Free Republic

Located just about halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix, Desert Center, California, was once bustling with business. In the ’20s, the local Desert Center Cafe was open 24-7 with customers filtering in and out as they made their way back and forth between the two iconic cities. According to The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, the cafe’s motto was “We lost our keys, we can’t close!” Today, the Desert Center Cafe — along with the rest of the buildings on the dingy Desert Center main street — is abandoned and dilapidated. Other than the small ghost town at its center,...

Decarbonizing the United States by the year 2050, as many policymakers advocate and a strong majority of Americans support, would likely be the most challenging infrastructure overhaul in the history of our country. Frankly, the odds are heavily stacked against it happening. Though many support the idea in abstract, they may not necessarily grasp what such an energy transition would entail in practice. The International Energy Agency (IEA) and researchers from Arizona State University recently spelled it out in detail. Here is a summary of what a carbon-free United States might look like in 2050: The grid will be producing...

A sign on an upside-down dumpster spelled the end of Pearl Pai’s long romance with plastics recycling. For years, Pai and her family generated almost no trash. She carefully washed, sorted and bagged hard-to-recycle items and drove them two towns over from her home in Berkeley, California, to the area’s best recycling center. But on a gray morning in late May, when she pulled up with a bag of flimsy plastic clamshell-style containers, yogurt tubs and meat trays, the sign informed her that, “due to poor market conditions”, these items would no longer be accepted for recycling. This is a...