The Environment

Do natural disasters really produce a boost in production? (Column by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.)

The Mississippi River Basin is the largest river basin in the world, and stretches from New York to Idaho and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In the course of American history, the river often flooded, but not until 1927 had so many people been killed and left homeless and never had such a large land area been covered by water. It was the greatest flood in history, but this fact is not as well known: government caused it.

How a treaty could lead to the loss of life. (Analysis by adjunct scholar Roy Cordato.)

When FEMA takes over, liberty ends.

Another public hysteria debunked by science.

The strange new politics of suburban economic growth.

Should the market or regulators place plants and waste sites?

When Carol Browner, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, proposed new air quality standards last year, she claimed that thousands of Americans are being killed every year by tiny particles in the air with diameters of less than 2.5 microns. The EPA currently regulates airborne pollutants 10 microns in diameter, so Browner asked to have the agency's powers expanded. Charcoal grills, lawnmowers, and other gasoline-powered equipment could be outlawed when they produce too much pollution.

When the Soviet Union's central planners failed year after year to produce a respectable grain harvest, they blamed "bad weather." If only the weather could be controlled, Moscow dreamed, communism might be made to work. Officially, communism is dead, but the bureaucratic obsession with controlling the weather lives on in Washington, D.C.