Word: greed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...gilded '80s? The new decade is only six weeks old, and already stores are piled high with books that portray the past ten years as a sink of avarice and excess. The melodramatic titles depict the American free-enterprise system as overrun by barbarians and liars, ambition and greed. And readers are lapping it all up. Just as they reveled in stories of the rich and famous during the past decade, today's inquiring minds are hungry for colorful tales about the pratfalls of the mighty...
...pell-mell pursuit of profits by businesses has long been a major source of pollution. But could such greed be used instead to help preserve the environment? A growing number of politicians and economists think so, and they have come up with the idea of allowing companies to buy and sell the "right" to pollute as part of a plan to encourage them to clean up their operations. Ultimately, there could be a national or even global market that would treat pollution permits like stocks and bonds...
...acceptable level of SO2 production, amounting to its fair share of the national limit. If a company managed to pollute less than its share, it could receive permits representing the shortfall, which it could sell to firms that could not meet their target. That is where the power of greed comes in: companies would have an enormous incentive to cut their emissions so they could profit from peddling their surplus permits...
ENVIRONMENT: How greed can lead to cleaner...
Mencken was really a man of his times, and despite his reputation as a vitriolic critic of American hypocrisy and greed, he shared more than a little intellectual common ground with those who perpetuated a status quo based on race, class, gender and religious bias...