Environment
There may be a bit of the old chicken and egg between the push for renewable energy and the Rhode Island government’s lust for power. Whatever the case, when one sees Senate President Joseph Montalbano’s name attached to a legislative initiative claiming to “spur economic development” by “sparking” environmentally friendly energy development, a game of…
As the budget clock ticks, the General Assembly has been taking its precious time figuring out how to resolve the mess. One imagines the legislators hiding in dark corners awaiting a miracle. What they need to be doing, at the very least, is making the sorts of noises that would show their comprehension of the…
This article would have been noteworthy based simply on pure irony: The rush to grow biofuel crops — widely embraced as part of the solution to global warming — is actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them, according to two studies published Thursday in the journal Science. One analysis found that clearing forests…
Sadly, it seems unlikely that Brown philosophy professor Felicia Nimue Ackerman’s attitude is the majority one on American (at least New England) campuses. Here are four reasons that she didn’t “devote a portion of class time” on a particular week “to teach about climate change”: Reason 1: Climate change is not what students signed up…
RI Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D, Ocean Drive) has personal experience with the dangers of global warming: Scientists say the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. Repeating the mantra of frustrated environmental advocates across the world, Whitehouse told a supportive audience that…
Paul Driessen’s op-ed in the first Providence Journal of the year is certainly worth a read. Regarding the U.N. Bali meeting on global warming: Meanwhile, respected climate scientists were barred from panel discussions, censored, silenced and threatened with physical removal by polizei if they tried to hold a press conference to present peer-reviewed evidence that…
Speaking of the solutions that politicians dubiously “favor,” I note that Rhode Island’s blue-blooded, old-money Senator Sheldon Whitehouse would support climate-related legislation even if the “average American household” suffers in both the short and long terms: Landmark legislation to combat global warming will also be a long-term boon to the U.S. economy, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse…
I know America is often regarded as an overstressed society, but I hadn’t realized just how far the stress problem had spread until I read this story in today’s Warwick Beacon by John Howell…If you feel this has been an especially drab fall, you’re not alone. Warmer and drier than normal conditions have dealt a…
Today’s ProJo contained this story about the latest warnings from the enviro-Henny Pennys: This fall, the state agency that regulates coastal development in Rhode Island plans to become one of the first local regulatory agencies in the country to officially recognize the likelihood of sea-level rise and write policies and regulations to prepare for higher…
Such stories are terrible to hear: Gail Corvello figured that if she and her neighbors held out for about five years, they would be able to get out from under the nightmare of the soil contamination in the Bay Street neighborhood that has had a stranglehold on their lives since 2002. She was wrong. On…