oil

A new natural capitalism

I'm going to sit the fence on Kit's poll by saying that reigning in climate change will require both a re-envisioning of capitalism and a revision of our core values.

An excellent professor of mine at MIT introduced our class to the concept of "natural capitalism," pioneered by Paul Hawkins and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins. Their 1999 book on the subject, probably familiar to many of you, was an eye-opener for me at the time. Here is a short synopsis of the book from Publisher's Weekly:

Peak oil and politics

Last week the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ran part one of a two-part series on how Cuba survived without oil after the fall of the Soviet Union. (Not technically true -- there was oil, just far too little of it.) The next part runs this Sunday and has to do with the redefinition of Cuban medicine in the post-oil world. It's all very fascinating, and it's produced by one of our national treasures, David Suzuki.

Which is thicker, blood or oil? A longtime shareholder reflects

My family has been intimately involved with Exxon through the years. My great-great-grandfather Maurice Clark went into the provisioning business with John D. Rockefeller around the time of the Civil War, but ended up selling the nascent oil-refining part of the business to Rockefeller in the late 19th century. Years later, my grandmother’s uncle ran […]

Addicted to Oil, with Tom Friedman

I poke fun at Thomas Friedman on occasion. His platitudinous, gee-whiz, American-tourist prose, presented with a heaping helping of deep-think pretension, is a target-rich environment. But that gee-whiz persona serves him well when he’s right, and he’s right about energy. His Discovery Channel program Addicted to Oil, which aired Sat. night, is absolutely stellar. Catch […]

Fuel tax magic, part one

The following is part one of a guest essay from Charles Komanoff, an economist and environmental activist in New York City. For more on taxing carbon fuels, go to http://www.komanoff.net/fossil/.

For part two of this essay, go here.

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"Pam and Matt Keith spent Memorial Day weekend on a houseboat on Lake Oroville in Northern California. But because of high gasoline prices, the Keiths never even untied the boat from its mooring slightly offshore. When they ventured away from the shore, they supplied their own power -- in kayaks."

So began The New York Times take on the start of the summer driving season in an age of $3 gas: "Holiday Travelers Hit the Road, but Scrimped a Bit."

The Times' page-one piece was guaranteed to bring smiles to both economists and despisers of motorized recreation. As a member of both camps, I ate it up. I loved that the Keiths were kayaking instead of houseboating around the lake, and that another California couple, Celia and Michael Shane, had shelved their annual jet-skiing trip in Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada. "To save the $70 per tank it now costs to fill up their minivan," the Times reported, "the Shanes were barbecuing instead." For guys like me who can let a single roaring jet ski ruin an entire beach day, fewer decibels mean more happiness. And after a year's drumbeat of articles insisting that higher gas prices hadn't dented Americans' "love affair with their cars," it was heartening to see the paper of record start acknowledging the No. 1 tenet of economics -- higher prices mean lower demand.

The world's thirst for petroleum breeds war, props up dictators, and imperils the climate. Known oil deposits are shrinking by the day. So no question in economics is more pressing than whether, and by how much, changes in the price of gas reduce the demand for it. I've been examining this question since May 2004, when the price first edged past two bucks. Every month I faithfully enter the latest price and consumption data into a spreadsheet. This has to be done just right. For one thing, because gas use follows seasonal patterns, monthly data must be compared over intervals of 12 months (or 24, etc.). For another, changes in price must be adjusted for general inflation. Most important is netting out the upswing in gasoline use that ordinarily accompanies expanding economic activity when the price of gas is stable. Only after taking these steps can one isolate the effect of higher pump prices on gasoline demand.

A geo-green third party?

Thomas Friedman -- la moustache de la sagesse -- has a column up (NYT $elect; reprinted in full here) suggesting that his "geo-green" shtick would be a good basis for a third party presidential candidacy. God love The Mustache for bringing energy issues to a broad audience, but this column is dopey.

Let's start with this:

What might a Geo-Green third party platform look like?

Its centerpiece would be a $1 a gallon gasoline tax, called "The Patriot Tax," which would be phased in over a year. People earning less than $50,000 a year, and those with unusual driving needs, would get a reduction on their payroll taxes as an offset.

Putting aside the rather paltry size of the tax and the difficulty of determining "unusual driving needs," this seems sensible enough, though a broad carbon tax would be preferable. But:

The billions of dollars raised by the Patriot Tax would go first to shore up Social Security, second to subsidize clean mass transit in and between every major American city, third to reduce the deficit, and fourth to massively increase energy research by the National Science Foundation and the Energy and Defense Departments' research arms.

What a bizarre list. Social Security is fine. If it's deficit-killing expenditures you're after, why not start with healthcare? And I'm all for mass transit, but is it more important than getting alternate sources of energy online? If reducing the deficit is so important, why does Friedman -- and virtually every other pundit -- insist that a gas tax be revenue neutral?

This, however, may be the most extravagant claim:

Can we replace oil and maintain energy supply?

This piece on EnergyBulletin is brilliant, and by that I mean it makes arguments I like to make.

Can we simply switch out oil for other fuels? No:

Tar sands fever

Via GCC, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has announced that by 2020, Canada will be producing almost 5 million barrels of oil, almost all of that being from tar sands.

This explains, in large part, why Canada has opted for empty symbolism: We've hitched our wagon to the tar sands, come hell and high water. I'm actually pretty sympathetic to our new Conservative government, who at least made their disdain for Kyoto honestly known. The previous Liberals were happily pursuing the same policies while pretending to care about Kyoto.

Push to raise fuel-economy standards gaining new support

Cringe as we might over record-high gasoline prices, they could be the best thing to happen to automobile fuel economy since the Arab oil embargo. Nowhere to go but up. The soaring cost of oil in recent weeks has sent Washington lawmakers into an election-year frenzy. Some of their proposals — like one from Senate […]