Culture & Ethics
Increasing bus ridership by making it cheaper
Jonathan presents an interesting idea for stimulating bus ridership in Los Angeles among “choice” riders (aka affluent commuters who could drive if they wanted to). For years, San Franciscans have enjoyed real-time data on bus and train arrivals (via nextmuni.com). It makes a huge difference when trying to catch a bus by minimizing unpleasant wait …
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CONTINUE READINGGet On The Bus — Even in Los Angeles
A few days ago, Ann cited the newspaper story highlighting the supposed “miracle” of a 26-year-old white woman taking the bus in Los Angeles. But the funny thing is that it would be actually pretty easy to increase bus ridership in LA if the MTA was just a little smart about it. I start from …
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CONTINUE READINGNew bill in Congress by Rockefeller (S. 3072) would delay regulation of GHGs under the Clean Air Act
As Cara and I have already discussed in detail, the Environmental Protection Agency has committed to delay the rollout of regulation of stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, and to regulate only the very largest sources. This backtracking from EPA has been a response to efforts by Senator Lisa Murkowski …
CONTINUE READINGOrganic wine is more desirable to consumers, but only if they don’t know it’s organic
Interesting new research shows that organically-produced wines are generally ranked higher in quality and command a higher price than non-organic wines. But the researchers also found that most organic wines aren’t actually labeled as “organic,” and that those wines with such a label command lower prices than comparable non-organic wines. The study by UCLA Institute …
CONTINUE READINGBig Headline News: Los Angeles Resident Voluntarily Takes the Bus
You can read all about the fact that a 26 year old white girl in Los Angeles actually chooses to ride the bus here.
CONTINUE READINGIPhone App to Counter Climate Skeptics
Jonathan and I have had a somewhat spirited debate about what to do about Climategate (see here and here). I just found one perhaps small but very smart answer: an IPhone app that lists top arguments from climate skeptics and succinct rebuttals. The arguments are divided into three categories: “it’s not happening,” “it’s not us” …
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CONTINUE READINGYour Environmental Talmud Learning of the Day
Come and learn: religion is not economics.
CONTINUE READINGAnswering the Climategaters
Want to create a scandal? Just add “gate” to the end of any noun. Climategate is a good example. Real Climate ha an excellent post dissecting the charges of error in the IPCC report, which turn out to be quite insignificant (and some of them not even errors at all.) Of course, if you come …
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CONTINUE READINGPesticides, Science and Politics
Those three can make for a toxic environment, literally and figuratively. Take the case of methyl iodide, a material so obviously toxic that scientists use it to induce cancer in laboratory experiments. Arysta LifeScience Corporation has obtained a federal pesticide registration from EPA for use as a fumigant, despite a letter from 50 scientists, including five …
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CONTINUE READINGFrom Songs to Film
So the obvious next step — in follow-up to the debate about the top ten environmental songs — is to debate film. Sean, Cara and I had an e-mail exchange about the topic and decided that environmental films could be divided, roughly, into three or four categories. First are the toxic torts/nuclear horror films. Silkwood, The …
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