Opinion
More Information Needed to Back or Crack Clean Smokestacks Claims
Officials have not put forward evidence confirming whether state regulations have made a difference in N.C. mercury emissions.
News
Friday Interview: Air Pollution Lawsuit Squashed
RALEIGH — A federal appeals court dealt a major blow this year to North Carolina’s efforts to force the Tennessee Valley Authority to cut back its power plant emissions. N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper and others had blamed TVA emissions for air pollution problems in western North Carolina. Carolina Journal Associate Editor David Bass discussed the court ruling with Donna Martinez for Carolina Journal Radio.
Opinion
Seeing Through the Fog Around the Clean Smokestacks Bill
Environmental regulators claim benefits from air-quality legislation approved in 2002, but they've offered no proof.
Opinion
No. 848: Hot Air: Alarmists Refuse to Celebrate Lower Ozone Levels
Despite what the alarmists say, the number of high-ozone days in North Carolina continues to decline every summer.
Opinion
Trains May Worsen Air Pollution
Advocates of mass transit can cast aspersions all they like, but it is they who cling to the notion that rail lines will improve air quality even though research and common sense suggest they won’t.
Opinion
No. 772: North Carolina Enjoying Its Clearest Smog Season
Joel Schwartz observes that North Carolina has registered no ozone-alert days through mid-July - its best smog season since the 1970s.
Opinion
He’s A Scientist
A Charlotte Observer story covering a presentation that debunked scare stories about air pollution in North Carolina demonstrated a rather-odd problem with labeling.
Opinion
No. 748: There’s Good News on the Environment, So Where’s the Party?
North Carolina's air is getting cleaner, but why don't environmentalists and the media report that fact?
Opinion
No. 724: Cooper Wages Environmental Imperialism Against Other States
In 2002 the North Carolina General Assembly passed the “clean smokestacks” bill. The legislation mandates dramatic reductions in emissions from coal-fired power plants run by Duke Power Co. and Progress Energy and will cost North Carolina electric customers more than $2 billion over the next eight years. In spite of the high price tag, the law was enacted with no cost-benefit analysis or serious scientific investigation of its health effects. Now that these costs are a permanent part of living and doing business in North Carolina, Attorney General Roy Cooper has decided to use a little-known aspect of the law in an attempt to impose these hardships on our neighbors. The smokestacks bill authorizes the state to “use all available resources and means,” including lawsuits, “to induce other states...to achieve reductions in emissions...comparable to those required [in NC]...”
Opinion
Murky Reporting on Soot
The Charlotte Observer continues to publish stories with scary warnings about how soot in the air could "prematurely kill thousands of people" annually — even though the Observer knows the the link to lung cancer or heart disease is inconclusive at best.
Opinion
No. 702: EPA Report Exposes Environmental Alarmists
Environmental pressure groups regularly publish “studies,” blindly reported by the media, meant to convince people that the environment is falling apart. We are also told that as a consequence our health and quality of life are declining. In June the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency exposed all of this as nonsense.
Opinion
No. 677: Hooray for Sprawl: New Study Debunks “Smart Growth”
Sprawl is a word that has acquired a negative connotation in our language. Mention sprawl and the immediate image in most minds is of subdivisions gobbling up farmland and pristine forests and causing commuters to sit in time-wasting traffic jams to and from work. Many politicians say they are for “smart-growth,” which is a kind of fuzzy, ill-defined alternative to “nasty” sprawl.
