Environment
Agriculture
Cattle can be a first line of fire defense
Research tells us cattle removed an estimated 11.6 billion pounds of fine fuels from California rangelands in 2017. Removal of fine fuels – grasses, shrubs, weeds – changes wildfire behaviors by keeping fires smaller and reducing flame length. As fire seasons continue to be a challenge for the state and ...
Commentary
Threatened With Legal Action, State Makes U-Turn on Electric Truck Mandates
Pressured by legal action from seventeen states that would have been impacted, California has agreed to not just drop enforcement of its electric truck mandate, but to repeal it entirely. Following the governor’s 2020 executive order that banned the sales of new internal-combustion engine cars in 2035, the state Air ...
Agriculture
Gray wolf study arms ranchers with research in coming gray wolf battle
There’s an adage about bears in the woods. It’s a tongue-in-cheek commentary about what’s obvious in life. Ranchers have known for years that the presence of wolves near livestock has a negative effect on everything from weight gain and maintenance to overall animal stress. A recent study released by researchers ...
Blog
The Spanish Power Outage Flu – Is California Next?
Energy journalist Robert Bryce assures us it is not. “California has already seen blackouts due to the weakening of its grid,” Bryce told PRI, “And no, it’s not too soon to speculate.” On the last Monday in April, “one of the worst” blackouts to ever hit Europe, the Associated Press reports, began ...
Agriculture
New bill in Congress revisits Prop 12
Imagine buying a house and having to adhere to the standards of a homeowner’s association five states away. In a practical sense, that is how Proposition 12 operates for pork producers across the United States. The law also outlines provisions for the house of laying hens and veal calves. Animal ...
California
California’s green new scam could cost you $20,000
California has long fancied itself a beacon of environmental progress, a state willing to lead the charge in combating global warming. But the reality is that this pursuit of a “green” future is coming at a staggering cost to California consumers and businesses, a cost that’s becoming increasingly unsustainable. Read ...
Energy
PRI’s Earth Week Special – What is the Cost of Going Green?
This week, we feature a special recording of our live webinar featuring PRI scholars and policy experts exploring key green topics being debated and discussed in Washington, DC and in the states – from Cap and Trade and gas and carbon taxes to green appliance mandates. Learn about the latest ...
California
New Study Reveals Soaring Costs of California’s Green Energy Transition
As the US marks Earth Day, a new study released today by the Pacific Research Institute, a nonpartisan, California-based, free-market think tank, reveals the staggering costs California consumers and businesses will incur as the state pursues its aggressive green energy mandates. The paper, “The Cost of Going Green,” provides a ...
Agriculture
Wolf management needs a regional strategy
With a daily hunting range of 30 miles or more, it is only a matter of time before wolves become a topic of conversation outside of livestock and conservation circles. Congress and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have several blueprints for the kind of predator management plan that makes ...
Blog
Read the latest on California's water wars
California Water Works
The company “plans to anchor about two dozen 40-foot-long devices, called pods, to the seafloor several miles offshore and use them to take in saltwater and pump purified fresh water to shore in a pipeline,” the Times reports. Before that, though, the concept has to be proved, which is why ...
Cattle can be a first line of fire defense
Research tells us cattle removed an estimated 11.6 billion pounds of fine fuels from California rangelands in 2017. Removal of fine fuels – grasses, shrubs, weeds – changes wildfire behaviors by keeping fires smaller and reducing flame length. As fire seasons continue to be a challenge for the state and ...
Threatened With Legal Action, State Makes U-Turn on Electric Truck Mandates
Pressured by legal action from seventeen states that would have been impacted, California has agreed to not just drop enforcement of its electric truck mandate, but to repeal it entirely. Following the governor’s 2020 executive order that banned the sales of new internal-combustion engine cars in 2035, the state Air ...
Gray wolf study arms ranchers with research in coming gray wolf battle
There’s an adage about bears in the woods. It’s a tongue-in-cheek commentary about what’s obvious in life. Ranchers have known for years that the presence of wolves near livestock has a negative effect on everything from weight gain and maintenance to overall animal stress. A recent study released by researchers ...
The Spanish Power Outage Flu – Is California Next?
Energy journalist Robert Bryce assures us it is not. “California has already seen blackouts due to the weakening of its grid,” Bryce told PRI, “And no, it’s not too soon to speculate.” On the last Monday in April, “one of the worst” blackouts to ever hit Europe, the Associated Press reports, began ...
New bill in Congress revisits Prop 12
Imagine buying a house and having to adhere to the standards of a homeowner’s association five states away. In a practical sense, that is how Proposition 12 operates for pork producers across the United States. The law also outlines provisions for the house of laying hens and veal calves. Animal ...
California’s green new scam could cost you $20,000
California has long fancied itself a beacon of environmental progress, a state willing to lead the charge in combating global warming. But the reality is that this pursuit of a “green” future is coming at a staggering cost to California consumers and businesses, a cost that’s becoming increasingly unsustainable. Read ...
PRI’s Earth Week Special – What is the Cost of Going Green?
This week, we feature a special recording of our live webinar featuring PRI scholars and policy experts exploring key green topics being debated and discussed in Washington, DC and in the states – from Cap and Trade and gas and carbon taxes to green appliance mandates. Learn about the latest ...
New Study Reveals Soaring Costs of California’s Green Energy Transition
As the US marks Earth Day, a new study released today by the Pacific Research Institute, a nonpartisan, California-based, free-market think tank, reveals the staggering costs California consumers and businesses will incur as the state pursues its aggressive green energy mandates. The paper, “The Cost of Going Green,” provides a ...
Wolf management needs a regional strategy
With a daily hunting range of 30 miles or more, it is only a matter of time before wolves become a topic of conversation outside of livestock and conservation circles. Congress and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have several blueprints for the kind of predator management plan that makes ...
Read the latest on California's water wars
California Water Works
The company “plans to anchor about two dozen 40-foot-long devices, called pods, to the seafloor several miles offshore and use them to take in saltwater and pump purified fresh water to shore in a pipeline,” the Times reports. Before that, though, the concept has to be proved, which is why ...
