Culture & Ethics
Politics versus Science in the 2010 Election Cycle
Here’s some fairly depressing news from Wonk Room: Remarkably, of the dozens of Republicans vying for the 37 Senate seats in the 2010 election, only one — Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware — supports climate action. Even former climate advocates Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) now toe the science-doubting party line. …
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CONTINUE READINGHot Off the Presses
So to speak. Our friend and colleague Matt Kahn’s new book, Climatolopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future, has just been published. Matt is a real rarity among economists in two ways: 1) He writes in English; and 2) He does not think that economics can explain everything and anything, and has …
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CONTINUE READINGNational Conversation on Chemical Exposure Drafts Available
I previously wrote about the National Conversation on Public Health and Chemical Exposures, the effort by the CDC and ATSDR to develop recommendations for action regarding chemical exposures. The National Conversation formed a series of work groups to focus on a set of specific areas, and develop draft recommendations. Today through September 20th, the draft …
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CONTINUE READINGFollow-up on refrigeration: the history of the idea of food “freshness”
My colleague Jonathan Zasloff’s recent post on refrigeration reminded me of a fascinating book published last year: Fresh, by Susanne Freidberg. This book — authored by a college classmate of mine who teaches geography at Dartmouth — chronicles the evolution of the culturally-constructed concept of “freshness” in 19th and 20th-century America, and the development of …
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CONTINUE READINGEPA proposes fuel economy letter grade labels for cars
New labels proposed by the federal government would give new cars letter grades reflecting their fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions. Electric cars and plug-in hybrids are expected to get the highest grades. The rule isn’t final yet; the public can comment and make suggestions on the label design. Most of us are familiar with …
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CONTINUE READINGOn the Lack of a Refrigerator
So my family just moved into a new house the other day, but the refrigerator won’t arrive from the factory for another few days. This condition has vast environmental implications. Really. My headache for the past few days has been: how to store food? Even I have the basic competence to prepare a meal without …
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CONTINUE READINGChina Needs the Straddling Bus More Than We Do
Jonathan just blogged about the very cool concept of the straddling bus, designed to go over automobiles and reportedly being built in China starting next month. His blog coincides with lots of attention focused on the mother of all traffic jams occuring right now outside of Bejing: a 60 mile long, multi-day jam comprised mostly of …
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CONTINUE READINGToo Cool to Avoid Blogging — The Straddling Bus
Critics of subways often argue, correctly, that they are very, very expensive. They argue much less correctly that they aren’t worth it from a cost-benefit perspective. (I’ll believe when they add in the subsidies for roads and automobiles, price auto traffic like they do with rail, and stop using tendentious examples to criticize high-speed rail). …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Environment as a Non-Positional Good
I just finished up Bob Frank’s terrific Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class, and it contains an interesting (although somewhat depressing) implications concerning political support for the environment. For several years, Frank has been writing about the distinction between “positional” and “non-positional” goods – a distinction that has spawned a large legal literature …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Nano Road to Energy Efficiency
Science Daily reports: Researchers at Oregon State University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered a new way to apply nanostructure coatings to make heat transfer far more efficient, with important potential applications to high tech devices as well as the conventional heating and cooling industry. These coatings can remove heat four times faster …
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