Going to jail to protect resources

When the Bush administration in its last days opened up large areas of land for drilling, this 27-year old economics student stepped in to mess up the process. By disrupting the leases, he sought to protect the land, and he succeeded, but now he's going to court for what he's done. Read the story! It's short and interesting and right here.

It raises lots of interesting questions, including who decides how to value different resources (oil vs. beautiful lands) and how they make that decision. Since few people travel to rural Utah to see some of these spectacular areas (though the Park Service conspicuously chooses to have people in a number of these shots) does that mean they are less valuable and don't merit government protection? That's exactly what Bush administration officials thought. They've since been overruled by Obama administration officials- at least for the next few years! More to come, obviously....

Fishing failing in Alaska

I knew that salmon fisheries in Oregon, Washington, and California had fallen upon hard times, but I didn't realize that Alaskan king salmon too were failing. I'm sure there are always ebbs and flows in the population, so maybe this isn't a big deal, but people sound pretty worried about it. That would be a huge loss to all of us- that fishery has been tremendously productive. Read the full article here.

Maryland considering offshore wind power

Apparently I'm pretty late in picking up this story, but here's a link: 12 miles off Ocean City may soon be some industrial-sized windmills. I guess that's far enough away that they won't be visible from the beach, which is probably key.

I wonder how BG&E feels about this, with all their recent investments in nuclear....

Shopping bags banned outright in San Jose, CA

Not much details on this legislation and apparently it's not final, but it sounds pretty strict. I wonder if grocery stores can just charge 5 cents a bag and get around it?

Live Strong

Thomas Friedman's editorial in today's New York Times is an interesting call for action. Nuclear power has many detractors (and rightfully so, I must say as a Nevadan) but one of its benefits is that it does not emit carbon. If we are really to take the issue of climate change seriously, there really should be more serious discussion of the topic, as well as of the perpetually unpopular carbon tax. Is now not the time because of the recession? Fine, then say we set a start date of January 1, 2011.

Friedman's point is that we simply have to wean ourselves of our dependence on foreign oil. It's not a new point but it bears repeating.

Another article of note in the same paper is an article about electronic devices and energy consumption. We had some discussion in class about "phantom loads"- devices that turn off but continue to use up a little energy so as to respond quickly when we activate them. Unsurprisingly, the average American home has more electronic gadgets than ever, and most of them drain energy basically all the time. An idea suggested in the article is to attach such devices to "smart" power strips, which turn off when they're not in use. I'm not sure where to find these strips, but I think I'll try to use more regular power strips to turn everything on and off at once rather than doing one at a time. Needless waste makes economists in particular cringe!

Federal plan for the Chesapeake

A belated welcome back to school to everyone. One observant class member sent along this yesterday: the EPA under the Obama administration is working on a plan to help the Chesapeake, starting with "$638 million over the next five years for farm incentives and other measures to help the bay." Sounds like a good start! This link is to an article about an executive summary of a draft report that's due to be released soon. I haven't seen much press about this: I wonder if the actual report will garner more attention....

Happy summer!

School's out and class is done, but I want to make sure this blog doesn't totally die. Good news from the Obama administration: they're considering ITQ's (though they don't call them that, apparently) to revitalize our ravaged fisheries, particularly the one for cod. You remember any of that stuff we talked about?

Hope you're having a great break!