As Eugene Volokh notes, yesterday, in Yellowhammer Fund v. Attorney General, a federal district court invalidated an Alabama law criminalizing assisting or facilitating the procurement of an out-of-state abortion by an Alabama resident. Eugene’s post focuses mostly on the First Amendment part of the ruling. I will focus on the right to travel.

In  Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the Court left open the issue of whether states could punish residents who seek abortions in other states. However, in a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that this is question is “not especially difficult,” and that the answer is “no” because such laws violate “the constitutional right to interstate travel.”

Federal District Judge Myron Thompson, author of yesterday’s ruling clearly agrees. Here’s an excerpt from his reasoning:

Considering the right to travel in the context of Article IV’s Privileges and Immunities Clause confirms that the right includes both the right to move physically between the States and to do what is legal in the destination State. The Clause was meant to create a “general citizenship,” 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 3:674-75, § 1800 (1833), and “place the citizens of each State upon the same footing with citizens of other States.” Paul v. Virginia, 75 U.S. 168, 180 (1868)…. When individuals do travel into another State, the Clause ensures that they lose both “the peculiar privileges conferred by their [home State’s] laws” as well as “the disabilities of alienage.” Id. The Clause “insures to [citizens] in other States the same freedom possessed by the citizens of those States in the acquisition and

enjoyment of property and in the pursuit of happiness.” Id. at 180-81. These goals are incompatible with a right to travel that would allow one’s home State to inhibit a traveler’s liberty to enjoy the opportunities lawfully available in another State….

Similarly, the Supreme Court has explained that the Privileges and Immunities Clause “plainly and unmistakably secures and protects the right of a citizen of one State to pass into any other State of the Union for the purpose of engaging in lawful commerce, trade, or business without molestation.” Ward v. State, 79 U.S. 418, 430 (1870)…

The Attorney General’s characterization of the right to travel as merely a right to move physically between the States contravenes history, precedent, and common sense. Travel isvaluable precisely because it allows us to pursue opportunities available elsewhere. “If our bodies can move among states, but our freedom of action is tied to our place of origin, then the ‘right to travel’ becomes a hollow shell.” Seth F. Kreimer, Lines in the Sand: The Importance of Borders in American Federalism, 150 U. Pa. L. Rev. 973, 1007 (2002). Indeed, the Attorney General’s theory of the right to travel, which would allow each State to force its residents to carry its laws on their backs as they travel, “amount[s] to nothing more than the right to have the physical environment of the states of one’s choosing pass before one’s eyes.” Laurence H. Tribe, Saenz Sans Prophecy: Does the Privileges or Immunities Revival Portend the Future—or Reveal the Structure of the Present?, 113 Harv. L. Rev. 110, 152 (1999). Such a constrained conception of the right to travel would erode the privileges of national citizenship and is inconsistent with the Constitution….

I agree and would add that the contrary view has drastic implications that go far beyond abortion. It would allow states to criminalize travel for virtually any purpose that is forbidden or restricted within their jurisdiction, but legal in another state. For example, some states ban marijuana, while others do not. But that doesn’t give a state the power to punish citizens who travel to another state to use weed. The same goes for sports gambling, legal in 38 states, but still forbidden in 12. If a Californian (resident of one of the states that still ban the practice) decides to cross into Arizona to place a bet on his favorite team, California doesn’t have the right to punish him for it.

Judge Thompson also effectively refutes the argument that the Alabama law is constitutional because it doesn’t directly punish women who travel to get abortions, but only targets those who assist them in doing so (in this case a charity that helps poor women get abortions):

Supreme Court precedent demonstrates that, when a State creates barriers to travel itself, “the constitutional right of interstate travel is virtually unqualified,” Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280, 307 (1981), and even the slightest burdens on travel are generally not tolerated. For this reason, travel restrictions directed toward those who facilitate travel for others can offend the Constitution. Exemplifying both points is Crandall v. Nevada, which produced the Supreme Court’s first majority opinion on the right to travel. 73 U.S. 35 (1867). At issue was a Nevada statute that imposed a one-dollar tax per passenger on common carriers leaving the State. The Court held that the tax was an unconstitutional burden on the passengers’ right to travel, even though the tax was merely one dollar and even though it applied only when someone relied on a common carrier for transportation….

Likewise, in Edwards v. California, the Supreme Court struck down a California law that made it a crime to bring or assist in bringing into the State any indigent person who was not a California resident. 314 U.S. 160 (1941). Thus, the California law subjected only those who assisted others in travel to criminal liability. The Court nonetheless determined that the law violated indigent people’s right to travel….

Denying—through criminal prosecution–assistance to the plaintiffs’ clients, many of whom are financially vulnerable, is a greater burden on travel than the one-dollar tax per passenger in Crandall, and it is precisely what was held unconstitutional in Edwards. The Attorney General argues that Crandall and Edwards are distinguishable because the travel restrictions at issue in those cases operated categorically, regardless of the reasons for which people were traveling. Again, however, the right to travel includes the right to do what is lawful in another State while traveling, so restrictions that prohibit travel for specific out-of-state conduct are unconstitutional just as those that impede travel generally are. There is no end-run around the right to travel that would allow States to burden travel selectively and in a patchwork fashion based on whether they approve or disapprove of lawful conduct that their residents wish to engage in outside their borders.

I think Judge Thompson is right on this point, as well. And I would add this issue unique to the right to travel. In other contexts too, the Constitution bars laws punishing people who assist in or facilitate the exercise of a constitutional right, as well as the immediate rights-holders themselves. For example, the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment surely bars laws that punish people who publish and distribute speech, as well as the actual speakers. In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law that barred the sale and distribution of contraceptives, not merely their use.

In the aftermath of Dobbs, interstate travel to get abortions has been a major factor limiting the impact of laws severely restricting abortion enacted by many red states. It’s a major reason why the number of abortions has actually risen slightly since Dobbs, instead of declining. It also helps explain why few people have “voted with their feet” to move to pro-choice states since Dobbs. Interstate travel to get an abortion is a less costly alternative form of foot voting for many women. “Mail order” abortions using drugs such as mifepristone are also a factor here.

That does not mean that severe abortion restrictions have no effect. Having to travel out of state is costlier and more time-consuming for many women than in-state options would be. And there are certainly some who simply cannot or will not undertake the necessary travel. But the interstate option has nonetheless greatly reduced the effects of Dobbs.

This ruling will almost certainly be appealed. But, ultimately, I expect Alabama will continue to lose. Judge Thompson’s reasoning is strong. And Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion is a strong signal there is no majority on the Supreme Court for upholding these kinds of laws.

In a 2022 post, I outlined how state laws banning interstate travel to get an abortion might also be unconstitutional on two other grounds: the Dormant Commerce Clause and lack of state authority to regulate activity outside its borders. Judge Thompson does not address these issues, presumably because he didn’t need to do so, given that he already decided to rule against Alabama on other grounds.

The post Federal Court Rules Laws Restricting Interstate Travel for Abortion Violate the Right to Travel appeared first on Reason.com.

Big Brother—and Parent, and Teacher—are watching.

Across America, teachers are uploading students’ grades to digital portals on a weekly, daily, or sometimes hourly basis. They are posting not just grades on big tests, but quizzes, homework, and in-class work too. Sometimes teachers give points for day-to-day behavior in real time: Did he raise his hand before asking his question? No? Points are docked. Parents are notified. So are the kids.

The pupil panopticon starts in elementary school and just doesn’t stop.

In one high school, I am told, the grading portal changes color when the grade, even on a single assignment, pushes the kid’s average up (green) or down (red). This can fluctuate by the hour, which means so can a kid’s feelings of joy or despair. Parents can enjoy the same stomach-churning experience because they, too, have access to the portals, for better or worse.

“If I have to hear one more time from my wife about how our son isn’t going to college because he forgot to hand in a single homework assignment or did bad on ONE test I’m gonna fucking lose my mind!” is how one father expressed it on Reddit. “All it does is annoy the shit out of him, annoy the shit out of me, and damage his relationship with her. That’s it.”

That really is it. Even many of the parents who say the portal helps them keep their kids on track still admit it’s a source of stress. They get an extra helping of angst when they watch their kids nervously await the exposure of their grades.

This new school-to-parent pipeline allows parents to micromanage yet another aspect of their kids’ lives. They already track their kids’ locations, via devices and AirTags. And of course, they sign the kids up for organized activities, so the kids are always doing something adult-supervised and parent-approved. Now they have become an invisible presence in one place they used to be banished: the classroom. The message for parents is they should always be watching their kids, even as their kids grow up under a microscope, telescope, and periscope.

I asked for comments on the portals via Facebook. Many people who responded asked me not to use their full names because they’re upset about the system but don’t want their kids to suffer extra for their indiscretion. “My son has ADHD and minor anxiety and he is obsessed with the grade portal—he’s 11,” wrote Jen, a mom in Marshall, Texas. “When he’s waiting for a quiz or test grade, he’s constantly trying to check and refresh the page. It’s disturbing.”

Beth Tubbs is a therapist in the Pacific Northwest who sees a lot of young people with anxiety. She says these portals aren’t helping. When grades are available to students and their parents in real time, “Everything feels high stakes,” Tubbs says. She’s had tweens tell her, “I’m really anxious because I got a C on my geometry test and that means I’m not going to get into a good college.”

Since a lot of parents are just as anxious, the ever-present portals can create a feedback loop. The parents worry that if they aren’t on top of things, their child might not be successful. So they’re always checking the portal, which makes the child worry that any bad grade means the end. Repeat this day after day, and it starts to feel as if grade portals may be one unexamined reason kids’ anxiety is spiking.

It’s not just the high school juniors and seniors who are suffering. ClassDojo is a popular portal that allows teachers to grant and dock academic and behavior points starting with kids as young as age 5.

“Depending on the teacher’s updating habits, you may get pinged with updates throughout the day on how well your child is sharing, sitting crisscross applesauce, staying quiet when directed, and following other classroom expectations,” writes Devorah Heitner in her new book, Growing Up in Public.

The result can mean no let-up for the parent or the kid.

“Three weeks into my son’s kindergarten year, I’m already dreading any notification from this app,” a mom named Melissa wrote on an education blog about the app. “The only thing I hear are private messages about what he’s done wrong. My workday is spent dreading the notification from this horrible application, and I feel so defeated about school already. I can only imagine what my son’s feeling.”

The set-up is even making teachers anxious. One told me she accidentally gave a student a low grade on a quiz because of a typo. Within two minutes, the visibly upset student was asking about the quiz and had already been grounded by their mother. “The online Gradebook has had a….questionable.…impact for some students, parents, and teachers,” the teacher wrote.

The problem is that the portals have created a whole new student/teacher/parent equation, says Emily Cherkin, author of The Screentime Solution: A Judgment-Free Guide to Becoming a Tech-Intentional Family. Before she became “The Screentime Consultant,” Cherkin was a teacher from 2003–2015—that is, both before and after the advent of the portals. When they were introduced in about 2005, she says, she witnessed two things: Her students stopped asking her why they got something wrong on the test, and the parents started asking for them. The portals “triangulated something that shouldn’t have been triangulated,” Cherkin says.

Gone is the opportunity kids once had to daydream in class, or blow a quiz, or crack a joke. As for the parents, they’re almost forced into helicoptering—a fact some are starting to resent.

Melinda Wenner Moyer, author of How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes and mom of a seventh-grader in upstate New York, says, “I saw my son got a 30 and I brought it up casually like, ‘What happened with that social studies thing?’ And he said, ‘Mom, I’ve got it handled. It was a mistake and I’ve talked to the teacher about it, and I see PowerSchool [the portal] too. I’m on top of it and would appreciate it if you would trust me.'” Since then, says Moyer, she has made a concerted effort not to open the portal much, “and it really helped my relationship with my son.”

Autonomy is one of the three great needs in any human’s life (along with relatedness and competence). Giving kids some autonomy back could be enormously beneficial for both generations, which is why it’s time to seriously consider whether the portals are doing what they’re supposed to do: help students succeed.

Roseanne Eckert is a defense attorney in Orlando. Her son graduated high school in 2017. For a while, she writes, “I would check his grades at work and come home mad, while he didn’t even know the grade yet. I finally decided to stop it and we were all happier. The schools push the parents to be on top of the grades but it is a constant misery. Just say no!” For the record, Eckert adds: Her son was not a straight-A student in high school, but now he’s about to get his master’s degree in biomedical engineering.

So for anyone seeing a B- on that portal: Shut it down, take a deep breath, and wait a few minutes.

Or better still, years.

The post Do Schools Really Need To Give Parents Live Updates on Students' Performance? appeared first on Reason.com.

If you’ve searched online about buying a car, you know you’re in for a wave of aggressive come-ons and sales pitches. But I found a way to make car sellers clam up: All you have to do is start asking questions about the increasingly intrusive “nanny” nature of automobiles.

“This is more of an industry question,” a Ford representative told me. “You may wish to follow up with the Alliance for Automotive Innovation on this topic.”

Like automakers, the Alliance, a trade group, ignored me. But I’m not alone in my concerns.

“Ah, the wind in your hair, the open road ahead, and not a care in the world….except all the trackers, cameras, microphones, and sensors capturing your every move,” the Mozilla Foundation warned in a report published in September.

With today’s computerized vehicles, “whenever you interact with your car you create a tiny record of what you just did,” the report authors added. Because many are wirelessly connected to manufacturers, “usually all that information is collected and stored by the car company.”

That report prompted Sen. Ed Markey (D–Mass.) to follow up with a letter urging that “cars should not—and cannot—become yet another venue where privacy takes a backseat.”

That’s nice, but it ignores the government’s own role in turning vehicles into tools of control.

The massive infrastructure bill that became law in 2021 contained a mandate for technology that can “passively and accurately detect whether the blood alcohol concentration of a driver” exceeds the legal limit. If it does, it is supposed to “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation.”

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) thinks this is a swell idea and endorsed it in 2022.

We’ll be required to pay for that nanny technology, of course, whether or not it works as advertised. My guess is that automated DUI sensors monitoring people of varying mass and metabolism will be slightly less reliable than the seat belt interlocks that were briefly mandatory in the 1970s. Those prevented ignition unless passengers buckled in.

“The result was that grandmas, grocery bags and guard dogs alike triggered the no-start unless the belts for the front seats they occupied were fastened first,” Mike Davis, who generally approved of nanny mandates, wrote for The Detroit Bureau in 2009.

Memories of my father getting pointers on disabling the interlock came back to me as I shopped for a new pickup truck and found that most of them remain in near-constant contact with automakers. Through the cell network, they receive software updates and hand off data about drivers. That information is used internally, sold to third parties, and surrendered to government agencies.

“There are so many ways for the law enforcement to unlock the treasure trove of data that’s collected by your car,” the Mozilla report added. “In the United States, they can just ask for it (without a warrant) or hack into your car to get it.”

Like many people, I don’t want my vehicle tattling on me to the mothership. If you investigate ways to make sure your car reports only to you, you quickly find a subculture of DIY types hacking their purchases to keep Big Brother out of morning commutes.

“My GTI and my wife’s new Toyota had the ability to collect data and transmit it over cellular or wifi,” I found posted in one forum. “I disabled it in both cars by disconnecting the antenna connections at the telematics module, it leaves the car unable to communicate, as if it’s out in the middle of nowhere.”

Disabling snoopy tech is an at-your-own-risk venture. You should assume the warranty goes out the window.

Modifications to make vehicles less intrusive weren’t what automakers and bureaucrats intended. But unintended consequences come with the territory. The national preference for SUVs and trucks over old-school sedans, for example, is largely a result of government fuel-efficiency standards that create weird incentives. Tweaking the regulations in 2010 made the problem worse. “Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards create a financial incentive for auto companies to make bigger vehicles that are allowed to meet lower targets,” a University of Michigan study found in 2011.

The latest stroke of genius from the NTSB is to propose requiring technologies that “warn a driver when the vehicle exceeds the speed limit” and may even “electronically limit the speed of the vehicle to fully prevent drivers from exceeding the speed limit.”

Because why would a driver want the freedom to respond to specific driving conditions?

I predict more DIY modifications in the future—and more unanswered questions about what is being done to our vehicles.

The post Your Car Is Spying on You appeared first on Reason.com.

Argentina actually elected a libertarian president.

Javier Milei campaigned with a chainsaw, promising to cut the size of government.

Argentina’s leftists had so clogged the country’s economic arteries with regulations that what once was one of the world’s richest countries is now one of the poorest.

Inflation is more than 200 percent.

People save their whole lives—and then find their savings worth nearly nothing.

They got so fed up they did something never done before in modern history: They elected a full-throated libertarian.

Milei understands that government can’t create wealth.

He surprised diplomats at the World Economic Forum this month by saying, “The state is the problem!”

He spoke up for capitalism: “Do not be intimidated by the political caste or by parasites who live off the state…. If you make money, it’s because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being. Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution.”

Go, Milei! I wish current American politicians talked that way.

In the West, young people turn socialist. In Argentina, they live under socialist policies. They voted for Milei.

Sixty-nine percent of voters under 25 voted for him. That helped him win by a whopping 3 million votes.

He won promising to reverse “decades of decadence.” He told the Economic Forum, “If measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, competition, price systems, trade, and ownership of private property, the only possible fate is poverty.”

Right.

Poor countries demonstrate that again and again.

The media say Milei will never pass his reforms, and leftists may yet stop him.

But already, “He was able to repeal rent controls, price controls,” says economist Daniel Di Martino in my new video. He points out that Milei already “eliminated all restrictions on exports and imports, all with one sign of a pen.”

“He can just do that without Congress?” I ask.

“The president of Argentina has a lot more power than the president of the United States.”

Milei also loosened rules limiting where airlines can fly.

“Now [some] air fares are cheaper than bus fares!” says Di Martino.

He scrapped laws that say, “Buy in Argentina.” I point out that America has “Buy America” rules.

“It only makes poor people poorer because it increases costs!” Di Martino replies, “Why shouldn’t Argentinians be able to buy Brazilian pencils or Chilean grapes?”

“To support Argentina,” I push back.

“Guess what?” Says Di Martino, “Not every country is able to produce everything at the lowest cost. Imagine if you had to produce bananas in America.”

Argentina’s leftist governments tried to control pretty much everything.

“The regulations were such that everything not explicitly legal was illegal,” laughs Di Martino. “Now…everything not illegal is legal.”

One government agency Milei demoted was a “Department for Women, Gender and Diversity.” DiMartino says that reminds him of Venezuela’s Vice Ministry for Supreme Social Happiness. “These agencies exist just so government officials can hire their cronies.”

Cutting government jobs and subsidies for interest groups is risky for vote-seeking politicians. There are often riots in countries when politicians cut subsidies. Sometimes politicians get voted out. Or jailed.

“What’s incredible about Milei,” notes Di Martino, “is that he was able to win on the promise of cutting subsidies.”

That is remarkable. Why would Argentinians vote for cuts?

“Argentinians are fed up with the status quo,” replies Di Martino.

Milei is an economist. He named his dogs after Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Robert Lucas, all libertarian economists.

I point out that most Americans don’t know who those men were.

“The fact that he’s naming his dogs after these famous economists,” replies Di Martino, “shows that he’s really a nerd. It’s a good thing to have an economics nerd president of a country.”

“What can Americans learn from Argentina”

“Keep America prosperous. So we never are in the spot of Argentina in the first place. That requires free markets.”

Yes.

Actually, free markets plus rule of law. When people have those things, prosperity happens.

It’s good that once again, a country may try it.

COPYRIGHT 2024 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

The post Argentina, Once One of the Richest Countries, Is Now One of the Poorest. Javier Milei Could Help Fix That. appeared first on Reason.com.

In the late 1990s, my grandfather bought a mail-order bat box as a natural approach to mosquito management. The dark green plywood roost was mounted on tall wooden poles on a sunny patch in the yard and stabilized with tension wires. The catalog promised that the bats would raise their pups inside the box and feast on the mosquitoes that swarmed my grandparents’ lakefront yard.

The bat box always seemed like an undisputed win for all parties (save the mosquitoes). But when I started researching a bat box for our mosquito-plagued property in North Carolina, I learned that some off-the-shelf boxes, like the kind my grandfather used, are essentially bat ovens. In hot months, artificial roosts that are poorly located, too small, darkly painted, or insufficiently ventilated can reach lethal temperatures, killing bat pups.

This knowledge rattled me, and I suspect it would have deeply upset my grandfather, who took great pride in his environmental stewardship. But this is how science is supposed to work—hypothesize, test, share, tweak, repeat. Sometimes it’s a bummer, but how else can we know if our corrective measures do what we want?

In 2021, several experts debated in the pages of Conservation Science and Practice whether it helped bats to publicize the potential lethality of a bat box. “Telling people their well-intended conservation efforts are wrong is rarely productive,” wrote Virgil Brack Jr. and Dale W. Sparks, principal scientists at Environmental Solutions & Innovations, Inc. The subjects of their critique, Reed D. Crawford and Joy M. O’Keefe of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, replied that they would continue to raise awareness “that the cavalier use of unsuitable boxes could expose bats to deadly temperatures.” Both parties agreed the design and deployment of artificial roosts could and should be improved. Once again, the reckoning is uncomfortable but necessary.

Amateur apiarists are rethinking a few things as well. Once considered the environmentalist equivalent of a victory garden, the European honeybee hives that were established in backyards and rooftops around the U.S. in the early 2010s following reports of “colony collapse” could “actually have a negative influence on native and wild bee populations through floral resource competition and pathogen transmission,” according to research published in 2023 by conservationists at Concordia University and the University of Montreal.

“For people who say they want to save the bees and they have a honeybee hive, it’s kind of like throwing Asian carp into the Great Lakes and saying you want to save the native fish,” York University conservation professor Sheila Colla told The Washington Post in May 2023.

The undesirable effects of good intentions scale up pretty quickly when government policy drives environmental efforts. In August, Science reported that 2020 emissions regulations imposed by the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization had the desired effect of reducing the amount of sulfur that ships released into the air, as well as the undesired effect of simultaneously reducing the volume of sulfur-based clouds, called “ship tracks,” that form along shipping routes and reflect the sun away from the Earth.

“By dramatically reducing the number of ship tracks, the planet has warmed up faster,” explained Science reporter Paul Voosen. “That trend is magnified in the Atlantic, where maritime traffic is particularly dense. In the shipping corridors, the increased light represents a 50% boost to the warming effect of human carbon emissions.”

In China, ambitious government subsidies for green energy projects in the late 2010s spurred an explosion in electric vehicle (E.V.) development that is now readily apparent in the car graveyards around the country where obsolete E.V.s have been abandoned. “Not only are the sites an eyesore,” reported Bloomberg News in 2023, but “getting rid of EVs so quickly reduces their climate benefit considering they’re more emissions-intensive to build and only produce an advantage over combustion cars after a few years.”

There are even policies where personal conservation and governmental environmental policy collide in a spectacularly horrifying fashion. In a September essay titled “We Thought We Were Saving the Planet, but We Were Planting a Time Bomb” in The New York Times, Canadian novelist and essayist Claire Cameron recounted her own personal reckoning with the time she spent planting trees on logging land in Ontario, only to learn years later that her efforts helped fuel forest fires.

“This was a common—if notoriously grueling—rite of passage for Canadian university students, since it allowed you to make good money while spending a few months outdoors with other like-minded young people. I was driven in part by the idealistic view that planting a tree was always going to be better than not planting one.”

Except the trees they were planting were all the same species, water-thirsty and highly flammable, neatly spaced six feet apart. “Much later, I learned that the trees we were planting, black spruce, are so combustible that firefighters call them gas on a stick. The trees evolved to burn: They have flammable sap, and their resin-filled cones open up when heated to drop seeds into charred soil.” To make matters more complicated still, the tree-planting program was managed by private timber companies but driven by government incentives.

For some, these unintended consequences will elicit schadenfreude; for others, despair. But there is a silver lining in these revelations, which is that we learn something new every day, month, and year about what kinds of eco-stewardship produce good results as well as what those results cost. While government bodies are not Bayesian actors, individuals and private firms can be. At the human scale, we can react and adapt to new knowledge, avoid or abandon well-meaning disasters, and make choices that have a positive impact on our local ecology.

In some cases, the best thing you can do for the environment is leave it well enough alone. Bats, it turns out, are naturally drawn to roosting in dead tree trunks. My property is full of them.

The post When Well-Intended Environmentalism Backfires appeared first on Reason.com.