Environment

A hand reaches for chains

Politics This Week: Unions Versus the People in RI

By Justin Katz | July 17, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss evidence of unions’ tightening grip on Rhode Island and other political topics.

Norman Rockwell Freedom of Speech

Politics This Week: Failures of Representation

By Justin Katz | June 7, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz review ways in which the RI elite fail to represent the people.

1 plus 1 equals 3 with young man on smartphone in background.

Politics This Week: Education and Agendas

By Justin Katz | April 18, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz walk through how the effects of today’s education, or lack thereof, are trickling through all facets of society.

Dana Kopec and Darlene D'Arezzo on State of the State March 13, 2023

State of the State: Dana Kopec

By John Carlevale | April 9, 2023 |

Darlene D’Arezzo talks with Dana Kopec of the RIDEM about Aquatic Resource Education and Women’s Hunter Safety Education Programs

Gustave Courbet's The Stormy Sea (The Wave)

Apocalyptic demands for funding are too cost free.

By Justin Katz | March 3, 2023 |

Sometimes the lack of response to statements — I mean just an ordinary, slightly skeptical response — is striking.  Here’s Warren Town Manager Kate Michaud asking the U.S. Senate to protect the town from an apocalyptic future: “The data analysis concluded that by the year 2100, three hundred and six of the area’s four hundred…

A message in a bottle at the beach

Rhode Island Republicans need a new policy strategy.

By Justin Katz | January 30, 2023 |

Two stories in the news recently have been nagging at me in combination over the past week.  The first is the Republican response to Democrat Governor Dan McKee’s State of the State address, as delivered by Senate Minority Leader Jessica de la Cruz.  Here’s the part that resonates particularly oddly: Where McKee called for cutting…

A Mrs. Claus ornament on a Christmas tree

Why are Christmas trees scarce?

By Justin Katz | December 24, 2022 |

It’s “climate change,” of course; that’s the easy go-to answer for anything having to do with the natural environment.  Even when there’s a more proximate explanation, the global bogeyman has to be tacked on, as the Boston Globe’s Dharna Noor does in this case: The culprit behind all those dead trees: Drought, which hit New England…

A water drop and ripples

They’re preemptively trying to sell this as evidence of global warming…

By Justin Katz | December 20, 2022 |

… but keep an eye out for claims of increased flooding that could be caused by a wobbling moon (which, if it needs to be said, is in no way related to carbon emissions): Beware, coastal communities. The U.S. is set to face a surge in high-tide floods along its coasts due to a “wobble”…

A pipe winds along a landcape

Natural gas price increases show what happens when we’re prevented from coordinating.

By Justin Katz | October 28, 2022 |

A recently released book by Gale Pooley and Marian Tupy, Superabundance, explores the amazing fact that the prosperity and the availability of scarce resources is proving only to increase as the population grows.  Their most fundamental argument is that people have value.  Every child added to the world increases the wealth of all of us. The authors…

Cooling towers at Brayton Point

A passing thought on the outrage about the PUC’s energy-price increase.

By Justin Katz | September 28, 2022 |

I saw in the Boston Globe, today, some spin blaming Donald Trump for New England’s worsening energy woes.  The phrases are almost like a trick image that looks different when you cross your eyes or look at it directly. The reporter’s eyes appear to be crossed, and those of the progressives citing the text on social…