North Carolina’s installed solar power is second only to California’s. Some may cringe at the thought of following California’s energy policy, given the rolling blackouts imposed there. Solar power seemed like an attractive option in 2007, when the Democrat-controlled legislature handed Democratic Gov. Mike Easley a bill that provided sweeping incentives to encourage solar power...
Bloomberg Energy this month issued an attention-grabbing report on a serious waste problem with wind turbines: Retired turbine blades are clogging up landfills. This problem is only going to get worse, as Bloomberg reports, because right now the blades at the end of their lifespan are from wind power built more than a decade ago....
North Carolina House Bill 56 got a lot of press earlier this fall when the General Assembly overrode the governor’s veto of the legislation. But most of the discussion was about GenX, an industrial chemical that had been found in the Cape Fear River, and the associated health concerns. However, tucked away in that legislation...
Raleigh used federal stimulus money for a project that would eliminate jobs.
As wrenching changes in daily life are unlikely and uneconomical, and sackcloth is itchy and rides up in the wrong places, landfills foes aren't likely to accomplish their ends.
I know it drives environmentalists nuts when their dogmatic prescriptions are described as a new secular religion.
All too often, government policymakers choose the clumsiest tool they can find to do a job. That is, indeed, an important reason not to give governments too many jobs to do.
Here's another round of media market-bashing when it comes to solid-waste disposal. Rather than slam new landfills likely to meet consumer demand, why not gang up on economic-development projects likely to fail?
Streets clean enough to eat off of? Not quite, but close. Trashcans are strategically placed, but no more so than in an ordinary city. Hundreds of thousands of people travel the streets of Disney World, generating tons of trash daily. But why no litter, no food debris, no castaway diapers, on these city streets?
