“Taboo” is a word associated with anthropology. If something is “taboo,” it may not be used, eaten, or discussed due to cultural, rather than legal, prohibitions. Cultural taboos create some tension when they constrain inquiry. However, they continue to survive in the academic, intellectual, and scientific worlds. Although I studied anthropology as a grad student, […]
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I recently read that a Japanese whaling fleet is heading toward Antarctica to kill humpback whales, a species “protected” since the 1960s. This took me back in time. When I was a grad student at Indiana University, nearly 40 years ago, I met the ecologist Garrett Hardin at an AAAS meeting in Chicago. Garrett had […]
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Geoengineering solutions to global warming are receiving ever more attention, and for good reason. Science reported that top U.S. climate scientists gathered at Harvard this month to explore ways geoengineering might lower the global temperature. Mimicking the natural cooling effects of volcanic eruptions by releasing massive amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere is one idea. […]
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As co-founder of Christians For The Mountains, I encourage church folks to enjoy God’s creation and be responsible caretakers. Our primary advocacy mission is to end the practice of Mountaintop Removal coal extraction. Historically, coal has been mined by burrowing underground tunnels from which the mineral is extracted. In recent decades, the advent of powerful […]
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Congratulations to Al Gore on winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. Mr. Gore asserts climate change is a moral and spiritual issue. In order to make responsible decisions on these dimensions, Mr. Gore’s next mission should be to focus on the tradeoffs his policy choices necessarily imply. I suggest when […]
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I’m often asked about our consumption of natural resources, e.g., oil, iron, and copper. Since these resources are finite and population continues to grow, aren’t we in danger of running out? My short answer is no, we’ll never run out of anything that trades in the marketplace. But, we should be concerned about running out […]
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With increasing acceptance of the reality of global climate change, interest groups of all stripes clamor to get in on the act. Some want to do good. Others want to do well, or to impose their notions of virtue on others. Our challenge is to devise sensible responses to global warming, while blocking “solutions” benefiting […]
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For over a decade, FREE’s weekly columns, usually on environmental policy, have strived for consistency. We work and write to harmonize ecology, ethics, and economics, while respecting the right of free and responsible individuals to make choices. FREE approaches environmental policy from a political economy perspective. This means we are alert to the reality of […]
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Many concerned and informed people feel guilty over their carbon footprint. Buying carbon offsets lets them assuage this guilt, but this is a misguided perspective. Instead, I suggest we promote climate stewardship with policies that steadily encourage energy conservation and low CO2 production, e.g., carbon taxes. Individuals atone for their “excessive” carbon consumption, i.e., twenty […]
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In accepting an Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore said, “People all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It’s not a political issue. It’s a moral issue.” Gore is not the only one defining climate change and other environmental issues in moral terms, and, as more and more environmentalists focus […]
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