Category Archives: Evironment
World Health Hates Hot Dogs
Nagging us about climate change isn’t enough for the World Health Organization. Now it warns that eating processed meat causes cancer. NPR calls it a bad day for bacon. Hot dogs too.
World Health
In a Financial Times piece titled You can either savor the bacon or relish the hysteria Tim Hayward says, “your breakfast banger” is now in a category “with tobacco, alcohol, asbestos and radioactive materials such as uranium.”
Emissions from Volkswagen
Reuters reports that Volkswagen will “repair” up to 11 million cars rigged to give misleading emissions info to inspectors. The “fix” will cost $6.5 billion.
Emissions
The evil geniuses at VW figured out a way for its diesel emissions systems to recognize when they were being tested. During a test the system stifles emissions according to government standards. The rest of the time the system turns itself down or off, allowing for great mileage and more power but higher emissions.
Who but the greenest among us is going to want to bring his car in for that repair?
Climate Catholic
Mike Grunwald, in Politico, was surprised the pope didn’t directly mention the climate in his speech to Congress. Instead the Holy Father referred to his 184 page encyclical on climate and capitalism. Gunwald went back and actually read the thing. He found it to be “super weird”:
The pope’s message in Laudato Si is surprisingly gloomy for such an inspiring figure, especially at a time when the world’s largest emitters, the U.S. and China, are cleaning up their own act and leading a push for global reductions in Paris. Pope Francis writes about the dangers of excessive growth, which “leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit,” but economic growth usually produces better environmental protection, which often seems to be a luxury poor countries can’t afford…
“There is also the fact that most people no longer seem to believe in a happy future,” the pope wrote in Laudato Si.
Aw, Your Holiness, is that really a fact? It really feels like things are starting to get a little better, and may be on path to get a lot better. Have faith.
Pope Fiat
Josh Ernest thinks Francis and Obama are two peas in a pod. Both men believe in social justice and global warming. But it’s hard to imagine King Barack in Fiat. Dennis Miller adds that the Pope drives a Fiat and Obama rules by Fiat.
Mass in Cuba
AP
Pope Francis celebrated Mass in Cuba on Sunday. Standing before a giant image of Che Guevara, he said “Service is never ideological, for we don’t serve ideas, we serve people.” Afterward he met with Fidel but not with Cuban dissidents.
He will meet with dissidents in the United States. President Obama has invited Catholic dissidents to a reception for the pope.
