- Drew Carey Video: LA Fights Bacon Hot Dogs
- Should We Party Like It’s 1870 to Stop Global Warming?
- What Would a McCain Presidency Look Like?
- New at Reason.com and Reason.org
Drew Carey Video: LA Fights Bacon Hot Dogs
Licensed hot dog vendor Elizabeth Palacios got 45 days in Los Angeles County Jail for ‘health code violations’ stemming from the sale of bacon-wrapped hot dogs. In order to stay out of jail, Palacios now sells plain hot dogs. The newest Drew Carey Reason.tv video examines Los Angeles’ over-the-top regulation of hot dog vendors (Palacios needs three permits just to sell hot dogs) and catches the cops protecting and serving LA’s citizens with a vital bacon-dog bust.
ยป Archive of Reason.tv Drew Carey Videos
Should We Party Like It’s 1870 to Stop Global Warming?
Reason magazine Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey writes, “in a quest to lower my impact on the environment, I calculated our [family’s] carbon footprint if we cut our use of electricity and natural gas in half, switched our two cars for a single Toyota Prius and reduced our annual mileage by half, tripled our train travel, and never took an airplane. Furthermore, what if we became vegetarians, ate only local organic food in season, bought only second-hand clothes, furniture and appliances, never went to movies, bars or restaurants, and recycled or composted all our waste? Even then our combined carbon footprint would be 7.3 tons per year, but that would get us just below the world average of 4 tons per capita annually…the creators of Carbon Footprint claim that everyone in the world must eventually emit no more than 2 tons of carbon dioxide per year. When did Americans last emit so little carbon dioxide? Around 1870. Taking historical U.S. carbon emissions and multiplying them by a factor of 3.67 in order to derive total carbon dioxide emissions and then dividing that amount by the number of people living in the country, we find that Americans emitted per person roughly 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide annually back in 1870. In those days, per capita GDP was $194 per year which would be equivalent to about $2,500 today. It is true that many of us in the rich countries could cut back a bit on our use of energy and other resources without too much pain. But 1.6 billion people around the world still lack access to electricity and 1.1 billion live on less than $1 per day. These poor people desperately need access to cheap sources of energy to improve their lives. Assuming that these ecological footprint calculations have some merit, the upshot is that if one does not want to ‘redefine progress’ as a return to 19th-century poverty (and surely no one does), then accelerated technological innovation aimed at finding low-carbon sources of cheap energy is crucial.”
What Would a McCain Presidency Look Like?
With the Democrats still squabbling, Republican Sen. John McCain is rising in the polls. So what would a McCain presidency look like? “If anyone can imagine a McCain presidency, it’s Matt Welch,” says the Times of London. Welch “knows the details of John McCain’s record better than anyone in journalism,” writes Matthew Yglesias of The Atlantic. Get Reason magazine Editor in Chief Matt Welch’s book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick to learn why Sen. McCain, not President Bush was the neocons first choice in 2000, why McCain’s foreign policy might turn out to be even more aggressive than Bush’s, and how a McCain presidency would seek to restrict individual liberties and basic rights like freedom of speech for the “national good.” Instapundit Glenn Reynolds says this book is “more relevant than ever.” And National Review says, “Welch discusses McCain’s proclivity to regulate, in the name of character and the greater good, everything from emissions to political expression to professional sports.” Members of the media interested in a copy of Welch’s book should contact Chris Mitchell.