Topping today’s Science/Nature section at BBC News, “Population size ‘green priority'”, by Richard Black. The article focuses on the thoughts of Professor Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, who contends that the “current global population of six billion is unsustainably high.” This is to say nothing of the growth rate and future generations. Based on a column Rapley wrote for a new BBC feature, The Green Room, the article presents the view that “humankind is consuming the Earth’s...

Today, Orthodox Christians all over the world are celebrating Epiphany, one of the great feast days of the Eastern Church. Epiphany is, for the Orthodox, the manifestation of the Lord’s divinity and the mystery of the Trinity, the inauguration of the sacrament of baptism, and the beginning of the preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven. For the Orthodox, Epiphany is also a profoundly ecological moment. Churches hold Blessing of the Waters services memorate Christ’s baptism in the Jordan River, an...

Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico appeared today at the January Series of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan to introduce a lecture by theologian and author George Weigel. In his address, entitled “Revolutionary Papacies: John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and the Future of the Catholic Church,” Weigel touched on 10 areas in which Pope John Paul II made important contributions to Catholic teaching, ecumenism, and world politics, and also described some of the major challenges facing Pope Benedict XVI,...

Despite his many writings, scholarly expertise and long service to the Church as Prefect of Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, there’s still much of an unknown quality surrounding Pope Benedict XVI. In the last two weeks, three mentators made some informed guesses about what to expect from the new pontiff. The National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen wrote a piece for The Spectator (U.K.) entitled “The Pope won’t back Bush” (no longer available on-line to...

It took place this morning in the Vatican. Click here for the text from the Vatican’s website. ...

Monopoly #1: I was somewhat shocked the other day when I heard a strong critique of the much-vaunted Canadian national health care system on NPR. I wasn’t dreaming – here’s the link to prove it. The report notes that “after 50 years, the Medicare dream has turned nightmare for many” – something that many advocates for socialized health care in the US would do well to take note of. It also takes note of the recent precedent-setting court decision in...

The long wait is finally over. Federal vouchers ing! Before you get too excited, however, I have to inform you that the vouchers are not for education. You can’t use these vouchers to send your child to the school of your choice. Instead, because of the government-mandated switch for broadcast TV from analog to digital bandwidths, set for Feb. 17, 2009, upwards of 20 million television sets will be obsolete, only able to receive the then-defunct analog signals. “To avoid...

Check out this interview with Acton senior fellow in economics Jennifer Roback Morse from the Zenit News Agency, “Righting the Wrongs in Modern Sex and Marriage.” She talks about writing her recent book, Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World (Spence) and says, “I wanted to write a book for the ordinary person who wants to get married and stay married. Most readers are not economists or theologians, so I wanted to convey to the public that this...

There are two good articles out there in today’s press about socialist thinking, which alas is all too prevalant, especially in issues concerning the environment. The first is a tribute to Arthur Seldon in the Daily Telegraph. Some of Seldon’s friends and family are gathering in a London synagogue today to remember one of the founders of the Institute of Economic Affairs. The creed was capitalism, a concept about which Seldon wrote his most distinguished book in 1990, and which...

Check out this review of James Howard Kunstler’s new book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Atlantic), which describes it as a “litany around the increasingly fashionable panic over oil depletion.” This paucity of oil will in large part contribute to a future in which “the best-case scenario is a mass die-off followed by a forced move back to the plete with associated feudal relations. As the title implies, this is to be an ongoing...

Arnold Kling at the excellent EconLog says that “the government should empty its strategic petroleum reserve and buy energy futures contracts instead. At some point, the futures market has to be taken seriously.” He concludes, “The government has all sorts of subsidies for alternative energy. However, the most efficient subsidy would be to buy oil futures contracts. If we must have an energy policy, it should consist solely of strategic futures market purchases.” This on the heels of the announcement...

Jeffrey Tucker at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute: You might say that water needs to be conserved. Yes, and so does every other scarce good. The peaceful way to do this is through the price system. But because municipal water systems have created artificial shortages, other means e necessary. One regulation piles on top of another, and the next thing you know, you have missars telling you what you can or cannot do in the most private spaces. Has central...