Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Instapundit links to a FastCompany article about Walmart’s pushing of the use of high-efficiency compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) as a means of cutting energy consumption. I like CFLs and use them in my home. Walmart’s effort represents an honest attempt to try to reduce energy consumption.
To bad this effort and all other efforts to reduce energy consumption via greater efficiency will never, ever work.
So, my sixteen-year-old is off doing “good deeds” to celebrate Earth Day. A Wall Street Journal editorial today concludes with one of those Churchill aphorisms:
So next time someone tells you that climate change is more dangerous than terrorism, bear in mind . . . Churchill once said: “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
Its point:
Since 1970, carbon monoxide emissions in the U.S. are down 55%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Particulate emissions are down nearly 80%, and sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced by half. Lead emissions have declined more than 98%. All of this has been accomplished despite a doubling of the number of cars on the road and a near-tripling of the number of miles driven, according to Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute.
Of course, these percentages are not unlike those the Green Revolution, headed by scientists like Borlaug, produced. As life gets better, we have more time to navel gaze.
Side note: I’m always struck by the despair & nihilism of 20th century lit as opposed to, say, 17th century. Then, well, things were a lot tougher – a mother could expect to see a real percentage of her children die before her, food shortages, great pain, fear were a part of life in ways we can not understand. Perhaps good times free our minds to think, but, being human, we spend those thoughts hypothesizing problems. Probably that’s a pretty good adaptation technique – if we didn’t worry we might lose our problem-solving skills. But perhaps we’ve gotten soft: it’s a lot easier to worry about the problems Gore hypothesizes than, well, the old big ones: like we are going to sin & die. And like why do some of us think our culture is worth neither defending nor reproducing? Or, even ones more specific & timely – we sense Gore’s comments are overblown; we are less sure those coming out of Iran are. Therefore, scaring ourselves with Gore’s predictions is more comfortable than meditating on Ahmadinejad’s.
…does not necessarily mean the Green Bay Packers. I previously wrote about how some millionaires with million-dollar water views were using the language and the tactics of the environmental movement to stop (wait for it…) a clean energy project. Windmills off Cape Code, to be specific, set up in the Nantucket Shoals.
Now their fund-raising manual has been leaked to the Boston Globe. Unfortunately, the text of their manual is not available online, but the excerpts are very funny. If you want a reliable guide to shmoozing people with fat wallets and heads, you owe it to yourself to look. Some highlights:
You have already heard about NIMBYs. How about BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.
The Law of Unintended Secondary Effects provides for the imposition of the death penalty. In this case, it is insecticide rather than homicide. In gardening and agriculture, “natural” pest control includes the introduction of beneficial insects to prey on insect pests. Unfortunately, some of these beneficial insects become pests themselves. The asiatic ladybug is still available by mail-order, even though they have become a nuisance in the US because of their habit of nesting indoors. A vacuum cleaner is recommended for removing them; they leave a nasty stain if you squash them.
In the UK, the problem is more serious. There are similar native species that are being destroyed by being out-competed by the aliens, or even by the more direct method of being eaten by them. The various native species may go extinct as early as 2008.
“Natural” does not mean “benign.” When we as a species were in a state of nature, we were prey. Stuffed amanitas, anyone?
The commotion over the proposal by Cape Wind Associates LLC to build an electricity-generating wind farm in Nantucket Sound has been a treat to watch. On one side is a private company willing to put its own money at risk to build an environmentally-friendly installation that could supply 3/4 of the electricity needs of Cape Code and the nearby islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. The proposal is supported by, among others, Greenpeace, the Conservation Law Foundation, and other environmental groups. It is opposed by, among others, the Massachusetts Audubon Society, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and other environmental groups. Green-on-green casualties and hard feelings have resulted.