Author Archives: L. David Peters

The Undergraduate Organizing Committee wants the circumstances of our birth to determine the particulars of how we pay for our undergraduate education. Or, at least, that’s how it appears. Through self-interested whining, the UOC has spent the past few years pushing Yale to increase financial aid to families and decrease the parent contribution, and has »

Nuclear power is the regrettable third rail of American energy policy. The environmental lobby has knee-jerk concerns about waste and pollution, the dirty power lobby is concerned about competition, and the public is irrationally concerned about safety. None of these issues makes particular sense for the environment or the public interest; in fact, they have »

Something extraordinary took place around August 15, 2003. In the valleys of Pennsylvania, the air was substantially cleaner than it had been just 24 hours earlier. Sulfur dioxide levels decreased by more than 90 percent, smog (ground-level ozone) levels about 50 percent, and light scattered by particles (a standard measure of soot and other pollutant »

Diametrically opposite today’s gas-guzzling SUVs is a passenger car that gets 50 miles to the gallon. It is not a hybrid gas-electric like the Toyota Prius, it is not a subminiature car like DaimlerChrysler’s Smart, it runs on neither natural gas nor vegetable oil. Based on modern refinements of a century-old technology (invented 1893), this »

X, Y and Z were all applicants to the Yale College class of 2008. They come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds and attend the same suburban high school, which we will tactfully call S. Both X and Y are leaders and at the top of their class. X is vice president, involved in a peer counseling »

The state of animal farming in this country is abysmal. The small farm and slaughterhouse have been almost entirely replaced by the vertically integrated meat and animal products conglomerate; environmental disaster and unintentional cruelty to animals in the name of efficiency have become de facto standards in much of the industry. Chelsea Purvis’ recent guest »

The recent discussion surrounding Berkeley dining hall begs a larger debate about sustainable food at Yale and “sustainable agriculture” in general. The food purchased by Berkeley, farmed using organic methods, is supposedly more Earth-friendly than the food served elsewhere on campus. But in pushing the theory that organic farming is the solution to humanity’s agricultural »