Environment roundup

  • I own a Volkswagen clean diesel myself, and can recommend its terrific fuel economy and peppy performance. It’s almost too good to be true [Clive Crook on policy background] Class action lawyers expect huge payday from scandal, but their emissions might not be very reliable either [Daniel Fisher] More from Fisher: will VW owners actually take their vehicles in for the recall? and more on litigation prospects [More: Car and Driver];
  • Housing advocates looking for plaintiffs to sue Bay Area town that refuses to make its housing supply denser [CityLab]
  • Behind court’s strikedown of NYC Styrofoam ban [Erik Engquist, Crain’s New York; Entrepreneur]
  • “Did Flint, Michigan Just Lead Poison Its Children? Doctors Think So.” [Russell Saunders, The Daily Beast]
  • “Global regulatory norms” favored by pontiff “would globalize Argentina’s downward mobility.” [George Will]
  • After long silence, Hillary Clinton declares opposition to Keystone XL pipeline [Politico, more]
  • Houston: “For the most part, we don’t look all that different from other big cities that do have zoning.” [The Urban Edge; Kinder Institute, Rice U.]

5 Comments

  • “After long silence, Hillary Clinton declares opposition to Keystone XL pipeline”

    Kinda makes me wonder how much support Clinton receives from Warren Buffett? (Buffett owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe – the only rail line into or out of the Bakken oil fields).

  • If the problem with Flint, Michigan’s water is that it is “corrosive” and leaches lead from old lead pipes, wonder why they can’t simply treat it to reduce the leaching. Adjusting PH should not be difficult or expensive.

  • Bill,
    If they adjust the PH, they don’t get the $10 million. Then the union pipe fitters don’t make campaign contributions. Remember. It’s for the children.

  • Hillary hopes to be bailed out by a victory of Canada’s socialist party (NDP) in next month’s election. NDP opposes the Keystone pipeline, which would make the issue moot in 2016.
    Polls currently show a three-way tie between the incumbent conservatives, NDP ( whose economic illiteracy would normally disqualify them, but Canada is hurting badly from collapsed oil revenues), and the center-left Liberals, economically competent but weak on free speech

  • I endorse George Will’s critique of Pope Francis’s socialism and hostility to economic development. [A personal complaint– it may now be confusing to use “Club-of-Rome” as my favorite metonym for stagnationist environmentalism.]

    Unfortunately, neither George Will nor I are Catholics. Peggy Noonan offered the most interesting Catholic approach in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed: conservative Catholics should ostentatiously adopt the strategies of their progressive co-religionists who showed outward reverence to two conservative Popes even while resisting their political agenda.