With the price of oil flirting around $150 a barrel, Americans’ views on energy and the environment are changing. Polling by the Pew Research Center indicates that people across party lines believe that expanding oil drilling and building new power plants should take priority over energy conservation. Have Americans abandoned support for environmental protection? The […]
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Bozeman consistently ranks high among American towns. Unless one is allergic to cold, committed to scuba diving, or loves big cities, Bozeman is wonderful. Cultural and natural beauty abound, while considerate behavior and civility are normal, not aberrations. Community involvement with music and the arts is exceptionally high; consider support for the Bozeman Symphony, Intermountain […]
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Governor Brian Schweitzer is a swashbuckling policy entrepreneur. He’s charmed the elite East Coast media with his Western swagger and tough talk about turning Montana’s abundant coal reserves into synthetic fuels: “Why wouldn’t we create an economic engine that will take us into the next century, and let those sheiks and dictators and rats and […]
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Montana’s culture, economy, housing patterns, transportation, and politics all evolved assuming we’d enjoy cheap and plentiful energy over the long-term. Low priced energy guided our development and social patterns. I recall occasionally driving to Butte just for dinner in the ‘70s. Many Bozeman friends did likewise, and Billings was a casual destination with little thought […]
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After another 4th of July celebration, thoughts of patriotism linger. Is patriotism singing the national anthem or shooting off fireworks? No, patriotism is simply valuing one’s country. Likewise, environmentalism is valuing the environment. Both are abstract concepts that are left to the individual to express. I may display a Support the Troops bumper sticker, while […]
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For over two decades FREE has sought to constructively work with responsible environmentalists, e.g., folks with Environmental Defense and the National Wildlife Federation. Our conference last week featured Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. They joined us (and a dozen others), seeking […]
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Here’s a fact that astounds many of my friends: the average person in 1800 was not materially better off than his counterpart 10,000 years earlier. Prior to about 1776, wellbeing measured by food, clothing, shelter, and heat varied across societies, but was generally miserable. Last April, Yale Press published historian Emily Cockayne’s Hubbub: Filth, Noise, […]
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The Bozeman Citizens Climate Protection Task Force was formed to help the city reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 15 percent below 2000 levels by 2020. It has proposed some dozen recommendations, ranging from adopting green building codes to buying energy from alternative sources. The task force believes many of their recommendations will be “cost neutral.” As a […]
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Each year we winter a few dozen horses on our ranch. A good neighbor arranges this with his friends who have horses but lack winter pasture and want to avoid the cost and bother of feeding hay. The horses have good, inexpensive feed for six months. We derive modest income while our rangeland benefits from […]
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Record high energy prices and a recent trip to Europe prompt these thoughts on our energy future. The current energy situation, i.e., high prices, high demand, and tight supplies, is a glimpse of what life in a carbon constrained world looks like. We’re entering the early stages of a transition from fossil fuels that will […]
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