Mutually Assured Destruction Gives Way To Monetizing Atomic Derelicts

We were utterly fascinated to read this article in the New York Times revealing that a full 50% of the nuclear fuel used in reactors in the United States comes from recycled nuclear bombs, primarily from Russia. Which pretty much explains why disarmament has been happening! And it has a nice swords-to-plowshares narrative, to boot. [...]

What Does Buffett’s Railroad Play Mean For The Environment?

Yesterday, famed American investor Warren Buffett announced that his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, would purchase the remaining shares of Burlington North Sante Fe railroad that it did not already hold. The $44 billion acquisition is the largest in Berkshire’s history, and pundits have been opining on what it says about Buffett’s forecasts for the U.S. [...]

What Difference Does 350 Make?

This past Saturday (October 24th) was the International Day of Climate Action. The “Action” chosen this year was thousands of displays of the number “350″ around the globe, including the above, at BU‘s Marsh Plaza. The number refers to the carbon dioxide atmospheric load in parts per million. This commonly used metric is the independent [...]

Oil And Gas Going Their Separate Ways On Climate Bill?

The New York Times has an article today on how the U.S. energy industry is reacting to the climate bill making its way through the Senate. Oil and gas companies, historically an effective hydrocarbon bloc, have started angling against each other as the differences in their emissions footprints become salient on a policy level. Traditionally, [...]

What Kind Of Centrism Underlies "Should Trees Have Standing?"

No one would accuse Christopher Stone’s 1972 discourse-changing article, “Should Trees Have Standing,” of being centrist. The article, which advocated assigning legal rights to animals and inanimate environmental objects, legal rights that could be activated to protect the trees, etcetera, for their own sake and not explicitly in the property interest of humans, was received [...]