Environment

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…

A water drop and ripples

The thing I’m not getting about the climate protesters in Boston…

By Justin Katz | September 21, 2022 |

… is how true believers come to the conclusion that the way to advocate for the environment is to cause an event that leads to thousands of people sitting in idling cars.

A water drop and ripples

Just to head off the inevitable commentary…

By Justin Katz | September 5, 2022 |

… if you see people citing the strange flash flooding in the Providence area and Rt. 95 as evidence of “climate change,” ask them whether the blame mightn’t more reasonably land on government officials’ poor management of the infrastructure under their authority.

A woman dances around a fire

Just a little shift in perspective goes a long way on climate change fear.

By Justin Katz | August 5, 2022 |

An underappreciated risk laps at the legs of our advanced knowledge.  When people didn’t know why things were happening in the world around them or how to predict change, they just dealt with them.  They invested some energy in a relationship with gods in the hope of exerting some control on their environments, but mostly,…