Culture And Society

Is Greed Good?

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.
Science And Industrialization

Solar Bird Killer

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?
Science And Industrialization

Climategate: A green conspiracy?

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.
Science And Industrialization

Green energy: Neither free nor forever

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 Al Gore, in particular, has said repeatedly that to end our “overdependence on outdated, heavily polluting carbon-based technologies .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.”
Science And Industrialization

Greens against green energy

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.
Culture And Society

Rescuing spirituality from religion

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.
Science And Industrialization

Small hydro not small enough for greens

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.

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
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Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
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