Articles by Gar Lipow

What if a public/private partnership tried to invent the stop sign today?

What if there were no stop signs and a 21st century corporation tried to invent one under contract from a 21st century government department? Yep, there are downsides to public investments …

Unilateral drilling deal is bad politics

Joe Romm seems to think Obama’s public support for drilling is smart politics, getting something for nothing. Romm is one of the smartest policy guys out there, but I think he has missed a key point on the politics here. Supporting drilling is a way of reaching out to low-information voters. But low-information voters don’t […]

How to stop horselaughs from crushing good ideas?

In a recent post about buy back programs to get polluting junkers off the road, I think David's key point was this: "This is one of those silver bb's enviros need to learn how to market better. All small-bore solutions sound faintly silly in isolation ..."

In fact any solution that is drastically new sounds faintly silly in isolation, or can be made to sound so if an empty-headed media does a one-sentence rephrase (omitting key facts or outright lying if necessary) followed by extended fits of giggles and horselaughs.

For example, Obama made a quite reasonable case that keeping tires inflated properly would save more oil than all offshore drilling combined. The response from the Republican Party and media combined is Tire gauges? Haw, haw, haw!

It would be interesting to hear from some market types on how to counteract this garbage. Because otherwise we can watch idiots giggle our future away: "What, you want to stuff my attic with some sort of fabric? Chortle ... You want to produce electricity by sticking blades on a tower in a windy spot? Heh, heh, heh ... You want to put up paths so people can ride bicycles like little kids? Ha, ha,ha."

You tell me: Are we doomed to forever be South Park Nation, headed by President Beavis and Vice President Butthead? Or is there a way to be heard over the whinnying and braying?

Short, medium, and long-term solutions to phase out oil

As opposed to emission or energy, what can we do about oil? As I've said in the past: not a lot. But "not a lot" is not equal to zero.

Here are some pretty immediate things we can do:

1. There have been some real drops in oil use in response to increased prices. I think Charles Komanoff once suggested that various types of conservation and efficiency measures could reduce oil use 10 percent more or less overnight [PDF]. Many of his suggestions are not exactly pain-free, but neither are the reductions we are making anyway in response $100 plus per barrel oil.
2. Alan Blinder's proposal to buy oil guzzling clunkers back from owner at a premium -- old, fairly cheap cars only. These tend not to be the cars driven the most miles. Still, there would be real savings.
3. Increased telecommuting. We are not going to switch everyone with an office job to 100 percent work-from-home mode. But putting in place some modest incentives, along with public education that help rebut some of the most common myths about telecommuting could get some modest immediate increases.
4. Increased subsidies to existing rapid transit. Existing buses and trains should not have to cut services right when more people want to use them.
5. Increased support for car pooling and van pooling. More incentives for companies to set up such pools, plus funding for services (such as the ones we already see) will make it easy for people interested in pooling private vehicles across companies to do so.

Below the fold you will find some things we can do that are not immediate, but can be done pretty quickly.