Articles by Gar Lipow

Found poetry on walkable cities

This blog often addresses the importance of walkable cities and towns, localities that are really there -- that have a sense of place. A friendly acquaintance of mine, Jacqueline Smay (wife of popular music guru David Smay, who authored SwordfishTrombones) tossed off this charming note that is more powerful than any statistic:

... it was cold but not bitter out, Union Square was glittering with lights and ringing with the sounds of competing street musicians, and the sidewalks were crowded with a mix of very late theatergoers, tourists, street people, street performers, local chi-chi store staff closing up for the night, dejected Giants fans, and elated A's fans. Everything felt very shiny and bustling and wide awake.

Outside a smoke shop on the corner of Powell a couple blocks up from Market, a two-man band composed of two young white guys, one with guitar and one with drums, was playing an improbably terrific version of "No Woman No Cry." Really, they had no right to be as good as they were. The streetcorner was crowded with tourists and miscellaneous wanderers, including a grandma out and about with her two six to eight-ish granddaughters; the girls were dancing deliriously in their teeny girl-power t-shirts and pastel Crocs while their grandmother beamed.

And right in front of the musicians, a middle-aged homeless black man was dancing with a middle-aged Asian woman all done-up for a big night out in a black, crepe dress with white lace and a long, swoopy duster and loads of makeup. They danced together a bit and then she spun out on her own, and he turned to the crowd, flung his arms out, and shouted, "She's beautiful! She's alive! She's alive and she knows it!"

Today’s gas consumption shows that price increases are only one part of the solution

As SUV sales plummet and gasoline use finally drops, one meme spreading around is, "Looks like people respond to price after all." The implication seems to be that any demand response other than zero proves that prices are wonderfully effective.

The problem, however, is not response is or might be zero. (I can think of few who ever claimed that.) The problem is that it takes a big price increase to produce a small response.

The current data support the conventional wisdom: 40 to 50 percent long-term elasticity, low enough to discourage us from relying on price as the main means of reducing emissions, high enough encourage us to use price as one among many means. At first glance, the raw data are even more discouraging than the conventional wisdom: Inflation adjusted gasoline prices have risen almost two-and-a-half times since 2000. Gasoline demand has dropped by slightly over 20 percent. But long-term elasticity is, by definition, a delayed response -- at least three years.

Also, if we are interested in price response as opposed to income response, we have to adjust for growth in GDP. So a rough calculation yields 45 percent long-term elasticity (with some biases that probably overstate the result). Here are two graphs, the first of raw data, the second after adjustment (click for larger versions):

Now that L-W is dead, Barnes’ sky trust is looking good

Revkin speculates that Barnes' proposal is a way to break the deadlock stopping climate change legislation.

I think he may be right. Tax emissions. (Or cap them and auction permits.) Refund the revenue to everybody. It has the following political advantages:

• It is simple and easy to understand.
• It puts a price on emissions without really penalizing anybody. It is a no-hair-shirt solution.

This last point is worth emphasizing. It does not punish consumers, because the increased prices they pay are made up for by the dividend check. It does not really punish fossil fuel companies, because the tax they pay gets passed along to customers who have new money to pay those increased prices. Of course, fossil fuel companies do lose, as people use less of their product, but that is not punishment; it is an inevitable result of their selling a product whose side effects can no longer be tolerated. Since it will take time to phase out fossil fuels, oil and coal companies are free to use the time tax-and-dividend gives them to make the transition to other businesses, perhaps by expanding the investments they have already made in wind and solar.

I'm going to post soon on why I think the people who think tax-and-dividend (or any mechanism depending on price) can be the sole, or even main, solution are wrong. Price is insufficient by itself; public investment and rule-based regulation have to remain the primary solutions. But price is not avoidable as part of the solution.

Country songs dedicated to your favorite climate personalities

Dedicated to the coal and nuclear industries: Lorrie Morgan's What Part of No Don't You Understand?

Dedicated to Scott McClellan: Randy Travis' Pray for the Fish: