Environment

Millions of Americans head outdoors in the summer, whether for a day at a nearby lake or a monthlong road trip. For environmental economists like me, decisions by vacationers and outdoor recreators offer clues to a challenging puzzle: estimating what environmental resources are worth. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan issued an executive order that required federal agencies to weigh the costs and benefits of proposed major new regulations, and in most cases to adopt them only if the benefits to society outweighed the costs. Reagan’s order was intended to promote environmental improvements…

Across Europe, 95 percent of people claim to have seen seen litter when they visited the coast - yet they say they don't litter. And they don't trust scientists, corporations or government to solve it, which leaves environmentalists who don't ever actually send people into the wilderness to clean up litter. Marine litter is a big deal thanks to environmental publicity but it is highly exaggerated - think mercury in salmon, alar on apples, floating barges of garbage, estrogen in drinking water and more to get an idea of how these issues get magnified.  But when surveyed, people care. In…

While environmentalists raise millions of dollars insisting they will get targeted pesticides (e.g. neonicotinoids) banned to save bees that aren't really in peril, science is looking at things which do actually put bees at risk. At the top of the list is not pesticides, it's nature. An international team has discovered evidence of 27 previously unknown viruses in bees, which could help scientists design strategies to prevent the spread of viral pathogens among these important pollinators.  Bees are pollinators. In some high-value crops like almonds, they are essential. And they have…

A new analysis estimates that if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, sea-level rise will endanger coastal wetlands across the United Kingdom. That conclusion was derived by estimating salt-marsh vulnerability using the geological record of past losses in response to sea-level change. Data from 800 salt-marsh soil cores showed that rising sea levels in the past led to increased waterlogging of the salt marshes in the region, killing the vegetation that protects them from erosion. Coastal wetlands are important because they provide vital ecosystem services, they act as a buffer against…

While churnalism sites like Gizmodo manufacture culture wars in order to promote fear and doubt about American science and medicine. China is engaging in actual risky behavior with no media attention from clickbait sites.  China is on an infrastructure rampage, committing $8 trillion (yes, trillion) for its 'Belt and Road Initiative' to 7,000 projects in 64 nations across half the world. But given China's environmental track record - they denied they were the world's largest CO2 polluter well into the 2000s - there is concern that they are engaging in the most environmentally risky…

In ireland 100 years ago, 1 percent of the island was forest, now it is 11 percent, and Irish people have no problem with food. They even grow Spruce, which is not native, to craft and sell furniture. Given that developed countries have lots of forest now, despite going through periods of growth where they felled far more than they planted, it smacks of hypocrisy that wealthy nations tell poor ones how vital the rainforest is.   The arguments are all fine, the lemurs of Madagascar and all that, but tropical forests are also home to people whose lives are being held back by rich…

Replacing fallow lands with cover crops in order to increase the levels of carbon and soil nitrogen  also enhances its quality and mitigates nitrate leaching in an agricultural land, according to a new analysis.  After collecting data for ten years, results indicate that such cover crops, which maintain the soil protected during winter months, reduce degradation and provide an extra organic matter after their completion, though not without cost.  The growing degradation of agricultural soils is an issue we have to deal with, especially in areas of traditional tillage that…

Around 2,200 B.C, agricultural societies around the world experienced an abrupt cooling and a critical mega-drought. Humans had been progressing nicely since the end of the last Ice Age, and suddenly this cooling, and accompanying droughts, forced the collapse of civilizations in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Yangtze River Valley, which led to migrations and regenerations in other areas.  Evidence of this period, now called the 4.2 kiloyear climatic event, has been found on all seven continents and it has become the reason for the…

A federal judge's recent discussion about why glyphosate should not have a warning label in California, despite the efforts of trial lawyers and the environmental groups they pay, not only shows the label would have no scientific validity, it calls into doubt Proposition 65 itself. Yet that may not matter. Prop 65, passed in 1986, is a voter referendum, not a law passed by the legislature, so it is unassailable at its core. And when it was passed, IARC was one of the groups which would lead to a compound being automatically included then because IARC was still a legitimate body. It was only…

The days when environmental litigation groups like Earthjustice and Farmworker Justice had friendly voices in EPA and the White House seem like two years in the past. Because they are two years in the past. Where once environmental groups could write entire documents for the White House to repost in the name of the U.S., now they cry foul if organizations like Heartland even have email exchanges with EPA. Yet when Natural Resources Defense Council was writing policy for EPA - a move so distasteful the New York Times, which carries full-page ads for NRDC, called foul - they insisted they were…