Writing for The Atlantic, John Paul Rollert describes the complex moral evolution of the concept of “greed” over three centuries, from Christianity’s unequivocal denunciation of self-interest to the present day, in which, Rollert argues, we have reached a kind of quiet but uncomfortable toleration of greed.
According to a poll just released by Gallup, climate change and “the quality of the environment” ranked near the bottom of a list of 15 “national problems” Americans worry about — way below “the economy,” “unemployment,” and “the size and power of the federal government.”
Turns out that windmills are not the only form of “green energy” that slaughters birds. As if being whacked to death by large steel blades weren’t bad enough, how about being fried by an intense solar death ray?
Who owns your cells? The FDA seems to think it does, given its lawsuit against Regenerative Sciences, a company that treats orthopedic injuries by extracting, culturing and reinjecting adult stem cells derived from a patient’s bone marrow.
In October, I posted on the opposition by environmentalists to solar energy projects in California’s Mojave Desert. I mentioned that California Senator Dianne Feinstein was planning to bolster that opposition with legislation.
The Climategate documents — the hundreds of emails and other data hacked from the Climatic Research Unit of England’s East Anglia University — have exposed serious breaches of scientific integrity. They contain evidence of collusion among a small but highly influential group of climate researchers to suppress and even delete key data, to manipulate the scientific peer-review process, to exclude the work of dissenting scientists, and allegedly to evade Freedom of Information requests by destroying requested materials.
One argument sometimes heard in favor of green energy is that sources such as wind and solar are “free, forever.” Al Gore, in particular, has said repeatedly that to end our “overdependence on outdated, heavily polluting carbon-based technologies . . . we need sources that are free forever, like the sun, wind and earth.”
Environmentalists claim, with ever-increasing hysteria, that our consumption of carbon-based energy in pursuit of prosperity and economic growth is altering the earth’s climate. Human survival, they insist, requires the immediate abandonment of fossil fuels, which provide more than 80 percent of the world’s energy, in favor of carbon-free sources.
POST byKeith Lockitch | View All PostsSeptember 17, 2009
The Wall Street Journal recently commissioned Karen Armstrong, author of numerous books on religion, and Richard Dawkins, author of numerous books on evolution and atheism, to answer the question: “Where does evolution leave God?” What I found most interesting about the exchange was an issue that neither discussed explicitly, but which lurked just beneath the surface of their answers: the fact that religion has co-opted the entire realm of the spiritual.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported on “small hydro” projects—hydroelectric power plants involving small dams on streams and tributaries, as opposed to giant dams on major rivers. Because hydro produces zero greenhouse gas emissions, these projects are being promoted by power companies hoping to avoid the fierce green opposition to carbon-based energy.
