Latest Articles
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Unlike McCain and Clinton, Obama would have us capitulate to Gas Price Terror
Gas prices are high, which is the worst thing that’s ever happened in the history of America, dating back to the time of the dinosaurs. It’s a violation of the spirit of the Constitution of Independence as written by Jefferson Davis. We must declare preemptive war on gas prices before they destroy our freedoms, which […]
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Output-based carbon regulations ignore critical types of efficiency
"Output-based standards" are getting credit around here as a politically impractical but sensible proposal. David described them as "relentlessly efficient."
I'm sure relentless efficiency was the intent, but in fact it is very much a way of picking winners, of rewarding one particular type of efficiency at expense of others. The idea is that within industries, a standard will be set for maximum emissions per useful BTU delivered. So if you are heating tomatoes as part of making tomato paste, the standard would apply to your emissions per BTU used to raise the temperature of a tomato. The problem is that while this rewards delivering those BTUs more efficiently, it does not reward heating the tomatoes less, perhaps by substituting a filtering process for some of the heating.
When I brought this up in comments, Sean argued that the second method still rewards by lowering fuel bills. But then, so does the first. If delivering BTUs more efficiently needs an incentive over and above fuel saving, then so does finding a way to use fewer BTUs in the first place.
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Wild Asian vultures going the way of the dodo
Wild Asian vultures are likely going to the way of the dodo, a new study says. The white-backed vulture population has plunged by nearly 99.9 percent in India since 1992, and two other vulture species have seen a drop of 97 percent, say researchers publishing in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Researchers […]
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Note to Bush, media: Opening ANWR cuts gas prices one cent in 2025
Bush blames Congress' failure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for high gasoline prices. The administration's own Energy Information Administration found otherwise in a 2004 Congressional-requested "Analysis of Oil and Gas Production in ANWR" (PDF):
It is expected that the price impact of ANWR coastal plain production might reduce world oil prices by as much as 30 to 50 cents per barrel [in 2025].
Don't spend it all in one place, American public! (Note to Bush: There are 42 gallons in a barrel.) EIA continues:
Assuming that world oil markets continue to work as they do today, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries could countermand any potential price impact of ANWR coastal plain production by reducing its exports by an equal amount.
Curses, foiled again!
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Next decade could be cooler than expected, says study
Natural shifts in ocean circulation may trump human-caused warming over the next decade, causing global temperatures to cool slightly, says new research published in the journal Nature. But hang on to your pessimism: “Just to make things clear, we are not stating that anthropogenic climate change won’t be as bad as previously thought” over the […]
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Economic naïvete on carbon prices
If you put a price on GHG emissions, will it raise the cost of energy?
That question goes to the core of carbon policy. Unfortunately, many people inside and outside the environmental community consistently get it wrong, with potentially disastrous results.
Consider: if the answer is yes, then we don't need any incentives for GHG reduction. The costs of carbon-intensive energy will rise, giving we energy users the incentive they need to lower consumption.
But if the answer is no, we will find ourselves with a tax on dirty energy but no incentive to reduce its use. That is, we will end up with a greenhouse-gas policy that fails to do the one thing it's supposed to do above all else: lower our greenhouse-gas emissions.
The answer, more often than not, is no.
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Umbra on cargo bikes
Hi Umbra, After reading your article on the amazing Thermos, coffee, and bicycle commuting, I thought I should alert you (if you’re not already alerted) to the Xtracycle (or S.U.B.) as a means for everyday, super-utilitarian biking. I replaced my car with one of these about eight months ago, and find that meeting new “can […]
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Food prices are high, and so are Big Ag’s profits
Food prices hitting you hard in the pocketbook? Agriculture giant Archer Daniels Midland feels for you, it really does — but gee, its profits jumped 42 percent this quarter, so it can’t really empathize. ADM’s grain-processing division is doing lively business keeping up with the bumper corn crop. And, they’ll have you know, high food […]
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Shorter ‘stache
Shorter Tom Friedman: "Tax the things we don't want, don't tax the things we do want, and don't be so freakin' stupid."
Amen to that, though his fantasy solution of George Bush being the one to "get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise" is a bit odd. Those waiting for that to happen might find this illuminating.
I suggest that Tom atone by joining this very excellent organization.
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