This just in from the Cato Institute: Renewable energy is "expensive, environmentally counterproductive and unsustainable." Cato President Robert L. Bradley says that electricity from renewable energy plants "is, on average, twice as expensive as electricity from the most economical fossil-fuel alternative." There’s a reason for that, and Cato-an influential conservative think-tank-should take some of the blame.
Will Utility Deregulation Finally Unplug 'Dirty' Electricity? At United Illuminating Company's harborside Unit 3 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, built in 1969, Kentucky coal rides in on a conveyor belt to five huge blue silos that can each hold 700 tons. When pulverized to the consistency of talcum powder and burned in UI's huge boilers at 2,500 […]
New Technologies Power the Car of the Future Every year, 30,000 people die in the U.S. from airborne toxins released by automobiles. Also largely because of the car, 100 million Americans live in areas with dangerous ground-level ozone concentrations. It's plain that, with a million cars a month adding to the 200 million already here, […]
Antarctica is widely referred to as the last wilderness area on Earth, and with good reason. It is our highest, driest, coldest, windiest and most remote place. Visitors, explorers and scientists alike all testify to its devastating beauty. The vast majority of its great frozen expanse remains largely unspoiled, the way it has been for […]
A Chronology 1773: Captain James Cook becomes first person to cross south of the Antarctic Circle. 1820-22: 320,000 fur seals are killed in South Shetlands. Hunt collapses soon afterward. 1904: First commercial whaling operation in the Antarctic kills its first whale. 1911: Roald Amundsen leads first expedition to reach South Pole. 1912-13: Antarctic whaling fleet […]
Want to Buy an Electric? Get Ready to Hurry Up and Wait If you are lucky enough to live in the state of California, you can-today-visit a car dealer and drive home in a brand-new, road-ready electric vehicle (EV). If you live anywhere else, the pickings are pretty slim. Although strict new Clean Air Act […]
Greening Up the Room That Baby Grows Up In The Heart of Vermont bassinet is handwoven from palm leaves, and uses an organic wool and cotton futon. Call it a new parent right of passage: eager mom- and dad-to-be armed with wash buckets and paint brushes (and credit cards) transform a drab bedroom into a […]
Is Early Sexual Development the Price of Pollution? Ten-year-old Christina Carter (not her real name) hides in her room when she wants to play Barbies. Although she has the mind of a 10-year-old, Christina has the body of a sexually mature woman. She started developing breasts and pubic hair at the age of eight, and […]
There’s No One-Stop Shopping for Socially Conscious Money Publications Despite a trunkload of yellowing press clippings from the mainstream media and the burgeoning ranks of socially responsible mutual funds, coverage of progressive money issues remains a niche market. There still isn’t a full-fledged magazine-particularly of the slick, bimonthly variety-that serves the socially conscious money community. […]
In the Year of the Reef, Bonaire Offers Great Diving and Protected Coral In stark contrast to the runaway American-style construction on neighboring Aruba (McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, a water-intensive golf course and numerous American hotel chains), the island of Bonaire, in the Netherlands Antilles off the coast of Venezuela, remains a quiet getaway and […]
