By Max Falque The managing director of ICREI, the International Center for Research on Environmental Issues, Max Falque is based in Aix-en-Provence, France. He tells the story of how he changed from a French bureaucrat to a proponent of environmental protection using private property and markets. From his essay, “Why Did I Become a Free-Market…
Tag: Environmental Management
The War on Roundup: A War on Science in Agriculture
By Blake Hurst This guest post is by Blake Hurst, a farmer in northwest Missouri, growing greenhouse flowers, corn, and soybeans. He is also president of the Missouri Farm Bureau. Farmers and what critics call “industrial agriculture“ are under public pressure—over genetically modified seeds, long-standing fear of chemicals, and concerns about animal welfare. Farmers’ methods of…
Thursday’s Links
A ‘blacklist’ aims at preventing climate skeptics from getting academic jobs, says Roger Pielke. Watch out. Los Angeles just issued a “Green New Deal.” Federal rules make it almost impossible for “Good Samaritans” to clean up abandoned mines, says PERC.
Why Should We Endorse Trump’s NEPA Reforms?
By H. Sterling Burnett You may have heard that the Trump administration is proposing changes in the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which mandates federal regulatory environmental oversight of major infrastructure projects. These changes are appropriate and overdue. Here’s why. NEPA requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of their proposed actions before…
Monday’s Links
‘Fight fires with facts—not fake science.’ Did British broadcaster David Attenborough scare Greta Thunberg with inaccurate stories of starving polar bears? NOAA revises American climate history (video).
Curbside Recycling: A Costly Mistake
Recycling companies are facing hard times. Partly that’s because in 2017 China started closing its doors to waste. It doesn’t accept mixed paper or most plastic or electronic waste.
Although some recycling (such as electronic waste) has been relocated to South Asia, the dwindling market for recycled material has sent prices downward, making it difficult for the entire industry.
But the biggest problems face companies—and communities—that pick up and sort household. Approximately 60 curbside programs were canceled in 2017, “with even more drop-off site closures and material limitations,” says Waste Dive, a newsletter about the waste industry. (The newsletter does note some programs that had been dropped have come back.)
Material that is supposed to be recycled is ending up in landfills, an Atlantic article said earlier this year. Companies are debating how to cope with the shrinking market. A debate over the “single-stream” versus dual-stream (requiring homeowners to separate recyclables) continues.