruling

The D.C. Circuit issued an opinion last Friday in American Petroleum Institute v. EPA, concerning EPA’s biofuels mandate. (N.Y. Times; slip opinion). The part of the mandate at issue required refiners to incorporate higher levels of cellulosic fuel into transportation fuel. Cellulosic biofuel is in the class of “advanced biofuels” that could actually offset greenhouse gas …

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The NAACP and the Politics of Race and Regulation

There’s a bit of a kerfuffle going on about the NAACP’s defense of over-sized soft-drinks.  In an amicus brief challenging New York City’s new ban on the super-size, the NAACP (joined by the Hispanic Federation and an association of Korean grocers) takes a surprisingly libertarian stance against government regulation.  It laments that the ban is …

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The Rise of the Low Carbon Consumer City

Matthew Holian and I have just released a new NBER Working Paper.     The “big idea” is that similar to a REESE’S Peanut Butter Cup  we merge together two separate economics literatures.   Glaeser and I have written about low carbon cities in the United States and China.  Glaeser has published on “consumer cities” and …

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How the EPA Saved America

If you don’t follow political blogs, you may not have noticed Kevin Drum’s outstanding story about how the decrease in crime over the last 20 years can largely be attributed to the sharp drops in lead ingestion.  When I first heard the theory, I thought it was too good to be true, but Kevin’s story …

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SeaWorld Doesn’t Care THAT Much

As the father of an eight-year-old, I am painfully aware of the attractions of charismatic megafauna.  Over the weekend, I took Rose to SeaWorld, pretty much the capital of charismatic megafauna, for an overnight with her YMCA youth group.  We slept with the penguins, and saw lots of other — well, charismatic megafauna. The highlight …

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The Last Rockefeller

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the current chair of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee has announced his retirement.  Rockefeller is 75, and faced a tough re-election fight in West Virginia, which has gone from being the state of John L. Lewis to the state of Mitt Romney — it went for Romney last year by …

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Envisioning the Earth

Here are some cool images from earth satellites.  Fans of Benoit Mandelbrot may detect a fractal quality to many of them. The subject of this particular photo ois the Namib-Naukluft National Park, which includes  Namibia’s Namib Desert. Here, southwest winds have created the tallest sand dunes in the world, with some dunes reaching 300 meters in …

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Looking Ahead to 2050

Since New Year’s Eve is both a time for nostalgia and for looking ahead, it seems appropriate to see what the world will look like at mid-century.  The world will be facing considerable challenges then. The population will be bigger. The United Nations predicts that the world population will grow by 2 billion to 9 …

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The Coase Theorem and Matt Damon’s New Fracking Movie

The law and economics movement has been studying the Coase Theorem for a long time.  In this cross-post, I discuss its relevance for Matt Damon’s new fracking movie “Promised Land”.

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