Our top five reads of the day:
- Tom Friedman wants political leaders to get their act together and think big: “The long-term concern is that people intuitively understand that what we need most now is nation-building in America. They understand it by just looking around at our crumbling infrastructure, our sputtering job-creation engines and the latest international education test results that show our peers out-educating us, which means they will eventually out-compete us”
- Kathleen Parker sees the signs of an emerging centrist movement: “In a political culture where moderation is the new heresy, centrism is fast becoming the new black. Political outliers – not quite Republican, not quite Democrat – are forming new alliances in a communal search for “Home.” Exhausted by extremism and aching for real change, more and more Americans are moving away from demagoguery and toward pragmatism. “
- Barry Brock makes the case for the importance of nuclear power: “When a carbon price that is high enough to drive a technology switch eventually kicks in, only nuclear power will keep the lights on, keep electricity costs down, and meet long-term emission reduction targets, say three Australian authors in a paper published this week in international peer-reviewed journal Energy.”
- Gregg Easterbrook makes the case for cutting the defense budget: “Why is the United States spending $700 billion per year on defense at a time when great-power tensions are low, and no other nation is even attempting to challenge the Pentagon’s supremacy? If U.S. defense and intelligence costs were pared in sensible ways, Washington would still retain a military dominance that no other nation would attempt to challenge.”
- Kate Galbraith highlights the importance of building codes: “Building codes are not exactly the stuff of a rollicking supper-table conversation. But experts say that they are among the most straightforward and cost-effective ways to cut energy costs in buildings, which account for about 40 percent of energy use in the United States and Europe because of the need for amenities like heating, cooling and lighting.”
