For a good blast of thoughtful (and in your face) history on how the U.S. has stumbled around in the Middle East, check out the current edition of www.getunderground.com and read The House of Cards, by Dan Benbow. Near the bottom of the features section GU is still running Part II of my long essay, The Green Emperor Gets Naked. Part III will be out in early November and will deal pointedly with government's role in the environmental community--particularly with respect to Global Warming (believe it or not, there are some good things happening out there as well as the many dumb things you read about and hear in the mainstream press...it is not time yet to give up the ship).
The following essay is a work in progress. I invite all readers to give me criticism and direction. --------------------------------------------------------------- Recently, the ABC show, Good Morning America , ran a segment interviewing columnist and author Stephen Dubner (co-author of the book Freakonomics ) on whether recycling works. You can watch it by clicking here . While Dubner's basic argument about recycling turns on the idea of market economics (which is sensible), he also says some really weird things that drew me back into the good old early 1990s when bashing recycling was the sport of kings. In particular, Dubner says that plastic water bottle recycling doesn't make sense because it costs more to recycle water bottles (they aren't as valuable as aluminum cans) than it does to make new ones. He also says that old newspapers have such a low value that cities often simply landfill them after they go to the recycling center. He doesn't really provide us with
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