As efforts for cannabis legalization heats up prohibitionists are quick to say that we need more research in order to know if cannabis is safe. Prohibitionists always seem to overlook that society has had a long history with cannabis and it is generally the federal government that has prevented adequate research from being done. Cannabis…
Continue reading →Five states will be voting on the legalization of recreational marijuana in the upcoming elections, plus four more voting on medical use. What is at stake is much bigger than simply the right for adults to get high, the movement to end cannabis prohibition is part of the same cultural battle as Black Lives Matter,…
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Marijuana legalization is culture war. From cultural conservatives fearful of losing the war on drugs to counter culture leftists who equally fear their precious herb will be corrupted by the poisoned chalice of capitalism and big business. Marijuana is representative of long standing culture wars and the prospect of legalization has implications far beyond arrest…
Continue reading →Nuclear power is one of the leading sources of low carbon electricity, yet it receives no credit for this in Pennsylvania. The Keystone State has five nuclear power plants that provide one-third of the state’s electricity and 93 percent of its low carbon electricity. Nuclear power plants are also the state’s most-reliable sources of electricity,…
Continue reading →Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s natural gas policies make no sense and are self-defeating. New York has banned drilling for in-state natural gas resources while at the same time the state has increased its reliance on natural gas to replace coal, clean up air emissions, and fight climate change. Natural gas has been critical in helping New…
Continue reading →New York state currently has five nuclear power plants, and they all face mounting financial losses and pressure from activists. But closing them is not an environmentally good idea. The FitzPatrick plant in Oswego is scheduled to be shut down in 2017, and Exelon Corp. has announced that the nearby Nine Mile Unit No. 1…
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Methanol has been largely overlooked in the biofuels debate, perhaps that is because that is because it is typically produced from coal and natural gas and is often considered a fossil fuel product. But it is more accurate to think of methanol as a synthetic fuel that can be produced from all manner of carbon…
Continue reading →Last week in Riyadh at the 6th CSLF Ministerial Meeting, US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi issued a joint statement identifying the critical need for carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies (CCS) as a solution to reduce rising levels of greenhouse gasses. Both the USA and Saudi Arabia are…
Continue reading →New York is engaging in an ambitious effort called REV (Renewing the Energy Vision) to update the state’s electricity grid to support renewable energy and microgrids. Unfortunately, this vision fails to see the importance of the state’s largest source of low-carbon electricity, nuclear power. Anyone who is concerned about climate change and the need to…
Continue reading →In the west the debate over climate change generally falls along two competing narratives. The environmental left says that fossil fuels are the source of the CO2 emissions causing climate change and the solution is to abandon fossil fuels. Their opponents on the right say that climate change is a hoax or at least not…
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