The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. ENVIRONMENT
Researchers find new growth in forests around the world.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Scholar R.J. Smith on how the U.S. can better manage its own forest land:
“Many in the government forest and fire agencies, forestry schools and associations (as well as timber associations) and a growing number of forest ecologists and fire ecologists have called for massive thinning of the forests to restore their health. Some of the leading forest ecologists say landscape- scale thinning of wild lands covering hundreds of thousands of acres is necessary to return the forests to pre-settlement conditions, when regular low- intensity fires would creep along the surface, promoting natural, healthy, and open, park-like forests.”
2. HEALTH
A new study suggests a link between consumption of red meat and breast cancer.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on previous studies linking fat consumption to breast cancer and heart disease:
“The widely-believed notion that low-fat diets are good for your health went ‘poof’ this week—although the busting of that myth shouldn’t be news to regular readers of this column. Low-fat diets didn’t reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, colorectal cancer or invasive breast cancer, according to three large studies published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.”
3. ENVIRONMENT
Activists prepare to celebrate “America Recycles Day.”
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Risk & Environmental Policy Angela Logomasini on why recycling mandates are a waste of resources:
“[New York City’s] recycling program — like many others around the country — has long hemorrhaged tax dollars. Every mayor has tried to stop the waste since the program began in 1989, when local law 19 mandated the city to recycle 25% of its waste by 1994. ‘It is impossible to reach a mandated recycling level,’ said Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1996, ‘unless you take all the people in New York, put them in prison, and force them to recycle.’”