Gristmill

EPA reopens possibility of regulating CO2 from coal-fired power plants

Anti-coal activists scored a win on Tuesday as the U.S. EPA signaled that it is reconsidering the Bush administration’s late decree that greenhouse-gas emissions shouldn’t be taken into account when determining whether to approve the construction of new coal-fired power plants. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said in a letter [PDF] to the Sierra Club that […]

A price signal in the vehicle market is best applied to the vehicle

Proponents of raising the gas tax -- and the chattering class is littered with them these days -- have a simple, central argument: gas taxes create a market signal that pushes all vehicle consumers in the direction of fuel efficiency.

Indeed, some conservatives (and car companies) go further: they say that CAFE standards are bad policy because they force automakers to create products for which there's no demand. It's no good making fuel-efficient cars if nobody wants to buy them! (Americans love big, powerful cars. "Everybody knows" that.) Higher gas taxes should replace CAFE, because they create create demand instead of forcing supply.

A moment's thought reveals a serious flaw in these arguments. Fuel costs are a relatively low portion of total vehicle costs -- maybe 10-20 percent. There's maintenance, insurance, parking, but most of all, the price of the car.

And when the time comes to buy a car, people don't behave like the rational interest maximizers of economic myth. They rarely calculate out future costs like fuel. They consider the number on the price tag in front of them: the price of the car.

It follows that if you want a market signal, you should put it where it will have the most effect: on the price of the car.

As it happens, we have a policy like that! Let's hand the mic to John Heywood, who has headed the Sloan Automotive Laboratory since 1972:

I think we need a purchase tax, a feebate system, like the French have instituted fairly recently. Fees for high-consuming vehicles and rebates for low-consuming vehicles. That will help reinforce consumer response to CAFE requirements by providing a market incentive.

There you go. A clear price signal, applied at the point of maximum effect, supplementing rather than replacing fuel efficiency standards. CAFE standards push automakers to make fuel-efficient cars; feebates push consumers to buy them. (Oh, and unlike gas taxes, feebates aren't regressive.)

How is this not a preferable policy, both economically and politically? What am I missing?

Thomas Friedman enthuses over 'eco-friendly alternatives to fertilizers'

It was a Thomas Friedman column like so many others: the pundit careens through the roads of India, breathlessly marveling at the innovation he sees. Ain't globalization ... awesome?

But this is Thomas Friedman 2.0, green version; this time, he's not being squired about by a loquacious and colorful local taxi driver, but rather by a pair of young Yalies in a "a plug-in electric car that is also powered by rooftop solar panels." And rather than gape slack-jawed at some software wizard's handiwork or a gleaming new factory, the pundit is bowled over by stuff like "organic farming in Andhra Pradesh, or using neem and garlic as pesticide."

And that's not all. Friedman and his entourage visit a "local prince's palace to recharge their cars," and discover that his highness' business was "cultivating worms and selling them as eco-friendly alternatives to chemical fertilizers."

Friedman once proclaimed that prospects for world peace hinged on dotting the globe with McDonald's franchises. Now he's blustering over organic farming. It's enough to make you gush about universal progress.

Attack of the zombies: global cooling!

John Fleck comments on George Will's latest zombie attack: in the 1970s, scientists said the Earth was cooling!

What's amazing is not that George Will is selectively quoting to mislead the reader, but that he continues to do so after John sent him a copy of the article in question:

When George Will last wrote about this subject, last May, I sent him a copy of the Science News article he misleadingly quoted in the example I used above. I got a nice note back from him thanking me for sharing it.

I'll leave it to the reader to decide what this reveals about George Will's journalistic integrity.

I can sense some frustration from Fleck that this argument lives on despite the publication of his nice BAMS article that lays out the actual history of the argument, and which clearly shows it to be false.

All I can say is: Welcome to the club, John.

Will U.K.'s prime minister act to address the biggest threat to Britain's youth?

This is a guest post by noted NASA climate scientist James Hansen. It has also been submitted to the Observer.

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Over a year ago I wrote to Prime Minister Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain. I have asked the same of Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, and other world leaders. The reason is this -- coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet.

Our global climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear, and there is potential for explosive changes with effects that would be irreversible -- if we do not rapidly slow fossil fuel emissions over the next few decades.

Tipping points are fed by amplifying feedbacks. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As tundra melts, methane -- a strong greenhouse gas -- is released, causing more warming. As species are pressured and exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.

The public, buffeted by day-to-day weather fluctuations and economic turmoil, has little time or training to analyze decadal changes. How can they be expected to evaluate and filter out advice emanating from special economic interests? How can they distinguish top-notch science and pseudoscience -- the words sound the same?

Leaders have no excuse -- they are elected to lead and to protect the public and its best interests. Leaders have at their disposal the best scientific organizations in the world, such as the United Kingdom's Royal Society and the United States National Academy of Sciences. Only in the past few years did the science crystallize, revealing the urgency.

Clustered housing and green space combine to good effect

Located just outside Austin, Plum Creek in Kyle, Tex. is this region's first traditional neighborhood development -- a community of 8,700 residential units, several hundred acres of green space, over 600 acres of commercial, employment, and mixed-use property, a 70-acre town center, and a commuter rail station, all built on the principles of "new urbanism."

View full stats and project history at Terrain.org, which has an absorbing file of such "UnSprawl Case Studies" (and other great literary and visual content on place, both natural and built) viewable in the dropdown in the top right corner. Plum Creek may not look like paradise to everyone, but it's an example of the way new developments can keep up with the times and the needs of a changing social and energy landscape.

Expanding on Barbara Boxer's principles for climate legislation

This post is by Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, announced earlier this month that she hopes to have a cap-and-trade bill blessed by her committee by the end of the year. Her announcement left room for criticism.

Action advocates wished Boxer had been more specific about goals for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. The Wall Street Journal posted a piece suggesting the Senator's new principles were vague and stale.

Moreover, if we want Uncle Sam to wow the world with new-found religion on climate action and to do so in time for the U.S. to take its seat at Copenhagen in a morally upright position, then a committee vote by year's end will be too little too late. A better goal would be affirmative votes by the House and Senate well before Copenhagen, along with aggressive, progressive energy legislation and continuing bold action by the Obama Administration this spring and summer.

Still, if we want principled action, then principles are a good place to start. Boxer's are as follows:

Until real middle-class wages start rising, we can't end agricultural subsidies

Watching this gripping animation (h/t Ezra Klein) that charts the spread of Wal-Marts across the country got me thinking. I felt like I was really watching the spread of wage stagnation across the country. I'm not suggesting there's any clarity as to which came first -- Wal-Mart or the grinding halt in middle-class wage growth. But Wal-Mart's accelerated growth in the 1980s matches this chart on wage inequality nicely (note the bottom two lines).

It's a pointless chicken-and-egg debate at a certain level. You can't blame Sam Walton (much less Sebastian Kresge or James Sinegal) for the fact that discounters that thrive on downward price pressure represent the only means most Americans have of maintaining the illusion of a rising standard of living.

Freaky