President Bush tells us to drive less and limit trips to only the essentials, while the EPA’s EnergyStar program is urging us all to “change a lightbulb” in our homes, from a regular one to a government-approved one, which they claim will save hundreds of millions. You are also supposed to take a pledge : “I pledge to do my part to save energy
The Disney-Pixar film WALL-E has been adoringly received by the majority of the theatergoing public. This adoration is unjustified. The film blatantly conveys environmentalist, anticapitalist, and antitechnological propaganda — and aims it at an audience of children, who still lack the critical faculties and intellectual sophistication to evaluate
This fall, school kids across the country will again be taught a chief doctrine in the civic religion: recycle, not only because you fear the police but also because you love the planet. They come home well prepared to be the enforcers of the creed against parents who might inadvertently drop a foil ball into the glass bin or overlook a plastic
Last year, on the last Saturday in March, Google’s white background turned black, as a symbolic gesture for 2008’s “Earth Hour.” They accompanied this gesture with a puzzling rationale : As to why we don’t do this permanently — it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display . Such a gesture, done
Kingsman: The Secret Service is a big-budget semi-satirical take on the spy genre, featuring the film clichés audiences now associate with the James Bond and Jason Bourne franchises. These include global intrigue, amazing gadgetry, beautiful women, hand-to-hand combat, and multiple international locales. Many friends of laissez-faire, and those
I’ve never had much use for Penn and Teller, a pair of comedians that I’ve seen from time to time on television and then have quickly turned off. But the other day, a reader of my blog, Mr. Robert Groot, a Canadian Ph.D. student, was kind enough to send me a link to their internet show on recycling. I have to say that this show has made me a fan
As detailed here , no expensive and ill-used, Western aid, no high tech inputs, no government planning, no Malthusian doom — just a simple tale of human ingenuity, incentivised by the small matter of better property rights, overcoming an ecological disaster. From colonial times, all trees in Niger had been regarded as the property of the state,
In conjunction with the DVD release of the BBC’s series, “Planet Earth: The Complete Series,” AOL is currently offering a short quiz and a video contest. Hysteria first: The 10-question quiz “ Planet Earth by the Numbers “ has a certain spin, to say the least. Note question 10, my favorite: Question: According to some estimates, by 2050, CO2
The Science and Public Policy Institute carries this report on a book on global warming for schoolchildren written by Film Director Laurie David and published by Scholastic Publishers, the producers of such staples for American schoolchildren as the Weekly [News] Reader. The book, titled The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming , not only
This article ran in the Journal of Commerce , May 5, 1999: By now, virtually every public school student in the country has heard about the supposed environmental catastrophe of deformed frogs. Everywhere you look, it is said, there are frogs being born with severe disabilities: too few or too many limbs, and misshapen eyes and toes. And the
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.