The Death of Environmentalism

Coming from the opposite political spectrum as the authors, I was quite skeptical reading this piece; it took me quite a while before I understood what this paper is actually about.

This paper is not about Environmentalism, except peripherally. Indeed, if one takes out any mention of environmentalism and replaces it with inequality, poverty, famine, overpopulation, child mortality, racism, sexism or any of the other easily identifiable crises that currently plague humanity, the paper would make equal sense.

This paper is about politics. Specifically, the paper lays out suggestions for environmentalists to achieve policy objectives through a variety of means – alliances with other left wing political power brokers, reframing issues and other techniques. Essentially, the paper makes the the case that environmentalism shouldn’t be about caring about the environment, but about passing legislation that gets things done – that achieves the policy objectives of the environmentalists. It is not enough to be in favor of something – one must also pass laws to enforce those views.

The great thing about this paper is that the organizational changes and strategies that it advocates are open to anyone – to any group. If you care about politics at all and want to see how it really functions, this is a good place to start.

The Death of Environmentalism[pdf]

Paper Carnival I

Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake[pdf]

Researchers identified a strong desire in many of the participants in the study to finish their portion, no matter how much they were actually eating. Additionally, the researchers found that most people use visual cues to estimate the amount they ate rather than their relative feelings of “fullness”.

Protecting Family and Race: The Progressive Case for Regulating Women’s Work[pdf]

An brief history of the socio-economic alignment the turn of the 20th century progressives had with eugenics and some of the reasons they supported such policies. Startlingly different from turn of the 21st century progressives in their conclusions, although identical in their core beliefs and methods.

An Efficient Heuristic Approach for Security Against Multiple Adversaries[pdf]

This is the research paper that sparked the use of randomized security at LAX. Very well done, and quite interesting. This paper has many conclusions that are useful in a variety of fields – anywhere where security is important. The key rule in sort of security is that security by obscurity doesn’t work very well. By assuming that opponents have perfect information about your own procedures, you dramatically decrease the damage done by information leaks.

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide[pdf]

An interesting paper about global warming. Specifically, the authors accept the hypothesis that the earth is warming that that humans are a partial cause of that warming. They also accept that carbon dioxide is the warming agent, although they contend that solar output correlates much more closely to observed atmospheric temperature than hydrocarbon emissions do. They conclude, however, that warming will have beneficial, not deleterious effects on the earth, and should be encouraged, not discouraged. As this seems to counter to the prevailing sentiments, take it with a grain of salt. The arguments, especially the graph on page 1 displaying past global temperatures, appear to be quite convincing, though.

Epstein on Zoning

Epstein on Zoning

An amazing talk by Prof. Richard Epstein about zoning and the Kelo vs New London court case. Be forewarned, Epstein is very close to a “little l” libertarian, although my feeling is that most economists fall into that category.