A Vegan Eyes Gore’s Nuts
Monday, August 4th, 2008The 27-year-old female author of the blog When Things Get Dark… is a vegan who would “love to kick David Suzuki and Al Gore in the nuts.” And goes on to announce:
Archive for the ‘environment’ Category
A few things I’ve been reading
Friday, July 25th, 2008A few links to articles I found interesting:
Who should shape drug policy? (more…)
GAP Audit
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008Lee has a somewhat different take on the Ape Acts in Spain than I did. Amusingly, we both start from the same Will Saletan quote.
Journal Entry
Sunday, June 29th, 2008Lee at Thinking Reed takes a whack at everyone’s favorite macroeconomic pinata, the awfulness of GDP as a meaningful measure of national well-being, or wealth, or much of anything else. I would add another huge problem: macroeconomics lacks even a primitive form of national balance-sheet accounting. It’s a truism among investors that income statements (”the P&L”) are for suckers: cash flow and the balance sheet - the summary of assets and liabilities - give you a better picture of the real health of a company.
Green Omelets and Broken Eggs
Sunday, June 29th, 2008I got a lot out of the comment thread to Alex Tabarrok’s post about Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution from earlier this month. It seems pretty inarguable to me that Borlaug’s work saved many lives in its day. It seems debatable whether what the present moment calls for now is more of the same. During the era of cheap oil, there was real economic - if not ecological - sense in pumping plants up with massive inputs of fossil fuel. Now? I’m honestly unsure what a post-hydrocarbon agriculture that can feed billions of people will (can) look like.
How Do You Give The Middle Finger In Semaphore?
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008Richard Posner writes:
Expanded drilling in U.S. territory (including our territorial waters) will reduce both U.S. dependence on foreign oil and the wealth of foreign oil-producing countries, many of which are hostile or potentially hostile to the United States. These are important benefits.
A friend of mine tweets, “this is simply untrue…Dependence would not be reduced in any meaningful sense.” He’s correct of course, but there’s more wrong with this claim than just the factual inaccuracy of the idea that offshore drilling can meaningfully reduce our dependence on foreign oil. (more…)
If Bloggers Were REALLY Crude, We Could Refine Them and Burn Them
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
It’s getting warmer
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008We’re less than halfway into April here in Taipei and it’s already time to put away the sweaters. In fact, it was already so warm and saturated with humidity today that I felt ready to keel over right over the bar in El Toro 20 minutes into my shift.
I was never so glad to see the first customers of the night walk through the door. The owner of El Toro, with reluctance, turned the air conditioning up to full blast. They’ll probably stay on all summer long — as long as there are customers in the restaurant. Meanwhile, the mercury is going to inexorably creep upwards until it hits a plateau around the mid to high nineties and stay there, seemingly forever.
This doesn’t make the owner happy. The current administration in Taiwan, in a craven bid to pander to voters, have put in temporary freezes in the price of gas and energy. But those price controls will eventually have to go, and Taiwan is steeling itself for a steep utilities price hike in the coming months that will undoubtedly be felt keenly by a populace already suffering through an economic downturn.
“If our utilities were $10,000NT (roughly $330USD)a month last summer, it might go up to as high as $14,000NT this year…” said Chef Charlie. The owner said nothing but furrowed her brows.
“Good,” I thought to myself, diplomatically not voicing that thought… (more…)