“Carbon emissions trading involves the trading of permits to emit carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases, calculated in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, tCO2e). It is one of the ways countries can meet their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon emissions and thereby mitigate global warming.”
Self-described “market liberal” Brian Holtz is running for Congress in California on the Libertarian Party’s ticket. This is his position paper on environmental issues — posted not by way of endorsement, but as an intro to some innovative thinking on how libertarian ideas can be used to address environmental concerns.
Keep comfortable, save on your utility bills, and avoid undue energy usage with this checklist from eHow.
“Just about everyone is now aware of climate change, so when an extreme weather event occurs, it is not unusual for people to ask if it is the result of global warming. Because of the link between higher ocean temperatures and hurricanes, there is speculation that hurricanes will increase in frequency or intensity in a warmer world, with higher wind speeds and greater precipitation. As stated above, the frequency of hurricanes has not increased on average over the long term. However, scientists believe that global warming will result in more intense hurricanes, as increasing sea surface temperatures provide energy for storm intensification. An MIT study published recently in Nature provides the first data analysis indicating that tropical storms are indeed becoming more powerful over time.”
… as expressed both in your utility bill and environmental damage, of course: This primer from the Florida Solar Energy Center is intended to guide builders of new homes in Florida, but a lot of the tips are applicable just about everywhere. [Hat Tip - treehugger]
“He seemed like an ordinary concerned citizen, not a part of an orchestrated, multistate campaign. But the libertarian movement he belongs to — broader and more powerful than the anemic Libertarian Party — has a growing reach in American politics. The movement’s mission is to maximize individual freedom by limiting government power in everything from taxes to judges’ rulings. One of its national leaders, Grover Norquist, has said that he wants to reduce government ‘to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.’ In this campaign, which is playing out in six Western states, the libertarians mostly want to ‘reform eminent domain’ — or at least that’s what they say.” (07/24/06)
“The cutting edge of low technology.” While governments hand out huge subsidies to old-style polluting energy producers on one hand, then dole out much smaller ones to those producers’ competitors on the other (creating situations in which the goal is the subsidy, not an inexpensive, working product for sale), some people are just doing it. This site chronices various homebrew experiments in building wind turbines, putting together cheap and efficient solar power systems, etc.
“[Our purpose is] To further the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet. This will be done by: 1. Broad public outreach to instill the vision of pioneering Mars. 2. Support of ever more aggressive government funded Mars exploration programs around the world. 3. Conducting Mars exploration on a private basis. Starting small, with hitchhiker payloads on government funded missions, we intend to use the credibility that such activity will engender to mobilize larger resources that will enable stand-alone private robotic missions and ultimately human exploration.”
“An externality is the effect of a transaction between two parties on a third party who is not involved in the carrying out of that transaction. In economics, externalities are an example of market failure. Externalities can be either positive, when an external benefit is generated, or negative, when an external cost is generated from a market transaction. An externality occurs when a decision causes costs or benefits to stakeholders other than the person making the decision, often, though not necessarily, from the use of common goods (for example, a decision which results in pollution of the atmosphere would involve an externality).”
“Ethanol can be used as fuel for automobiles either alone or as an additive to gasoline. Ethanol can be blended with gasoline in varying quantities to reduce the consumption of petroleum fuels, as well as to reduce air pollution. The resulting fuel is known as gasohol. Two common mixtures are E10 and E85 which contain 10% and 85% ethanol, respectively. Ethanol is also increasingly used as an oxygenate additive for standard gasoline, as a replacement for methyl t-butyl ether (MTBE), the latter chemical being responsible for considerable groundwater and soil contamination. Ethanol can also be used to power fuel cells.”
edited by Thomas L. Knapp
Freedom News Daily
