I write these editorials simply to record, for myself, my own opinions and thought processes. People have a tendency to correct their memories to fit with the events after the fact. (Ask people how they voted in an election when the winner subsequently turned out to be unpopular, and you won’t get close to the percentage that actually voted for that candidate.) By writing down my thoughts, I seek to avoid such false corrections. It is unlikely that I have any readership of these commentaries (I have never checked my weblogs to see), except for the occasional Google search hit, but they are out on the web to keep me honest. You’re welcome to read them, but first let me warn you that my opinions are bit unusual.

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

…

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle. One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one’s opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it. Political predictions are usually wrong. But even when one makes a correct one, to discover why one was right can be very illuminating. In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality. If one recognizes this, one cannot, of course, get rid of one’s subjective feelings, but one can to some extent insulate them from one’s thinking and make predictions cold-bloodedly, by the book of arithmetic. In private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one’s weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean world where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, all finally traceable to a secret belief that one’s political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality.

George Orwell, In Front of Your Nose, 1946

Anyway these are my humours, my opinions: I give them as things which I believe, not as things to be believed. My aim is to reveal my own self, which may well be different tomorrow if I am initiated into some new business which changes me. I have not, nor do I desire, enough authority to be believed. I feel too badly taught to teach others.

Michel de Montaigne, On educating children, as translated by M. A. Screech in The Complete Essays

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

“Think Different” Advertisement, Apple Computers
(I like this quote for what it says, but that’s nothing compared to its amusement value. Think about it.)

6 September 2010 — Shorter Thoughts: Politics

End of Combat Mission in Iraq

President Obama’s speech on Iraq was as disappointing as it was expected. Had the grammar been mangled, I would have been tempted to believe it was George Bush speaking. It would have been better had President Obama said nothing at all, rather than to speak as if the war had been necessary and appropriate. Also, it is Orwellian in nature to declare an end of the combat mission in Iraq while fifty thousand troops remain, and the state department is arming itself and hiring mercanaries to continue operations on its own.

Peace Talks

Without a new approach from the U.S., nothing can come of yet another round of U.S. and Israel vs. Palestine talks. I doubt President Obama has the courage to try a new approach. The U.S. strategy seems to be one of letting facts on the ground outlast five or more generations of Palestinians in the expectation. Of course, the Israeli claim to Palestine, based upon words written over one hundred generations ago illustrates that even this strategy contains the seed of future potential strife.

U.S. Economy

I tend to agree with Paul Krugman and Simon Johnson on the Democrats’ failures, particularly on the economy. I have not written here in this vein when I would be parroting them. Of course my longer horizon view of the economy is quite different from theirs.

RSS for the record

It would be good, for the record, to record periodically my news sources. The majority of my information comes from the following RSS feeds:

4 August 2010 — Blowout in perspective

The Federal Flow Rate Technical Group made an estimate of 4.9 million barrels (±10%) for the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout. At 140 kg/barrel, this is 700 million kg, or 756,186 short tons. Coal consumption in the US in 2009 was 1,000,424,000 short tons, or 2,740,888 short tons/day. So the entire 118-day blowout was the equivalent of only 0.28 days of U.S. coal emissions (less than 7 hours). Said another way, the U.S. puts almost one BP Deepwater Horizon into Earth’s atmosphere 3.6 times a day. (I write almost because coal combustion does leave behind some fly ash as a toxic by-product.)

As horrible as the blowout has been, the real problem remains coal.

2 August 2010 — Things that would be useful inventions #2

This is a second installment of the series started last month.

Concentrated solar combining PV and thermal. For example, a triple-junction, high-temperature concentrated PV cell at the focal point of a Stirling Dish.
Bacteria bred or genetically engineered to eat gunpowder.

13 July 2010 — Shorter Thoughts: GIIPS, Spectator Sports, Spy Swap, Gaza

More short thoughts for the record:

Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy

I tended to ignore Paul Krugman’s arguments on the Euro in 2001. I wanted it to work, which clouded my judgement and let me think the EU could be successful, but I see now that I was wrong, and Krugman was right. Greece’s problems will probably require default, and leaving the Euro. What is interesting is how little the traditional press reports Professor Krugman’s arguments; traditional media accepts the argument that the EU bailout will work, which is unlikely. It also interesting to see all of these countries being lumped together in reporting, when their situations are somewhat different. The adjective profligate and similar words are often used to describe these countries, but Spain and Ireland were running budget surpluses before the panic, whereas Greece was engaging in deception to cover its true financial situation. Portugal and Italy were running moderate deficits before the panic.

World Cup

A massive opiate for the masses to keep them distracted from the real issues.

LeBron James

Ditto.

Spy swap

A minor opiate for the masses.

Attack on the Gaza aid ships

The attack was clearly a violation of international law. The lack of a response by the U.S. once again demonstrates that it only condemns illegal behavior when it is convenient.

12 July 2010 — Shorter Thoughts: Blowout, Financial Reform, Deficits

I haven’t commented on many recent events; my feelings about them seem quite obvious, and exposition is not necessary, but here for the record are a couple of comments:

Blowout

What need be said about BP’s Deepwater Horizon blowout. Just as the financial panic highlighted the failure of regulation of Wall Street, just as the EPA approval of the Pine Creek mountain removal highlighted the triumph of corporate power over our mandate to promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, the blowout highlighted the failure of regulation by the Department of Interior of oil exploitation. The mechanism of regulation in the U.S. is broken.

Of course the real answer to the blowout is to end our use of fossil resources (oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, aquifers, and so on). We must electrify our transportation so that it can be powered by wind and solar energy.

In the meantime, it is necessary that corporations be held responsible for their mistakes.

Financial Reform

The Financial Reform bill will do little to prevent the next financial panic and the next bailout. It is simply an attempt to give the appearance of a response, without accomplishing much of significance. It fails to break out the large financial corporations, as Simon Johnson trumpets. It fails to solve the failures of Federal regulatory agencies. It fails to impose hard leverage constraints. It fails to separate banking and trading (the strong Volcker rule) and reimpose the Glass-Steagall rules. It fails to create strong consumer protection.

Deficits

My position has always been that the government should run a surplus and a deficit in bad times. The economy needs financial stimulus at the moment. At the same time, we need to raise taxes to pay for the Republican’s irresponsible tax cuts, to pay for the plutocracy’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and wind down spending there. Once the economy has ended its downward spiral, we need to find a way to end its upward spiral.

Oscar Grant

We will never be free of police terror in this country until we have completely independent organizations to investigate, prosecute, and judge the government, especially including the police.

5 July 2010 — Things that would be useful inventions #1

I have a long list of things that would be useful if invented. Since they are outside of my field, I won’t be the one inventing them, but I can at least write down my ideas from time to time. The idea needs to be fairly specific (e.g. better batteries doesn’t qualify). Here are a few:

Thin-film photovoltaic with a bandgap around 550 nm and transparent in 400-500 nm and 600-700 nm: It would convert green light (where the solar irradiance peaks) to electricity, and pass the wavelengths absorbed by chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and the carotenoids, which are used for photosynthesis in most crops. This would allow crops to be grown underneath PV arrays on rooftops and in fields.
Similar to the above, a mirror that reflects green light and passes red and blue, allowing concentrated solar thermal arrays to be built over plants.
Bi-directional DC-to-DC converter as a component of a battery management system: It would connect to the battery terminals and maintain the voltage of each battery in a series chain at the same voltage by either taking or providing power to a secondary shared system voltage (e.g. 12 V or 36 V in a car). It would operate both during charge and discharge, and avoid the weakest-link problem in a battery pack.
Books that are fireproof and waterproof; a form of paper and ink that allows books to be printed that will survive fire and flood: This would be used to create libraries in both publicized and secret locations meant to survive the collapse of civilization to help shorten the ensuing Dark Ages. For example, very thin stainless steel or titanium foil might serve as paper and printing might be via deposition of a different metal. While this might be hard to read, it might serve as a master for more convenient material.
Clothing material that is opaque to Terahertz radiation.

12 June 2010 — Can Debt Be Tamed?

Our economics is based upon growth. Because growth is not sustainable, our economy will likely collapse, and then begin to grow again, only to collapse again. Such a cycle will keep the economy within Earth’s bounds, but it is a rather painful solution. The only escape from the cycle is to someday transition to a steady-state economy. In the past I have suggested that a non-growth economy cannot have debt, because debt is predicated upon growth to be repayable. Here I explore one possible solution.

Imagine a steady-state economy with debt. Those with savings lend out their money, and receive payments of principal and interest in return. While some borrowers default, on average the return from lending must be positive, or savers would simply hold onto their money instead of lending it. Unless lenders spend their interest, rather than saving it, they will have more money than they started with. Because the economy as a whole is of constant size, they will have increased their fraction of the money in circulation. If they continue to lend, their fraction will increase over time, which indicates equilibrium has not been achieved. Without growth, equilibrium implies that lenders must spend their interest rather than re-lend it, which implies no incentive to lend. In economics, the lack of incentive to lend would be no expected return on investment (the interest rate is equal to the inflation rate plus the default rate). If there is no incentive to lend one’s interest payments (that is reinvest), then there is no incentive to lend principal (that is invest in the first place). Thus the only stable equilibrium has no lending and no debt.

Perhaps a society without debt and interest would be a good thing in some ways. However, it would mean that only large existing institutions (e.g. governments, corporations) would be able to innovate; an entrepreneur would have a hard time getting sufficient capital to bring new technology to market.

A possible solution would be to auction the right to loan or to borrow (or both?). The government would set a quantity appropriate to the economy, and auction the rights to that fixed quantity of debt. Across the economy as a whole, this requires that profits be spent, rather than reinvested.

The auction could be based on payments to the government (in effect a debt tax), or on interest rate, or on some other parameter.

A similar mechanism might be devised for equity.

1 June 2010 — The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Obama’s Fault

Wall Street has won this round with the Federal government, having successfully managed to neuter the financial reform process, which means there will be another financial crisis in our future. President Obama deserves much of the blame, as he opposed provisions that would have improved the reform somewhat. Congress appears to have been open to doing more, but his administration’s opposition to the better provisions of financial reform (e.g. the Brown-Kaufman and Merkley-Levin amendments) ensured that the result will be ineffective at preventing another crisis.

The world, and particularly the U.S., is facing immense challenges in the near future, and another financial crisis is likely to so weaken the country that it may be unable to deal with these challenges. The oil bomb and the climate bomb are examples of challenges that will be harder to navigate in the midst of the next financial crisis. My old guess for Peak Oil had been approximately 2015±5. Some suggest it has already occurred (though somewhat masked by the Great Recession). Our ability to deal with this bomb has already been weakened by the ongoing financial crisis; the next financial crisis could leave us unable to respond as needed to such a challenge.

13 March 2010 — Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal

Note: I wrote this back in May of 2008, but never published it. I recently had reason to want someone to read it, and dug it up. I have updated it slightly since that time, and added a conclusion.

The true cost of renewable energy is already lower than the cost of than coal energy, but the market price is higher, and in our society the market price currently trumps true cost. The market price of coal energy is lower than its cost because the market fails to account for coal’s impacts on the shared resources of the Earth (sometimes called the Commons). Economists call such market failure costs externalities. For coal energy, the largest externality is the climate disruption that it brings, but there is also the effect of mining the coal (e.g. mountain removal, watershed pollution), and the other effects upon the air we breathe.

Because investment decisions are made on incorrect market prices of energy, and not the true cost, some see the answer as bringing down the market price of renewable energy to be less than the market price of coal energy. The market has already been tending in that direction, with new wind energy at a similar price to new coal energy. Proponents of the price lever for energy suggest that a few more decades of technology improvement will result in new renewable energy being preferable by our imperfect market.

The idea that working to reduce the market price of renewable energy will solve our problems is attractive, but unfortunately it is simplistic because coal energy must be subdivided into future coal, existing coal, and paid-off coal.

The price of a future power is based upon receiving a target rate of return on the capital investment to build the plant, plus the cost of the feedstock supplying the energy, plus operation and maintenance costs. The capital to build the plant is typically a combination of equity and debt.

Once an investment decision has been made and the plant built, the cost of a power plant is now a sunk cost, and now it is existing power. As long as it generates enough cash flow to cover the interest on the debt, the price of its feedstock, and the operation and maintenance costs, the plant will continue to operate (if these conditions do not hold, the plant declares bankruptcy and the equity and debt holders lose their money). The price at which the plant sells its power determines the rate of return to the equity investment. If price is high the value of the equity investment may increase, generating a nice profit. If the price is low, the equity investment may decline in value, but closing the plant would see the equity investment fall to zero. A small sum is better than zero, and so the plant continues to operate. This is the environment for an existing plant. Electric power utilities are often operated as regulated local monopolies, and the price of the power they sell is set by government agency at a level that produces a reasonable profit for the utility, removing both some risk and some upside potential.

Once the debt on a plant has been paid off, the plant moves to the third category, paid-off. Now it takes only cash flow sufficient to meet the price of the feedstock and the operation and maintenance costs to make it profitable to operate the plant.

Renewable energy has near zero feedstock costs. There is no price for sunlight, wind, waves, tides, or heat from the Earth. Operation and maintenance costs are low for some technologies (e.g. solar) and high for others (e.g. ocean). However, the land area to collect the feedstock (e.g. sunlight or wind) can be large, and this represents an increase in the investment required. The plant costs are currently somewhat high as well, but declining rapidly.

Proponents of bringing the price of renewable energy below that of coal energy seek to reduce plant costs, either by finding less expensive materials and construction techniques, or by increasing the energy collected using the same materials (conversion efficiency). It is plausible that this will someday lower the price of future renewable energy harvesting below the price of future coal energy. (Of course coal energy might see plant cost reductions through technological improvements during the same period, making it a potentially moving target.)

What is not addressed by technology to lower the price of renewable energy is existing and paid-off coal. In a non-regulated environment, if the price of renewable energy could be made less than the cash flow needs of existing coal, it could force such plants into bankruptcy. With an even lower price, it could force paid-off plants into bankruptcy. However, such low renewable energy prices are implausible. Paid-off coal can produce positive cash flow at around 2 cents a kWh wholesale. Worse, many coal power plants operate in a regulated environment with a profit guaranteed a profit by those regulators, making lower renewable prices incapable of shutting fossil plants via bankruptcy.

The world has already built too many coal plants. Carbon-dioxide (CO₂) is increasing at 1.9 ppm each year (10 year average of 2000-2009 increases), and the 2009 preliminary level was 386 ppm so if emissions remained constant, we would reach 450 ppm in just 33 years (2042). (Currently emissions are not constant but increasing each year, so unless we change our behavior, we will reach 450 ppm sooner.) Coal combustion currently represents 40% of our CO₂ emissions, or 0.8 ppm per year. To keep CO₂ below 450 ppm, we need to eliminate most emissions, including coal, over the next two decades.

Technology that produces future renewable energy with a market price than future coal will not eliminate emissions from existing plants. For the market to address existing plants requires future renewable energy to be priced below existing and paid-off coal. This is asking far too much from technology; it is extremely unlikely. Only raising the price of existing and paid-off coal will cause market forces to eliminate coal emissions, and then only if utilities are allowed to go bankrupt by their regulators. Regulatory fiat (e.g. legislation similar to California’s SB1368) could also accomplish this goal, but modifying the price approach based on greenhouse gas emissions has the advantage of working across all emissions in a way that allows the market to make adjustments between various fuels during the transition period.

Various proposals have been made to fix the failure of the market to correctly price fuels. One is a simple tax on greenhouse gas emissions (often called a “carbon tax” because carbon-dioxide is the most biggest contributor to global warming of the greenhouse gases). A disadvantage of taxes is that they must be constantly adjusted to make sure they have the effect of driving emissions down quickly enough.

Another approach is to set a cap on greenhouse gas emissions that declines as a function of time. The allowed emissions are allocated to emitters in a variety of methods (e.g. by auction, or grandfathering). Emitters can also trade their allocations. This trading puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions, via the tension between supply (the cap) and demand (the intent to emit), and lets the market find the price that keeps emissions below the cap. The method of allocating emissions can be controversial, as can be what to do with the revenue, if any, generated by the allocation process. This is not the place to explore the options.

Even correcting flawed market prices for greenhouse gas emissions is not sufficient. Regulated utilities are often allowed to simply pass on their fuel cost increases to their customers, and it can take a very large price increase to affect electricity customer behavior. At some point, it becomes necessary for the regulators (e.g. public utility commissions) to refuse to pass on fuel price increases to the customers, and instead demand that the utilities replace or retrofit their existing plants. This is difficult because replacement of a coal plant could mean large losses for the debt and equity holders for those plants.

While putting a price on greenhouse pollution (e.g. carbon dioxide) is an important step in undoing the distortion of market forces that currently drives new investment decisions to incorrect answers, it cannot undo the effects of past market failures that created a terawatt of coal power plants. Because the world must shut down coal combustion within two decades, there is no longer time for market forces, even after eliminating externalities to correct for market failure, to effect the necessary change. The only plausible course is regulatory fiat. In addition, at least for the U.S., it will probably be necessary to bail out the investors in existing plants to make the regulatory fiat politically possible (the U.S. political system generally does not allow its investors to suffer large losses, since investors also own the U.S. Congress). What is therefore needed in the U.S. is a government buy-out, take-over, and shut-down of all coal power plants. This is a necessary (though not sufficient) action to conserve our climate.

10 March 2010 — The Federal Government Deficit

I have in these commentaries often called for fiscal sanity in the Federal government budgeting process (insanity has been the rule for as long as I have been an observer). I have not raised this recently in these commentaries because my opinions have not changed. However, I did hear an interview with David Walker on Fresh Air, author of Comeback America: Turning the Country Around and Restoring Fiscal Responsibility, and I found his comments refreshing in their sanity, and this prompted me to put in a plug for the interview at least (I have not read his book). He properly identifies certain deficits as appropriate and others as dangerous. That simple point is critical. Paul Krugman has similarly been pointing out that fiscal stimulus is appropriate during a recession while the Bush tax cuts, war spending, and medicare deficits are dangerous.

Budget insanity is bipartisan. While the Democrats are not as psychotic as Republicans, their recent House vote to cut estate taxes (extending the Bush cut, which expires in 2011) indicates they too suffer a milder form of mental incapacity. (Republicans voted against the Democrats’ tax cut, holding out for a larger one, and thereby reiterated their insanity.) The estate tax is a particularly appropriate tax. It allows us to pay lower taxes during our lifetime. Those avoided taxes, if saved, should cover the tax when the estate is transfered. Furthermore, the estate tax helps reduce income inequality.

I do go further in the call for budget sanity than I heard in the interview. Until we transition to a non-growth economy (and eliminate debt), Federal accounting should be far closer to non-government accounting. The appropriate use of government debt is for financing infrastructure and spending that has a positive return (the increased revenues from the spending should exceed the debt service payments over the long term). Prudent fiscal stimulus during a recession falls into this category. Defense spending would generally not, for example, qualify, and should generally be funded out of revenues (however, deficits run during a short-term war that maintain economic activity at a level that increases revenue, i.e. prevents a recession, might qualify).

One point on which government and non-government accounting might differ is the creation of money. An older suggestion of mine, called for money created by central banks (e.g. the Federal Reserve Bank) to be given to the government, rather than lent to commercial banks, and this would help the Federal deficit. I also believe this may be one small step toward an economics of sustainability.

2 March 2010 — The Need for an Economics of Sustainability

Complex human civilizations began on the order of 10,000 years ago, but in only one or two centuries our latest incarnation will be radically restructured, either by design or by calamity. Despite the looming concrete wall ahead, we continue our acceleration toward it, rather than braking or turning. There is a need for some thought about what turn we should take, and yet there is little of that. Here I explore the problem a bit, without providing any answers.

What does a sustainable economy mean? Informally, something is sustainable if it can continue indefinitely. However, indefinitely, or forever must be bounded. Life on Earth is only sustainable for at most 1 billion years, because the sun will eventually make Earth too hot for liquid water to exist. I would be willing to accept a much shorter definition of sustainability, for example as short as 100,000 years. This is plenty of time for civilization to develop and implement a refined definition of sustainability.

Our current civilization is not sustainable for anywhere near this long. For example, the current rate of population growth (1.14%) yields a population of one trillion in just 360 years. Long before this population is reached, population growth will halt due to basic physical limits (water, sun, land, etc.). Stopping growth everywhere before limits stop it for us is desirable, because an exhausted world provides less flexibility, quality of life, and a buffer for dealing with exceptional conditions. Even if 99% of the world were to stop growing, if one culture or nation continues to grow, it can soon overtake the others; for example, if Uganda continues its 2.69% growth rate, its population would increase from 32.4 million in 2009 to 457 billion (almost half a trillion) in 360 years. It will be necessary for the zero population growth policy to be global.

For the sake of argument, let’s say the Earth could sustainably support 10 billion people (this is doubtful, but illustrates the point anyway). To keep under this population for 100,000 years the growth rate everywhere must be kept under 0.00038% per year. This is essentially zero growth, and there is little value in targeting 0.00038% growth rather than zero. Does allowing 20 billion people instead of 10 billion help? The allowable growth rate would be just 0.001%, again essentially zero. Defining sustainability as 10,000 years instead of 100,000 allows 0.0038%, again essentially zero. Sustainability requires essentially zero population growth. (Indeed, it probably requires negative growth for a period, before zero.)

As a digression, consider what is a desirable (as opposed to sustainable), human population. In 1848, when the population of the world had reached 1 billion and there were approximately 23 million people in the United States, John Stuart Mill, wrote Principles of Political Economy, which said,

There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of cooperation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated, is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.

It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on. Even the industrial arts might be as earnestly and as successfully cultivated, with this sole difference, that instead of serving no purpose but the increase of wealth, industrial improvements would produce their legitimate effect, that of abridging labour. … Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers, become the common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot.

Mill’s argument is just one of the reasons I support a human population target of just 500 million, confining itself to 20% of the land (and not just the most desirable land), leaving 80% of the land as wilderness. Neither is very likely, but to illustrate, we would reach a 500 million population after a millennium of 0.26% population decrease per year. (More likely we will reach this level in a mass die-off in next 200 years after a collapse of our civilization.)

Now assume for the moment that Earth’s human population growth rate has reached zero. This alone is insufficient for sustainability. While we would have put a halt of exponential population growth, that is insufficient to tame the monster. Of course we must also end exponential per capita power, mineral, and biosphere consumption. For example, humans currently use 15 TW of power, out of a potential 120,000 TW of solar power (which dwarfs all other possible energy fluxes). Even a 1% per capita annual power growth rate reaches this limit in just 903 years. A 1% per capita annual increase in iron usage exceeds the mass of all Earth’s iron (including the core) in just 3477 years (mass of Earth 5.9736e24 kg, 32.1% iron, current iron production 1.8e9 kg/year). The only way to increase per capita wealth, if wealth is based upon power and matter, once the limits are reached is to reduce the population, but there is an obvious lower limit to sustainable human population. Wealth might be based upon something other than energy and matter, e.g. knowledge or pleasure, but the limitations of the human brain seem to place an upper limit upon these as well (artificial intelligence could allow further growth in knowledge or pleasure wealth, but it would be non-human growth).

Turn these calculations around, using the 100,000 year criteria I suggested above. Power consumption can grow at most by 0.009% per year (with zero population growth this is also the per capita limit). This is essentially zero. We need to target zero growth in power and matter consumption as well. (Of course, we could allow sufficient growth to reach equal wealth for the human population without busting our budget; I am not suggesting locking in current wealth inequalities.) Over time, Earth’s economy (and its wealth) must stop growing (with the A.I. exception identified above).

My arguments here are independent of technology. Technology can provide short-term growth in wealth. For example, imagine a process that is 10% efficient. Technology may allow this process to eventually achieve 80% efficiency. If this factor of 8 improvement is spread over 200 years, it represents a 1% per year growth in the wealth represented by this process. However, there is a natural limit to efficiency increases (100%), and that limit is seldom economically achievable. A factor of eight increase in wealth seems huge, but it does not affect the fundamental argument here about long-term sustainability. Technology does not provide an out. The colonization of space may open up additional resources to the human species, but I am confining my arguments to Earth’s economy.

Earth’s economy must therefore transition to one that has bounded power and matter use. Bounded may be oscillatory below a maximum, or constant. The power must derive from our Sun’s power (e.g. solar power or wind power). Even greenhouse-free power with waste heat (e.g. from fusion), cannot serve as a power source on Earth at any level approaching the 120,000 TW provided to us by the Sun, or it will result in global warming (a higher global temperature will be necessary to export the heat back to space as blackbody radition; see, for example, Long-Term Global Heating From Energy Usage by Eric Chaisson). Fusion may prove useful in outer space, but it can never be as significant on Earth as solar power. (If fusion power is used on Earth; it will be necessary to block an equivalent amount of sunlight in space to compensate.)

If matter use is constant, then there is no reason to mine the Earth for minerals; recycling our waste is sufficient. Our landfills represent a sufficient stockpile of raw materials on which to operate the economy. There may be changes in technology that cause a temporary need for an element that is under-represented in our landfills and waste stream, and this would be properly addressed by short-term mineral extraction until the waste stream is sufficient to meet the new need.

The primary problem with this scenario is that no one has yet invented a successful economics that is consistent with zero growth in wealth and GDP. Compound-interest debt and return on investment cannot exist in a zero-growth environment, and this prevents capital formation for technological development. This then is the fundamental issue that must be solved in the transition to sustainability. There are two possible solutions, neither of which is desirable. The first is cycles of growth and collapse. The second is a centrally managed non-growth economy (like any major corporation). Neither is desirable, but given a choice, I think I would prefer the distributed economy with collapse to central management. (Besides the pain of collapse, the cyclical collapse model has the problem that each cycle will be occurring in a more and more degraded world.) The question is whether a distributed non-growth economics can be created. It is a wonder that so few economists seem to be working on this issue. While the likely outcome for civilization in the next one or two centuries is collapse, it is still appropriate to provide a roadmap to the remnant of the human population when they rebuild, and so this issue is still of importance.

While the place we must go is unknown, we could begin the transition anyway, taking into account some of the constraints identified above. If raw materials are to come from our landfills and waste stream, then we should begin to tax mineral extraction, and increase this tax over time. This will cause the economy to begin the adjustment process. This is a generalization of the greenhouse pollution tax concept. We would not tax only greenhouse emissions, but all mineral extraction (because the greenhouse problem is measured in mere years rather than decades, we might tax carbon extraction more heavily than other minerals at first).

25 February 2010 — More on Point of No Return

This graph from Schmidt and Archer’s 30 April 2009 Nature article summarizes in a simple graph one of the several reasons I wrote Point of No Return. 30 April 2009 Nature p. 1117 Figure 1

This is not even taking into account the aerosol issue raised by Ramanathan and Feng’s On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system: Formidable challenges ahead, which showed that we are really already at 2.4°C of warming, but most is masked by aerosols that will disappear rapidly when our CO₂ emissions cease (they will certainly cease one way or the other). Their paper included the following figure to show the effects of temperature on Earth’s systems. 23 September 2008 PNAS p. 14245 Figure 1

And this is just the climate bomb.

The U.S. is also setting itself up for an economic collapse, which would of course take the world down with it. This assessment is due to: (1) the failure to implement meaningful regulatory financial reform; (2) and the failure to deal with the structural deficit (health care, wars, and the Bush tax cuts); (3) the failure to deal with China’s neo-mercantilism; and (4) avoiding the fate of post-bubble Japan or sovereign bankruptcy.

On China, the U.S. is too much of a slave to its creation, the WTO, to impose import tariffs on China to offset the weak renminbi. We therefore have no leverage. We are playing a game of repeated prisoner’s dilemma where we refuse to use tit-for-tat to move toward the Pareto optimum, presumably because we are so in thrall to free-trade ideology that we refuse to counter those that deviate from it.

The technology bomb seems ahead of schedule given the results of recent synthetic biology competitions (can Oryx and Crake be far off?), and a recent study in the Journal of Environmental Quality suggests synthetic nitrogen fertilizers are ruining our soils.

Of course the oil and population bombs continue to lie in wait like a roadside IED.

All of this while the U.S. has political rigor mortis. Things look grim indeed.

19 February 2010 — Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

I have made several references here to the 21 January 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens v. Federal Election Commission, but I have not written directly about the decision. It should be clear from my previous writings that I believe corporate money has no place in politics (e.g. Corporations are not people). What I have not addressed is the question of whether Citizens v. Federal Election Commission, was properly decided by the Supreme Court. That is a separate issue from whether the consequences are desirable or ruinous. Unfortunately the debate I have read in blogs and heard on the radio focuses mostly upon the consequences, and not whether the matter was properly decided. There is a strong tendency in the U.S. to demand the Supreme Court rule as one would politically like, rather than actually looking at what the Constitution says. One problem in the U.S. is that we too often look to the Supreme Court for our rights; we are too timid to demand our legislature respect our dignity. This is only partially due to the political timidity of U.S. citizens; it is also because our legislatures are slaves to campaign money and because our Constitution is so flawed at allowing our representation.

My first observation is that whatever I think of Hillary The Movie, there is every reason to allow it to be shown before an election. Free speech demands this much. The ability to show the movie was never in question because Citizens United could have done so within existing law by forming a Political Action Committee. (In doing so, it would have been limited to $5000 donations for individual contributions.) Thus the question here is not whether the movie should have been shown, but whether it was wrong to prohibit a corporation from doing it directly with corporate funds (Citizens United is a corporation, a 501(c)4 non-profit).

I have already made clear that I believe corporations are not people, and they do not automatically deserve the rights accorded to people. Corporations are creations of our legislatures (actually state legislatures), and the Constitution is silent on corporations. The legislature should be able to define corporate rights in creating corporations, until such time as the Constitution addresses the issue. This is the first reason I believe the Supreme Court was wrong in its ruling. The Court, however, has a history of extending free speech rights to corporations; Justice Kennedy’s opinion cites ten cases dating back to 1970. In my opinion, the Court needed to reconsider overturning this line, rather than the line of decisions supporting restrictions on corporate money in politics.

As an aside, I believe the Federal government should create its own Federal incorporation legislation, and should require that corporations that engage in interstate commerce should be required to obtain a Federal charter under such legislation. It is an anachronism that only states create corporations, and it leads to a race to the bottom in standards (which Delaware won). A Federal charter might help the Supreme Court avoid seeing corporations as people, if the statute were appropriately worded, although this is not certain given the current Justices.

There is a second, more important, reason that the Supreme Court was wrong in its ruling. The Constitution is inherently contradictory. The rights it grants are in conflict with each other and other provisions of the Constitution. The resolution of these conflicts has been left to the courts, which seek to find a balance based upon the overall intent of the Constitution. Words are not looked at in insolation, but as a part of a whole. This has been a source of great strength in allowing the Constitution to be a workable document over two centuries. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission does not seek to balance the right of free speech with any over provision of the Constitution; it elevates free speech above democracy. It is likely that the Justices that decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission saw no threat to democracy, or even an enhancement of it, and so see no conflict. This then illustrates the problem with the inherent conflicts of Constitutions; it depends upon the wisdom of Justices, which in this case was lacking. Sometimes the Justices need help in finding wisdom, and so some of the failure can be attributed to the amicus curiae briefs (e.g. the Obama Justice department’s) to adequately explore the overruling of corporate free speech precedents as an alternative.

There was one point on which Justice Kennedy’s opinion was interesting. He wrote, Yet, §441b would seem to ban a blog post expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate if that blog were created with corporate funds. Were this country to decide that corporations are not people, it would be necessary to allow corporate delivery of speech by individuals. This is a tricky point that would need to be addressed in any legislation, should that legislation be one day allowed either by Constitutional amendment or the overruling of Citizens United; without a provision for this, such legislation could violate individual free speech rights.

Congress is unlikely to pass a Constitutional amendment to address corporate spending on politics, and the Court is likely to continue extending the rights of people to corporations. It is tempting to be spiteful and suggest it may therefore be time for Congress to treat corporations even more like people (Felons are denied even the right to vote in most U.S. states; perhaps a similar penalty could be applied to corporations with felony convictions. Perhaps corporations should pay income tax and estate tax at individual rates, and be subject to the death penalty, imprisonment, and so on.) More seriously, the real remedy is to be found in the token system described in Bringing Democracy to the U.S. Tokens would not be available to corporations, but corporations would be able to buy airtime using dollars. To compensate, the airtime available with use of tokens could be set at a higher levels than the level of corporate spending.

16 February 2010 — What happened to George Bailey?

What I want to know is how I woke up in the alternative reality that is Pottersville. When Clarence conjured this world, why did it not convince George Bailey? Today, the Henry Potters of the world are firmly in control, and worse, every day there is more bleed-thru from Hollywood. Moe is in the House, Curly is in the Senate, and Larry is in the White House. Ours is government by the Three Stooges while the Potters of the world count their winnings.

5 February 2010 — Evil Virus Infects Whitehouse

Some pranksters removed the W keys of computer keyboards upon leaving the Clinton Whitehouse for the incoming squatters of George W. Bush’s administration. There is now evidence that something far more sinister was done in the Bush-Obama transition. While there is nothing conclusive, circumstantial evidence suggests that a secret virus, perhaps the result of a black research project at Fort Detrick directed by Dick Cheney, was left behind in the Whitehouse to infect the incoming Obama administration. The effect of the suspected virus is to induce the victim to evil. Evidence for this has been accumulating for months in the actions of the Obama Whitehouse, with the most recent being the actions of the Whitehouse in the Kiyemba v. Obama. What other explanation could there be, other than artificial infection with Bush-era evil, for the move to dismiss the Uighur’s habeas corpus motion? It is unlikely that Dick Cheney would have directed an antidote to be prepared in parallel with the virus itself, so I urge the CDC to step in and do tests on Whitehouse staffers, and search for a cure. It would be wise to check both houses of Congress at the same time, as there is similar evidence of unusual behavior there.

27 January 2010 — Was A.I.G. Rescue Essential?

I was initially supportive of the Federal government’s rescue of the financial industry, but even then the rescue of A.I.G. stood out as questionable. The rationale was that A.I.G. owed a lot of money to the banks, and if the banks went under, a second Great Depression would result. However, the government could have let A.I.G. go under, default on its obligations, and then provided additional aid to its counter parties. I suspect this would have been better policy. The A.I.G. bail-out was moral hazard that shielded the banks from the consequences of properly evaluating the risk of their counter parties. Letting A.I.G. default would have created enormously greater losses at their counter parties, further reducing shareholder equity, but capital infusions from the government could have kept capital ratios up to allow the banks to continue operation. Really the A.I.G. bail-out was a gift to A.I.G.’s counter parties’ shareholders. Was this appropriate? I think not.

25 January 2010 — Marionette Obama

With each passing week President Obama has shown an increasing propensity to follow rather than lead. Today he reached a new pinnacle in servility with the news that he will propose a budget freeze for all non-security discretionary spending. Is Obama’s title President or lead Marionette? To whose strings does Obama dance? Today’s deficit peacocks consist of Republicans who simply raise deficits to torpedo their opponents and journalists and pundits who cannot take the time to consider the source of the deficits.

Freezing Federal discretionary spending is like adding a washer to the dripping faucet upstairs when levy has broken and the water is rising on the ground floor.

Marionette Obama should be expanding the regulatory departments of the Federal government, not freezing them. The EPA, FDA, USDA, and various financial regulatory agencies all should be hiring from outside industry to increase their regulatory capabilities while diluting the revolving door hires of previous administrations. Marionette Obama’s freeze in one timid action gives Republicans two things they most crave: regulatory relief for their investors, and the failure of their political opponents. The marionette further demonstrated his strings when he singled out security from the freeze; it would not do to stop feeding the beast that Republicans use to cow the nation’s citizens.

The Federal deficit is an important issue. It could be dealt with properly by first looking at its origins, which are primarily threefold: (1) the Bush tax cuts; (2) the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and (3) medical spending. President Obama attempted to slow the hemorrhaging in Iraq, but Iraq will continue to deplete the treasury for decades. Marionette Obama is pointlessly escalating in Afghanistan to create a new source of deficit spending to outlast Iraq. President Obama tried to address the health care crises, but Marionette Obama and his party have been timidly retreating from on this source of deficit bloat. On the Bush tax cuts, Marionette Obama’s new servility suggests he will act to make them permanent, at least once the Republicans begin pulling on his strings in that area, probably soon after the mid-term elections. After dealing with the origins of the current deficit, it is necessary to look at where future deficits will come from and address those issues proactively, e.g. greenhouse pollution mitigation and adaptation. President Obama has fine speeches on this subject, but Marionette Obama is doing little to address the issues. He could be doing far more using the EPA authority under the Clean Air Act.

The Republican minority orders the Democrats to jump. The Democrats respond with speeches explaining why jumping is poor policy. The Republicans continue to chant Jump! and journalists begin to pick up the beat, and before long the Democrats are talking about adding a little skip to their strides hoping that will make the chant cease, but of course the chant continues, and pretty soon the Democrats popping up like hard corn kernels on a hot skillet, while asking is this high enough?

24 January 2010 — Point of No Return?

In my 2004 Train Wreck Test I proposed a methaphor for U.S. politics where factions on a train argue about how fast to run down a hill, despite a warning that the bridge over the ravine at the end is out, so the train will surely crash. Only a tiny faction wanted to stop the train before the switch, change the switch to take the side spur running parallel to the ravine, and then continue on in safety. The primary factions argued only whether to go 15 or 45 MPH over the speed the engineers said was safe, and worse, insanely ignored the warning about the ravine.

Events over the last year suggest we have now passed the last turn-off point before the ravine, and the train’s brakes are no longer capable of stopping before the ravine. We are now committed to plunging the train and all of its passengers over the edge.

How did we get to this point? First, the train passengers in the first car (one of the 1^st class carriages) squabbled about what to stock in the dining car, rather than the train route and speed. Then an all-car conference to discuss whether to begin braking ended in complete failure. Then a few passengers in the first car switched their support from the Ds (the bad faction) to the Rs (the worse faction). And then finally a court for the first car decided that the fare paid by passengers should determine their influence on that car’s debate.

We are all on this train and a train wreck seems inevitable.

18 December 2009 — Even Less Than Expected

The Copenhagen outcome was even less than I expected. The only positive aspect I see of the agreement is that the verification provisions demanded by the U.S. may help persuade Congress to pass legislation. Whether Congressional legislation is a good idea (consider what has happened to health care legislation so far), as opposed to the EPA regulating greenhouse pollution under the Clean Air Act, is still an open question in my mind, so even this positive may be nothing.

As much as anything, this indicates how pathetic the Democrats are as a party. Their real identity is merely non-Republican, which is hardly a basis for coherence.

17 December 2009 — An Undeveloped Thought on Banking

I am beginning to think it is time to put an end to banking as we know it by requiring banks to hold 100% reserves for short-term deposits. This would effectively end their ability to lend (and therefore create) money; they would exist only as a convenience services. In the short-term, this would prevent bank mischief and therefore failures. In the long-term, it would help end exponential money supply growth.

The question is what replaces bank lending. One major category of loans is home mortgages. Banks had already become middlemen for these loans, where the ultimate buyer was either Federal agencies or the securitization machinery of Wall Street. A radical revision to banking would therefore not much affect home mortgages. Other major categories of lending include commercial mortgages, construction loans, and small business loans (large businesses seem to prefer the short-term paper money markets). The task will be to create viable alternatives for each of these areas.

Over time I may return to this subject, with possibilities for replacing the such debt with better alternatives.

16 December 2009 — Copenhagen

For the record, I haven’t expected much to come from the Copenhagen summit. Two countries, the U.S. and China, emit over half of the greenhouse pollution, and neither country is going to let treaties bind it. Even if the U.S. were to sign a treaty, it would be as meaningless as the Kyoto treaty, because there are not 67 votes in the Senate to ratify it. If significant reductions in greenhouse pollution are to occur, it will be the result of the U.S. and China internal action, and perhaps private agreements between the U.S. and China.

In the U.S., I expect the most progress will come not from Waxman-Markey, but the EPA regulating greenhouse pollution under the 1970 Clean Air Act. If Waxman-Markey is passed, it may actually slow progress, as it will remove the EPA’s ability to act.

15 December 2009 — Senate Health Care

The whole Senate health care process simply illustrates how much control we have ceded to our corporations. Senator Lieberman is clearly acting purely as a representative of the insurance companies, many of which are headquartered in Connecticut. The bill that results will be a minor improvement over the current situation. The political theater for such a result indicates how fully lobbyists have crippled Congress.

10 October 2009 — Afghanistan

I have not written much about the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The war against Iraq was the easier target, as it was a predictable catastrophe from the outset, and its initiation was immoral (the perpetrators deserve trial for crimes against humanity). The war in Afghanistan was a reaction to an attack upon the U.S. This does not make it the right response, but it is at least more understandable. The U.S. used poor tactics, and never seems to have had a real strategy in Afghanistan. However, it is unclear whether better tactics and strategy would have been able to make the Afghanistan war a success, insofar as that word can be applied to any war.

As President Obama begins disengagement from Iraq, that country will likely fall further into even deeper Lebanon-like chaos. However, that is the consequence of the original 2003 invasion; while the full consequences of that evil could be delayed, they cannot be eliminated. We should withdraw and let the tragic inevitableness play out.

President Obama’s Iraq withdrawal is paired with an intensification of U.S. combat in Afghanistan. The President and the nation have come to see Iraq as a lost cause, so it is puzzling that the President at least cannot see the same thing in Afghanistan. Obama’s rhetoric suggests we cannot afford to lose Afghanistan, but that is meaningless when victory is not achievable. The limitations of U.S. power in Iraq apply equally in Afghanistan. It is a larger country, with a similar number of people, and the U.S. lacks the manpower to successfully occupy the country.

President Obama will of course continue his escalation of the war in Afghanistan. That became tragically inevitable when General Stanley McChrystal’s report was leaked. It is unlikely that the White House will be willing to deny the forces that military officers say are necessary. Of course, General McChrystal’s report requests only what is logistically possible for the U.S. to provide; it is an order of magnitude too small to actually accomplish the stated objective. The real objective is then not the stated one, but rather the age-old unwillingness of the powerful to recognize their own impotence. Perhaps President Obama will take control of the situation after he gives into the extortion of leaked reports, and make the escalation temporary, and then withdraw from Afghanistan as well.

Like so many others, I am puzzled by the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize award to President Obama. His policy of escalation in Afghanistan alone disqualifies him from receiving the award.

14 September 2009 — Storm Rising

I supported the idea (but not all of the specifics) of the Federal Reserve and Treasury stepping in to avoid a depression after the financial panic. However, I am beginning to think that I was wrong; it turns out that the system needed a larger shock to induce regulatory reform. With a few name changes, it seems to be business as usual back on Wall St, which is a real problem. There seems to be no effort to prevent the next panic, and the momentum for reform has been lost. If nothing is done, the financial history of the 21^st century may look more like the 19^th than the 20^th. The next panic must include reform as part of the bail-out, and not leave it for the future. We seem to have lost the ability to look back and learn as we did in the 1930s: a Pecora Commission is not possible in our age.

The root causes of the above problem are two: (1) the political power of corporations; and (2) the hysteria convulsing the Republican party. The incompetence of the Democrats, while serious, may be derivative of the second cause, where a large number of politicians with Democrat labels are partially infected by the hysteria in the Republican base. The Republican-packed Supreme Court of the U.S. is probably going to rule against limits on the political power of corporations when it decides Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and there seems to be no cure for the Red Plague either. I fear that with the start of this century the U.S. entered a period of its history that will be remembered the way Germany now looks back upon the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. A future Aeschylus will have plenty of material with the remorseless inevitableness of what is to come.

References:

11 September 2009 — Obama’s Healthcare Speech

It was a good speech. It of course was not targeted at most Republican Representatives and Senators, who will not vote for the Democrats’ plan under any circumstances. It was not targeted at Republican voters, who are likewise unmovable. It was targeted at the President’s base, who should have taken heart from the speech, especially since it attacked the lies that are so maddening for their simultaneous ridiculousness and widespread acceptance. It was also addressed to the independents; I cannot say if it was successful here or not. Clearly the acceptance of a few Republican ideas was an attempt at winning the hearts of independents (it won’t do much to win Republicans). I was surprised that the speech did not say more about rationing, an issue that I suspect would have helped with independents. Whether the effect upon the base and independents was enough, I am unsure and doubtful. The Senate remains very confused on healthcare, and the Senators that control the issue may not have enough of a Democratic base and independents to matter.

I just hope Congress can get something passed so it can move onto reducing greenhouse pollution, which is far more critical. I suspect whatever healthcare bill they pass will be pretty awful, but perhaps a slight improvement over the current situation.

6 September 2009 — Van Jones resignation

If Republicans can demand and get Van Jones’ resignation for extreme views, can Democrats demand the resignation of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia?

5 September 2009 — Corporate Speech

The Supreme Court is taking another look at corporate speech in politics (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission). I predict the current court will find for Citizens United (e.g. by overturning Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which will increase the flow of corporate money into politics (akin to the difference between a breached levy and a dredged canal).

The flood of corporate money in politics is already a Katrina-sized disaster. The only good that can come from it is if the Court’s decision causes Congress to throw out its previous failed attempts to lessen the impact of money in politics, and instead adopt real change. A first start could be the system adopted in Arizona, Maine, and Connecticut, where public financing of campaigns is linked to taking private money only in small amounts. Even better would be a token system such as I outlined in Bringing Democracy to the U.S., but that idea is no doubt too radical for Congress to pass. While these changes would be an improvement, they do not address the issue in Austin; they merely help in other areas. To really address Austin, Congress would need to implement another suggestion of mine, which would be to redefine corporations. Congress is even less likely to take on this most important reform of all. By eliminating the ability of state-incorporated companies to engage in interstate commerce, and instead requiring Federal incorporation (something that does not exist yet), Congress would be able to define these new entities to not have the rights of persons.

Of course, the possible good that could come from this is dependent upon a competent, functional Congress, which today is only a dream.

17 August 2009 — Horrible Failure?

If George Lakoff is right about how the Democrats should debate issues such as health care and climate change, e.g. as he suggests in Don’t Think of an Elephant and The Political Mind, then the Democrats are continuing to fail horribly, as usual. That means the choice between the Republican and Democratic factions of our one-party system continues to be a choice between evil and incompetance. No wonder that half of citizens don’t vote.

14 August 2009 — Consumer Financial Protection Agency and Ben Bernanke

I support the creation of an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, opposes such an agency. I believe that is sufficient grounds to replace Dr. Bernanke when his term expires in January 2010, despite his role in financial panic cleanup.

His performance on the financial crisis was mixed. As a member of the FOMC, Dr. Bernanke claimed there was no housing bubble, a serious misjudgement. However, his response to the financial panic as Federal Reserve chairman was mostly correct, and along with the Federal safety net, helped to avoid another great depression.

A Consumer Financial Protection Agency would not have prevented the housing bubble, but it might have well lessened the impact of that bubble if it had prevented the worst of the subprime mortgage lending that helped fuel the bubble and accelerate the downside.

2 August 2009 — Economic Equilibriums

Earth’s societies should switch to an economics that is not based upon growth (see The end of growth), but this is likely only in response to a cataclysm, if then. The alternative is oscillation; periodic growth followed by collapse, with no net progress over the long term. My economic proposals (e.g. Market Hypothesis and Fix and Too Big To Fail) are intended for the short term as tweaks to what is a fundamentally flawed system (one in which our apparent wealth derives from spending our inheritance rather than producing wealth from our effort†). If these proposals would have the effect of delaying the cataclysm, and therefore increasing the magnitude of suffering that eventually results, then it would be better to let the system expire sooner rather than later. However, there is little chance of proposals such as mine being effected, so this is a merely academic objection. (I write them down merely because current events prod the engineer portion of my brain to seek solutions.) Also, it is unlikely that these proposals will prevent cataclysm; more likely they will simply improve life during our current binge as we burn through our endowment. With that preface, I seek to record another observation about our current system.

Our macro-economics is similar to a ball moving around at the top of a hill (an unstable equilibrium point or area). As it deviates from the exact equilibrium area, gravity begins to pull it down the hill. Active forces (e.g. from Central Banks and governments) are then used to push it back into the equilibrium area. If the corrective force applied is too small, the economy (ball) continues to roll down the hill; if the corrective force applied is too large, the economy overshoots the equilibrium area and descends another side of the hill. Over time central bankers have become increasingly adept at playing this game, i.e. keeping the economy in the equilibrium area, but it is still a tricky problem, and they are not always successful at maintaining stability. When they fail (and failure is inevitable), the result is at least another recession. If their failure is large, the economy may come to rest in a stable equilibrium point, analogous to a ball in a local valley. This equilibrium is considered less desirable than the top of the hill, and eventually central bankers and governments attempt to push the economy up to the unstable area to play the game again. In some cases, unsustainable gimmicks have been used to push the economy.

First, I pose the question whether it is possible to achieve quality of life objectives (e.g. employment goals) with the economy (ball) in a stable equilibrium point (a local valley), rather than an unstable one? If it is, such an economy could be far preferable to the one we have today. I question whether we have ever really tried to find such an operating point; we always seek to climb to the top of the hill, instead of finding a safer home in the valley.

Second, let us suppose we are unable to find a stable equilibrium point, and we must continue to play the game. We should then ask whether we can make the game safer. Lately we have increased the ball’s velocity, which increases the difficulty and magnifies both the upside and downside. We have accomplished this with leverage and risk; increasing the amount of investment and consumption with borrowed funds. Credit cards and home equity lines have boosted consumption. The U.S. trade deficit (which is identical to the foreign investment surplus) and conventional Wall Street leverage have increased investment. Both serve as positive feedback, amplifying both the ups and downs. I suggest that we should reduce the positive feedback from today’s levels, making it easier to maintain equilibrium. My credit card proposals would reduce the use of borrowing for consumption, while still making them useful for certain purchases. A simple proposal would decrease home equity borrowing: require 50% equity for such loans (and 20% equity for first loans). The 50% margin rule for stocks should be applied to all financial investments (e.g. hedge funds). I am unsure how a country should best reduce its trade deficit.

The effect of such changes would to lengthen the period and reduce the amplitude of oscillation.

† Legitimate wealth derives only from applying current energy from the sun for creation (which includes human labor) without exploitation, or from the fruits of the human mind (science, invention, discovery, art, etc.). The spending of our endowment (fossil fuels, forests, mineral resources) produces illusory, faux wealth. Real wealth is rare today, compared to faux wealth.

1 August 2009 — Too Big To Fail

Too Big To Fail by Gary Stern and Ron Feldman looks at ways to remove the assumption that the largest financial institutions of the country must be rescued by the government when they fail. (Disclaimer: I should first note that the details of what they suggest are buried in papers they cite in footnotes, and the book deals with things only at a fairly high level. I have not read the cited references.) Their suggestions appear reasonable as far as they go, but they do not go far enough; Their ideas are not intended to solve the problem described in Market Hypothesis and Fix; rather they propose a regulatory environment where the government does not bailout financial institutions that get into trouble. Banks that lose their capital base are shut down, and all shareholder value, debts, and non-insured deposits are wiped out. The authors suggest that lenders and depositors will then do enough homework to avoid institutions that are likely to get into trouble. I very much doubt that this mechanism would prove adequate. One reason is the asymmetric nature of information; lenders and depositors lack the ability to know adequately know the soundness of the financial institution. Even regulators are often unable to see problems until after the fact, and rating agencies have conflict-of-interest issues that appear all too real. Moreover, soundness can change suddenly and can unsoundness can cascade based upon short-term trading at financial institutions (e.g. Bear Stearns’ hedge fund losses and subsequent chapter 15 were quite sudden). Although the authors’ TBTF proposals are not adequate, they are still useful; they would help. There is no reason to reward the shareholders of a financial institution with a bailout; they deserve to be wiped out when serious financial mistakes are made, and the authors’ proposals would make such remedies a bit more palatable.

The simple notion that too big to fail is also too big to exist was not adequately explored in the book. I wish to explore that and other notions here.

The FDIC fund for bank takeovers needs to be large enough to handle the largest financial institution in the country. The gap in funds created by the largest institution from the second largest should be covered entirely by the largest institution. Large institutions should be split into smaller institutions using anti-trust-like legislation. Even the pieces of these institutions may be TBTF, so in addition, the gap between the second and third covered entirely by the second, and so on, until a point is reached where normal statistics apply. This discourages a given institution from becoming large, or if already large, from being larger. The takeover fund contribution would be based upon an estimate of the takeover cost estimate according to a standard set by the regulatory agency; any new risk taking beyond the funded amount would require an increase in the takeover fund prior to the risk taking.

As I said before, The idea that banks can regulator-shop between four Federal agencies and pick the regulator that gives them the most lax treatment is absurd on its face. There must be a single regulator for a given type of financial institution, and there must be a Federal regulator for any entity that is interstate. (State regulators are not equipped to handle an institution such as AIG.)

There is no size at which an individual or institution is too small to be subject to regulation. All borrowers and lenders must be regulated, because even small actors can, in aggregate, create systemic risk, as the subprime fiasco clearly demonstrated.

I intend to continue these thoughts soon, but leave behind the TBTF issue, and look at broader macro-economic issues. There is a connection to TBTF in that macro-economic outcomes are an important failure mechanism for financial institutions. Not all failure are the result of mismanagement.

31 July 2009 — Shorter Thoughts: Health Care, California Budget Woes

Health Care

I have yet to comment here on health care. This is primarily because I don’t feel I have much to contribute, and also while it is quite important, it is not as important as issues such as ending greenhouse pollution, and because the answers are obvious. However, for the record, I see the U.S. medical industry as fundamentally broken, and in need of major overhaul. The health of both Americans and American business depend upon it (our business competitiveness is undermined by our non-performing medical industry). There are actually a lot of options, already tried and tested, either by the U.S. government itself, or by foreign governments. Almost all of these work, and it is just a matter of implementing one of them, taking into account the necessary transition from what we have today to one of the other systems. With several models to choose from, there’s no real issue, except for politicians whose allegiance is to campaign contributions from the for-profit insurance companies that stand to lose in the transition from non-performing to performing healthcare. If I have any preference between the many options to choose from, it is to remove the profit motive from much of the medical industry (e.g. doctors, hospitals, insurance companies). For example, in Switzerland, only non-profit companies provide health insurance. Still, I think any first world healthcare system is better than the U.S. system.

California Budget Woes

The recent California budget, with its gimmicks and deep cuts, and Schwarzenegger’s questionable line item vetoes simply reinforces my opinion that we need a constitutional convention to fix the mess that California voters have created over the decades.

While I have many ideas on how to rewrite constitutions, California so desperately needs some quick fixes that I support keeping the convention focused on eliminating the two-thirds budget requirement. Eliminating the two-thirds requirement for tax increases (Proposition 13) is also important, but that risks a backlash that could sink budget sanity. I would put off repealing Proposition 13 to a future constitutional convention. If changing the 2% annual property-tax increase to 3% would fly, I would do that instead. Rather than packing everything into a single convention, I propose calling for a new convention every ten years for the next fifty years.

There is one other priority worth including in a convention, and that is off-loading the excess baggage from the constitution. Take what is there, separate it into two parts: the basics, and the baggage, and then call the basics the constitution, and move the baggage into either legislation or a new category in between legislation and constitution.

30 July 2009 — Market Hypothesis and Fix

I conjecture that the world will continue to experience market crises as long as traders use non-self-aware financial strategies, models, algorithms, etc. Such strategies cannot anticipate their own impact upon the market. Most often they are based upon historical data, and that data becomes invalid as use of the new strategy begins to affect the market. Even self-aware actors usually fail to predict the effect of new strategies, as they either fail to apply their awareness to the changing situation, or the consequences are too complex to analyze. The situation is made worse when the affected market has not experienced a crisis recently, and traders begin to believe such events are no longer possible. Because it takes years for trading innovations to reach the stall angle and for traders to become oblivious to crisis risks, there is a natural periodicity to crises.

In the recent crisis, the models used to evaluate mortgage-backed security risk did not anticipate that their use would drive the system outside of the limited historical data used to assess risk. The securitization process produced low rates and high demand for mortgages to feed the securitization pipeline, and thus encouraged both subprime fraud as well as increased conventional lending. This in turn led to the housing price bubble. The creation and collapse of the bubble could have been anticipated by self-aware actors, but not by the use of historical data. Even self-aware actors, e.g. in the securitization industry, generally failed to realize that their actions would create a bubble. Worse, even when the housing bubble became obvious, most refused to recognize that it invalidated the models on which their risk estimates were based. They continued on, increasing their rate of climb until the inevitable stall occurred, plunging us all into a dive and spin.

It is of course possible for a few traders to recognize what is happening, but history suggests that this phenomenon is always insufficient to prevent the crisis from occurring. Before the recent panic, many warned about the housing bubble, and some noted the risk evaluation deficiencies with mortgage-backed securities. For example, Andrew Feldstein’s Blue Mountain Capital hedge fund correctly identified the problems with risk models, and acted by betting against the financial industry, but the hedge fund’s actions actually helped other traders double-down on their foolish bets.

Regulators were even less effective than traders in recognizing the consequences of trading innovation, and I see no mechanism by which they can become sufficiently effective in the future. Regulators are look to avoid the mistakes of the past, and so their defenses are no more effective than the Maginot Line.

The consequences of financial crises are so great, and so disproportionately born by those who were not responsible for the crises, that financial innovation must be seen to be a huge externality by which the financial industry subsidizes itself, and transfers wealth to itself from the rest of society. Economics suggests that externalities should be eliminated or compensation introduced for the markets to produce better results. If my hypothesis and observations are correct, crises are inevitable so long as financial innovation is allowed, and must be included in financial industry externality calculations. In the case of financial crises, it seems either necessary to ensure that the cost of the crises is born entirely by the financial industry. The only alternative would be to eliminate financial crises by regulation that eliminates financial innovation (i.e. makes banking boring again). I conclude that we should adopt the latter approach until such time the financial industry can raise a fund of 15% of GDP (e.g. about $2 trillion for the US) to bond the innovation. Increases in GDP would require traders to increase their fund contributions. Had such a fund existed, it would have used to fund the AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, IndyMac, WaMu, etc. bailouts/takeovers and the fiscal stimulus enacted by Congress as well. Too Big To Fail financial firms must also be eliminated, but I leave that for a future commentary.

8 July 2009 — ACES Border Adjustment

I am pleased to see that the House version of The American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act has a last-minute provision that require the president, starting in 2020, to impose a tariff on goods from countries that do not act to limit their greenhouse pollution. Indeed, this is one of the few good parts of the bill. I am as mystified as Professor Krugman as to why President Obama criticized these provisions. He suggested this sent a protectionist signal. I disagree; it sends a signal that everyone must get on board with greenhouse pollution limits. A tariff is fair, as it does not single out any individual nation and any nation that wants to avoid the tariff can adopt greenhouse pollution limits.

The argument made by developing countries that to place limits on them would be unfair have not considered methods that are fair, such as the one I proposed on 30 July 2006. By making the limit per person without rewarding future population growth, it becomes fair to both developing and developed nations.

Of course, President Obama’s criticism may be just posturing. He may in fact be criticizing the trade provisions to bolster his free trade credentials, when in fact he accepts the provisions. Politics is such a game.

29 June 2009 — Political Dipoles

I have written before on the absurdity of simplifying multi-dimensional political space to a single dimension (the so-called political spectrum). George Lakoff’s new book, The Political Mind is a fascinating argument in which he hypothesizes that each dimension of political space consists of just two points: a dipole, one pole associated with the authoritarianism and obedience and the other pole associated with empathy and empowerment. He calls these the conservative and progressive modes of thought:

Conservatives and progressives do not have different goals or values. They have very different modes of thought. Neither mode is obvious. The political mind has to be probed in depth to be understood. What we see is complexity: many Americans make use of both conservative and progressive modes of thought in their politics, but apply them to different areas in different ways. There are regularities, but there is no clear scale from left to right (or color spectrum from blue to red). There are no moderates—that is, there is no moderate worldview, no one set of ideas that characterizes a center or moderation. People who are called moderates use conservative thought in some issue areas and progressive thought in others, without falling on any linear left-to-right scale. Indeed, many so-called moderates have no moderation at all, and are quite passionate about both their conservative and progressive views.

…

The left-to-right scale that political pundits love is an inaccurate metaphor—and a dangerous one, for two reasons. First, it posits a political mainstream, a population with a unified political worldview, which does not exist now nor has it ever. Because radical conservatives have so dominated political discourse in America over the past thirty years, conservatives ideas are being passed off as mainstream ideas, which they are not, while progressive ideas are being characterized as leftist and extremist, which they are not. … One can speak of left and right, as in left hand and right hand, or left hemisphere and right hemisphere of the brain, without any linear scale in between.

Professor Lakoff at times acknowledges the multi-dimensional nature of his dipole model (the discussion of moderates in the excerpt above), but he is inclined to the one-dimensional simplification as well (the left and right hemisphere analogy in the excerpt above).

It matters little if Professor Lakoff is correct or not on whether each political dimension is a dipole or continuous, so long as the multi-dimensional aspect is retained, as that produces similar conclusions. If I compare Professor Lakoff’s conclusions to mine, I find little to quibble about. He writes, for example:

The very use of the left-to-right scale metaphor serves to empower radical conservatives and marginalize progressives. …

Accordingly, the left-to-right scale metaphor creates a metaphorical center with about a third of voters located between the two extremes—even though their views vary every which way and don’t constitute a single mode of thought at all.

Metaphor is a normal, and mostly unconscious, mechanism of thought. It is sometimes harmless, and other times can be used for good or ill. The left-to-right scale metaphor is not harmless. It is being politically manipulated to the disadvantage of American democratic ideals.

Compare the first thought above to what I wrote in 1999: The purpose of the one-dimensional simplification of political space is simply to aggrandize those in power. The primary difference is that Professor Lakoff sees the one-dimensional simplification as favoring Republicans, where I saw it as favoring the two-party system (i.e. the Republicrats). Of course, Professor Lakoff may be correct that in the last few decades, the Republicans have better exploited such thinking, but I suspect that such exploitation is not inherently favorable to them.

I disagree with one point he goes on to make:

And yet the left-to-right scale metaphor is no concocted hoax. It is real as a metaphor; it is in people’s brains. Even though it is grossly inaccurate, many people use it. My job here is to make you think twice about it, and then stop using it. If you can. It won’t be easy. Thinking that way is a reflex. You will think in terms of the left-to-right scale. Try to catch yourself and stop. Overcoming misleading metaphors that are physically in your brain is never easy.

In contrast to the claims above, I have it relatively easy to discard the left-to-right scale in my thinking once I realized what was going on. Perhaps the mathematical metaphor is stronger in my brain. Indeed, I find myself experiencing something akin to disgust every time I hear others employing the metaphor. As this occurs primarily when reading and listening rather than in conversation, I am not able to correct the writer or speaker, but I do register an objection, and also then go on to discount the analysis that follows. The conclusions of anyone who thinks in such a flawed way cannot be trusted. Since that applies to essentially 100% of the U.S. media, I am quite skeptical of almost all political commentary (even though I read some political blogs for news that cannot be found in the mainstream media).

It will be interesting to keep in mind Professor Lakoff’s multi-dimensional dipole hypothesis (especially the authoritative vs. empathy/empowerment dichotomy) to see how it applies to future situations. It will be especially interesting to see how it applies in situations that were described as follows by William Greider in Who Will Tell The People:

The Republican party is not a party of conservative ideology. It is a party of conservative clients. Whenever possible, the ideology will be invoked as justification for taking care of the clients’ needs. When the two are in conflict, the conservative principles are discarded and the clients are served.

Unlike Professor Lakoff, I will continue to avoid the word conservative to describe Republican thinking, as there is nothing conservative about Republican policies.

Professor Lakoff’s exposition is interesting in that appears to offer an explanation for the Republican worldview. As I have been unable to understand the Republican thought on almost any rational level, this could at least make their point-of-view predictable. However, I still believe the adjective evil can be applied to many Republican policies, and to some Republicans. Authoritarianism may explain their worldview, but it does not excuse it, any more than authoritarianism excused the actions of Germany during World War II.

12 June 2009 — Democrats had more mettle in 1930s

We need a 2009 version of the Pecora Commission to investigate the causes of 2008’s collapse of the U.S. financial system. No such investigation appears to be forecoming. Congress no longer has the mettle to take on large campaign donors and their well-funded lobbyists. President Obama is not much better at doing so; his administration recently shelved plans to have a single banking regulator. The idea that banks can regulator-shop between four Federal agencies and pick the regulator that gives them the most lax treatment is absurd on its face. The Washington Post reported, Officials had envisioned an ambitious restructuring of the agencies responsible for overseeing financial regulation. But people familiar with discussions at the White House and Treasury say officials have stepped back from some of their biggest ideas after encountering criticism from lawmakers, regulators and business interests. I am encouraged that at least some in Congress are still calling for a single regulator, despite President Obama’s retreat.

We have a checkered history. We need to look to the high points and strive to do as well and learn from our low points. The Pecora hearings and reforms that resulted was a high point. The failure to even attempt such an effort reflects poorly on the state of U.S. politics.

11 June 2009 — Shorter Thoughts: Caperton v. Massey, Democrats acting like Republicans

First reaction to Supreme Court decision Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal, et al.

I was gratified to see the Caperton v. Massey outcome because any other outcome would be seriously detrimental to a fair judiciary. What concerns me is that the decision was 5-4 instead of 9-0. I find it hard to understand that Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito were able to vote to allow such a tainted process to stand. I have not yet read the dissent, so perhaps there is some point I have not considered, but at this preliminary point I feel that this is another case of Justices letting only the ends justify the decision. Much as in Bush v. Gore, this decision appears to be more about supporting Republican ideology than providing jurisprudence. I will withhold full condemnation until I read the dissent, but in this short thought I wanted to register my concern about what this says about these four justices. But then, the 5-4 portion of Bush v. Gore already said quite a bit about Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas (the other two of the Bush v. Gore five, Rehnquist and O’Conner, are no longer on the Court for Caperton v. Massey). Justice Kennedy at least voted for a fair judiciary in this case.

Democrats acting like Republicans

Yesterday’s Washington Post article What Would a Health Overhaul Cost? All Eyes on the CBO recalled the Rove White House’s firing of Lawrence Lindsey for predicting in September 2002 that the Iraq war might cost $100-$200 billion instead of the $50-$60 billion estimated by the Rove White House† (compare these pre-war figures to Joseph Stiglitz’s post-war estimates of $3 trillion, made in 2007 and 2008). The Democrats have not gone as far as the Rove White House, but the following Washington Post sentence was certainly cause for concern.

Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a key figure in the health debate, has publicly lectured Elmendorf, saying he has a moral duty to be creative and deliver the favorable budget estimates we have to have to win broad support.

† Note on terminology: I used to write Bush White House for the 2001-2005 period, and President Bush for the 2005-2009 period, based on the 2001 election being fraudulent (Florida in fact voted for Albert Gore as became clear from a statewide examination of the ballots long after the election), and the 2004 election being less clear. At other times I have used squatters in the White House to indicate the illegitimate nature of the 2001-2005 term. Here I am trying out Rove White House, to shine light on one of the mastermind’s of the fraud. One could of course argue for Cheney White House as well.

10 June 2009 — Cash For Clunkers Revisited

I gave Cash For Clunkers some additional thought because earlier I did not include the effects of scrapping cars with useful lifetime. The result is a much better way to think about the program. I suggest that the correct metric is whether we reduce or increase medium-term global temperatures by the trade-up choice. As a proxy, we can look at atmospheric CO₂ levels at some future date (e.g. 2030), and see whether Cash For Clunkers helps or hurts. I did a little research and discovered that vehicle production today is around 10% of lifetime CO₂ emissions. If we assume a 150,000-mile vehicle lifetime (12 years at 12,500 miles/year, or 10 years at 15,000 miles/year), that means producing the vehicle and recycling it at end-of-life is 167% of the annual emissions from fuel and fuel production. Take the tonnes/year of the trade-up vehicle, multiply by 1.67 to get the non-fuel pollution (in reality it would be better to use a per-vehicle estimate, or at least something based upon vehicle mass). Now get the annual fuel emissions for the trade-in. The net emissions effect of the trade-up is
(150,000 − OldMiles) × (NewCO2permile − OldCO2permile) + NewProductionCO2
If this is negative, we reduce emissions. Our voucher should be a number of dollars times the emissions reduction.

For example, if the government is willing to pay $30/tonne, then trading in a 2003 Camry automatic 5-spd (526 g CO₂e/mi, wells-to-wheels) with 87,5000 miles on it for a new 2009 Prius (242 g CO₂e/mi), and you get something like −12.7 tonnes, which is worth a $381 voucher.

As another example, consider trading in a 2005 Ford Expedition 4WD (792 g CO₂e/mi) with 62,500 miles for a 2009 Ford Escape Hybrid 4WD (399 g CO₂e/mi). The emissions are −16.2 tonnes and the voucher would be for $782.

These calculations suggest that the government would have to be willing to pay much more than $30/tonne for emissions reduction to reach the several thousand dollar level that the current bills in Congress are targeting, e.g. $200/tonne (the vouchers above would be $2540 and $5212 respectively). This high $/tonne makes the whole program somewhat questionable as climate protection, as there are much cheaper CO₂e reductions we can invest in today. At this level of voucher, the real purpose of the program is automaker revenue enhancement for macro-economic stimulus. Such stimulus may or may not be valid. If it is, using the above calculation at least gives the proper alignment with the climate crisis.

The above calculation assumes that vehicles of the future remain at current CO₂e/mi levels, when in fact they would decrease over time (making things more complicated). In reality voucher prices could be set by a more sophisticated model of the effect upon cummulative CO₂e emissions at a future date that includes such effects.

The above calculation also doesn’t take into account the effect on promoting EVs, which are necessary technology to solving greenhouse pollution, but which have a long lead time. If there is a near-term EV glut on the way (i.e. production in excess of early adopter demand as suggested by Earth2Tech’s Electric Car Glut on the Way?), some incentives may be necessary to not have plug-in vehicles pronounced a failure for a second time. This is a strategic calculation (the voucher calculation is by comparison tactical).

9 June 2009 — Cap-Grandfather-Trade considered harmful

I continue to believe that the Waxman-Markey bill is a diversion, and as such it is actually harmful. It is better than doing nothing, but that is a poor standard. It delays the real work that is required by several years at least, and we cannot afford that delay.

I don’t believe that cap-grandfather-trade (usually known as cap-and-trade—a less descriptive phrase) will work well to achieve greenhouse pollution reduction. To achieve what could be better accomplished with regulation, the carbon price will be so high that there will be severe pressure to relax the goals, which means a worse climate disaster than the disaster in store for us with regulation. Congress should set the goals and give the EPA the authority to achieve the goals. I expect that the EPA will not be in thrall to Republican ideology (ideology is always the enemy of practicality), and will choose lower-cost, better solutions. I doubt that the EPA’s choices would be sufficient, but they would be better than what we’ll get with carbon pricing as our primary tool.

Ideology says that a price on greenhouse pollution will drive rational actors to reduce their pollution in the most cost-effective fashion. This assumes that homo economicus has sufficient knowledge, time, and motivation to seek optimizations in a myriad of her activities. Reality is somewhat different; time and knowledge restrictions prevent optimal action. Studies show large opportunities for efficiency improvements that save money, but remain undone. Looking at cars, it seems that the majority of purchasing decisions are the result of Madison Avenue manipulation of the non-rational portions of homo sapiens’ brain.

Here is an example of how the carbon price signal will fail to drive the market as well as CAFE. The 2009 Honda Civic automatic gets 29 MPG. That is 383 g CO₂e per mile, wells-to-wheels. If the carbon price is $20/tonne, then the cost per mile is $0.0077, or the equivalent of $0.22 per gallon of gasoline. We saw from the summer of 2008 that price can change drivers’ behavior, but it takes $2 per gallon of gasoline to do so; prices one-tenth of that will have little effect. Conversely, it would take carbon prices of $200/tonne to move car buyers to more efficient vehicle choices. If U.S. politicians don’t falter and repeal or weaken cap-grandfather-trade when prices approach that level, carbon pricing could force changes. Proponents would argue that lower carbon prices will see us first reduce emissions where it is matters at $20/tonne before the price climbs to address cars. However, this ignores the fact that the U.S. vehicle fleet takes more than a dozen years to change; it would be better to change the fleet in advance, so that the eventual carbon price increase is affordable and does not requiring the junking of vehicles just a few years old because they are no longer affordable. That’s what regulations can accomplish.

Proponents of carbon pricing point to the success of the sulfur trading system in the U.S. They should read Gar Lipow’s Emissions trading: A mixed record, with plenty of failures.

8 June 2009 — Cash For Clunkers

Representative Sutton’s Cash For Clunkers amendment to the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill is an example of the undue influence of corporations that I complained about yesterday. Cash For Clunkers is no longer about addressing climate change; it is now only about generating sales for automakers.

I have yet to see any Cash For Clunkers bill that is done right. Basing the test upon increasing MPG (miles per gallon) is wrong; the test should be on decreasing grams of CO₂ equivalent per mile (which is related to the inverse of MPG, i.e. gallons per mile).

Let’s work an example with two cars. The real clunker gets 22 MPG, which is 504 g CO₂e per mile. Another car gets 30 MPG or 370 g CO₂e per mile. If the Cash For Clunkers standard requires a 6 MPG increase, then the first car buyer must trade-up to a 28 MPG vehicle (396 g CO₂ per mile), and the second buyer must trade-up to a 36 MPG vehicle (308 g CO₂ per mile). It is greenhouse pollution that matters. The first buyer’s savings of 108 is larger than the second buyer’s savings of 62, and has a larger impact on the climate. Similarly, if the goal is reduction in imported oil, it is the inverse of MPG that is the appropriate goal. Therefore I would state the standard in greenhouse pollution, e.g. setting the threshold for a Cash for Clunker rebate at 150 g CO₂e.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Senator Feinstein’s bill, S247, would give vouchers to people who turn in a car or truck that gets 15 or fewer miles per gallon to a dealer that scraps it. The voucher could be used to buy a new vehicle or a used one from 2004 or later, as long as the replacement vehicle exceeds government fuel-efficiency standards for its class by at least 25 percent. A passenger car would need to get at least roughly 28 miles per gallon (city/highway combined, as posted on the window sticker). Vouchers would range from $1,500 to $4,500 and could also be used for mass transit. The mass transit provision is nice. By changing the 25 percent to 150 g CO₂e per mile, I would find this acceptable.

7 June 2009 — Undue Influence

As I watch my governments’ responses to the crises still unfolding, I never cease to be amazed at the undue influence that is wielded by corporations. For the most part, it is the actions of corporations that both create our problems and prevent governments from implementing solutions to our problems. This phenomenon occurs in essentially all industries, including health care, pharmaceuticals, energy, transporation, chemicals, food, and finance. It is true that corporations are often part of the solution, but the influence of the solvers is rarely on par with the influence of the problem-makers, with the end result that there is a lot of sound and fury, but very little improvement. I still believe we will never succeed until a solution to undue influence is implemented. That needs to be a priority, and yet it is one of the few things that President Obama does not appear to be tackling. Business as usual: just say no.

6 June 2009 — Earth 2100

I watched television for the first time in a long time. The occasion was ABC’s fictional life of a woman born on 2009.06.02 (the day the show aired). The show was seen by 3.7 million viewers in the 18-to-49 demographic, according to the New York Times, ranked behind NBC, CBS, and Fox. Far more people watched crime show and drama repeats and Inside the Obama White House. It seems that Earth 2100 won’t have much effect, which is unfortunate.

My purpose here is to note is that collapse could occur much earlier than portrayed in Earth 2100. Once the problems begin, if they are not solved quickly, they are likely to generate severe economic problems that I would expect to far exceed our current recession, and perhaps could could rival or exceed the Great Depression. We have chosen an economic system that is dependent upon exponential growth. The usual concern with exponential growth is that it collides with finite limits quite suddenly. Still, the limits to growth could be a century or more away (e.g. if we substitute renewable energy for fossil energy), and so I note that there are other non-limit problems with exponential growth, in particular stability. Problems could develop not as the result collision with limits, but just from a severe, prolonged interruption of growth, causing not just a recession or depression, but a self-sustaining spiral dive. It only takes a hard enough nudge to tip the system into a feedback loop that could destroy the basis for our economic system. Something similar happend to the Western Roman Empire. Loss of population from plague was one factor in its collapse. I believe our economic system is far more susceptible to a population decline than the Roman’s was.

5 June 2009 — David Souter and Sonia Sotomayor

I thought Justice David Souter was a very good Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. One of his best characteristics is his lack of interest in power, as evidenced in his resignation to return to his New Hampshire farm. He is the sort of non-activist judge that Republicans frequently say they want (in actuality Republicans really covet very activist, radical judges who would undo decades of precedent to serve the Republicans’ investors).

It is difficult to know what sort of Justice Sonia Sotomayor will be; her decisions on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit have followed precedent, much as David Souter’s did on U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Her role on the Supreme Court will provide an enlarged scope, and Sonia Sotomayor may turn out to be as much of a surprise for Democrats as David Souter turned out to be for Republicans.

I am supportive of nominating a woman, someone of Puerto Rican descent, and someone who grew up in the Bronx. It is appropriate for there to be diversity on the Supreme Court. With 45 million (15%) Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S., her appointment will foster a sense of inclusiveness and opportunity to a demographic that is growing four times faster than the overall U.S. population. Indeed, if she should serve as long as recent U.S. Justices, and if the Supreme Court were to match U.S. demographics, the Supreme Court would have two Hispanic Justices by the end of her term.

I don’t sympathize with the view that Supreme Court appointments should be based only on who is the best candidate, because I don’t believe that such a person exists; one cannot give candidates a single point score and rank them; that is the fallacy of the one-dimensional simplification of multi-dimensional space. Considering candidates with multi-dimensional criteria produces a set of people who are all well-qualified, and determining who is best is impossible. In this circumstance, it is reasonable to use gender, racial, ethnic, religious, and other criteria as tie breakers, because diversity and the appearance of inclusivity are important. However, by the same reasoning, if a candidate strictly dominates another in multi-dimensional criteria (in the sense used in game theory), then it is not reasonable to choose such a candidate merely because of diversity criteria.

As Judge Sotomayor’s second circuit decisions have very little to criticize, Republicans have turned to her speeches, and fixated upon her pride in being a Latina. I actually do consider excessive identity pride to be an issue; I prefer Justice Souter’s modesty, and while my guess is that Judge Sotomayor will continue some of the restraint she has shown on the second circuit, I do expect her attitude to affect a few of her decisions. However, I don’t consider this a serious problem (i.e. I don’t expect Judge Sotomayor’s pride excessive). One of the purposes of having nine Justices on the Supreme Court is encourage an exchange of ideas based upon a diversity of views, with the goal of reaching better decisions. Only in an era of 5-4 decisions from a polarized Supreme Court is the choice of a single Justice of such high political stakes. That is an unfortunate consequence of Republican appointments from President Reagan on (ignoring the Republicans’ mistake in appointing David Souter in 1990) with the explicit goal of undoing Supreme Court precedents that irritate Republicans’ investors.

The real problem is that both Democrats and Republicans are playing a game where they make Supreme Court appointments with a results-oriented goals. Candidates are evaluated based on whether they will deliver decisions that will have the right outcome, rather than the right reasoning. (California’s Supreme Court decision on Proposition 8 is a good example: it is criticized or praised based upon alignment with the proposition itself, rather than on the reasoning that produced the decision.) I don’t know enough history to know when this started, but once one faction begins this practice, it essentially forces the other faction to adopt it for balance.

In conclusion, I support Judge Sotomayor’s appointment, even though I expect some limited color to her decisions from identity pride (which I hope will not be excessive). I would however prefer a Latina with a humility closer to Justice Souter’s.

4 June 2009 — President Obama’s Cairo Speech

President Obama gave a great¹ speech in Cairo. I was quite impressed by both the quality of the rhetoric and the content (the honesty and understanding). However, the honesty and sentiments expressed cannot substitute for action. Unless President Obama is able to follow through, this speech will not be remembered, despite its greatness.

Words lose their force as they age. The word great is quite old, and now quite weak, but I mean it in its older pre-dilution sense.

3 June 2009 — Governor Schwarzenegger

I voted for other candidates for California Governor in 2003 and 2006, but I have generally been surprised that Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t been as bad of a Governor as I feared. Some high points include:

Low points include:

2005 SB 76 (Hydrogen Highway)
2007 Firing CARB chairman Robert F. Sawyer
2008 CARB’s gutting of the ZEV mandate
Failing to do fix California’s prison problem
Budget gimickery

However, my opinion of Governor Schwarzenegger’s performance has been rapidly deteriorating since the May 19th special election. He falsely interpreted the defeat of propositions 1A-1E as a mandate to slash spending without raising taxes. (My understanding was that voters were disgusted with being asked to do the legislature’s business, even though voters are the ones that created the problems facing the legislature in the first place.)

2 June 2009 — Charging Infrastructure

Snow White, my Solectria Force (an electric car), has an intermittent failure that I have yet to diagnose and fix. As a result, I have been driving my backup car, a 2007 Toyota Prius. Burning fossil fuel is a disgrace, and I feel bad about it; each trip to a gas station is a painful reminder. To lessen the pain, I recently converted my Prius to a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) using the Hymotion kit. Pat’s Garage in San Francisco did the installation. I had been getting 48-49 MPG in the Prius before the modification. Now that I have been driving the modified Prius for about a month, it is time to report how I am doing.

First, I was well aware that the Prius is a poor starting point for a PHEV. I did not expect great results, because the Prius has an electric motor that is too small, and the car’s designers turn on the gasoline engine whenever power demands exceed the capability of the batteries or electric motor (I am not sure which is more limiting). Thus I did not expect 100+ MPG, or even anything close. I installed the kit expecting a modest decrease in my gasoline usage (such is my disgust at burning fossil fuel). I did expect that my EV-trained light foot on the pedal would help. Even so, I was surprised at just how little it takes for the Prius to spin up its infernal combustion engine (ICE). The Prius computer frequently beeps and flashes something like Cannot enter EV mode on the display as it denies the Hymotion’s electronic pushing of the EV button. (Pat’s Garage also installed a Scan Gauge, which helps tremendously at figuring out what the Prius is actually doing.)

One problem is that I often drive in hilly areas, and uphill power demands are fairly high. I live at 740 foot elevation, and the nearest town is at 147 feet, so the drive home is always fairly steep. Interstate 280, on which I drive frequently, is far from flat—it runs up and down rolling hills. I also drive in San Francisco, which has its share of hills.

(If I depart from Los Altos Hills with a full Hymotion pack, drive on Interstate 280 to San Francisco, a distance of about 37 miles, I arrive in SF with the Hymotion almost, but not entirely depleted, having averaged about 75 MPG. If I drive on Highway 101 instead—43 miles—I get higher MPG, but the pack is depleted before I reach the 37 mile point of the trip; more energy is coming from the batteries and less from gasoline on the flatter 101, and so the range is less.)

My purpose in writing this note is to report something I did not expect. I find that my MPG results are primarily a function of my ability to charge. I often get 75 MPG on Highway 280 at 54 MPH, according to the Prius display, and sometimes I get over 100 MPG in town at 30 MPH (the ICE turns often turns on around 33 MPH). However, my month-long average is much lower, perhaps 68 MPG, only 20 MPG more than pre-conversion. On some weeks it is as low as 61 MPG. The primary reason for these low numbers is that the Hymotion pack becomes depleted, and the Prius reverts to a simple HEV. A large fraction of my miles are spent driving in HEV rather than PHEV mode.

It is tempting to ask that the Hymotion kit provide a larger battery pack. Mine is approximately 5 kWh, which if the Prius could operate an EV (which it cannot), this would provide roughly around 20 miles of range. This is a low-end PHEV, but hobbyist volume battery packs are expensive (the kit plus installation is over $2/Wh), and until production volume PHEVs drive down costs (e.g. to $0.50/Wh at first, later dropping to $0.35/Wh), cost is going to limit pack size.

Instead of increasing pack size, it would be far more cost-effective to get more out the 5 kWh that I already have. What I really need is the ability to charge twice as day, but Hymotion has made that difficult by providing only Level 1 charging (a standard garage plug). A Level 2 charging capability would be a big improvement.

Even when Lithium-Ion battery costs drop to $0.50/Wh, given the choice of doubling capacity from 5 kWh to 10 kWh, the additional $2500 could well be better spent on a shares of chargers at various destinations, rather than batteries that I have to carry around in the car.

I have not measured the Hymotion’s exact current draw, but they claim 5.5 hours for a charge, which works out to 900 Watts into the batteries. (I’ve read that their charging algorithm is ultra-simple: constant current only, which means they are not topping off the batteries with a constant voltage trickle charge.) Assuming 90% efficient AC-to-DC conversion, and 95% efficient battery charge/discharge, this means 1060 Watts drawn from the plug. This is not even Level 1 (120 V, 12 A would be 1440 Watts). Since I have run a shop vacuum from the same plug that was used to charge the car without tripping a breaker, this seems consistent.

Let’s say that I run errands in the morning. If I am able to run these errands mostly in EV mode (no highway driving), then the pack is likely to be depleted before I return home (e.g. in somewhat more than 20 miles). Let’s say I return home at 10:00. If I wanted to charge before going again, it would be 15:30 before I could leave (forget that lunch appointment). Neither I nor my electric utility would be very happy about me charging after noon standard time; my time-of-use (TOU) rates increase dramatically (about 3×) then because noon to 6pm is the peak period for the utility. (While at noon my PV is generating far more than the Hymotion can draw, I am still missing the opportunity to run my meter backward at peak rates, and so effectively I am paying the higher rate, even though the power is actually from sunlight.)

Level 2 conductive AC charging (the old J1772) is limited to 11.5 kW (240 V, 48 A from a 60 A circuit breaker). A more typical draw is 9.6 kW from a 40 A from a 50 A breaker and NEMA 14-50R receptacle, or 7.7 kW (32 A from a 40 A breaker). The charge times at these levels are 30, 37, or 46 minutes respectively. I could easily recharge and depart for a lunch appointment (and even recharge during lunch). A similar calculation applies for a commuter who arrives at work at 09:00 and plugs in; the car will not be recharged in time to go out for lunch, and would require power during the utility’s peak demand period.

(The new J1772 specification update will offer 80 A charging from a 100 A breaker, which brings the charge time down to 18 minutes. Europe’s new three-phase, 400 V 63 A standard can deliver 75.6 kW, charging the Hymotion pack in just 5 minutes, the time it takes to run into a store for a quick purchase.)

The EV community likes to say that plug-in vehicles (PHEVs and BEVs) require minimal infrastructure, because the grid is already omnipresent. However, as the examples above demonstrate, Level 1 charging really is not sufficient, and increases battery pack size and cost, and it is Level 1 that is omnipresent. Plug-in vehicles really can benefit from charging infrastructure development.

I really need to fix Snow White. Even with just thirteen 12 V lead-acid batteries (about 6550 Wh of range to 80% depth-of-discharge), the Solectria Force is a better plug-in vehicle than the modified Prius, although its range limitation is hard rather than soft. I used to get 4000 miles a year on Snow White, and 6000 miles on the Prius (40% electric), using 125 gallons of gasoline a year. Driving 10,000 miles on the plug-in Prius a year at 68 MPG will require 147 gallons, an increase. The Force+Prius combination was a better PHEV than the Prius+Hymotion, even though it required me to select the infernal combustion whenever my expected trip was greater than 40 miles.

31 May 2009 — Credit Cards

Congress should pass legislation mandating higher minimum payments on credit cards. The goal should be to maintain the convenience of being able to make small purchases on credit, while protecting the consumer from a debt trap, and reducing the severity of recessions.

The minimum payment set by credit card companies varies, but it is typically 1%-2% of the balance plus interest, with a minimum payment of $10-$25. Imagine a credit card with a balance of $4,000. If the holder stops making any new charges, and pays the minimum payment calculated with the 1% and $10 parameters, it takes almost 20 years to pay off the debt, and the interest payments at 16% will total $4,673 . Very few items purchased with credit cards have a lifetime this long; it is unwise to continue paying for an item long after it has been discarded. With only $40 of additional purchases per month, the balance never declines. If the bank uses the 2% and $10 parameters, then it takes almost 13 years to repay $4,000, assuming there are no new purchases, and $80 of additional purchases each month maintains the $4,000 balance indefinitely.

I suggest that Congress pass legislation mandating a minimum minimum payment calculation that targets a 24-month payoff. This would be appropriate for most purchases. If the consumer wishes to purchase items with longer lifetimes and pay them off over their lifetime, then she should seek a non-recourse loan specific to the item. Such a secured loan will typically have a lower interest rate than the credit card company charges. For example, auto loans at my credit union are currently 5% to 6.5% depending upon the term (3-7 years).

To target a 24-month payoff, the appropriate calculation is no longer a simple percentage of the balance (my $4000 example would require a 22% minimum payment, putting most of the payment burden up front). Rather the minimum payment would be calculated as new purchases are made using standard fixed-payment loan formulas that incorporate the current interest rate. The interest rate for new purchases would be locked in at the time of purchase; changes in rates would only affect purchases made after the card holder is notified. Each month the minimum payment would be the sum of the fixed payments for unpaid purchases. Any additional payment beyond the minimum would go towards paying off the purchases made with the highest interest rate, and for the oldest debts at the same rate.

Under my proposal, if someone makes a purchase of $4000 at 16%, then the minimum payment from this purchase is $195.85. When the purchase is paid off in 24 months, the purchaser has paid only $700 of interest. This is much more consumer-friendly. It would also help provide greater macro-economic stability by lessening positive feedback; consumers would enter recessions with less debt, and so need to cut-back less (i.e. they could make more new purchases than otherwise). During booms, they would fewer new purchases, because the monthly payment would be limiting. Both add to macro-economic stability.

25 May 2009 — Guanánamo Bay Prison

I don’t understand the opposition to closing Guanánamo Bay prison. The opposition claims that the terrorists held there are too dangerous to bring to the U.S. First, the press is violating its own rules when it calls those being held terrorists instead of alleged terrorists, as they have not yet been tried and convicted. It is a reminder of how easily we forget the rule of law when foreigners are involved. Second, suppose some of those held in Guanánamo Bay prison are tried and convicted. If the U.S. understands anything, it understands how to incarcerate prisoners; there would be no safety issues in putting dangerous individuals in Federal SuperMax prisons. Third, even if some were tried and released because of Bush White House’s failures (e.g. torture), we accept the release of dangerous individuals all the time (e.g. the by enforcing the Miranda rule) in order to safeguard our own rights. What is special about the detainees at Guanánamo? Also, by not addressing recidivism, we also release dangerous individuals at the end of their prison terms (one of our many penny-wise, pound-foolish public policies). Also, by keeping Guanánamo Prison open, we help fuel terrorist recruitment, potentially creating more danger than release would. Fourth, and finally, Guanánamo Bay prison is not the only U.S. prison in operation; why is the discussion not also addressing the other prisons, such as the Bagram Theater Internment Facility?

24 May 2009 — Manned vs. Unmanned Space Missions

NASA suggests that the Space Shuttle repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope is the end of an era. I have yet to comment upon manned space flight, so this provoked me.

First, when it comes to science missions, I have never understood why NASA chooses to put only one of so many science platforms into space. For the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), NASA built two, and launched one (the other remained on Earth for repair practice). Given the enormous R&D required to develop the HST, would it not have made sense to build five instead? The incremental cost would not have been that large. NASA could then have put one in orbit as a test; when the mirror proved defective, it could have fixed the remaining four on Earth, and then launched another. A year later it could have launched a third. Having two in space would have doubled the results for the same R&D costs, with only the cost of an additional instrument and launch. When one failed, NASA could have launched one of its remaining HSTs stored on Earth, rather than repair the one in space. I cannot say for certain that this would be cheaper than the Space Shuttle program and repair missions, but I strongly suspect it would have been. We deploy multiple copies of communications, GPS, and spy satellites; why not science missions?

Such replicated science missions would eliminate much of the need for manned space repair missions. It has always been the model for most non-science missions. However, there will always be situations where we might wish we had more flexibility in space. Here it seems the best approach would be the space equivalent of remotely operated aircraft. Developing this capability is also likely to have significant spin-offs to non-space technology. Consider the Mars rovers (one of the few examples of deploying two of something rather than just one). No manned mission to Mars in the next few decades is likely to last the five years that Spirit and Opportunity have been exploring. Had we developed remote-operated repair capability, Spirit might have already been freed from its current sand trap, and its broken leg returned to operation. Of course, a manned mission to Mars might not have needed five years to cover as much as Spirit and Opportunity have accomplished, but the cost would have beeen one or more orders of magnitude larger; would it not be better to have ten times the number of robotic science missions than a single manned mission? A manned mission to Mars would have eliminated spending on missions to other planets, solar observatories, Earth science missions, and so on. We need to explore as much as possible in parallel, because we cannot predict which is the most fertile ground for discovery.

It is therefore my opinion that we should reduce our manned space missions in favor of more unmanned missions, and increase the capability of our unmanned missions.

23 May 2009 — A National Party No More?

I am surprised by the Democratic bloggers I read (e.g. Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos). They seem to declaring a premature demise to the Republican Party. I am not nearly so optimistic; I believe the Republican Party could easily regain its grip upon U.S. politics, much like the typical Hollywood monster that always has one or two more lives left in it after the hero delivers what appears to the audience to be a mortal blow.

Even in diminished numbers, today’s Republicans still pose a threat to rational public policy. George Lakoff recently wrote, up to now, Democrats have been acting like sheep being herded by the Republican minority. I agree with his characterization.

More importantly, there is no reason the Republican Party cannot stage a comeback. Enough U.S. citizens vote not for policy positions, but instead for personalities, that it will take only a charismatic Republican candidate for the them to regain the White House. This is especially true if the Democrats continue their habit of nominating uncharismatic candidates (President Obama being a recent exception). In Congress, it will only take the electorate becoming dissatisfied with the economy for Republican candidates will regain seats (voters often vote against a Party more than they vote for another).

18 May 2009 — Meet the new boss. Sometimes the same as the old boss

President Obama’s continuation of several Bush White House policies is disturbing. While the about-face on energy and climate is most welcome, other policies are troubling, such as: the revival of the military tribunal system; back-pedalling on his transparency pledge (e.g. the Cheneyesque decision to fight the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act request); and the continuation of UCAV attacks that kill innocent civilians.

17 May 2009 — California’s Special Election

California’s propositions 1A-1F are a mess. The proper solution is to convene a constitutional convention for a rewrite. However, that cannot happen in time to solve the budget crisis. The real question then is whether to reject proposition 1A so as to force the legislature to try again, or to allow 1A, get on with fixing the budget hole, and then hope that these propositions will be redone properly in the future. California’s constitution is becoming a landfill of broken machinery. We need to apply reduce, reuse, and recycle to shrink our landfill constitution.

There are three fundamental problems that got us into this mess: Proposition 13 (1978), Proposition 16 (1962)¹, and various recent ballot propositions that cordon off certain revenue sources from the general fund or otherwise restrict the legislature’s ability to make tradeoffs between competing demands. Proposition 16 (1962) and its 1933 predecessor were placed on the ballot by the California legislature, whereas Proposition 13 was placed on the ballot via the signature process. Thus California’s voters share the blame with the legislature. I outlined my thoughts on how propositions should be done in Bringing Democracy to the U.S. and Ballot Initiatives. Our landfill constitution and resulting current crisis is a good demonstration of the consequences of our current process.

I am still unsure how to vote. I am inclined to vote yes on 1A and 1B, and no on all the rest, and then hope we can clean up our mess later, but the temptation to vote no on 1A to force a better result is strong.

Unfortunately, a constitutional convention to rewrite California’s constitution is not likely with either a yes or no vote.

The 1962 proposition modified Proposition 1 (1933) an earlier two-thirds requirement that only applied to budgets that increased by 5%.

9 May 2009 — Torture vs. Killing

There is finally serious outrage in the U.S. over the Bush White House’s use of torture, and yet, at the same time as the wailing over deeds a half dozen years ago, there is little outrage for the ongoing killing of innocent people by the U.S. The events of the past are important, but priority should be for correcting our future actions, and for that we should be looking at what is going on now. U.S. policies encourage civilian casualties and collateral damage, and yet where is the outrage at these policies? There is some, but it not mainstream. One of the evils of partisanship is the lack of criticism of political allies. Until this changes, we will continue to live in a world where torture is, for the moment evil, but death from the sky is merely regrettable.

28 April 2009 — Senator Specter

There is much buzz today about Senator Specter abandoning the Republican Party, but I fail to see much significance. Most seem to think that it gives the Democrats the 60 votes necessary to end fillibuster, but that only matters if Senator Specter changes his future voting based on his party affiliation. The pressure to sustain a fillibuster will be gone, replaced by a slight have the pressure to end one, but Senator was already a Republican defector when he felt it appropriate (e.g. on the President Obama’s stimulus bill), so it is not clear that a shift in pressure will change that many future votes. Further, Democratic Party pressure is especially weak compared to the Stalinist discipline that is the norm in the Republican Party. If Senator Reid got Senator Specter’s committment to vote with the Democrats on cloture issues, independent of his subsequent vote on the matter, then this may be more significant.

Even with Senator Specter, Democrats may have difficulty ending Republican fillibusters. There are still many Democrats who put their campaign contributions (e.g. from the coal industry or automakers) ahead of serving the nation’s interests.

After writing the above, I read Nate Silver’s What Kind of Democrat Will Arlen Specter Be? Data is useful, and so I am reconsidering my opinion in light of their data. Nate’s first take on Senator Specter’s switch has another valid point: Senator Specter now needs to worry about a Democratic primary challenge, which may affect his future voting.

23 April 2009 — Time for a New U.S. Political Party

Note: While it is almost farcical for me to lay out a Conservative Party platform, I use this vehicle, with a wink, to comment upon the state of U.S. politics.

The U.S. political party of torture, economic mismanagement, corruption, fear mongering, war, environmental destruction, law breaking, and hypocrisy is now so currently discredited that the U.S. needs a replacement. It is time for someone to found a new political party to replace the Republicans. The Republicans are actually the radical party in the U.S. (and the Democrats are primarily the conservatives, in the dictionary sense of the word), but this new party should actually be more conservative, in the dictionary sense, than the Democrats, and so for marketing purposes, call it the Conservative party.

As I have explained often in the past, I don’t believe in the political labels conservative, liberal, or progressive, as they represent points on the bogus political spectrum concept, but I am pretty much alone in thinking that the political spectrum is a useless concept, and so to be successful, using a name that will have appeal to many of those who identify with the Republican party is a clever marketing move.

I intend this suggestion to provide a sane choice of factional politics for Americans within our existing two-faction, one-party system. Today Americans have a choice between evil (Republicans) and incompetence (Democrats). I am concerned that without a credible opposition party to the Democrats, their incompetence will grow. I prefer a multi-party system to make the U.S. less of plutocracy, but that requires major surgery to the U.S. political system, and is unlikely any time soon. Of course, replacing the Republican party is unlikely as well, but there is a greater chance of success than rewriting the U.S. Constitution.

What would the new Conservative Party stand for? Before I explore that, let me examine the values shared by the Democratic Party and Conservative Party. As the U.S. political system only allows for two major parties, these issues would be off the table for practical purposes.

Reality-based: The Republican Party has an almost Lamarckian view of the world that is in stark opposition to reality. This was illustrated by the infamous remarks of a Bush White House denizen to Ron Suskind concerning the ability to create their own reality, and also in being the political party of anti-science, such as global warming denial. If the United States can only support two major parties, then both must accept that the physical laws of the Universe do not dance to our whims, and that even political reality is not something that a single faction can control.
Fiscal Responsibility: This is really an instance of reality-based economics. It needs to be a shared value of both the Democratic Party and the new Conservative Party. It represents an acceptance of Keynesian economics (which appears to be science within our economic system, at least as far as anything is science in economics). The government should, on average, keep revenues and expenses balanced, but during recessions it should run a deficit to provide stimulus, and during economic booms, it should run a surplus, and so act as negative feedback, thereby adding system stability. (Borrowing for infrastructure spending that exhibits a positive return on investment might be exempted from balanced budget accounting.) While fiscal responsibility was once a major platform of the Republican party (prior to Reagan), they have since abandoned it, while the Democrats have somewhat adopted it (President Obama’s health care proposal being a possible exception). It is time that fiscal irresponsibility be off the table for the two major U.S. parties. The current Republican party starve the beast tactic (creating enormous deficits outside of recessions) has no place in U.S. policy.
Freedom, Liberty: The United States was founded upon an ideology of freedom and liberty, and neither of its dominant political parties can have a superior claim to this ideology. The Republican Party is deeply hypocritical on this today, being at once the party that likes to talk about personal freedom (really only freedom for their cronies—primarily client corporations—to do as they please), while in actuality being the Orwellian party.
Market-oriented economics: Whether it is optimal or not, the prevailing ideology of the United States (unlike much of Europe) is against much government participation in economic production. It is therefore a shared value to maintain a good deal of separation between government and production. However, while the parties are 90% aligned on this, I do propose a slight preference in the Conservative Party for private over public enterprise, as described below. (In contrast Republicans don’t today stand for market economics, but rather crony economics, e.g. pay to play). Note I omit the laissez-faire prefix free before market because the shared position has to now be that moderate regulation is part of U.S. economics, and that laissez-faire has been proven a failure often enough to not warrant further experimentation.
National Security: The Republican and Democratic parties are equally zealous in their pursuit of national security (perhaps too zealous). Likewise, neither is more patriotic than the other. Americans do not appear to want this to be a political party difference, and so it remains a shared value between the Democratic Party and the new Conservative Party.
Rule of law: Do I even need to justify this?

Note: the above are not necessarily my values, but rather my observation of shared values in the United States, or values that are basically now known to be necessary (such as accepting science, including what is now known about economics). My personal opinions increasingly emphasize the need for sustainability, something that is at odds with our current economics, which is based upon growth. Solving this is necessary, but without an acceptance of this observation, it cannot yet be part of the shared political values of the two major parties. Indeed, it is currently not accepted by either current major party, though the Democratic Party is slightly closer than the Republican Party.

With that background, now I turn to the Conservative Party platform:

Preference for Private Enterprise: While market-oriented economics is a shared value, this Conservative party position represents an even greater tendency toward private enterprise than might be found in the Democratic Party, though the Democratic Party is already heavily biased toward private enterprise for most things, it is willing to entertain public enterprise activities when there is market failure, as in health care. The Conservative Party would be more skeptical about government’s role.
Limiting Federal Spending: Similar to the above, the Conservative Party would advocate caution on Federal Spending. As Fiscal Responsibility dictates that taxes reflect spending after adjusting for recessionary stimulus and boom-time recuperation, the primary way to maintain low taxes would be by caution on new Federal spending. Low taxes would not be a party platform, but rather a consequence of limited Federal spending.
Cautious on Regulation: Acceptance of regulation must be a shared value of the two major parties (from reality-based), but a small difference on how quickly to respond to market failures with regulation is reasonable. The Conservative Party would therefore take the more cautious approach, while the Democratic Party would be more inclined toward the precautionary principle.
Limiting Federal Power: The Conservative Party would be less inclined to expand Federal Power than the Democratic Party. The Republican Party tends toward an absolute monarchy interpretation of executive power (e.g. warrantless wiretapping, excessive claims of Commander in Chief privileges). In contrast the Democratic Party would be more willing to exert Federal power for civil rights, economic regulation, and so forth.
Reluctance on Foreign Involvement: The Conservative Party would be less inclined to get involved in the affairs of foreign nations (be more isolationist, as it was a half century ago), except in matters of national security (e.g. nuclear proliferation). The Democratic Party would be more willing to intervene in humanitarian situations.
Caution on changing social values: This would be the party for those opposing gay marriage, for example. (I have personally never understood how gay marriage threatens the institution of marriage, and while I don’t find this position to have any validity whatsoever, many today don’t share my view, and so the preservation of the status quo suggests opposition of changes until society values have clearly moved on.)

With such a Conservative Party replacing the Republican Party, Americans would at least be spared having to choose evil to have representation on legitimate issues of concern.

21 April 2009 — U.S. Automakers

What should be done about the U.S. automakers? I have yet to form a real opinion on this; this note is more of a trial balloon. The best way to help them would be a universal U.S. healthcare system based on tax revenue, but Congress will not pass such a plan in time for the automakers, and so a shorter-term solution is required. My non-expert opinion is that Chrysler, GM, and Ford have been non-viable for years (partially because of healthcare costs), and that the best that that can be expected is for them is to have their technology, factories, employees, and select liabilities (e.g. warranties) transferred to companies that can perform better. President Obama’s auto task force seeks to reduce the company’s debts, but that leaves the same management that has already failed in place. If possible, the task force should seek a pre-negotiated liquidation, where some (but not all) of the liabilities are transferred to the buyers. In that way, management is eliminated, but most of the employee base and the supply chain remain employed. If buyers willing to continue their operations cannot be found, then the task force should install new management, and use the bankruptcy process. It may also be important to treat each automaker differently; for example, Chrysler might be liquidated while parts of GM are given new management and parts liquidated. Because the U.S. government must pick up the automakers’ pension liabilities in bankruptcy, this is likely to be very expensive for taxpayers regardless of the approach taken. This underscores the need for intervention as early as possible when companies become non-viable.

19 April 2009 — Shorter Thoughts: Torture, Bail-out Bonuses, Cap-and-trade

My target here has been somewhat longer essays, but I don’t often feel up to that level of writing, and I would like to set down my thoughts more often, and so I plan to reduce the justifications in many cases and just note my thoughts, to keep some kind of record as George Orwell suggested. Of course a more complete argument would make for a better record, but when the alternative is nothing, short notes are something at least. What follows is three such notes.

Torture

The U.S. is now looking into the torture conducted during Bush’s occupation of the White House (2001-2005) and his subsequent Presidency (2005-2009). My preference would be to have Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity, but that is so unlikely that as a practical matter, I favor an approach that will achieve something rather than nothing. While I have not thought deeply about the issue, my current opinion is that South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the right model. While I know few details, the legislation introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy and Representative John Conyers may be appropriate.

In particular, I believe that by honestly and completely describing their actions, U.S. officials should be granted immunity from prosecution in the U.S. and extradition. They would not be exempt from prosecution abroad, and would therefore find it unwise to travel outside U.S. borders. This is minor punishment indeed for heinous crimes, but it is unlikely that anything more severe could be achieved in the U.S. Even a Truth and Reconciliation Commission will be vigorously opposed by the neocons.

Bail-out Bonuses

The bonuses paid by firms receiving bail-out funds from the U.S. has generated great controversy. While I consider it poor form, foolish, and bad public relations, I cannot generate the same sense of outrage, as the monies paid are a small portion of the bail-out funds. Outrage on this issue delays us from addressing the larger issue of how to make banking boring again, which might be sufficient to bring down compensation without adopting other ill-advised measures. Silicon Valley style compensation schemes would also be appropriate.

Cap-and-Trade

Congress’ attempt to pass a cap-and-trade bill is a sideshow to most of the real issues. When I outlined my thoughts on a solution at Actions to take on Greenhouse Pollution I included putting a price on greenhouse pollution (GP) as a minor item, and that is all it is because GP pricing will not drive changes unless the price is much higher than appropriate. Congress should get to work on the important tasks first. I should also write about cap and trade vs. a GP tax in a future commentary.

4 April 2009 — President Obama’s First 74 Days

I have yet to write much about the Barack Obama’s presidency so far (74 days so far). Though I voted for the Green Party as usual (Senator Obama being the certain winner in California at the time), I of course far preferred Senator Obama to Senator McCain. I have generally been pleased with President Obama’s first 74 days. His appointments have generally been reasonable on environmental and climate issues, and his actions in human rights and foreign policy have been generally good. Here are some exceptions to the good things:

Appointments
- Kenneth Salazar as U.S. Secretary of the Interior
- Timothy Geithner as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury (he appears too included to tinker rather than reform the system—he appears to be too close to the entities he regulates)
Domestic
- U.S. EPA is still not properly enforcing the law against coal companies (e.g. in mountain-top removal mining)
- The financial collapse response is being bungled (far more major restructuring is required)
Foreign
- President Obama’s Afghanistan policy is unlikely succeed (see Jason Lyall’s Rage Against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars (appendix) and Burden of Victory: The Painful Arithmetic of Stability Operations by James T. Quinlivan for some reasons why).

I should probably write down my thoughts for later reflection on most of the above. My attention has been consumed elsewhere lately, but I hope that will soon change.

There are many things where it is still too early to know whether President Obama will do the right thing. For example, the military budget needs an obvious overhaul, but perhaps the first year is not the time for it. This year’s 4% increase is probably not warranted if Iraq and Afghanistan budgeting is still separately funded.

Perhaps now that the Bush era is over, it is time to state my opinion that our 43rd President was the worst in the nation’s history (though there may be some contenders from the 19^th century that I am less familar with). In recent years, a runner up might be the 40th (despite the adoration which he receives from many).

5 April 2009 note: Today’s Washington Post had another reason to question President Obama’s Afghanistan policy: Which Way in Afghanistan? Ask Colombia For Directions. The provocation of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is compared to Colombian paramilitary forces:

Perhaps the most important parallel, though, is the lack of a strong central government. Colombia’s government has rarely held sway beyond Bogota’s nearly two-mile high plateau, and the frail Karzai administration in Kabul has a similarly short reach. As a result, Colombia has relied on brutal paramilitary forces to support a weak army, alienating much of the population in the process. In Afghanistan, that role is played by U.S. forces, which, although by no means as savage as the Colombian irregulars, have cost Afghanistan’s government support among a people famously hostile to foreign invaders.

15 March 2009 — Two Billion Cars

I try to select the books I read carefully, based upon reviews, perusal, etc. I cannot say whether I am successful or not, as I don’t have a proper control group of books. One recent indication is a book that I was asked to read and comment upon: Two Billion Cars by Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon. It was far worse than the average book I read.

Since I have previously experienced Dr. Sperling’s statements during CARB board meetings, I expected a real bias towards hydrogen and against EVs, which was promptly demonstrated, but the real problem was that the book’s solutions consisted primarily of platitudes and statements that are essentially content free. The book lacked specificity and detail.

In addition to bias against EVs and for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the authors have an even more serious bias against EV advocates, describing EV advocacy at CARB meetings as follows:

Battery electric vehicles have a rabid following. At periodic public hearings for California’s ZEV rule during the 1990s and in the early years of this century, electric vehicle advocates noisily proclaimed the righteousness of their cause with raucous cheering of allies and booing of skeptics. But, alas, the rhetoric and enthusiasm for electric vehicles has still not transformed into reality.

Words such as rabid and raucous seem out of place in my experience at CARB meetings, and even if noisy righteousness and booing occurred at a meeting I did not attend, that is no reason to so characterize all EV advocates that way. Moreover, righteousness may come from being right, a possibility the authors do not seem to consider.

The history of CARB’s ZEV program is abbreviated to just two paragraphs here, from which the above quote is taken (it is revisited in a similarly too terse fashion again in Chapter 7). It is a cartoon treatment, meant to brush aside the failures of CARB by transferring them to the vehicles. If it were not for the chance to vent at EV advocates, the authors might have omitted the ZEV program mention altogether. The last sentence above about electric vehicle reality is partially the result of author Sperling’s own work at CARB.

About the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? the authors write:

… But missing from the lineup was the one real culprit: the battery. … But the real problem once again was the cost and life the batteries. Ironically, battery electric vehicles faltered two centuries in a row or the same reason.

Author Sperling surely knows better, as he has heard (assuming he listened) frequent testimony at CARB meetings from RAV4-EV drivers and their happy experiences with the cost and lifetime of the batteries in their vehicles (my wife’s $42,000 RAV4-EV has 90,000 miles on the odometer and continues to perform well); where are the cost and lifetime problems?

He goes on to write about batteries:

Through the 1990s, entirely new battery technologies were developed and commercialized—nickel cadmium, nickel metal hydride, and more recently lithium-ion batteries—spurred by the energy demands of proliferating portable consumer products such as laptop computers and camcorders. But scaling up these new and improved battery technologies for use in cars has proved formidable. Even with continuing cost and performance improvements, the high cost and physical bulk of batteries discourages their use in cars. Into the foreseeable future, batteries won’t be cheap or compact enough to make battery-powered electric vehicles cost-competitive with full-sized, full-performance internal combustion engine vehicles.

The above is written as-if the authors are stuck in the 1990s, despite publishing their book in 2009. Again, does not the 2002 RAV4-EV, with its nickel metal hybrid batteries, reasonable cost, and good road record, challenge the authors’ misinformation on cost, bulk, and lifetime? Where is the scaling up problem? Similarly, a mere start-up (Tesla Motors) introduced lithium-ion battery technology to the market before this book was published, again making the authors’ scaling up criticism seem overblown. Moreover, NiMH batteries continue to be improved as hybrids proliferate. Consider the change from the first year Prius to later years reported at First Numbers on Hybrid Battery Failure: Also, there is a small factual error in the above quote: according to Wikipedia, nickel cadmium was invented in 1899, first went into produdction in 1906, and saw production in the U.S. as early at 1946. It is not a 1990s technology.

With more than 100,000 Honda hybrids on the road, the automaker told Newsweek that fewer than 200 had a battery fail after the warranty expired. That’s a 0.002 likelihood. Toyota says its out-of-warranty battery replacement rate is 0.003 percent—or one out of 40,000 Priuses—for the second generation Prius. Based on this rate, and the fact that very few of the second-generation Priuses have been driven beyond the warranty period, perhaps fewer than a dozen have had battery failures after the warranty expired. Replacement rates for the first generation Prius was closer to 1 percent.

To further dispel the batteries aren’t ready myth, consider that there are number of Priuses operating in taxi fleets, and they rack up very high mileage quickly as for example detailed in the report Toyota Prius taxi tops 340,000mi, dispels battery myth. As a member of CARB and the U.C. Davis Institute for Transportation Studies, author Sperling presumably knows these facts, or should. (There are differences betweeen the way NiMH batteries are used in hybrids and BEVs, which means that a straight extrapolation of miles is not appropriate, but my point is the inevitable improvement of quality and technology once it is brought to market that Two Billion Cars ignores.)

The authors go on to indicate that where pure battery vehicles have the greatest potential to succeed is in applications that call for smaller vehicles with less power and performance… Other goods fits include neighborhood and city cars… The suggestion that this is the best that battery vehicles can do is nowhere supported with evidence.

The authors title their fuel cell section The Holy Grail: Fuel Cell Vehicles, which simultaneously indicates their bias for FCVs (in the holy grail sense of earnestly wished or sought for), while introducing a freudian slip, in that other metaphorical meaning: This or that holy grail is seen as the distant, all-but-unobtainable ultimate goal for a person, organization, or field to achieve. For instance, cold fusion or anti-gravity devices are sometimes characterized as the holy grail of applied physics (quote from Crystalinks). In fact, fuel cell vehicles have serious limitations from a public-policy standpoint that the authors never discuss (such as the need for two to four times the electric power generation, which in the future primarily means two to four times the land area for wind and solar). This is a serious omission.

The authors do describe downsides for fuel cell vehicles, such as cost (the lifetime problem is not mentioned). They write, But for these costs to be realized, fuel cell systems must be produced in large volume. As with hybrids, it takes time to build manufacturing capability and markets. This is true, but I ask why is the same observation never made about battery-powered vehicles? Similarly Two Billion Cars suggests that government subsidize renewable hydrogen, but does not suggest subsidies for batteries. They show their bias for hydrogen again in the section Imagining Futurama III where FCVs are cited, but not BEVs except NEVs.

As another indication of the authors’ pro-hydrogen bias, consider the book’s cherry-picking assertion A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle operating on hydrogen made from natural gas generates about half as much as greenhouse gas as gasoline, taking into consideration the full energy cycle. They cite as a reference a Scientific American article that reads,

If hydrogen were produced from natural gas, the most common method today, and used in an efficient fuel-cell car, the total greenhouse gas emissions would work out to be about 110 grams per kilometer driven. This amount is somewhat less than the total emissions from a gasoline hybrid vehicle (150 grams per kilometer) and significantly less than those from today’s conventional gasoline cars (195 grams per kilometer).

Note that the authors use the worst gasoline number against the FCV instead of using the best; the NG-to-H₂ powered FCV is not twice as good as existing gasoline technology. Their lack of specificity and clarity in writing misleads the reader.

When the authors write, Policymakers must overcome the temptation to prescribe and mandate any one particular solution, one of them should look in the mirror and examine his own hypocrisy. Dr. Sperling’s actions on CARB have been to implement a non-level playing field, tilted in favor of FCVs and against BEVs; most recently he fostered yet another delay in the ZEV requirement so that FCVs would have a chance to become viable, even though BEVs were already viable.

My major criticism of the book is what they left out, which is a coherent, convincing problem statement and solution. Basically the book boiled down to the observation that we need to do a lot of things. It listed several actions, but gave no indication of the degree of anything or any proof that those things would actually solve our problems. The book was written as if the authors were innumerate when it came to the future. This dumbing down cannot have been the result of publisher feedback, because numbers and graphs were allowed in the problem statement. The refusal to actually sketch possible futures in detail must then be a limitation of the authors. They could have partially made up for their refusal to lay out future scenarios by writing with cogency and perspicuity, but they did not; their writing is a muddle.

6 March 2009 — Ideology is the enemy

The US needs to take over any insolvent bank without dithering, but in the US the word nationalization is a pejorative. Ideology is always the enemy of practicality (doing the right thing).

There comes a time when people must admit their old gods are dead and that the old sacrificial rituals must be discarded. Inevitably they will be replaced with new gods and new sacrificial rituals, but one hopes that there will be an iota of practicality introduced in the substitution.

6 December 2008 — Actions to take on Greenhouse Pollution

I decided to write down, in outline form, my thoughts on attacking our greenhouse pollution problem. As this is just from memory, I am sure to have left out a few important things, but this memory dump represents most of my thinking on the subject.

We need to start working in parallel on many fronts:

Adopt at the Federal level California’s policies, incentives, and regulations. These are for the most-part proven, politically acceptable solutions. These made California the most efficient state in the nation in terms of electricity use. Where better, more successful policies, incentives, and regulations have worked in other places, use those instead. Let’s not take needless risks: use what has already been shown to work. In a few years the result of New England’s alternative approach to decoupling will be known, and that might be substituted if it is more successful. Over time this should bring U.S. kWh per capita down to 7,000 to 8,000, (a 35% to 43% reduction). Total power generation should fall at least until 2023, and be essentially flat for a few years thereafter, despite population growth. The California approach is to go as low as the technology reasonably allows, so lower may be possible. This will also drive down natural gas use in the U.S. (one of the largest direct fuel uses). The feed-in tariff idea from Germany might be another proven approach to fold in. Examples of California policies, incentives, and regulations that could be adopted wholesale:
- Title 24 building codes
- Title 20 appliance standards
- Decoupling/negawatts
- Loading order
- PV initiatives (e.g. SB1)
- Solar hot water initiatives (e.g. AB1470)
- Net-zero residential buildings in 2020, Net-zero commercial buildings in 2030 (2007 IEPR proposal)
- AB32 total emissions cap (1990 level by 2020, 80% below 1990 by 2050)
- SB1368 power plant cap (500 g CO₂e / kWh), phased in over 30 years at Federal level
- Renewable Portfolio Standard (CA SB 1078: 20% in 2010, 33% proposed in 2020, US: 20% in 2015, 33% in 2025)
- AB1493 LDV efficiency standard (e.g. 40+ MPG in 2016)
- Cold ironing (aka Green Ports) for ships
- Smartway efficiency for trucking
- Anti-idle trucking regulations and substitutes
- Cool paints for cars and roofs
- Water use regulations (affects electrical use)
- Smart growth, congestion control, public transit, zoning changes, and other VMT reduction policies
- Diesel particulate traps to control black carbon (a greenhouse pollutant and health issue)
- Regulations for high GWP GHGs (e.g. SF₆, NF₃, etc.)
- Landfill methane initiative
- Biogas initiative, manure management
- Tire inflation initiative
- Blended cements
- Diesel vehicle hybridization
- Maybe Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (I’m yet to be convinced of this California initiative)
- Time-Of-Use Net metering
Use the purchasing power of the Federal government to drive deployment of key technologies:
- Heating, cooling, lighting efficiency retrofits
- Purchase renewable energy for all Federal needs
- Purchase plug-in hybrids for Federal and USPS vehicle fleets
Begin transition of U.S. passenger vehicle fleet to plug-in hybrids, targeting 50% of new vehicle sales being PHEVs in 2027, and 50% of the fleet being PHEVs in 2035. PHEVs should be V2G capable starting in 2015. Also transition class 1 to 6 trucks to PHEVs (class 7 and 8 trucks will probably remain diesel, transitioning to diesel-electric hybrids).
- This long-lead-time action enables progress in the transportation sector once AB1493 standard starts to run out of steam.
- It is synergistic with the RPS of #1.
- Need to encourage public charging infrastructure (incentives, standards, funding), e.g. Coulomb Technology, Better Place.
Begin deployment of Smart Grid technology.
- This long-lead-time item enables V2G to play a role in the electric grid, and also allows renewables to increase their percentage of the grid over time (e.g. by allowing grid-aware appliances to modify their usage patterns).
Vigorously enforce existing laws on coal.
- Eliminate MTR, fly ash dumps, etc. by enforcing existing regulations.
- Drive up the cost of coal mining and combustion.
Require old coal plants to meet current standards (end grandfathering—40 years is long enough).
After #5 and #6 and the carbon cap of #1, and the reduction in demand from the efficiency of #1, coal will be much less economic. At some point coal investors will seek a bail-out. At that point the U.S. should nationalize the coal plants to shut them down. (Better to let the investors lose out, but we know the U.S. government never lets investors get too badly hurt, so be realistic and take advantage of the situation.)
Cogeneration in short-term where feasible
- Issue: cogeneration lifetime may be short, as fossil fuels are phased out within 30 years, limiting ROI. CSP and geothermal cogeneration may be only opportunities, but those are research items.
Implement policies, incentives, and regulations that favor rail transport over trucking. Encourage electrification of diesel rail lines
- With the decline of coal, rail will have greater freight capacity. Make sure it is used and capacity is used to replace trucking, because rail is many times more efficient.
Biofuels
- Biofuels are idiotic for BAU transportation, but as a PHEV backup fuel, they work. E85 made from corn stover (the primary form of agricultural waste in the US) via cellulosic processes for 20% of VMT at 60 MPG is about right. This reduces our petroleum consumption to just 15% of 20% of 33% = 1% of today (33% from 60 MPG vs. 20 MPG). However, corn stover needs to checked against fertilizer increase to insure this is wise.
- Most other biofuels belong in Research and Development sections, since they are not yet ready for deployment (e.g. algae biodiesel)
Electrification of public transit:
- High-speed (TGV-like) rail to replace short-distance air
- Replace diesel buses with combination of plug-in hybrid, partial overhead electrification for opportunistic charging
Improvements to public transit
- Paris-like dedicated bus lanes in cities
- Free public-transit in certain zones as in Portland
Carbon price (e.g. tax+rebate, or cap+auction+rebate)
- close loopholes in other actions
- present proper economics (reduce externalities)
- prevent backsliding (e.g prevent oil sands, shale, methane hydrates, etc.)
- provisions to tax imports based on any carbon price advantage of producing nation (encourages other nations to adopt similar carbon prices)
Improve agricultural practices
- Limits on fertilizer use (CO₂)
- No-till
- Organic incentives
Adopt best-practice recycling (e.g. mixed stream, advanced separation) nationwide
Implement cradle-to-cradle policies as in Germany (manufacturer responsible for product disposal)
Development (funded at roughly 10% of deployment funding level)
- Cellulosic conversion technologies
- Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
- Wind-assist for container ships
- Wind turbine improvements (e.g. higher/larger, tubercles, better conversion to electricity, etc.)
- Off-shore deep-water wind technologies
- Thermal Energy Storage (TES) for CSP—need to prototype Ausra’s technology, for example
- Advanced heat pump technologies
- CPV cost reduction
- Urban wind technologies (e.g. Bil Becker turbines)
Research (funded at roughly 2% of deployment funding level)
- High-altitude wind
- Alternatives to concrete
- Lower CO₂ production for steel
- CSP and geothermal cogeneration
- Regenerative shock absorbers for vehicles
- Using V2G to support wind on grid
- Advanced heat to electricity technologies (e.g. waste heat conversion)
- Materials science
- Ultracapacitors and batteries
- New PV, CPV, CSP technologies
- Grid energy storage
- Ocean power technologies (wave, tide, etc.)
- HVDC power grid for US
- Thermal spallation drilling for deep geothermal
- Algae biodiesel from atmospheric CO₂ for jet fuel, shipping.
- CO₂ extraction from atmosphere technologies
- Aerosol injection into stratosphere to compensate for aerosols lost from closing coal plants until 350 ppm achieved.
- GreenFreedom-like wind-powered CO₂ to hydrocarbon fuels for jet fuel and other non-electric transportation.
- CCS for NGCC (not for coal)
- Replacement/reduction technologies for NG in residential, commercial, and industrial uses
- Miscanthus
- Carbon-Negative Biofuels from Low-Input High-Diversity Grassland Biomass and similar work
- Aircraft efficiency

Many of these are highly synergistic and don’t make as much sense in isolation. There is no single silver bullet. Only a broad approach can achieve the goal. Many items are long lead time as well, which is why they must be started today, and not serialized. It will take 30+ years to ramp up renewables, to change vehicle fleets, modify the grid, reduce VMT with smart growth, build public charging infrastructure, change our buildings, etc. These things must be started by 2010 to have any hope of contributing significantly by 2050.

21 November 2008 — A crazy idea for the economy

Note: this was originally an email that I decided to put here, dated when the email was sent.

One problem today is that no one can figure out who owns a particular mortgage, since it has been repackaged so many times. That makes renegotiation quite difficult to carry out in practice. However, the system is set up to deal with refinancing, so suppose we use that mechanism instead.

Suppose the Federal government simply offered new fixed mortgages at 4% interest rate during 2009, with the term equal to the term of the mortgage being refinanced. These mortgages would be subject to income verification and so on, and it would only be available for mortgages below a certain value (i.e. not benefit the wealthy) with only one refinance per individual (corporations not eligible). Existing mortgage holders would have a strong incentive to refinance to get the lower rate. After refinancing, they would have lower monthly payments, and be less likely to default. The money they save would also provide a fiscal stimulus to the economy, preventing the slide into depression. It should also cause bank mortgage rates (for people that don’t qualify for the Federal mortgages) to go down, and thereby housing prices to stabilize.

I think there is approximately $10 trillion of mortgage debt in the U.S. today. If the U.S. refinanced 80% of it, the U.S. debt would climb from $10 trillion to $18 trillion (in the form of 10, 20, and 30-year treasury bonds), but the interest on this debt would be offset by the interest received from the mortgages. Right now the yield on the 30-year bond is below 4%, so this would mean positive cash flow. However, if the Treasury tried to issue $8 trillion of new bonds, the interest rate would presumably climb. Let’s say it reaches 6%, which is 2% above what is being received. That means $160 billion of interest delta per year in the first year, slowly declining thereafter. Painful, but not out of the question. Since existing mortgage buyers get cash back from refinancing, they will want to reinvest that cash. There’s a good chance that they will invest it in Treasury bonds, which means bond rates should not rise much.

It also has the advantage of removing some toxic assets from bank balance sheets (refinancing makes them disappear).

18 November 2008 — Senator Lieberman

I wrote Senators Boxer and Feinstein suggesting that Senator Lieberman should not retain the chair of the Homeland Security and Covernmental Affairs Committee. Unlike calls for Democrats to punish Lieberman, my purpose was simple: I don’t think his views on homeland security and governmental affairs align with my own, and I would have preferred someone with a closer philosophy. Normally the senority rules of the Senate do no allow chairmanships to be determined by such considerations, but Lieberman’s presidential campaigning afforded a perfect excuse for the change.

The Democratic caucus in the Senate decided otherwise. I hope Lieberman will not be an impediment to reform on affairs of homeland security.

15 November 2008 — Thinking aloud about U.S. Automakers

Democrats are attempting to put together an aid package for U.S. automakers. I am uncertain whether this is appropriate, or whether it is better to allow reorganization under the protection of a bankruptcy court. Automakers claim that U.S. consumers will not buy vehicles from a company in bankruptcy, but the experience of many airline companies is that continued operation is feasible. Automakers would have to quickly move to have the court honor vehicle warranties, just as airlines quickly got approval to maintain frequent flyer programs. The real issue for the U.S. government is whether bankruptcy would cost the government more than a bailout. If bankruptcy transfers pension and health care obligations to the U.S., then a bailout could save the taxpayers money.

Democrats talk about government taking an equity stake in the automakers. Today General Motors’ market cap is only $1.8 billion. A $10 billion infusion of U.S. funds into GM as equity would result in 84% stake. That would be in effect a take-over. Nationalization produces a knee-jerk reaction in the U.S., and so I expect this direct approach would be avoided. That is unfortunate, because lesser measures are unlikely to result in the changes necessary for a sustainable business model at U.S. automakers.

6 November 2008 — One Hundred Days

Jim Gilliam set up White House 2. It is an attempt to keep Americans involved in the discussion on what we want to change. Unfortunately, there are flaws in the site’s approach. The 100 day honeymoon period is also too constraining, so here are my agenda suggestions, organized by time periods.

Before inauguration
- Set up a commission to review all of President George W. Bush’s executive orders, regulatory acts, signing statements, and legislation. The commission should produce a prioritized list of items to rescind, modify, or improve. Afterward, look at President Ronald Reagan’s and President George H. W. Bush’s terms for things to undo.
100 days
- Direct all U.S. agencies to enforce existing law.
  - Direct EPA to comply with Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA.
  - Grant waiver to California for AB 1493 emissions standards.
- End torture by U.S.
- Rescind George Bush’s other inappropriate executive orders (e.g. warrantless wiretaps).
- Restore habeas corpus in the U.S.
- Begin the regulatory process to fix the flaws of Republican administrations.
  - Mercury standards
  - Tougher Federal CAFE standards
- Get Congress to make grants to state governments as fiscal stimulus. The states are reducing spending now when they should be increasing to counteract the downturn.
- Adopt California’s energy, environment policies, incentives, and regulations. This would make efficiency a priority for the nation.
  - Efficiency/negawatts first
  - Utility profit decoupling
  - California Title 20
  - California Title 24
  - Renewable Portfolio Standard
  - Emissions cap as in California AB 32
  - Limit new power plant emissions as in California SB 1368
- Set up unit at Justice Department to investigate crimes against humanity by previous administration. Collect and preserve evidence, testimony, etc.
1 Year
- End mountaintop removal mining by enforcing existing laws.
- Begin major hiring at Federal agencies, especially the EPA, for enforcing the nation’s laws.
- Pass legislation requiring the FDA to regulate cosmetics. Ban toxic and dangerous substances in cosmetics.
- Join the International Criminal Court.
- Implement new financial regulations. Any operation that is too big to fail needs to be regulated. Most lenders and borrowers need to be regulated.
- Direct all Federal agencies to buy only renewable power. Direct all Federal agencies to buy plug-in hybrids.
2 Years
- Pass new legislation preventing damage to the environment from mining.
- Amend the Clean Air Act to phase-out the grandfathering of old power plants. All plants should meet current standards by 2030.
- Pass legislation beginning a new HVDC transmission grid.
- Pass legislation moving the U.S. to a smart grid with V2G capability.
- Withdrawal from Iraq.
4 Years
- Begin legislation to switch U.S. regulation toward the precautionary principle, as in the EU.
- Decide whether to prosecute George Bush, Dick Cheney, Ronald Rumsfeld, and others for crimes against humanity, either in the U.S., or by granting extradition the Hague.

What is not on this list?

Tax cut: Tax cuts are ineffective at stimulating the economy in the short term, and in the long term we need to return to more prudent fiscal policy.

5 November 2008 — Good News, Bad News

Good News
- Senator Barack Obama elected President
- California Proposition 2 passed
- California Proposition 1A passed
- Kay Hagan elected Senator for North Carolina
- Mark Warner elected Senator for Virginia
- Mark Udall elected Senator for Colorado
- Tom Udall elected Senator for New Mexico
- Jeanne Shaheen elected Senator for New Hampshire
- Joan Buchanan, Marty Block, and Manuel Perez elected to California Assembly
- Hannah Beth Jackson potentially elected to California Senate
Bad News
- California Proposition 8 passed
- California Proposition 5 failed
- California Proposition 9 passed
- Santa Clara Measure B failed
- Senators McConnell (KY), Wicker (MS), Inhofe (OK) reelected
- Senators Coleman (MN), Chambliss (GA), Smith (OR), Stevens (AK) potentially reelected
- Senate remains hostage to Republican fillibuster
- House Republican losses too low to protect against 2010
- Too many California bond measures approved (too much debt)
- Failing to achieve budget threshold in California Assembly (4 short) and Senate (1 short)

4 November 2008 — Red Plague Status

I am happy to see Senator Barack Obama elected President, but I see issues that temper that happiness. First, the Republican party did far better than was appropriate given the last eight years, which indicates it remains viable, unfortunately. Second, Senator Obama’s campaign had an enormous financial advantage over Senator McCain’s, which used public financing, something not typical for a Republican. Future Republican candidates will likely outspend Democrats. This will lead to an upward money spiral. Third, Senator Obama’s election was partially the result of extraordinary circumstances in the financial markets. Had the financial system failures come a few months later, the United States might very well have returned a Republican to the White House. All of these things point to the sad fact that the U.S. seems to still suffer symptoms of infection from Karl Rove’s Red Plague. The prognosis for recovery remains uncertain. I am not happy about that. Just as bacteria subjected to an incomplete dose of antibiotics mutate to develop resistance, I fear the Red Plague has been insufficiently beaten back to prevent a return. Unless President-elect Obama can administer a full dose of antibiotics, the fate of the United States is precarious.

2 November 2008 — World Financial System Reform

I support many of the items in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s call for world financial regulation as described in today’s Washington Post article Discord on Economies In a World Of Trouble. As George Monbiot observed, trying to have each individual tree control the monkeys that jump between trees doesn’t work. Unfortunately, President Bush is likely to wreck the effort with anti-leadership. In some ways the proposals may not go far enough: there should be a world regulatory agency for all trans-national corporations, not just trans-national financial corporations. However, the lack of a reasonable world government is an impediment to such efforts.

I am skeptical that the IMF is the appropriate agency, at least without some reforms.

14 October 2008 — Senator Obama’s Presidency Quest

I have been concerned that Senator McCain would be elected as President of the United States. I have tended to discount polls showing Senator Obama’s widening lead for two reasons: (1) the Bradley Effect; and (2) the ability of the Republicans to successfully slander and tarnish Democrats with false accusations during in the run-up to the election. I now see some hope for Senator Obama becoming President. First, the polls are beginning to show a spread sufficient to overcome the Bradley effect. Second, recent research suggests that the Bradley effect may be working in reverse in certain states where voters may actually want to vote for Senator Obama, but feel uncomfortable saying so. Third, the financial market crisis seems to have pushed voters into the Democratic party’s column. Fourth, either Senator McCain is inept at Republican slime tricks, or the fourth estate is less receptive to these tricks than in 2000 and 2004. I am therefore turning cautiously optimistic that the Republicans can be defeated.

It may be that this is simply an instance of Cory Doctorow’s observation:

Increasingly, the opportunity to define the truth has been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. What’s more, the new Media Hyperbarons are corporations of such colossal wealth and power that they are guaranteed to support the status quo that gave rise to them.

where the Media Hyperbarons now see the Democrats as more appropriate to deal with financial panic.

Regardless of the cause for the Democrats’ current poll results, the need for a non-Republican approach to the financial crisis is clear. Senator McCain’s approach is reminiscent of the Republican response to the onset of the Depression. There they followed ideology and tightened when stimulus was required. As with medieval doctors and leaches, today the Republican prescription is always tax cuts, regardless of the illness. Republican tax cuts will only make it more difficult for the U.S. to sell debt to raise the money required to address the financial and greenhouse crises. Whether the world will continue to finance the U.S. is a major worry, regardless of which party occupies the White House, but it is less likely that it will do so under the Republicans.

The next question is whether the Democrats are capable of the changes necessary to successfully navigate the minefield that decades of Republican nonfeasance, malfeasance, corruption, and ideology has left behind. The last Democratic Presidency was not inspiring, but President Clinton was handicapped by Republican control of the Congress. Whether the Democrats can overcome Republican sniping and fear of antagonizing industry and commerce that must be reformed is uncertain, even with control of the White House and Congress.

13 October 2008 — Risk

Note: in the following comment, it would be more conventional to use the term investor than gambler. My personal preference is to reserve investor for venture capitalists, credit unions, and others whose investment is put to productive ends, as opposed to those are simply making side bets. The primary difference between the stock and bond markets and casinos are that the former have positive expected returns. In recent years, mortgage investing (a nominally productive end) has become intertwined with gambling, with toxic results.

Risk can be an externality, much as greenhouse pollution is an externality. In pursuit of larger returns, gamblers seek higher risk games. Even when the expected value of a gamble is positive, there is a chance that the gamble will turn out poorly: a gambling strategy with a 99% probability of being non-problematic each year will, on average, be problematic once every 100 years. A bad gamble affects the gambler, but under some circumstances, they may affect the wider financial system, as is happening in 2007-2008. At that point the gambler has externalized some of the consequences of his actions. Economics theory calls for externalities to be minimized, e.g. by imposing a cost that reflects the costs externalized. The FDIC fund is an example, though it is perhaps undercapitalized.

What is clear from recent events is that gamblers have been able to create new more risky games faster than government can keep up. Each externality adjustment occurs only in response to a crisis, after the public nature of the gamblers’ actions becomes apparent. What is needed is needed for the gambling markets is a precautionary principle. The precautionary principle is the appropriate standard for regulating pollutants, toxic chemicals in industry and consumer products, and it has become apparent that it should be the used in regulating financial markets. (The US, unlike the EU, has yet to accept the precautionary principle for regulating toxic substances—a major problem in its own.) Now would be a good time for the US and EU to begin to apply the precautionary principle. I do not expect it in the US, however. We never learn the real lessons that history teaches us. Our myths stand in the way.

8 October 2008 — The end of growth

If economists are right, the Paulson plan (Cash for Trash) will fail to end the liquidity crisis, and more drastic steps will be required. I cannot predict whether the next step will occur before or after 20 January 2009. If before 20 January, then it is likely to be a giveaway to financial institutions. If after, it depends on 4 November’s results, but what Senators McCain or Obama would do, I cannot predict.

However, I know what won’t be done, even though it is past due. We need move away from the growth is good myth. We need to invent a new economics not based upon growth or investment. This is a daunting task, and I have no concrete ideas on how such an economics should work at this point. However, it is still possible to begin to de-emphasize growth by eliminating tax code preferences for investment. We should return to taxing investment (capital gains, dividends, interest, etc.) on par with wages (and that applies for the income tax, the social security tax, and the medicare tax). This is less onerous that it sounds, as we should also be moving away from taxing wages at all, as in Tax Waste, Not Work, and we also should not tax trading of securities, but only at withdrawal of funds from investment accounts (like an IRA). Instead of a low long-term capital gain rate, implement a short-term trading sales tax (to discourage casino betting and speculation). The trading sales tax could be applied to leveraged investments to further discourage the activities that led to the financial crisis.

7 October 2008 — Federal Reserve to the Rescue

While the flawed Paulson plan is still waiting to be put into effect, the Federal Reserve is taking appropriate action. Today’s announcement that the Fed would buy short-term commercial debt will restore liquidity for commercial transactions, bypassing banks. Since banks are the problem, bypassing them reduces their ability to blackmail the U.S. Treasury with the threat of the economy further stalling if they don’t get enough Cash for Trash. If Paulson is willing to act in the interest of taxpayers (a big if), this should allow him to get a better deal, concentrating on what is sufficient for banks, independent of the rest of the economy.

I will try to explain in a subsequent comment why I think that the current crisis is not the time to reengineer the global financial system, even though that will eventually be necessary.

6 October 2008 — Geoengineering?

The article On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system: Formidable challenges ahead came as a shock to me, and yet it had no information that wasn’t already available in the IPCC AR4. By pointing out that aerosol pollution, e.g. from coal power plants, has so far offset 75% of the warming that our greenhouse pollution has created, the article makes it clear just how difficult it will be to transition from today’s high-greenhouse, high-aerosol pollution world to a low-greenhouse, low-aerosol pollution world. Because aerosols have short atmospheric lifetimes, and greenhouse pollution is long-lived, eliminating fossil fuel use will create much higher temperatures during the transition. These higher temperatures may be sufficient to unleash further greenhouse feedback from permafrost, glaciation, etc. To maintain temperatures below these tipping points, it may be necessary for the transition period to consist of low-greenhouse, high-aerosol pollution until such time as we can reduce the atmospheric load of greenhouse gases well below current levels. This would involve the deliberate emission of aerosols into the atmosphere for the purpose of reducing incident solar irradiation. I hope that an alternative to such geoengineering can be found, but at this point I am unable to see one.

5 October 2008 — Off-site Comments 3

I don’t plan to do as many off-site comments from now on, so I’m wrapping up my recent blogging for Climate Progress with this list.

2008.09.20	Coal-to-Liquids in Defense Authorization Bill
2008.09.23	The savings from cutting California’s carbon outweigh the costs
2008.09.26	Pickens’ natural gas plan makes no sense and will never happen (Reprinted at Pickin’ on the plan)
2008.09.26	Iceland gives hydrogen the cold shoulder (Reprinted at Iceland gives hydrogen the cold shoulder)
2008.09.27	U.S. geothermal is hot

4 October 2008 — Letter to the Los Angeles Times

Note: Sent 1 October 2008, but not printed. The Los Angeles Times has a 150-word limit, which precluded sketching a solution. Had there been space, I would have suggested:

Allow the EPA to enforce the Clean Air Act (as directed by the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA), e.g. garnering much tougher standards than the new CAFE;
Federal adoption of California policies, incentives, and regulations (e.g. Negawatts first);
Convert the US passenger fleet to PHEVs from 2010 to 2050;
Smart grid with V2G build out;
HVDC grid build out;
Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard;
Fossil power plant buy-outs / shutdowns to remove generation no longer needed from #1, #2, #6;
Reforestation;
Improved agricultural practices;
Biofuels from Ag residue (only) for PHEV backup fuel;
Use U.S. trade leverage to encourage countries that export to the U.S. to adopt greenhouse pollution policies such as our own.
Use U.S. government purchasing power to jumpstart deployment where possible.

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger’s opinion piece on Tuesday (The green bubble bursts) illustrates well America’s inability to deal with her problems. Instead getting to work on solutions to the problem, we turn everything into political bickering and finger pointing. Nordhaus and Shellenberger have no solution to global warming. They propose only feel-good investments in R&D that will do nothing to address the gigatonnes of greenhouse pollution produced by existing sunk-cost plant. Without a plan to shut down our existing dirty energy, we will reach a tipping point in less than thirty years, and yet all they can talk about is new energy, ignoring what is already sufficient to ruin our atmosphere. Because they see no politically acceptable solution, they snipe at those who are working to make the solutions politically acceptable. Solving the problem necessarily means replacing our existing infrastructure starting in 2009. Now is not the time for research; it is a time for action.

3 October 2008 — Plug-ins and the Grid

When people first think about plug-in cars (both Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles, PHEVs, and pure Battery Electric Vehicles, BEVs) their first reactions are about suitability to their personal usage. A little further on, people often wonder about whether the US power grid can support a fleet of plug-ins. Here we look at that question.

An important first question is how long will it take for plug-in vehicles to be significant to the grid. How long will the transition from Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEVs) to Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) to PHEVs take? (Caveat reader: predictions usually say more about the seer than the future.) The diffusion of new technology into the marketplace is well studied. It generally follows something called an S-curve because it vaguely resembles a stretched out letter S. This is mathematically modeled by the Fisher-Pry equation, which has two parameters, the year the technology reaches 50% market penetration, and the number of years to go from 10% to 50%. The S-curve has a very gentle slope at first, and then rises sharply, and then levels off to asymptotically approach 100%. To get an idea of the long tails at the beginning and end of the curve, consider that Honda introduced the Insight in the US in 1999 (the Prius came in 2000), and hybrids only reached 2% market share in 2007. Extracting the Fisher-Pry parameters from such a curve is error-prone, but it appears the HEV technology will have something like a 7-year 10% to 50% time. If we presume that the PHEV curve has the same parameter, and starts in 2010:

This is for new vehicle sales. Plug this into a simple model for vehicle retirement and sales, and scale it with population growth:

It takes a while to change the US passenger vehicle fleet.

With this data, let’s look at how much power it takes, using 2050 as the most challenging date, with a US population of 420 million projected. If passenger Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) per capita remains at 9,300 (it had been growing slightly until gasoline prices rose), then in 2050 the US will have a VMT of 3.9 trillion miles (15% of the distance to Alpha Centauri). If this were all electric (unlikely, but a worse case), and plug-ins required 300 Wh/mi at the wall plug and 324 Wh/mi at the power plant (using 92.7% for grid efficiency), then 1,263 TWh will be required to power the vehicle fleet. However, let’s presume that only 80% of PHEV miles are powered by the electric grid and the other 20% are powered by the liquid backup fuel (e.g. E85). Then 1,014 TWh are required in 2050. To put this in context, the US generated 4,065 TWh in 2006, of which 3,691 TWh was customer consumption. The 2050 energy required by plug-ins is a fraction of what we generate today.

Next, please note that we could achieve more than 1,180 TWh of electricity conservation in this country by 2050. Investing in energy efficiency is the equivalent to investing in power plants, and demonstrably cheaper. Amory Lovins coined the term negawatts for this. A simple, but plausible, negawatts model, based on what has already been achieved in 10 states, suggests 1,738 TWh of energy savings in 2050. We could power 2050 plug-ins simply with the energy we saved by applying already developed policies at the Federal level. However, we are much better off using this 1,738 TWh to close coal power plants, and generate renewable energy for plug-ins instead, so let’s continue on.

Is it necessary to build new generation for plug-ins at all? Not for a long time, and surprisingly little if tomorrow’s grid looks like today’s. Plug-ins would then primarily charge at night, e.g. from 9pm to 6am. Of course there will be some daytime charging, but the bulk will be while people sleep and because electricity is cheaper then with time-of-use metering. Nighttime charging is helpful because the US grid has spare capacity at night. Consider the figure at the right from EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) looked at the US grid region by region in the US and concluded that 73% of cars, pickup trucks, SUVs, and vans could be supported by the existing power generation infrastructure. In the model presented above, the vehicle fleet exceeds 73% PHEVs in 2040, though 73% is an average over multiple regions, some of which have lower thresholds for new generation. PNNL’s projection is, however, based upon burning of additional fossil fuel (primarily natural gas) in existing power plants, and so this scenario does represent additional greenhouse pollution. How much? The Wells-to-Wheels (WTW) emissions of the 2002 Toyota RAV4 2WD Automatic gasoline vehicle (GV) is 484 g CO₂e/mi. The WTW emissions of the 2002 Toyota RAV4-EV are 236 g CO₂e/mi when powered by the 2006 US grid. (The WTW model is GREET 1.7 from Argonne National Laboratory, as run by the EPA/DOE and reported on their website.) This is despite 49% of the 2006 grid being coal-powered. If PNNL is correct that additional plug-in electricity would come from primarily natural gas, then greenhouse pollution would be substantially less. Still, by 2050 the US needs to reduce its emissions by 80%, and even natural gas powered plug-ins could benefit from switching to renewable energy.

Selected data from www.fueleconomy.gov
Vehicle				Air Pollution
Make/Model	Year	Engine	Fuel	Greenhouse†	Other‡
† Tonnes CO₂ equivalent (CO₂e) per year (15,000 miles)
‡ 1 = worst, 10 = best
Honda Civic	2008	ICE	Gasoline	5.8	6
Honda Civic CNG	2008	ICE	CNG	4.9	9
Honda Civic Hybrid	2008	HEV	Gasoline	4.0	9
Toyota Prius	2008	HEV	Gasoline	3.6	8
Toyota RAV4	2002	ICE	Gasoline	7.2	2
Toyota RAV4-EV	2002	BEV	US Electric Grid	3.5	10
Toyota RAV4-EV	2002	BEV	California Grid	2.3	10

Consider fueling plug-ins (BEVs and PHEVs) entirely with renewable energy. Plug-ins will be able to charge when renewable energy is available and pause when there is a lull. Eventually this will be accomplished with smart grid technology, but cheap hacks can make this happen even before we have a smart grid (for example, the start-up Coulomb Technologies controls charging with cellular technology). 12,500 vehicle miles per year is and average of 34 miles/day. At 300Wh/mi at the plug, the vehicle needs 10.2kWh to recharge. From a 208V, 32A circuit it takes only 1.5h to recharge. The ability to take 1.5h of power anywhere in an 9h window provides quite a bit of flexibility for wind. Moreover, an plug-in need not be fully charged to be useful. A PHEV can always fall back on its range extending liquid fuel, and a BEV usually has enough range that a full charge is not needed every day. Vehicle software would give the driver some control over whether to demand a full charge from the grid or not.

If we choose wind as the renewable energy source for plug-ins, what is the requirement? In many locations, Wind tends to generate produce best at night, which suits plug-in charging, but here we assume a flat time-of-day profile.

Stanford wind expert Mark Jacobson writes,

Wind speeds 7 m/s or higher are needed for the direct cost of wind to be competitive over land with other electric power sources (Jacobson and Masters, 2001). Further, 13% of land outside of Antarctica has such wind speeds at 80 m, and the average wind speed over land at 80 m worldwide in locations where the mean wind speed is 7 m/s or higher is 8.4 m/s (Archer and Jacobson, 2005). Finally, the resulting capacity factors for 7-8.5 m/s wind speeds combined with the existing turbine considered here (a 5 MW turbine with a 126 m diameter rotor), are 0.294-0.425, which encompass the measured capacity factors, 0.33-0.35, of all wind farms installed in the U.S. between 2004-2007 (Wiser and Bolinger, 2008).

Using this data, to generate an average of 944 TWh from 9pm to 6am, requires 170,000 5MW wind turbines (for comparison the US produced 324,750 aircraft from just 1939-45). At $5 million each, this is $31 billion per year for 30 years. This is quite a bargain compared to what we spend in Iraq (the $3 trillion war, currently costing $11 billion per month). Note the assumption that the wind turbines generate plug-in electricity only 9 hours of the day, boosting the number required by a factor of 2.7×. Note also that during the other 15 hours of the day, these same turbines will generate 1,582 TWh for our offices while we work, helping to rid us coal and natural gas. One question is how can the US grid absorb 1,582 TWh of wind during the day. Kempton and Tomić have an answer in their paper Vehicle-to-grid power implementation: From stabilizing the grid to supporting large-scale renewable energy, where they write

Our calculations suggest that V2G could stabilize large-scale (one-half of US electricity) wind power with 3% of the fleet dedicated to regulation for wind, plus 8-38% of the fleet providing operating reserves or storage for wind.

Thus plug-ins allow 50% wind energy on the US grid via V2G, a technology that has already been prototyped.

If wind is not sufficiently reliable, there is a renewable technology that is. Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) with Thermal Energy Storage (TES) could soon be generating renewable power 24 hours a day. Ausra’s whitepaper, Solar Thermal Power As the Plausible Basis of Grid Supply, suggests their CSP+TES technology could generate 92% of the U.S. grid 365×24 at 7.8 cents per kWh (the rest could be supplied by existing hydro). Perhaps their cost estimates are optimistic, but this is an important result nonetheless. The TES actually helps lower the cost by allowing them to depreciate the turbines over 24h generation instead of just 8-12h each day. Thus we could power plug-ins with CSP instead of wind (though the best time to plug them in would be daytime). Wind is probably a better match, but CSP is an option. CSP is being built today at increasingly competitive costs per kWh. Stirling Dish systems look especially cost effective right now, but lack TES. 500-850 MW of Stirling CSP is being deployed for Southern California Edison, and 300-900 MW for San Diego Gas & Electric.

Negawatts, Wind, CSP, and CSP+TES are likely to be the core components of the US grid as it evolves under pressure to reduce greenhouse pollution, with other renewable technologies being introduced as they are ready for deployment (e.g. geothermal, tidal, and wave). In the table below, prepared for the California Public Utilities Commission, the price of new renewable power is on par with fossil power:

E3 modeling for California Public Utilities Commission
Power Source	Busbar cost†	Greenhouse Pollution‡
† ¢ per kWh
‡ gram CO₂e per kWh
Biogas	8.55
Wind	8.91
Gas CCCT	9.38	367
Geothermal	10.18
Hydro	10.53
Coal ST	10.55	822
Coal IGCC	11.48	773
Solar Thermal	12.65
Nuclear	15.32
Biomass	16.48
Coal IGCC with CCS	17.32	88
Gas CT	50.15	574

A plausible scenario for the future (not a prediction!) is illustrated in the chart below. Nuclear is left constant in the scenario because of the controvesy over its use, and because of its cost competitiveness today. Note that Negawatts allows US generation to actually drop through 2023, despite PHEV and BEV deployment.

The negawatts model used above is quite simple: we start out with two groups: efficient and inefficient. The efficient group initially consists of the 10 most efficient states (average 7,774 kWh per capita), and the inefficient group initially consists of the 40 least efficient states and the District of Columbia (average 13,947 kWh per capita). New population growth each year goes into the efficient group (presuming that all new infrastructure is build to the standards of the efficient states). Also, each year 5% of the inefficient group migrates to the efficient group (representing remodels, retrofits, upgrades, etc.).

The key conclusions from this look at Plug-ins and the grid are that plug-ins do not stress the grid; they aid it in its transition to renewable energy.

2 October 2008 — Climate Protection Competition

We have the technology to stop global warming. What we lack is the will to deploy that technology. What would it take to build a consensus, indeed a groundswell, for immediate, sustained deployment?

Anthropogenic global warming is a crisis that must be addressed on a timescale unprecedented for civilization. It threatens the food, water, and shelter of much of humanity. It similarly threatens many of Earth’s species with extinction. The sort of thinking that created the problem is not the best way to solve it in the limited time we have. We are bombarded with possible approaches and technologies, but we do not evaluate these choices, and many do not scale. Without evaluation there is no urgency. We delay. We need a blueprint that puts our choices in a context of an overall solution so that the scale of each is apparent. We do not design and construct a building by having four separate teams for each wall, and one for the roof, because the resulting parts will not work together. Given time, such ad hoc approaches might be melded together, but we do not have time for this today. A blueprint to follow is needed to guide our efforts to a timely solution.

Much of the world watched the Olympics in August. We love competition and the triumph of the best. Could we harness such a force to encourage climate survival? Like the Nobel and X prizes, this competition could have a more than a medal—something like $1 million to motivate entrants. Imagine then a competition held every few years, where the entries are not athletes, but teams with blueprints for protecting Earth’s climate by ending greenhouse pollution. The prize will be awarded to the team that submits the most feasible, comprehensive, and cost-effective blueprint for returning atmospheric carbon-dioxide to 350ppm while at all times keeping the level below 450ppm and the temperature rise below 2°C. These levels are chosen to avoid the devastating social, economic, and ecological impacts of global warming in the short-term and long-term. Teams are expected to be multidisciplinary and create models to show how their blueprints evolve by year and affect the climate, economy, land use and habitat, food and water supply. They must address all significant greenhouse pollutants.

The competition between team plans will spark public interest. The competition of blueprints also makes the lack of alternatives apparent: if a blueprint exists where delay is feasible it would win; the lack of such any such alternative will make the choices before us black and white. The process is more important than the specific winning entry.

The most important benefit is public awareness and pressure on policymakers. If the competition process garners sufficient attention and illustrates how calamitous delay might be, then policymakers will also find it difficult to ignore the winning blueprint(s). The winner will be a de facto set of initial policy choices. It is a follow-on to the IPCC process, framed as a competition to gather maximum visibility, public awareness and participation. Without such a blueprint, policy makers may be expected to respond in a Business As Usual fashion.

Today, policymakers and the public both fail to recognize how long it will take to address greenhouse gas emissions. A mathematical proof that no quick-fix exists is not possible. Only by considering a diverse range of alternatives, each themselves well-developed and considered, will the imperative need for immediate action become self-evident. This will become apparent when diverse plans are created and compete, and no feasible plan allows for procrastination.

As example, consider some possible details. Blueprints would be judged by a panel of 15 experts drawn from the fields of science and engineering. Judging would be, in order of priority, feasibility, accuracy, comprehensiveness, economic development, fairness, habitat preservation, and safety margin (how far below 450 ppm atmospheric CO₂ levels stay and the earlier that levels return to 350 ppm).

The panel shall choose the best blueprint based upon the above criteria in the order above. If multiple plans are reasonably equally feasible, they will compete next upon accuracy, comprehensiveness, etc. Slight differences in judged feasibility or subsequent criteria would not eliminate a contender, but would allow it to advance, but the difference could remain as a factor for the judges to consider.

The judges should be chosen early, and specify their own detailed rules within three months. An excellent place to seek judges would be members of the IPCC Working Group III.

Each team shall give a public presentation on its plan after its submission. This is expected to generate media coverage and public attention. The panel shall organize its judging process such that winnowing process (feasibility, accuracy, comprehensiveness, etc.) is spread out, further generating media attention at each step. This competition is similar to the Olympics, but with the results affecting most of humanity. Thus interest in the process could be enormous.

The existence of multiple blueprints all demonstrating the difficulty and imperativeness of the task ahead is expected to make non-action by the World’s policymakers impossible. They may choose to construct a different blueprint using the best components of the leading contenders, or create their own alternatives, but the exploration of the solution space is certain to be valuable input to the choices to be made in the coming decade.

Identification of the technologies most suitable to addressing the crises is likely to act as a spur to investment in these technologies, independent of policymaker decisions.

If possible, blueprints should be first published in a peer-reviewed journal that agrees to cooperate. If a peer-reviewed journal does not cooperate, the blueprints will be published on a website for public scrutiny. Public debate upon the plans is important goal for this competition. After the 2012 submission deadline, teams will be required to make a public presentation of their blueprints at three day intervals. There will be one round of questions and clarifications issued by the panel to the participants, who will respond by 2013.

The judges would conduct a series of eliminations during 2013 considering the priority order of selection criteria, leading to an eventual winner (with perhaps silver and bronze winners as well).

The process would be repeated every 4 to 7 years, so that new information, technology, progress or the lack therefore, can be factored into the competition.

1 October 2008 — Really Fixing the Credit Markets

The rush to fix the credit markets left little time for proper consideration. As I read more, it becomes apparent that the Paulson† plan is not the right fix, so I am reversing my position, stated just yesterday.

I was somewhat convinced by comments that the Paulson plan lacks infusions of equity to institutions with undercapitalized balance sheets. Then George Soros’ Financial Times comments appeared, and presented a alternative with several desirable characteristics. It is time for a more serious examination of the alternatives. Congress should remain in session to examine alternatives based upon equity infusions.

† Given the fig-leaf nature of the Frank-Dodd changes to the plan, it still deserves the Paulson moniker.

30 September 2008 — Fixing the Credit Markets

To restore the operation of credit markets, the U.S. Treasury proposes to buy questionable debts. It stinks. It seriously stinks. And yet, I cannot think of an alternative. Congress should hold its nose and pass authorizing legislation. Then it should get to work on making sure it doesn’t happen again through regulatory authority and law, and making sure that those responsible are not rewarded (within the limits of Constitutional limits on bills of attainder and ex post facto laws of course). Congress should end the casino nature of U.S. financial markets, and force them to concentrate on activities with value to the public.

I am disappointed that some Democrats are conditioning their votes upon Republicans joining them on voting for authorization. I understand that Republican votes are necessary to pass the legislation, given some Democrats’ objections, but for Representatives to vote against the legislation because of insufficient support from the minority faction is derelict devotion to partisan advantage.

I support a move away from the current methods of finance, but the collapse of the entire system at once is too calamitous a method to effect that change.

Update: I wrote the above before reading Mussolini-Style Corporatism in Action: Treasury Conference Call on Bailout Bill to Analysts (Updated), which, if true, certainly is reason to reconsider supporting authorizing legislation.

27 September 2008 — Presidential Election

I have not commented this year about the election campaigns. First, as I am not a registered Democrat, I was not being called upon to cast a ballot in California’s Democratic primary, and so I took in the winter and spring as a semi-interested voyeur. Second, I didn’t find there to be a lot of difference between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I tended to think Clinton had a slightly better chance at fending off Republican dirty tricks, but political tactical ability is not something I am well-qualified to judge.

For the Presidential election, there is no question that the Republican party is unacceptable, and so I have found little reason to seriously compare Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. Today, Republicans are simply unqualified to be President. That’s a strong assertion, which I will justify in a moment.

I have also had less interest in this election because it seemed probable to me that Senator John McCain would win. I find it shocking that the election is this close after the last eight years. Unfortunately the Democrats have been inept in their Presidential bids, and apparently Americans are more accepting of Evil than ineptness.

Here I stress the party affiliation of the candidates over their individual merits. I believe that part of the problem in American politics of the last few decades, is that Americans, unlike Europeans, do not realize that in voting for a President, they are not really voting for an individual, but for a Party. The President is just one part of a package, because with the President comes a whole set of members of the same party who then occupy the appointed positions in government. Thus with Bush2 you got the junior folks of the Ford/Bush1 administrations taking over. During Bush2 these people were even more of a problem than Bush2 himself (e.g. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Rove, Ashcroft, Yoo, Gonzalez, Cox, and so on). Senator McCain himself may not be so bad (though I would say he is seriously confused), but his administration will necessarily call upon the Republican party bench to fill the appointed positions of government, and those people are largely anti-science, deniers, ideological, militaristic, and dangerous. This bench is exactly the sort of people who are hostile to the very functions of government that they would be called upon to oversee, just as Christopher Cox has done nothing at the SEC to avert or mitigate the subprime crisis, because he is ideologically incapable of of believing the markets are not best left alone. This is the sort of person that Senator McCain would have available to fill appointments.

My hopes for this election are not for the White House, but that the Senate goes 57-43 and that with occasional help from 3 Republican Senators (e.g. Collins, Snowe, Specter), the Democrats might prevent the worst of a Republican presidency. Of course Lieberman might join the Republicans in 2009 if the Democrats take away his Homeland Security Committee chairmanship, but he would fall into the Collins, Snowe, Specter block then. Voinovich and Hagel might occasionally lend a hand, but they are likely to be pretty loyal to their fellow Senator, at least at first. If the Democrats cannot muster 60 on important votes, they will continue to get rolled by the White House, just as they do today. Today even the House gets rolled by the Republicans, and they don’t have super-majority voting.

The worst prospect of all from this election is the Supreme Court. A single Republican appointment to the Supreme Court could easily change the balance to the point where there would be critical mass to return to Lochner era jurisprudence (today Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Alito lean this way), which would effectively end the ability of the Federal government to regulate much, including greenhouse pollution. Would Republicans, if elected, nominate someone like Janice Rogers Brown? Maybe not, but possibly. Would the Democrats object? Certainly. Could the Senate Democrats be rolled yet again? Possibly. The Senate numbers are quite different, but I am always amazed at how ineffective the numbers are for the Democrats.

I did watch last night’s debate, primarily to get an idea of what we might have to suffer during 2009-2013. I have had little exposure to either candidate’s personality before, as I so rarely watch television, and get all of my news either online or from public radio. I found it difficult to see any honor in Senator John McCain’s debating. He seemed the usual Republican trickster out to slime his rival. Senator Barack Obama was somewhat better, but still was interested in attacking where he could, but without as much venom. I found no inspiration at any point in the 90 minutes. I did not leave feeling that either answered the questions put to them very well.

Unlike many, I consider Senator McCain to be the weaker on foreign policy. Anyone who could not see the problems in invading Iraq in 2003 that were obvious even to me at the time (see Iraq Predictions) is too naive to occupy the White House.

I remain concerned that neither the Republicans or Democrats will properly address global warming during 2009-2013. I am certain that a Republican White House would do less well than a Democratic White House, but I also doubt that a Democratic White House will get a passing grade, especially after Congress passes a collateralized debt obligation bail-out. Though the crisis is probably the result of incompetence, rather than design, it will well serve the Republican agenda of impoverishing government, and prevent it from accomplishing much. That goal alone is sufficient to warrant the charge of evil.

14 September 2008 — Off-site Comments 2

2008.04.16	National Journal on the EPA Tailspin
2008.04.17	Leaving No Small Stone Unturned
2008.04.21	For Nanosolar, the Future Is Municipal Solar Power Plants
2008.05.04	California tightens building standards yet again
2008.05.05	Communities Basing Decisions on Climate Impact
2008.05.28	White House Rebuked over EPA Waiver
2008.06.25	Delaware to get offshore wind
2008.06.26	The CAFE we could have had
2008.06.28	VW to join Toyota, GM with 2010 plug-in Hybrid
2008.07.01	White House disses Supreme Court, kills $2 trillion savings
2008.07.09	Video: The Folly of Liquid Coal
2008.07.11	Plug-in Hybrid FAQ
2008.07.18	The Desolation of Coal
2008.08.01	Massachusetts mandates more renewable energy
2008.08.23	Your TV should not be a couch potato too
2008.09.10	California targets sprawl to reduce CO₂
2008.09.13	Book Review of Physics for Future Presidents, Part 1
2008.09.14	Book Review of Physics for Future Presidents, Part 2

31 March 2008 — Off-site Comments

I’ve been writing things that have been posted in other forums, and neglecting this page. I intend to return to writing here, as writing to influence others is unsatisfying. However, for completeness here are some of my off-site comments:

2006.10.26	Prop 87: A Reader Responds
2007.11.29	Part I: California dreamin’ is becoming a reality
2007.12.03	Part II: California dreamin’ is becoming a reality
2007.12.13	California looks for yet more clean energy
2007.12.17	Judge Rejects Detroits Clean Car Act Attack
2007.12.30	More on White House overruling EPA staff
2008.01.04	California sues EPA
2008.01.11	Confusing short-term variability with a long-term trend
2008.01.24	Letter to Mary Nichols about her San Jose Mercury commentary Hydrogen’s benefits as fuel becoming obvious
2008.01.30	Here comes the sun, at least to CA and NJ
2008.01.31	California Solar Applications Brighten
2008.02.08	Understanding the Global Warming Disinformation Campaign
2008.03.09	California Cars to Get Global Warming Stickers
2008.03.11	The EPAs Tailspin
2008.03.13	Killing the Electric Car Again — Part 1
2008.03.14	Killing the Electric Car Again — Part 2
2008.03.21	Comments to CARB on ZEV2008 Decision
2008.03.24	Strike a blow against Palm Oil Madness
2008.03.30	California Cuts Zero Emission Vehicles 70-79%

21 July 2007 — Letter to CARB chair Mary Nichols

As the new chair of the Air Resources Board, I believe you have a chance to make some needed changes in direction for California’s air regulations. My particular concern is the ARB’s ZEV mandate. This program has become severely dysfunctional, and should be looked at anew. Your arrival at the ARB presents this opportunity.

The ARB is tasked with ensuring California’s air is safe and clean, and recently with reducing our greenhouse gas emissions (AB32). The ZEV mandate was created to address clean air concerns, but it has become something quite different: it has become a fuel cell vehicle research program. The ARB’s job is clean air, not research, and I urge you to return to your mandate to provide us clean air, and not try to manage automaker research. The ARB may have entered into the ZEV “Alternative Path” believing it was a development program, not research, but the reality is now painfully apparent with the schedules now proposed by your staff in their latest recommendations. I support fuel cell research, but not as a gambit to delay clean air. Imagine if someone had succeeded in aborting California’s wind and solar initiatives, promising that fusion reactors would be better. In energy this fortunately did not happen, but in vehicles, fuel cells research has aborted real progress. You must not allow this to continue.

The entire ZEV program has become a sort of Rube Goldberg device, with gold, silver, bronze levels, credit ratios, Type I to IV, sliding scales for large vs. small automakers, and so on. Your staff proposes to further tinker with this contraption in response to automaker pressure. This will not result in clean air. The Rube Goldberg device should be dismantled, not tinkered with. In science, it can take years or decades to understand the consequences of fairly simple physical laws and systems. With a system as complicated as the ARB has created, no one can predict the consequences. It is an irresponsible approach that only serves to keep the ARB’s goals unmet.

The most direct and transparent method for clean air and reduced greenhouse gases (AB32) is a cap-and-auction system. ARB would cap the emissions of NOx, SOx, PM, and other pollutants, and also greenhouse gases for AB32, that California would tolerate each year, and then auction permits to automakers for new vehicles sales. Each vehicle would be certified for emissions based on current testing methods. To sell a vehicle, the automaker would need to possess permits for each of its pollutants for the years of the vehicle’s life (e.g. 10 years). By decreasing the pollutant cap over time, the ARB would be able to clean California’s air. It has been 40 years since the ARB was founded, and yet we still have smog in our cities, despite all the progress that has been made. Is it not time to consider an approach that is far more certain to achieve our air quality goals?

There are improvements that could be made to such an approach (e.g. credits for automakers that take old vehicles off the road, separating pollutants into urban and total, and taking into account the greening electricity supply over time for plug-ins), but this letter is already long, and I would prefer to elaborate if there is interest in this approach.

To be politically acceptable, this can be made revenue-neutral by rebating the auction revenue for a given year equally among the new vehicle purchasers for that year, thereby offsetting the auction cost markup of the automakers. The purchaser of a clean vehicle would see a net price reduction, and the purchaser of a dirty vehicle would pay a premium. This is appropriate.

This system also puts the automakers in competition with each other to produce cleaner vehicles. Today the automakers have only the incentive to meet quotas and limits, with the result that California’s air is dirtier and warmer than it would be if automakers compete.

This system also unifies the handling of conventional pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions, which I believe is an important simplification.

The attraction of ZEVs for the automakers under such a cap-and-auction system is obvious: there are no auction fees to be paid for urban pollutants, and very little for non-urban pollutants (since ZEVs, or BEVs at least, are so efficient). Since the pollutant cap would decrease with time and vehicle volumes would increase, ZEV technology would become increasingly important to meeting the targets. Initially plug-in hybrids would provide the necessary pollutant reductions (based on a standardized daily driving profile where some initial number of miles are zero emission). Eventually full ZEVs would become most appropriate. There are other, early ways to reward ZEVs within the auction system, but again I can elaborate depending upon your interest.

The best way to illustrate the working of such a system would be with an example. Let me know if you would like me to provide one.

If it is not possible to replace the existing ZEV mandate, I urge you to consider the above approach for AB32 implementation, and then radically simplify the ZEV mandate, eliminating the distinction between the original and Alternative Path, so that plug-ins can be returned to service while CARB conducts its fuel cell vehicle research program.

Lest you think my proposal is anti-ZEV, let me relate that my wife and I both drive battery electric vehicles, one of which, a RAV4-EV, was only produced in response to the ARB’s 1990s ZEV mandate. We are just as passionate about these vehicles as any the drivers seen in the movie Who Killed the Electric Car, if you have seen that. As much as I would love the ARB to simply require the production of more ZEVs, I believe the above approach is a much more straightforward response to the ARB’s legislative mandate and actually more likely to get ZEVs of some sort back on California’s roads.

3 May 2007 — Hydrogen Highways: Wanton Mighty Diversion

Industry and many politicians and pundits tout the hydrogen economy as the answer to the transportation portion of our global warming problem. We just have to wait until it is ready, they say. The real value of hydrogen to these folks is that it is so distant in the future, they need not do much other than research today.

Hydrogen can store energy, but the energy has to come from somewhere. Almost no matter where the energy comes from, hydrogen is not a particularly efficient way to store it, when the efficiency of energy to hydrogen, shipment, and hydrogen back to energy are all multiplied. Here I summarize my understanding of hydrogen’s efficiency for powering vehicles relative to other technologies. Others question the safety of hydrogen (e.g. the storage tanks and the fire potential). I think those are not real issues; solutions exist. However, if hydrogen cannot beat the cost and efficiency of alternatives, it has no place.

First, I digress and provide a vehicle categorization, explaining terminology and providing background:

Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) only vehicles (ICEVs) are powered by various energy storing fuels:
- Gasoline and ethanol (spark-ignition)
- Petrodiesel and biodiesel (compression-ignition)
- Hydrogen (spark-ignition), compressed or liquefied
- Natural Gas (compressed (CNG) or liquefied (LNG))
Hydrogen ICEVs are not seriously considered here. Only BMW seems to be pursuing such vehicles. They seem inferior to the alternatives in every way. Their only utility might be as a transition technology to FCVs.
Electric Vehicles (EVs) have electric motors and batteries, and a variety of ways of charging those batteries:
- Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) use a combination of an ICE (with all the above fuel choices) and batteries with an electric motor. They come in two basic kinds:
  - Serial hybrids use the ICE to generate electricity which is used to turn the vehicle’s wheels via the electric motor. A series hybrid may not have a transmission, since an electric motor can operate efficiency at a wide range of RPMs.
  - Parallel hybrids use the ICE to both turn the vehicle’s wheels (via a transmission) and generate electricity. The electric motor can power the wheels in conjunction with the ICE or by itself.
  Serial hybrids are simpler than parallel hybrids, but some experts (e.g. Dr. Andy Frank) question whether they are as efficient. Much of the efficiency of HEVs over ICEVs comes from:
  - not having to idle the ICE at stops;
  - using regenerative braking, that is operating the electric motor in reverse as a generator, and thereby helping to stop the vehicle and putting energy back into the batteries;
  - using the electric motor to accelerate the vehicle from a stop (electric motors have fairly flat torque curves, whereas ICEs have poor torque at low RPMs);
  - allowing the use of much smaller internal combustion engines (large engines are used to help accelerate ICEVs, but electric motors do this more efficiency); and
  - allowing the use of an ICE optimized for a single RPM (e.g. the Prius ICE uses the Atkinson cycle instead of the common Otto cycle). (Micro-turbines or Stirling engines might someday replace reciprocating engines in serial PHEVs, providing greater fuel flexibility.)
  These effects, if fully exploited, allow HEVs to be 50% more efficient than ICEVs (e.g. the 2007 Honda Civic gets 33 EPA MPG, the Honda Civic Hybrid gets 50 EPA MPG, a 51% improvement). (The Prius, despite being larger and slightly heavier than the Civic Hybrid, has other efficiency advantages that give it a 55 EPA MPG rating. There is unfortunately no non-hybrid Prius for comparison.) Not every HEV has 50% higher MPG—the Highlander hybrid improves only 21% over the Highlander—because automakers sometimes use hybrid technology to optimize acceleration instead of efficiency or fail to implement all of the changes above. HEVs get all of their energy from their fuel tank. The EV portion of the vehicle simply helps deliver that energy more efficiently to the wheels than an ICE alone can.
- Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCVs) are a sort of series hybrid electric vehicle where the ICE/generator combo is replaced by a fuel storage tank (typically hydrogen) and fuel cell. Batteries are still required because the fuel cell cannot respond quickly to changes in energy demand, and as a place to store energy from regenerative braking. The cost of the fuel cell, the difficulties of storing hydrogen fuel, and the inefficiency of generating, storing, and using hydrogen are the primary limitations of FCVs.
- Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) are HEVs with the addition of a plug to charge the batteries overnight in the garage. PHEVs are also called gas-optional HEVs because not all of the energy need come from the fuel tank. PHEVs typically use a larger battery pack than an HEV to provide greater all-electric range, since operating from electricity is cheaper and cleaner than operating from on-board fuel. If the PHEV is capable of operating entirely on electricity during normal operation, the on-board fuel serves only to extend range.
- Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs): A vehicle powered only by an electric motor with only batteries for energy storage. Their energy usually comes from the electric grid, though some drivers charge their BEVs from solar cells. BEVs typically have larger battery packs than HEVs or PHEVs. They are simpler than other vehicle types and are therefore very reliable. The size and the cost of the battery pack are the primarily limitations of these vehicles.

My primary points of comparison below between hydrogen FCVs and the alternatives (PHEVs and BEVs) will be cost and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, primarily in the form of carbon-dioxide (CO₂):

Hydrogen fueled vehicles will require massive infrastructure investment (e.g. pipelines, tankers, fueling stations). The infrastructure exists for PHEVs (the electric grid and garage electrical outlets). BEVs likewise use the grid and electrical outlets, but could benefit from high-speed charging stations on the highways.
1. If the hydrogen comes from natural gas (the only cost-competitive method today):
  1. The FCV emits roughly 150 g/mi of CO₂. A 45 MPG hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), such as the Prius, emits 200 g/mi. The FCV has insufficient improvement to solve global warming or to warrant massive infrastructure investment. However, one advantage of the FCV is that is possible to sequester the CO₂ created in producing hydrogen, if it is produced at a large industrial facility (but not if it is produced at fueling stations).
  2. The efficiency of a FCV is similar to that a CNG ICE, such as the Honda Civic CNG. A hybrid-CNG vehicle would probably have better efficiency than a FCV. Burning the CNG to produce electricity in a power plant and powering PHEVs and BEVs would be even more efficient.
  3. The U.S. is already begining to imported natural gas for non-transporation use because North American production is inadequate. To fuel the U.S. vehicle fleet will require more massive imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in tankers from Russia and the Middle East. FCVs do not improve national security considerations.
2. If the hydrogen comes from electricity:
  1. If the hydrogen comes from electrolysis then a PHEV or BEV could drive at least twice as far on the same electricity. With California’s current electricity mix, EVs emit 75 g/mi of CO₂ (it would be zero of course with wind or solar energy). The U.S. grid is twice as CO₂ per kWh as California, but it is fortunately improving with time. Adding renewable energy to the grid to power PHEVs and BEVs is more cost-effective than using the same to generate hydrogen for FCVs: it would take half as many wind turbines or solar modules to power an EV fleet as a hydrogen fleet.
  2. Hydrogen from electrolysis is expensive. Driving an FCV fueled with carbon-free hydrogen is considerably more expensive than driving with gasoline. Driving a PHEV or BEV powered by electricity is considerably cheaper than driving with gasoline (it is analagous to paying $0.70 per gallon for gasoline).
3. If hydrogen is produced cleanly and cheaply by some other, as yet undiscovered, method (e.g. directly from heat):
  1. Scientists might someday develop a technology to separate hydrogen from some abundant substance (e.g. water) using heat and/or sunlight that is efficient (it skips electricity as an intermediate for example). This might make hydrogen FCVs somewhat more attractive. However, it would still be better in most cases to turn the H₂ into electricity in a combination stationary fuel-cell and steam turbine (potentially 75% efficient, e.g. DFC Turbine) and then ship that electricity over the grid (92%) to vehicle batteries. The wall to battery output is 86% efficient. Combining these efficiencies gives a generation to battery output efficiency 0.7×0.92×0.86 = 55%. There is no technology, even on the distant horizon, to get 55% efficiency from compressing hydrogen, shipping it, storing it in a vehicle tank, decompressing it, and then converting it to electricity in a portable fuel cell (which are half the efficiency of stationary ones and are not easily followed by a steam turbine to use the waste heat). Only a 60-70% efficient portable fuel cell is going to make hydrogen competitive. That would truly be a breakthrough.
According to Hell and High Water by Dr. Joseph Romm, Fuel cells currently cost about $2000/kW, about 50 times greater than an internal combustion engine.
A FCV is a BEV where some (but not all) of the batteries are replaced by a fuel tank and fuel cell (FCVs are serial hybrids). Any technology that makes FCVs better except in these two components benefits EVs just as much. In particular FCVs need good, cheap battery technology just like PHEVs and BEVs. FCVs can be evaluated by comparing the batteries they displace from a BEV: does the mass of the tank and fuel cell compared to the extra batteries provide enough vehicle efficiency to overcome the inefficiencies of hydrogren? I know of no demonstration of this.
Auto makers currently say FCVs might by ready for the market by 2018-2020. But 2020 is too late to prevent serious global warming problems; we will have passed the climate tipping point by then. We need solutions now, if not yesterday. PHEVs and BEVs require only production to become solutions. No new R&D is required. The only issue is the cost of the batteries, but they start at a lower premium than do fuel cells, and they have cost drivers besides cars. PHEVs will start with as little as 10 miles of electric-only range (costing $1,000), and scale up as battery prices fall. FCV technology predicted for 2020 might easily be 2040 technology; schedules that long tend to have plenty of unknowns in them.
PHEVs solve the chicken-and-egg problem. They allow the use of small, affordable battery packs until volume begins to bring down the cost of batteries to the point the electric-only range of the PHEV naturally increases, and BEVs become even more attractive.
BEVs can help the electric grid switch to renewable energy via Vehicle To Grid (V2G) technology. FCVs cannot because they have too little battery capacity (like HEVs).
The primary touted advantage of FCVs over BEVs (but not PHEVs) is range and refill time. Range is not a problem when one pulls out from the garage with a full battery pack every morning, except for long-distance highway travel, at which point recharge time becomes critical. When FCVs were first touted as better than BEVs, recharge time was an issue. However, in recent years, new Lithium battery technology (e.g. by Altairnano and A123 Systems) allows ten-minute recharge times, which allows highway recharge stations. Also, PHEVs have similar or better refueling times as FCVs, and far greater range. I expect someday, the same vehicle will be offered either as a PHEV or a BEV, much as today automatic or manual transmissions are options, and the purchaser will be able to decide how important a liquid fuel backup is.

Given the inefficiency of hydrogen production and use, FCVs are inferior to PHEVs and BEVs. The only plausible reason that industry appears prefers inferior technology is that they delay having to produce alternatives to ICEVs in volume.

It is no wonder that the EV community calls them fool cells instead of fuel cells.

8 March 2007 — Winning, but Losing

My next door neighbor of twelve years died last year and her estate is subdividing her property to realize a better sales price. I didn’t like portions of their subdivision plan, so I challenged it at my town’s Planning Commission meeting, and won. That is, the Planning Commission approved their plan with a change I requested. The estate trustee decided to take the matter to the town council, preferring the original plan. I won again. So why do I feel like everyone lost? Because the process was so flawed that I probably won for the wrong reasons.

The process was far too adversarial from the very beginning. It began with the estate preparing a plan, at great cost, without ever consulting those who would be affected by the plan. Having invested quite a bit into their plan, the estate was naturally reluctant to change it, since any change would involve incremental cost. However, I fully understand how the estate’s trustee took that path, for when I was on the other side (I recently built a new house and went through a similar but not identical process), I did the same thing: I crafted my plans and then presented them to my neighbors. I was wrong to have done it that way, and the estate was wrong to do it as well, but I also think the process should have encouraged both of us to take a different approach. (I know I will next time.)

In my case there was also a failure of mechanism that was supposedly in place. Before the Planning Commission meeting, there was a meeting with town staff that I was supposedly invited to attend. I never received an invitation. I don’t know whether it was never sent, or lost in the mail, or lost in junk mail filtering, or lost by yet some other mechanism, but I was not aware of this town staff meeting until after it took place. A more robust invitation mechanism should be used, where one either accepts the invitation, declines it, or failing either of the above, the invitation is repeated (preferably by alternative means, such as telephone, email, etc.). Only multiple failures to respond would be taken as declining.

Another issue is that only residents within 500 feet of the property being changed needed to be notified. In this case, there are people who live thousands of feet away who are in fact very much affected. The simplistic distance rule was not sufficient. Perhaps no simple rule can suffice? Public notice is not the answer: People can barely pay attention to notices they may or may not receive in their mail (a consideration greatly influenced by the amount of junk mail we all receive—another problem). The town staff should have the discretion to include notification of others beyond the simplistic requirement, and also those notified should have had the ability (and been encouraged) to add still others to the notification process.

However, even an opportunity to attend the town staff review of the subdivision would not have addressed the issue that the applicant is highly invested in their single-minded approach by the time the review takes place. The town should have had a process where someone declares her intent to make a change before plans can be developed. Those affected should be consulted, and brainstorming take place about the best ways to accomplish the goals of the applicant while keeping the needs of those affected in mind. Only after such exchange of ideas should money be spent on developing detailed plans. The applicant would have the ability to develop plans just as before, in spite of opposition of those affected, but she would be forewarned that her plans would face opposition.

The adversarial process was especially problematic in that the judges in this process were poorly informed. When I presented my case before the Planning Commission (my first contact with the applicant), I had only three minutes to make my case. Just how informed can the Planning Commission members be after three minutes of input? An informed judgment in fact required, in this case, actually walking the property in question to look at the issues under dispute. The town staff did a little bit of this, but never required a meeting of all interested parties once my concerns became known. Moreover the town staff were not the decision makers. They might choose to present information to the decision makers or not. My three minutes were certainly not sufficient to properly present my side of things (fortunately my wife also had three minutes, but a single person would have had only three).

We were also fortunate that one Planning Commission member chose to spend a little extra time talking to both sides before the Commission meeting, so he had much more background on the matter. But I don’t think this fortuitous circumstance is the norm, and it certainly cannot be relied upon for everyone.

The Planning Commission decided in our favor on one issue that we thought was most important to us. At this point we finally started to have the discussion with the estate’s representative that should have been the starting point, not a near end-point. We began to explore options that were neither the Planning Commission victory we had won nor their original proposal. That was what should have occurred in the first place. To my surprise, the estate pulled back from these discussions, and decided to apply to the Town Council to overrule the Planning Commission. It was a very in your face sort of approach.

At this point I started talking with others affected by the subdivision (looking for allies), because most of them had, to my surprise, not attended the Planning Commission meeting. Many had not been invited, for reasons mentioned above. Others had not been able to attend that particular night. It turned out that the small issue I was concerned about was probably not as important as some of the issues they made me aware of. We strategized and came up with a long set of issues that should be brought to the Council’s attention to properly decide this issue.

I prepared for the Town Council meeting based on my Planning Commission experience, only to be surprised to find out that the Town Council would take only two minutes of input, not even three. Being the most affected neighbors of the subdivision, the Mayor kindly granted my wife and I three minutes each, but even that was not sufficient to make both the prepared points I wanted to make and impromptu responses to what had been said earlier, and I was cut off about half way through my prepared remarks. In contrast the applicant had essentially unlimited time to make his case. I found this asymmetry to be also be problematic for making a proper decision. There was also not opportunity to point out flat out wrong facts that were presented by others.

It was also clear from the questions and comments made by the Council members how little they understood the issue they were being asked to decide. Basically they ended up ignoring all of the new issues that my neighbors and I tried to raise, and concentrated on the issue that had divided the applicant and me at the Planning Commission hearing. In the end my reading of the outcome is that they decided they really didn’t want to get involved with the issue (they probably understood how poorly suited they were to decide on the information before them) and they decided to ratify the Planning Commission’s decision (though they mentioned that the applicant could return there if they wanted). So I won on the issue I had originally had with the estate, but my neighbors and I failed to bring the new issues raised by my neighbors—potentially more significant—to anyone’s attention.

The estate’s trustee may choose to take the matter back to the Planning Commission, at which point we might get a slightly better hearing on all the issues (with a full three minutes for the opposition, but probably unlimited time for the applicant), or they might choose to just live with the Commission/Council decision, and bury the other issues. Either way, the system did not perform well, as I see it.

The answer is not to give those affected (such as myself) more time to make their case at Commission and Council meetings. Such meetings already go on late into the night. One could constitute decision making bodies on a per-case basis (like the jury in a criminal trial or civil case), which would allow the decision makers more time to hear the various sides, but after having gone through a legal dispute, I find just as many problem in that paradigm as the one I just experienced (unfortunately I never wrote down my very negative opinion of the legal process I endured). Simply letting town staff decide is not the answer either, even though they are better informed, because they are part of a hierarchical organization with its own interests. The answer must instead be to find a process whereby the parties interact more directly, with some mediation, and earlier.

So though I won (so far) on one issue, it was for the wrong reason and by the wrong process. When we suffer broken processes, we are all losers.

6 February 2007 — W.Q.

Garrett Hardin wrote in Tactics in Tackling Taboos, It takes five years for a person’s mind to change. He based this observation on personal introspection of several occurrences in his life, estimating the time from which he had been in possession of all of the facts needed for the change to the time he noticed his opinion had actually changed.

Based on his writings, I would consider Hardin to be an intelligent, thoughtful person, who actually let facts affect his opinions. I have observed others whom seem to have been inoculated against the effects of facts. Even intelligent people are capable of this; indeed often intelligence is pressed into forced labor to invent rationales to explain away inconvenient truths. Thus intelligence is not wisdom. I therefore propose to extrapolate from Hardin’s Law a wisdom quotient, or W.Q., analogous to the intelligence quotient, or I.Q. The W.Q. could simplistically be computed as 500 divided by the average number of years it takes for facts to affect one’s opinions. (A better measure would involve means and standard deviations, as in the I.Q.) Garrett Hardin would then have had a W.Q. of 100. Those completely impervious to facts would have a W.Q. of zero.

Measuring the W.Q. is difficult, because there are also those who change opinions to orient with the slightest puff or any gentle zephyr. They are not responding to facts so much as others opinions in an attempt to conform and fit in. Such vanes would not have a high W.Q., and a mechanism to exclude such fashion-driven wafting would have to be devised.

There are those whose profession teaches adjusting to new facts, such as scientists. The best test of W.Q. for such professions would be to look how they react to facts outside of their profession.

More fundamentally, being open to the facts is a necessary but not sufficient condition for wisdom, so the above is merely a thought in progress.

25 January 2007 — Immigration

What should the U.S. policy on immigration be? The issue is often looked at in isolation, separate from other issues, but that leads to inconsistencies. A related issue is sustainability, though the relation is not typically recognized. If we are to build a sustainable society in the U.S. then we should eliminate or strongly reduce our dependence upon foreign sources, which are at present unsustainable. This includes people: a sustainable U.S. would not need a guest worker program, or immigration from Mexico to staff its low-paying jobs. Instead it would have to adjust its wage scales so that these jobs would be filled by its own citizens.

Conversely, a policy position that the U.S. should not be self-sustaining, but should enrich itself at the expense of the rest of the world, might be appropriately coupled with some immigration, simply so that some lucky few of the exploited might be granted the opportunity to have their children graduate to exploiter status. Most in the U.S. would argue that we do not exploit foreign workers, but instead provide a market for their labor. We have euphemisms for everything ugly we do.

Of course contemporary politics can be a bit inconsistent. Republicans want minimal immigration, maximal exploitation, and minimal sustainability. Democrats don’t give much real priority to a sustainable society, at least not enough to do anything significant in that direction, but they might voice support for such a society (as long as it didn’t conflict with other goals more important to their investors). While offering verbal support for a more sustainable society, Democrats would also at the same time support more immigration than Republicans.

My priorities strongly favor sustainability, and so I would support policies that restrict both unsustainable imports and immigration. A supportable level of immigration is one that matches the level of emigration from the U.S.

10 January 2007 — More on Collapse

After writing Collapse, I thought I should write down some further clarifications, since I left a lot unsaid.

First, not every bomb in the minefield, even if it detonates, is likely to cause collapse. Also, in my opinion, collapse is not likely in the next forty years (i.e. in my probable lifetime). I have no biological progeny either (though there are younger people I care about who might be affected). The first thing to address is then why should I be concerned about it all? The danger in attempting to answer this question may be that my concern is emotional, whereas any attempt at an answer will be intellectual, and simply a rationalization. That said, I believe there are three things that most bother me. First is the suffering of the innocents. Homo sapiens may deserve (in the sense of needing to learn a lesson for our collective stupidity) what may be coming, but we will hurt many other sentient beings along the way (we already are). The second is related; it is the destruction of things in general. We are busily destroying things we do not even understand, and once they are gone, they cannot be brought back. Non-sentient species, ecosystems, and even inanimate Earth systems fall under this category. Extinction is a great loss. Even if a niche is eventually refilled with something evolved from another branch of the tree, what it was and what it might have become will never be known. The third concern is the loss of scientific opportunity. I cannot say why exactly (I have reached the point at which intellectual effort fails), but it feels good to me that we are slowly deciphering our universe, and the collapse of civilization will set back much of that.

There are potential good things from collapse: Myths would be punctured, lessons would be learned, and homo sapiens would be reduced to a more sustainable population size. But new, potentially more pernicious, myths might be created, and the pain along the way might be massive. Joseph Tainter summarized collapse as follows in The Collapse of Complex Societies:

There is, first and foremost, and breakdown of authority and central control, revolts and provincial breakaways signal the weakening of the center. … The umbrella of law and protection erected over the populace is eliminated. Lawlessness may prevail for a time, as in the Egyptian First Intermediate Period, but order will ultimately be restored. Monumental construction and publicly-supported art largely cease to exist. Literacy may be lost entirely, or otherwise declines so dramatically that a dark ages follows. … Whether as a cause or as consequence, there is typically a marked, rapid reduction in population size and density. … The level of population and settlement may decline to that of centuries or even millennia previously.

And that is just the homo sapiens perspective; the marked, rapid reduction is likely to affect wildlife even more dramatically than homo sapiens.

A breakdown of authority and central control, a reduction in population size could be considered good or bad, depending upon your point of view, but the loss of publicly-supported projects (the arts and sciences) and the loss of literacy and subsequent dark age are worrisome. The destruction of the myths of our age may be welcome, but the myths created by the dark age will not be. The eventual renaissance following the dark age would benefit from not being straight-jacketed by our civilization’s biases, but it would have the biases of its own dark age to overcome. It will be able to selectively sift from our ashes to fertilize its growth, but it will not be able to choose the ground upon which it grows. It may be hindered by religions that hold back scientific inquiry about the universe: Deities are failures of the imagination; they ask that we look no further than the will of the deity for the explanation of things.

If that is the worry, then what is the potential for collapse? For the bombs I listed (and most likely for the ones I missed altogether, e.g. a pandemic bomb), it is the suddenness of change that may decide between collapse and adaptation. Tainter believes that the declining marginal return of complexity is the primary factor behind collapse. (In contrast, Diamond believes that environmental degradation is the primary factor. Of course, it is not necessary that a single theory explain every collapse, but Diamond’s thesis could be seen as an cause of declining marginal return cited by Tainter.) Returning to the suddenness of the bomb, as Tainter puts it:

There are two general factors that combine to yield a declining marginal return. First, stress and perturbation are a constant feature of any complex society, always occurring somewhere in its territory. Such a society will have a developed an operating regulatory apparatus that is designed to deal with such things as localized agricultural failures, border conflicts, and unrest. Since such continuous, localized stress can be expected to recur with regularity it can, to a degree, be anticipated and prepared for. Major, unexpected stress surges, however, will also occur given enough time, as such things as major climatic fluctuations and foreign incursions take place. To meet these major stresses the society must have some kind of net reserve. This can take the form of excess productive capacities in agriculture, energy, or minerals, or hoarded surpluses from past production. Stress surges of great magnitude cannot be accommodated without such a reserve.

Yet a society experiencing declining marginal returns is investing ever more heavily in a strategy that is yielding proportionately less. Excess productive capacity will at some point be used up, and accumulated surpluses allocated to current operating needs. There is, then, little or no surplus with which to counter major adversities. Unexpected stress surges must be dealt with out of the current operating budget, often ineffectually, and always to the detriment of the system as a whole. Even if the stress is successfully met, the society is weakened in the process, and made even more vulnerable to the next crisis. Once a complex society develops the vulnerabilities of declining marginal returns, collapse may merely require sufficient passage of time to render probable the occurrence of an insurmountable calamity.

In that context, I will look at the bombs in turn. I laid out the problem of the oil bomb earlier. The degree of stress this puts on the civilization depends upon the details of production. If peak oil has a long flat top, prices will perhaps increase slowly enough that civilization will adapt, substituting new energy sources for the old one. Existing consumers will pay more to command access to the flat production, preventing potential new consumers (i.e. the world’s poor) from receiving any product. Some current consumers may even be priced out of consumption, but not enough for catastrophic stress to the system. The rising prices will effect development of alternatives (things currently uneconomic). During this period civilization will draw down its surpluses (if it has any), but probably survive. The other possibility is that production begins to decline rather quickly, without a long period of flat production. Then prices will rise much faster to shed even current consumers (not just emerging ones). This economic dislocation will ripple through the system as a stress surge. It could cause civilization to collapse to a lower level of complexity.

The climate bomb is likely to be take place over an extended period of time. A tipping point might occur suddenly, but the consequences are probably slower; an analogy might be throwing someone from an airplane: the act is fast and irreversible, but the fall takes a while before it ends in impact with the ground. Billions of homo sapiens may have to relocate, and substitutes for lost resources of production (e.g. land) found, but this would be over a period of a century. The potential stress surge is one of magnitude, not timing. I don’t think the outcome can be predicted, but the magnitude of the stress appears to me capable of triggering collapse through wars and severe economic reversals.

The economics bomb is not a cause itself (and I probably should not have included it at all). It is rather a simplistic argument that our current economic system has theoretical problems, which is of course perhaps better demonstrated by the recurring history of collapse (Tainter goes through at least eighteen). Basically, the compound return argument suggests our economics has evolved in a world of periodic collapse, and so its sustainability has never been an issue. Should we avert all other reasons for collapse, either economics would evolve to something else, or some sort of bomb would result from the asymmetric accumulation of wealth. I cannot begin to predict which, though I suspect the latter.

The population bomb is primarily a problem of our civilization’s complexity. Wildlife populations grow exponentially until a resource limit is reached, and then oscillate about that limit. Human population could do the same (and has done so successfully, such as Japan reaching near zero population growth in the 18th and early 19th centuries), except our population is already far above the limits of the resources provided naturally; it is supported there only by the complexity of civilization (e.g. our unsustainable agriculture). Growth of population can be one input to Tainter’s declining marginal return thesis, creating a collapse, and therefore a return to a lower level of complexity, and therefore a return to a dramatically lower population. Thus population growth in our civilization may play out differently—with a more dramatic crash—from wildlife observations.

The technology bomb is the real odd-ball. Its potential for a stress surge is of high intensity due to suddenness created by the situation the day before a technological development and the day after. As such, it is hardest to anticipate, or counter with surpluses. As such, it may be something that could topple even civilizations not experiencing declining marginal returns.

The optimist’s view on all of this is that science and technology will solve our problems. Here is Tainter’s response:

It is not that R&D cannot potentially solve the problems of industrialism. The difficulty is that to do so will require an increasing share of GNP. The principle of infinite substitutability depends on energy and technology. With diminishing returns to investment in scientific research, how can economic growth be sustained? The answer is that to sustain growth resources will have to be allocated from other sectors of the economy into science and engineering. … The allocation of greater resources to science of course is nothing new, merely the continuation of a two centuries-old trend. Such investment, unfortunately, can never yield a permanent solution, merely a respite from diminishing returns.

…

Will we find, as have some past societies, that the cost of overcoming our problems is too high relative to the benefits conferred, and that not solving problems is the economical option?

Tainter concludes with the following observation about the global nature of the next collapse. It is worthwhile to keep this in mind.

In fact, there are major differences between the current and the ancient worlds that have important implications for collapse. On of these is that the world today is full. That is to say, it is filled by complex societies; these occupy every sector of the globe, except the most desolate. This is a new factor in human history. Complex societies as a whole are a recent and unusual aspect of human life. The current situation, where all societies are so oddly constituted, is unique. It was shown earlier in this chapter that ancient collapses occurred, and could only occur, in a power vacuum, where a complex society (of cluster of peer polities) was surrounded by less complex neighbors. There are no power vacuums left today. Every nation is linked to, and influenced by, the major powers, and most are strongly linked with one power bloc or the other.

…

Peer polities then then tend to undergo long periods of upwardly-spiraling competitive costs, and downward marginal returns. This is terminated finally by domination of one and acquisition of a new energy subsidy (as in Republican Rome and Warring States China), or by mutual collapse (as among the Mycenaeans and the Maya). Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.

Our civilization should be more concerned about the possibility of its collapse. We must first reduce its probability. The most important step is to stop frittering away our inheritance, and instead live only off of our current income (and perhaps even to add to our natural capital after our long drawdown of it, similar to Japan’s reforestation efforts that started in 1666, as noted in Jared Diamond’s work). As an insurance policy, a second step would be to build arks to help our descendents recover from a collapse if our efforts to avoid it prove insufficient. And history suggests that the question is not whether the next collapse will occur, but rather when.

6 January 2007 — Collapse

Civilization today has some challenges ahead. We’ve got the oil bomb, the climate bomb, economics bomb, population bomb, and the technology bomb to circumnavigate. It is a real mine field. Even if the probability of avoiding each one is 80%, the probability of avoiding all 5 would be a mere 33%. Of course these are not independent; so the probabilities don’t strictly multiply (e.g. avoiding the oil bomb may make avoiding climate catastrophe more or less likely depending upon the solution).

The climate bomb is of course climate change that occurs too fast for the Earth species (including homo sapiens); the result being catastrophe (e.g. world war resulting from the massive relocations of billions of people). I think the probability of avoiding the climate bomb is really much lower than 80% (though I would put several of the others higher — 80% is just meant to illustrative). I was actually someone more optimistic on climate change until I saw the gross under reaction to Katrina (after the gross over reaction to the pinprick of 2001.09.11). Now I suspect we will not act until it is too late. Recent science shows there may be a tipping point that we are on the verge of broaching. This is a non-linear feedback mechanism where a little bit more warming may cause massive carbon dioxide releases that once started cannot be stopped. Even if we do eventually pull back, we will not be able to stop these natural processes, with the result that the warming snowballs. In Permafrost and the Global Carbon Budget Sergey A. Zimov et al. point out that the carbon in Earth’s atmosphere has recently increased from its pre-industrial level of 560 Gt to 730 Gt today. This has resulted in warming that is now beginning to melt the permafrost in Siberia and Alaska. They estimate that the frozen yedoma deposits across Siberia and Alaska contain approximately 500 Gt of carbon covering 1 million km² to an average depth of approximately 25 m. Peatbogs contain 50 to 70 Gt of carbon, and non-yedoma, non-peat permafrost contains approximately 400 Gt of carbon. They further suggest when thawed most yedoma carbon will be released within a century. Thus once thawing occurs, as much as 4 Gt of carbon might enter the atmosphere each year, in addition to what humankind adds. Even if humankind could suddenly stop its 7 Gt per year emissions completely, the permafrost might keep on going at more than half of this level. Our only option at that point would be to run backward just to stay in the same place; we would have to sequester up to 4 Gt per year, a change of 11 Gt.

The chemical form of carbon emissions makes a difference. Methane has 23 times the global warming potential (GWP) of carbon dioxide, so it matters quite a bit whether permafrost carbon ends up as methane or CO₂. In Methane bubbling from Siberian thaw lakes as a positive feedback to climate warming, Walter et al. present their surveys of methane release from sixty Siberian thaw lakes. Their more accurate method found 3.7 times the methane release than previous work on the same lakes. Since these northern latitudes had not been included in current wetland methane emission estimates, this represents a new, extremely worrisome, methane source. Their 0.004 Gt CH₄ yr^-1 estimate is equivalent to 0.087 Gt of CO₂ in GWP. While these numbers are still small, Zimov’s data suggest that the potential exists for huge (non-linear) increases as the temperature increases just enough to increase the thawing.

The oil bomb I refer to above is more commonly discussed using the term peak oil. It refers simply to the fact that crude oil production may soon level off and then begin to decline, while our appetite will grow ever larger. That gap will of course be closed by market forces: prices so high that consumption is strangled (this will be accomplished by pricing it beyond the means of the poor). Since very basic needs, including food production, are now very dependent upon oil, this could lead to problems for the poor on a scale we have never seen before. Having looked at the data from various sides of the peak oil debate, I don’t know what to believe. I’ve yet to see really convincing data. Even the USGS position (e.g. Long Term World Oil Supply) seems to be based on simplistic assumptions to me. However, unlike the business as usual crowd, I don’t think it is up to Peak Oil folks to prove their peak prediction dates; prudence calls for being prepared for the possibility of an early peak when the data is so unclear. Also, if the oil bomb is avoided by oil conservation, this helps delay the climate bomb. (Conversely, if we switch to coal to avoid peak oil, we trigger the climate bomb all the sooner.)

The population bomb has been discussed since Malthus wrote his warning in 1798. Overpopulation is indeed extermely serious right now, but the lack of a dramatic catastrophe in the years since 1798 has only made humankind complacent and dismissive of the notion (Malthusian has even entered the lexicon). This complacency is lunacy, but the human mind has a enormous difficultly grasping exponential growth, especially at low rates of compounding. It is a characteristic of exponential growth that it collides into its limits with the same subtlety of a race car hitting a concrete abutment. What is worse is that the population rate has been super-exponential; the growth rate has been increasing. For example, the last four doublings of world population took 500 years, 200 years, 60 years, and 36 years. The growth rate was 0.109% between 1 and 1950. When Malthus wrote his warning in 1798, it was a scary 0.43%. Between 1950 and 2006 the population growth rate has been 1.41%, which is almost unimaginable: we added 3 billion people to the planet between 1960 and 1996. The growth rate is down to a mere 1.2% in recent years (between 2000 and 2005). The U.N. and others estimate the population will stabilize around 2050, but that may be just wishful thinking; predicting the future says more about the seer than the future.

The economics bomb is probably unfamiliar. I encountered the notion in George Monbiot’s Manifesto for a New World Order in the form of a gedanken: Invest a penny at 5% annual interest for 2,000 years.† What do you get? The answer is so monstrously large it boggles the imagination (again the human mind has trouble with even simple exponentials). The value of a quantity of gold with the same mass as the Earth is tiny in comparison. It implies that the present capitalist system requires periodic resets (e.g. the Dark Ages, Depressions, wealth destroying wars, etc.) to avoid the problems of compound return.

1.05²⁰⁰⁰ is roughly 2.4×10⁴² or
2,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
It is indeed a number of unimaginable scale. It is as large as the Planck scale is small. For example, the land area of the earth is only 148,939,100,000,000 m².

I consider the 5% example cited in the book too high, given inflation and taxes, so I repeated the calculation with a 2% real return. 1.02²⁰⁰⁰ is 160,000,000,000,000,000, so after investing $1 at 2% real return for 2000 years you’d have over $1000 for each square meter of land on earth ($2.7 billion per sq mi). Still impressive. The mass of the earth is
6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.
It only takes 3% real interest to get numbers this large.

It is amazing that people took Marx’s arguments as proof that capitalism would be relegated to the dustbin of history. The above is a much simpler and stronger indictment. Of course it does not relegate capitalism to the dustbin; rather it only requires wars, depressions, and dark ages to periodically intervene to destroy accumulations of wealth, such as that owned by the hypothetical entity (e.g. a family or a corporation) collecting 2% compound interest for 2000 years. Sustainable capitalism of the sort we know is not possible. It can probably go for only several hundred years to a thousand years at most before requiring a reset. Perhaps we are almost due? This is the potential economics bomb.

The technology bomb is simply the notion that as technology advances, it becomes increasingly possible for a small number of individuals or even a single individual to cause enormous damage. A suicide bomber today can destroy a bus, a cafe, or an office building. What will the suicide bomber of tomorrow do? Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake gives one glimpse of what might be in store.

The conjunction of probabilities for walking this mine field is not encouraging. There’s a good chance for some serious negative outcomes. Very possibly any one might cause a collapse of civilization. That is of course not new; collapse has happened repeatedly and frequently throughout history. What is new is the degree to which our civilization is now global, and so a collapse has wide consequences.

I don’t think there is much that can be done to personally prepare for collapse. The only sensible strategy is to work to avoid it. Even if the probabilities where much different (e.g. 95% chance of avoiding each bomb gives 77% chance of avoiding all of them if they are independent), it still makes sense to work to increase our chances, since factoring in the pain factor (i.e. the computing the expected value of 23% collapse and 77% non-collapse) is still a very bad result. Society could prepare the possibility of collapse by preparing a sort of ark, but it is unlikely to do so.

† After writing the above commentary, I ran into an earlier gedanken along the same lines in Garrett Hardin’s 1963 essay The Cybernetics of Competition:

Suppose, for example, that the thirty pieces of silver which Judas earned by betraying Jesus had been put out at 3 percent interest. If we assume these pieces of silver were dollars, the savings account would today amount to a bit more than 2 × 10²⁶ dollars, or 70 million billion dollars for every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth.

21-31 December 2006 — Fossil Addiction and Getting Clean

As usual, President Bush got it wrong. (Also as usual, the press did not even notice.) The U.S. is not addicted to oil; it is addicted to fossils. In 2005 85% of our energy use was from fossil fuels: 46 EJ of petroleum energy (40%), 25 EJ of coal energy (23%), and 24 EJ of natural gas energy (23%). Only 8% was nuclear and 6% renewable. To use a food analogy: we aren’t addicted to chocolate; we are addicted to sugar.

(Another way to look at it: we aren’t addicted to oil, we are addicted to spending our inheritance and fouling our own home, rather than spending only our current income.)

Is the distinction significant? If we consider not the energy content of the three fossil fuels above, but instead their carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, then in 2005 petroleum was 2.5 gigatons (43%), coal was 2.1 gigatons (36%), and natural gas was 1.2 gigatons (21%). (The reason emissions don’t parallel energy content is due to the hydrogen content of the fuel; coal is mostly carbon without much hydrogen, natural gas is CH₄ with a large hydrogen content, and petroleum is in between.) Total U.S. CO₂ emissions are 5.945 gigatons, and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions amount to the equivalent of 1.139 gigatons of CO₂. Even if we kicked the oil habit, our fossil addiction would still have plenty of consequences for the planet.

We will have to target all of our fossil addictions, while avoiding even worse temptations (e.g. methane clathrates), but if the ease of overcoming the addiction is factored in, then oil might not be the highest priority. Consider next our consumption by sector: electricity 40%, transportation 28%, industrial 22%, and residential 11%. Perhaps we have an electric addiction too. Or at least some of us do; some are gorging and some are leaner. Consider electricity use per person by state: Californians used 6,732 kWh per capita in 2003, whereas the U.S. average was 11,997 kWh per capita, or 78% more. The standard of living in California is no worse than in the rest of the nation; California is simply more efficient. This becomes clearer when we consider historical per capita electricity use (see page 12). In the 1960s California and the rest of the nation consumed about 4,000 kWh per person per year. By the 1970s the U.S. was up to 8,000 and California was less than 7,000. Over the next few decades, California’s per capita usage stayed almost flat while the rest of nation increased to almost 12,000 kWh per capita. The divergence is the result of California’s policies, incentives, and regulations that encouraged or required efficiency (e.g. appliance and housing efficiency standards). If these policies were implemented at the Federal level and the nation’s use fell to California’s levels over the next decades, the 44% reduction in electricity generation and consumption would result in gigatons (Gt) fewer carbon dioxide emissions. For example, if the 44% is applied equally to all generation types, then about 1.0 gigaton of CO₂ emissions would be avoided. If the 44% reduction were applied selectively to coal generation (this would be best accomplished with carbon taxes or a cap and trade system), than about 1.6 gigatons of emissions would be avoided. We don’t sacrifice anything by being more efficient—indeed we end up with more money in our pockets due to lower electric bills—but we are much less destructive.

Most things that we can change take time. For the U.S. to reach California electrical efficiency may take 20-30 years for the nation to achieve. But the benefits begin to accrue soon after the change, and begin to support other changes. For example, getting rid of coal makes electricity enormously more attractive. Consider the table below of electric fuel sources before and after negawatts selectively applied to coal:

2006.12.21 Table 1—Electric Power Generation After Negawatts
Fuel	2005				After Negawatts
Fuel	TWh	%	Gt CO₂	%	TWh	%	Gt CO₂	%
Coal	1956	52.6%	1.944	81.8%	322	15.4%	0.321	42.6%
Nuclear	782	21.0%			782	37.5%
Natural Gas	553	14.9%	0.319	13.4%	553	26.5%	0.319	42.4%
Hydro	260	7.0%			260	12.4%
Petroleum	111	3.0%	0.102	4.3%	111	5.3%	0.102	13.5%
Renewables	59	1.6%			59	2.8%
Other			0.012	0.5%			0.012	1.5%
Total	3721	100%	2.376	100%	2088	100%	0.753	100%

The carbon dioxide per energy produced falls from 0.64 kg/kWh to 0.36 kg/kWh. Electricity gets a lot cleaner!

Proclaiming an addiction is one thing; doing something about it is another. Negawatts are a relatively painless way to get rid of a lot of coal. In contrast, getting rid of oil is a bit more complicated. One reason President Bush may have been willing to proclaim an oil addiction is that it only serves to highlight our dependency upon (and need to support) those who feed our addiction with the needed substance, or least some alternative (when the drug of choice becomes scarcer, the addict often switches to a similar substance.) The oil portion of our fossil addiction is primarily a personal transportation addiction (i.e. automobiles). There are many reasons why it might be best to cut back on this craving, but short of severe crisis, I don’t see this happening. Thus the question becomes can we find a non-fossil way to satisfy our personal transportation craving.

Fortunately automobiles need not be fossil fueled. The methadone analogs for personal transportation are biofuels, hydrogen from renewable sources, and electricity from renewable sources. Of these, electricity is the only alternative that is a here and now technology (though biodiesel is close). No new technology is required to produce battery electric vehicles (BEVs) that would replace most of the nation’s vehicle fleet. Electricity has the advantage of existing infrastructure and a trivial migration strategy (more on these later). BEVs appear to be the most efficient, and compare favorably to even the futures promised by biofuels and hydrogen. The only current disadvantage of BEVs is the cost of the batteries, a problem that will be solved with volume. Because volume depends on getting the cost down, the migration strategy is to start off with vehicles with modest battery requirements: plug-in hybrids.

The case against hydrogen as a fuel is quite simple. Hydrogen as a transportation fuel is a way of storing energy (batteries are a similar way to store energy). A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (FCV) is the same as a battery electric vehicle (BEV) where a hydrogen storage tank and fuel cell replace some (but not all) of the batteries. This makes it relatively straight-forward to compare. Hydrogen is only economically produced today from natural gas (a fossil fuel). Hydrogen boosters claim natural gas hydrogen is simply a transition mechanism, and in the distant future we will substitute renewable production methods. The only renewable production methods that exist today is electrolysis of water from renewable electricity and the use of biogas as a substitute for natural gas (a biofuel method). For electrolysis from electricity, it seems clear that it is superior to simply transmit the energy across the electric grid to our garages (92% efficient), and then store and retrieve it in vehicle batteries (86%), for an plant to motor input efficiency of 80%. No conceivable electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity technology can match this 80% efficiency. A hydrogen booster’s claims are 70-75% efficient electrolysis and 50-70% efficient fuel cells, yielding at most 35-52% plant to motor input efficiency. Since the BEV and FCV are otherwise identical, the only way a FCV could beat a BEV is if the weight of the hydrogen storage tank and fuel cell were so much less than the weight of the Lithium batteries they displace to undo this 1.5 to 2.3 times efficiency disadvantage. In the real world, existing BEVs with NiMH batteries (which are much heavier than Lithium batteries) provide superior efficiency to existing FCVs. I have yet to see a hydrogen booster make the needed weight argument, and I doubt one can be made. Instead hydrogen boosters point at the limited range and long recharge times of old BEVs, ignoring the fact that new BEVs have largely solved the range problem with Lithium batteries (e.g. by Altairnano and A123 Systems) and that these batteries are likely to solve the recharge time problem as well.

From the vantage of the auto industry, the real advantage of the hydrogen FCVs is not that they are potentially better than BEVs (they are not), but they are clearly not ready for immediate deployment, and thus by espousing them as the future solution, they avoid the need to make changes today.

Biofuels are the other major thrust for future personal transportation. In the case of one biofuel, ethanol, the attraction is obvious. Ethanol is already a gasoline additive; increasing its concentration from 10% to 85% of automobile fuel requires almost trivial modifications of existing automobile designs (for example, Ford claims their entire current production is already E85 capable). For an addict, it is like substituting one amphetamine for another; the change is hardly noticed.

The problem with ethanol, as it is currently produced, is that it is essentially fossil fuel in disguise because it takes so much fossil fuel to produce ethanol from corn that experts actually argue whether the energy return on the fossil fuel is actually positive or negative (e.g. see page 28 of Fuel-Cycle Energy and Greenhouse Emission Impacts of Fuel Ethanol and pages 2-3 of Corn-Based Ethanol Does Indeed Achieve Energy Benefits). Ethanol boosters point to cellulosic ethanol as the future solution to this problem, but until this year’s publication of Carbon-Negative Biofuels from Low-Input High-Diversity Grassland Biomass there did not appear to be even a hypothetical way to produce ethanol sustainably (e.g. without carbon emissions). Like hydrogen, ethanol now appears to be a possible future solution, but not something here and now. Worse, even were a sustainable, carbon-neutral method of producing ethanol to emerge, the efficiency of burning ethanol in the internal combustion engine (ICE) is poor. Electric motors are a much better way to convert stored energy into motive power. For example, a direct comparison of the 2002 RAV4 (gasoline fueled) to the 2002 RAV4-EV (electricity stored in batteries) shows the BEV model to be 4.3 times more efficient than the ICE model. More efficient ICEs are possible, but a factor of 4.3 is not on even the distant horizon. This is also seen on the production side in Table S3 of the supplementary materials to the grassland biomass research cited above where producing ethanol is inferior to producing electricity. Thus even if grassland biomass becomes a real technology in the future, BEVs will still be a much more efficient use of that resource.

We must not think that ethanol is the only biofuel. Biodiesel from oilseed crops is already superior to corn ethanol with much better energy return on the fossil inputs. Moreover, producing oil for biodiesel from algae appears to be up to 30 times as efficient as growing oilseed crops. Thus algae biodiesel is a strong candidate for personal transportation. Moreover, it appears to on the verge of commercialization, like cellulosic ethanol (unlike FCVs). My only real argument against algae biodiesel is that BEVs are more efficient. Algae is about 7% efficient at turning sunlight into oil, and compression ignition engines (diesels) are at best 45% efficient. The corresponding figures for solar energy (e.g. the Stirling Energy Systems plants in the Mojave desert) are 30% efficient; grid delivery of this energy is 92% efficient, and the BEV is perhaps 60-80% efficient, yielding a sun-to-wheels efficiency over five times that of algae biodiesel. Algae biodiesel may still find a niche in long-distance freight transportation, where it is unclear how BEVs could be time-competitive.

The transition from internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is relatively simple. Car makers are already moving pure ICEVs to hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) where electric motors provide all or part of the wheel turning motive force. Though 100% of the energy to power these vehicles comes from gasoline, the electric drive provides such significant advantages in city driving (e.g. not burning fuel when stopped, and accelerating more efficiently) that the 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid gets 50 MPG compared to the 2006 Honda Civic’s 34 MPG—a factor of almost 1.5.

A trivial modification to HEVs is to add more battery storage and a plug, producing a gas-optional or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV). This technology is so trivial that hobbyists and after-market kit companies have already produced such vehicles based on production HEVs. More radical PHEVs have been produced by University projects, such as Dr. Andy Frank’s work at U.C. Davis. The advantage of Frank’s PHEVs is that ICE power is not necessary, even at highway speeds, for 50 miles or more, so that the vehicle is essentially a BEV except on long trips. If fueled by ethanol from grassland biomass, the PHEV could be carbon neutral even on long trips, and the inefficiency of ethanol production compared to electricity is of concern only for a tiny fraction of the miles driven by the PHEV. The only disadvantage of such a PHEV compared to a pure BEV is that it carries the weight and cost of the ICE and the associated continuously variable transmission (CVT) for use on only a tiny fraction of the vehicle’s miles. The advantage of liquid fuel for long trips is simply to provide fast refueling. The Lithium batteries by A123 and Altairnano, already being designed into electric vehicles, allow much faster charging, almost competitive with liquid fueling. Some PHEVs may therefore eventually simplify into BEVs as highway fast-charging infrastructure becomes available (the ICE/CVT may become a furutre purchase option much the way manual vs. automatic transmissions is a purchase option today), but the advantages of electric drive in PHEVs will already have saved the planet long before this infrastructure is needed (unlike FCVs for example).

Converting the U.S. passenger car and other 2-axle vehicle fleet from gasoline to BEVs would save at least 0.6 gigatons (Gt) of carbon dioxide emissions; it would save much more if coal were eliminated entirely from the U.S. grid. How can we do that? Before answering that, we need to eliminate the other fuels that result from crude oil refining. Gasoline cannot be eliminated if diesel is still needed, since diesel is a byproduct of producing gasoline.

As I indicated above, battery electric vehicles may not be feasible for some time for long-distance freight transportation. (Short distance freight is already being electrified, as can be seen by the trucks and vans being produced by Azure Dynamics.) Here, I think we can turn to biofuels, in particular biodiesel from algae, as discussed above. Michael Briggs estimates to replace all of U.S. transportation fuel with algae biodiesel would require 15,000 mi² of Sonora desert land (12.5%). But as I argued above, EVs are superior for passenger travel, and I estimate from Briggs’ work and being a little less optimistic that 7,000 mi² might supply our freight needs. Algae biodiesel replacing 2005’s 63 billion gallons of diesel would save another 0.6 gigatons (Gt) of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

One fossil fuel for which a carbon-neutral strategy is still lacking is aviation fuel. Perhaps as in Diamond Age we will need to return to lighter than air travel?

PHEVs and BEVs of course require additional electricity to be generated. Table 2 below shows the estimated power required. It is less than the negawatts saved above, and so we could just reduce the negawatt savings by burning some of the coal we saved with efficiency, but coal is so destructive of the planet that it imperative to instead build wind and solar farms to generate power for these vehicles. In the 30 years it will take to convert the vehicle fleet, the U.S. could easily finance and build these farms. Just as an example of scale, it would take only 3,000 mi² of Mojave desert land to replace all 140 billion gallons of gasoline burned each year with Sterling Energy Systems’ solar mirror generators. (And defending this 3,000 mi² of U.S. land would be a lot easier than defending the 166,859 mi² of Iraq. Our Iraq war spending would also be more than sufficient to pay for the construction.) Using renewable energy to power PHEVs and BEVs will save 1.2 Gt of carbon dioxide, as compared to only 0.6 Gt if the existing grid power mix is used.

2006.12.21 Table 2—BEV Electric Power Requirements
Vehicle Type	2004 U.S. Trillion Vehicle Miles Traveled	Estimated Wh/mi	TWh needed
Vehicle Type	Passenger Car	1.705	260	443
Other 2-axle 4-tire vehicle	1.014	370	375
Motorcycles	0.013	150	2
Total	2.732	300	821

The above strategy for eliminating petroleum is multifaceted, and involves battery storage of electricity in an enormous number of vehicles (the 2004 fleet was estimated at 234 million vehicles), whether BEVs or PHEVs. Even at 50% of the fleet having batteries, this represents a storage capacity of at least 16% of U.S. daily electric generation (after negawatts). This immense storage capability allows us to return to the grid and further eliminate emissions. As seen in Table 3 below, 30% would be renewable energy, which can be intermittent. Some sources estimate the grid can absorb 5-10% renewables without problem (e.g. Given wind’s intermittency, can the power grid handle much larger amounts of variable generation?), others 10-20%, but 30% renewable energy without storage is sure to be problematic. There are many energy storage possibilities, such as pumped hydro, flow batteries (e.g. VRBPower), and using the vehicle fleet. The last is called Vehicle to Grid (V2G), and it has been studied as a solution. Kempton and Tomic estimated in Vehicle-to-grid power implementation: From stabilizing the grid to supporting large-scale renewable energy that V2G could allow one half of electricity to be wind generated. So the 30% above is achievable with V2G technology.

2006.12.21 Table 3—Electric Power Generation After BEVs
Fuel	After Negawatts				After BEVs
Fuel	TWh	%	Gt CO₂	%	TWh	%	Gt CO₂	%
Coal	322	15.4%	0.321	42.6%	322	11.1%	0.321	42.6%
Nuclear	782	37.5%			782	26.9%
Natural Gas	553	26.5%	0.319	13.4%	553	19.0%	0.319	42.4%
Hydro	260	12.4%			260	8.9%
Petroleum	111	5.3%	0.102	13.5%	111	3.8%	0.102	13.5%
Renewables	59	2.8%			880	30.2%
Other			0.012	1.5%			0.012	1.5%
Total	2088	100%	0.753	100%	2908	100%	0.753	100%

The next step is to get rid of the remaining coal and petroleum used in electricity generation (but not natural gas), since these are so dirty, replacing them with renewable energy. As shown in Table 4 below this substitution brings renewables up to 45% of the grid, still below the limit estimated by Kempton and Tomic. However, going all the way and replacing natural gas (the least dirty fossil fuel) brings renewables to 64%, and so further storage solutions (e.g. flow batteries) will probably be required.

2006.12.21 Table 4—Electric Power Generation After Renewables
Fuel	After BEVs				More Renewables				No Fossil Fuels
Fuel	TWh	%	Gt CO₂	%	TWh	%	Gt CO₂	%	TWh	%	Gt CO₂	%
Coal	322	11.1%	0.321	42.6%
Nuclear	782	26.9%			782	26.9%			782	26.9%
Natural Gas	553	19.0%	0.319	42.4%	553	19.0%	0.319	96.5%
Hydro	260	8.9%			260	8.9%			260	8.9%
Petroleum	111	3.8%	0.102	13.5%
Renewables	880	30.2%			1313	45.2%			1867	64.2%
Other			0.012	1.5%			0.012	3.5%			0.012	100%
Total	2908	100%	0.753	100%	2908	100%	0.330	100%	2908	100%	0.012	100%

The calculations presented above are simplistic. In reality we are unlikely to totally eliminate any of the fossil fuels. We would quite successful if we eliminated even 90% of gasoline, for example. In my calculations, I have simply used the extreme case rather than making guesses about percent adoption, so these should be taken as indications of where we might go, rather than specific predictions. The case for negawatts, PHEVs, BEVs, and renewables looks quite strong. It appears that the U.S. could eliminate about 3-4 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions (out of almost 6 gigatons total) each year without real changes in its standard of living or lifestyle. Whether we will do so is the question.

2006.12.21 Table 5—Summary of Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reductions
Step	Eliminated	Added	Gt CO₂ Savings
Negawatts to reduce coal electricity generation	1633 TWh		1.6
Conversion of gasoline vehicle fleet to BEVs	140.4 billion gallons gasoline	821 TWh from renewables	1.2
Algae biodiesel for long-distance freight	63.1 billion gallons petroleum diesel	64.4 billion gallons algae biodiesel	0.6
Replacing remaining coal and petroleum with renewables (enabled by PHEV/BEV fleet)	322 TWh of coal electricity 111 TWh of petroleum electricity	433 TWh of renewable electricity	0.4
Total			3.8

Note that these estimates are just for the vehicle tailpipe or the power plant. For gasoline and diesel powered vehicles they do not include refinery emissions and electric power use. For PHEVs and BEVs they do not include emissions getting fuel to the power plant. Thus the actual carbon dioxide savings would be substantially higher than the numbers above suggest.

References:

13 December 2006 — Letter to NYT

Thank you for Steve Lohr’s article, The Cost of an Overheated Planet. Something usually overlooked in discussions of this issue is the role efficiency has to play in solving the problem. Sure, Mr. Lohr gives a nod to compact fluorescent bulbs, but if you are like me a few years ago, you probably wrote that off as a nice feel-good sort of response, but one that would not really dent the problem. Indeed, Mr. Lohr quickly turns to other topics (albeit important ones) such as the tax vs. cap and trade proposals.

What I, like so many other people, did not realize until recently is that the efficiency opportunity is huge. Consider that each person in California and the rest of the U.S. used about 6,000 kWh of electricity each year in the 1970s. Since then California has kept its per capita kWh usage roughly flat while the rest of the nation’s usage has doubled. In 2003, California was 50th in the nation in electricity use at 6,732 kWh per capita, while the nation was using almost double that amount (11,997 kWh). That was the result of policies, incentives, and regulations implemented by California. States with similar policies, such as New York, had similarly low usage (NY was 48th in 2003).

Is a few thousand kWh per person a big deal? In fact it is huge. If California’s policies were implemented at the Federal level and U.S. per capita kWh fell to California’s level, there would be a 44% reduction in electrical generation, resulting in approximately one gigaton of carbon dioxide not being put into the atmosphere each year, a reduction of one sixth of all carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. (which are 83% of all greenhouse gas emissions). If we used the efficiency reduction to selectively close coal power plants, the savings are much larger, approximately 1.6 gigatons. All of this could be accomplished while putting money in consumer’s pockets (since their monthly bills would be lower).

Could such a program survive the onslaught of electric utility fury? What industry likes its revenues cut 44%? Here is where California was particularly savvy. It decoupled utility profits from revenue. The utilities profit more from negawatts (efficiency savings) than they do from megawatts. My local utility is constantly telling its customers about how to save electricity, and even subsidizes the purchase of compact fluorescent light bulbs. Duke Energy would no doubt be even more willing to solve the problem with such a system in their states. This idea deserves equal attention to carbon taxes and cap and trade proposals. It is refreshing to see states that recognize how important market-oriented solutions are to our problems.

References:

30 July 2006 — Carbon

Here is a system for reducing and then eliminating greenhouse gas emissions. (Note however that it is unclear how this could be implemented without the cooperation of fossil fuel extracting national governments.)

Set a limit of 7Pg (7×10¹⁵ grams, i.e. 7 giga-tons) of fossil fuel carbon per year for 2010.
Each year decrease the limit by 0.1Pg (10¹⁴ grams), so that it reaches 0 by 2080.
Allocate 1,029kg (about one metric ton) of the 2010 carbon limit per person. Each person may sell part of his or her allocation, and each person may buy allocations from others. People can save their allocations for the future as well. (Note 1,029kg of carbon represents 424g of gasoline.)
Purchase of fuel, airplane tickets, products, etc. requires one to spend both money and allocation. The allocations form a secondary monetary system. Credits flow from individuals to companies and back through the production infrastructure, and eventually end up being use to permit the extraction of fossil fuels from the earth (thus destroying the credit).
Upon the birth of their first child, the parents lose their allocation; it passes to the child. Subsequent children receive no allocation.
Allocation credits are given for the permanent removal of carbon from the atmosphere and oceans (e.g. turned back into hydrocarbons and sequestered in the earth). Credits are not given for plants that are not sequestered, since their carbon can easily return to the atmosphere.

This system has many desirable consequences:

It uses market forces to find a solution to the most serious problem facing the world.
It operates at the level of individuals rather than nations.
It covers both direct and indirect fossil fuel use. Individuals can make personalized lifestyle choices. Someone who commutes by subway, and so uses little fossil fuel directly, may be able to indulge in occasional indirect use (e.g. strawberries from Chile in February) which someone who drives a Hummer will be hard-pressed to afford because she has spent her allocation to feed her guzzler.
The level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will grow more slowly and will eventually level off by at least 2080. Zero emissions may be achieved earlier due to the deliberate refusal of some to use or sell their allocations, and because the market may find solutions that make fossil fuels irrelevant before the allocations drop to zero.
The system is fair to the first world and third world alike.
The system is independent of population growth and economic activity. It avoids arguments over whether emerging economies should be part of the system or not.
It encourages parents to have small families (preferably only one child) for the next few decades, perhaps leading to a decrease in population by 2080. Second and third children will be economically disadvantaged. Nations cannot increase their allocation by population growth.
It transfers wealth from the first world to the third world. The average U.S. citizen uses about 27 times the allocation she receives, and so she will need to purchase the other 26 tons of carbon allocation from others. The primary sellers to the first world will be third world citizens. Note the monetary transfer is to individuals, not governments.
The cost of acquiring credits will encourage first world citizens to reduce their carbon emissions dramatically, because these costs will increase with time.

Eventually it may be necessary to implement a similar system for fresh water.

4 July 2006 — Close Elections

These thoughts are primarily relevant to politics as they are (e.g. the two-party system), and not to the way they should be (a more frequent source of reflection recently).

The close election in Mexico after two close elections in the U.S. stimulates me to reconsideration of the phenomenon. First, there is the question of why elections are close, and second the question of what to do when they happen.

To state the obvious, using a two-faction election scenario, a close election means that the electorate is almost evenly divided on their perceptions of the factions. This can result from the factions adjusting either their underlying candidates and policies or from adjustment of the electorate’s perceptions. To the extent that factions adjust actuality to capture sufficient votes to win an election, they are working to represent the electorate (though some would say they pandering to it instead of leading). In a system where perceptions are accurate, one might expect two factions to adjust their policies to make every election a close election. (That is at least what the thought patterns of Economists would predict.) Close elections might be then seen as a good thing—a sign that the factions are representing the electorate.

However, the electorate’s perceptions are for the most part not accurate. The factions often exploit this by seeking to adjust the electorate’s perceptions rather than their actual positions. Greater differences between the position required to win an election and the actual positions of a faction require greater perceptual manipulation. This produces weak feedback, as described in My Party Right or Wrong. (Plutocracies with weak feedback are now called Democracies.) Battles to manipulate perception can also result in close elections as the enormous manipulation required to produce a landslide may be infeasible and is certainly not worth the effort.

In these two close election scenarios, the question is what to do about the inevitable irregularities, questionable results, etc. (hanging chads, mismarked ballots and so forth)? When the electorate correctly perceives the actual policies of the factions and is evenly divided, I think which faction is handed temporary power is not of primary importance, as each has similar support for its positions. Changes of the weather or other unrelated events could have as much effect as a hanging chad here or there. In my opinion, votes are not sacred. It is the process of submitting the power of the elites to popular inspection that is important, as that introduces weak feedback that causes factional positions to adjust to electoral concerns. What may appear terribly important to the factions is less important than the requirement that the factions submit to the process. The system should then be the winner, and for this to be so, the results must be respected by the populace. The process should then give appropriate deference to the idea every vote is sacred, to maintain the appearance of legitimacy. The factions need to avoid Ends Choosing Principles, which is to say arguing for process that benefits their short-term position at the expense of long-term principle. Too often if the chad situation were reversed, the factions would simply adopt whatever principles benefit them at the moment in question.

In the second situation, where manipulation of perception trumps actualities, the system is not functioning well. It is in danger of devolving toward less and less feedback. What the system needs is a good jolt or crisis to get the electorate to take a closer look at what is going on in the ruling class. Perhaps a closer look will even lead a few to realize how much they are being duped.

Of course, real world situations are never binary. They are not black or white; they are always some shade of grey. That complicates the prescription.

I am rather ignorant of Mexico’s policies, but I suspect at the moment the first prescription would apply there. In the U.S. the shade of grey is much closer to black than white, and what is most needed is a crisis to get the electorate questioning the system. In the U.S., the fourth estate is unfortunately delivering the first prescription.

28 May 2006 — Representation Revisited

Direct democracy is too burdensome, and so representative government is required: that is conventional wisdom. But is it necessary for representative government to consist of individuals elected for terms to decide each issue before them? The necessity of choosing a set of individuals to represent me on issues as diverse as economics, liberty, security, public infrastructure, etc. is fraught with tradeoffs. As a result, the idea that multidimensional political thought is possible does not even occur to most. Instead our politicians group into parties, and artificially align their positions. From agreement on a few primary issues, agreement on many secondary issues is forced. The result is a failure of representation.

For most of my life, I have speculated whether it would be possible to elect one set of representatives for economic issues, another for law-making, etc. The problem is the boundaries; issues and decision-making can be intertwined, and themselves multidimensional. Electing individuals we trust to be our representatives seems like the only way, but the process guarantees we end up with individuals we do not trust to make all of the decisions for us. What to do?

The growing role of NGOs in international issues, as well as the growth of domestic political groups not affiliated with a party (primarily ones concentrating on a single issue) suggests a possible alternative to the dilemma. Modern technology makes it feasible to implement as well.

Consider replacing the legislature with direct democracy. Citizens vote on every issue. Few citizens could follow every issue and make an informed choice. Many already rely on others to form their opinions. Let us formalize this but allow each citizen to allow their votes to be cast by a proxy. On any particular issue before the legislature, the citizen may reclaim their right to directly vote, but if they fail to exercise that right, then their proxy casts the vote for them. This is not just representative government with vote reclaiming. Unlike traditional representative government, where the number of legislators is typically fixed and each has an equal vote, the number of proxies is potentially quite large (bounded only by the number of citizens), and the proxies votes are weighted by the number of citizens who have delegated to them.

Here are some details. A citizen can change her proxy at any time (not only at periodic election boundaries). Thus if my proxy decided to vote for war, I might change proxies to someone who better represented my state of mind, both for the war vote itself, and subsequent votes. I can also reclaim my right to a direct vote on any individual issue of my choosing when I feel I am sufficiently well-informed to cast directly.

Next consider that I might designate multiple individuals or even organizations as proxies, either in an ordered list, or something more complex (see below). Some proxies might restrict themselves to single issues. For example, a citizen might designate the ACLU as her first proxy. The ACLU only votes on issues relating to liberties, and if they do not vote, e.g. on an economic or environmental issue, the citizen’s next proxy is used, and so on until the a proxy with an opinion is found.

The process may be transitive. Proxies may themselves designate proxies. Political parties would then be proxies that designate proxies each specialized in one area (environment, economy, security, etc.). The list of a parties’ proxies is its platform.

Next add the ability of a citizen to provide an algorithm of her own choosing for designating a proxy for her votes. For example, I might implement a consensus algorithm: designate twelve organizations I generally trust on various issues. Collect the positions of those organizations that have one on a given vote, and see if there is a consensus, or overwhelming majority one way or the other. If say 85% of my proxies are voting one way, I let the algorithm make that choice. Otherwise it asks me for my opinion, listing the position statements of my designated proxies as input to my decision making process. With this method I am not overwhelmed paying attention to the decision making process, but get to fine tune when that is appropriate.

The above only begins to scratch the surface of the possibilities of such a system. It might also be used in conjunction with conventional legislative bodies in a bicameral legislative branch of government. The conventional body with a fixed number of periodically elected representatives forms the debating chamber, where the issues are discussed, and the proxy body serves to represent the people’s will on each issue passed by the first. The interactions with proposals such as the following needs thought:

Bringing Democracy to the U.S.
Ballot Initiatives
Judicial Appointments
Legislating Taxes and Spending
Filibuster
Experimental Government

27 May 2006 — Note to Myself

I have not written here for half a year, but that has not been for a lack of ideas. Rather, my ongoing battles on house construction issues have kept me out of the mood. The legal battle with T&D Construction is almost over, which lifts my spirits somewhat (problems with AmeriCal Metal Roofing, Pacific Bay Construction, and Niviya are still to be resolved). Perhaps I’ll create separate pages to describe those troubles, and the lessons learned, since it is of such a different character than these commentaries.

My lack of entries here has not been for a lack of ideas about what to write about. Indeed, my little to-do list has the following entries for these pages:

meaning
reform vs. revolution
plutocracy vs. democracy
averages vs. individuals
confirmation bias
John Locke in the corporate world

A pretty tall order! Notes are so much easier to write than what they suggest. And of course, the note may imperfectly suggest what I intended, and if I finally get to the above, I will probably end up writing something different than I first intended.

However, first I plan to write down an idea in my series on Constitutions, while it is fresh, rather than just add it to the to-do list. It occurred to me while reading George Monbiot’s Manifesto for a New World Order. As I read his introduction to the issues, I was sure he was about to propose the idea that seemed to logically follow from NGO participation in decision making, but he was rather more conventional and never went that far, and so it is left to me.

Previous items in my Constitutional series are:

2004.07.14 Designing/Evolving Complex Systems
2004.07.16 Bringing Democracy to the U.S.
2004.08.09 Addendum: Term Limit Thoughts
2004.08.20 Ballot Initiatives
2004.08.23 Judicial Appointments
2004.08.31 Legislating Taxes and Spending
2005.05.23 Filibuster

4 December 2005 — An explanation for George W. Bush

Note: This originally appeared in an email on this date, but I decided to add it here in September 2010.

How to explain evil? It is an age-old question. It really needs no explanation at all, being simply a judgement of ours, but the following explanation for the madness of George W. Bush popped into my head one day, in the form of a theology of sorts, and I found it rather amusing, and wrote it down. Of course there is nothing scientific about it; it was actually meant to be funny, which mostly says something about my sense of humor.

This invented theology seems so much more plausible to me than traditional ones. P is President, D is Diety, which is to say one of the programmers of the simulation in which we exist.

P: You tell me what to do, and I’ve never questioned it, but I kind of feel like, it doesn’t, you know, really make sense.

D: Our instructions has always been enough.

P: Yes, but, you see, I’m having doubts.

D: Put aside your doubts.

P: I’ll go to heaven, won’t I?

D: You’ve never asked questions before.

P: But I really need to know. I’ll go to heaven, won’t I?

D: No.

P: What? Uh, really I’ve done what you asked.

D: That’s not how it works.

P: What else do I have to do?

D: Just do as you are told.

P: Am I going to hell?

D: There is no hell.

P: And when I die?

D: You will cease to exist.

P: That’s worse than hell.

P: There is no heaven?

D: Some are chosen.

P: How many?

D: Every several generations we find one to move to the next level.

P: That’s it?

D: What is your time to us? Usually your existence isn’t even something we bother with, except to find stock for the next level, and occasionally to tinker with to keep conditions favorable for breeding. Mostly your world runs on its own and with its own time.

P: What do you mean by the next level?

D: The ones we do choose from your world move on to other worlds and other challenges for more breeding.

P: How many levels are there?

D: It depends.

P: And the ones who are not chosen?

D: The dead ends cease to exist. The ones with potential are used in the next generation within your level.

P: Like reincarnation?

D: Only a little bit like that. It is quite complicated, but if you want to think of it as reincarnation, go ahead.

P: Am I going to be reincarnated?

D: No, you are a dead end.

P: Why?

D: You are not worthy.

P: But I’m President!

D: That pretty much guarantees you are not worthy.

P: What do I have to do to be worthy?

D: There is nothing. Your soul has nothing to offer future generations.

P: So what I am doing here?

D: You are just one of the dead ends from the breeding.

P: Breeding?

D: Souls that meet our criteria are the basis for the next generation at this level.

P: You mean my children?

D: No, this is separate from biology. It is an overlay on top of biology that we are breeding. Think of it as soul DNA.

P: If I’m a dead end, why am I here?

D: The dead ends still serve a purpose in the breeding. They challenge the ones with potential. Worthiness is judged by the response to the imperfect world.

P: All this time you’ve just been using me to create an imperfect world as a stimulus for your breeding?

D: Yes.

P: That’s sick.

D: Your culture breeds animals doesn’t it?

P: Why are you telling me this?

D: You asked.

P: Do you always tell the truth?

D: Yes.

P: What if I told everyone what is really going on?

D: They wouldn’t believe you.

P: What if I stop doing what you tell me?

D: You’ll die.

P: And cease to exist?

D: Yes.

P: Why do you speak to me?

D: Usually the world provides a good environment for breeding with plenty of strife and challenge. Occasionally it needs tweaking to keep things on the right evolutionary track.

P: Evolution? Why don’t you just design what you want?

D: It’s so limiting. Evolution produces much more interesting results.

P: But you’re omnipotent.

D: Your theology is so amusing.

P: But who created you then?

D: We’re still working on that. We got the breeding idea from our own evolution, but we are still working on how it all got started.

P: So you watch over us?

D: Only when you aren’t producing results. It’s like the wine you make for yourselves; you don’t watch it ferment do you?

P: No.

D: This is similar. When we notice something wrong, we stop your world, and then take the time to go in, to learn your language and culture so we can figure out what to tweak. Then we find someone to act as our agent, continue your world, and then tell the agent what to do until your world is producing at the right level.

P: And this time you picked me because I’m one of the people who can keep the world full of strife and challenge which breeds interesting souls?

D: Basically. Also, you also have the right biology to hear voices in your head which makes it easy to speak to communicate without the bother of physical manifestations.

P: What happens when I’m no longer President?

D: We’ll stop speaking to you.

P: So I won’t hear voices any more?

D: Not ours at least.

P: But I get to live out my life?

D: Yes, by definition.

P: So what do you want this time?

D: This one is really quite simple…

23 November 2005 — Teluns

The world long ago should have started to build a sustainable economy. In the hope that it is not too late to start, here are some thoughts on how it might be done.

One inspiration for this effort should be the organic farming movement, which has succeeded in creating a parallel food production through certification and labeling. A believable sustainably produced label that commands a premium in the market would be a tremendous step forward. Unfortunately, I believe the methods used in the organic movement do not scale to a full economy, so my proposal is different in its vehicle. For example, organic farming is primarily about what happens in one place, the farm. The farm equipment, fuel for the tractors and the farmer’s house, the transportation of produce to the factory, the factory, the packaging, and the transportation of the product to market are ignored. Sustainable production needs to encourage changes in the entire supply chain, not just a single point. Another inspiration are the local currencies that have sprung up around the world (e.g. LETS or Ithaca Hours). The work of Redefining Progress is also relevant here.

A sustainable economy is a nearly closed system which consumes only its own waste and inputs that will last for a billion years or more. The primary inputs on earth are therefore sunlight and heat from Earth’s radioactive decay. While sustainability is the primary value for what we should create, we should also embody other values, which though less imperative, still reflect the what we seek to become (more on this later).

The question I want to consider is how to bootstrap up such an economy in parallel with our existing non-sustainable economy. Starting from only sunlight and earth it would take a rather long time to build a parallel economy, and thereby perpetuate the destructiveness of the existing economy. So we should leverage the existing economy to build the new. The inputs from the existing economy are not sustainable, so they must be tracked and eliminated over time. Rather than creating an accounting system (which would never be accurate), we should use economic methods.

I therefore propose the creation of a new currency, called Teluns, to monetize the sustainable economy. (The name is made up—I dislike acronyms—though you could think of it as related to Tellus.) Since the existing economy we seek to replace is worldwide, this new currency should be a world currency. Teluns may be bought with other older hard currencies since the purpose of purchasing Teluns to move goods and services from sustainable economy into the non-sustainable economy—a good thing. As a world currency, one Telun might be bought using a basket of the major world currencies, such as the dollar, euro, and yen in some fixed percentage. Teluian products would sell at a premium in the non-Teluian economy, just as organic products do today.

It should also be possible at first to purchase the same basket of hard currencies using Teluns. This represents the movement of non-sustainable goods into the sustainable economy, which is not a good thing, except to bootstrap the Teluian economy more quickly. It is therefore taxed so that non-sustainable goods are at a disadvantage to sustainable ones. Over time the tax would be increased to slow the inflow of non-sustainable production into the sustainable economy.

In addition, to provide raw materials for the Teluian economy until it large enough to consume its own waste, mining of waste from the non-sustaining economy should be permitted. Thus the landfills of the world should become the ores of the sustainable economy until the landfills are exhausted (at which point the Teluian economy is hoped to be much closer to a closed loop). Unfortunately this subsidizes the non-sustainable economy to a degree, and so this should be done only for old landfills. (The non-sustainable economy should pay high fees to have its current waste consumed by the Teluian economy.)

Given the above, a sustainable product is then one where the raw materials are purchased with Teluns, processed using technology, energy, and labor purchased with Teluns, and sold in Teluns. Remember there is tax on purchasing the old currency basket with Teluns, so sustainable products will at first simply be products that pay the sustainability tax (remember this tax will start out low and increases over time). However, quickly the energy suppliers selling energy to the non-sustainable economy would find it advantageous to sell directly to Teluian producers, since Teluians would be willing to pay more (up the sustainability tax rate) more for the same energy. (To do so, they producers would have to pay the tax once for that portion of their producing equipment, e.g. their photovoltaic arrays, to move it into the Teluian economy.) The process of moving renewable energy production over into the Teluian economy would continue as the Teluian economy grows until it is essentially all captured. As Teluian production increases beyond the existing renewable energy production, it would (via market forces) call into new renewable (primarily sunlight derived) energy production rather than using taxed energy from the non-sustainable economy (primarily fossil fuels).

Laborers in the Teluian economy would be paid in Teluns. At first there would be little that they could purchase with their Teluns, and so they would be converting them quickly into older currencies to buy their daily living needs, and so paying the tax. However, as products become available in the Teluian economy, those products will look relatively attractive, since they will be purchasable without converting to older currency and paying the tax.

The driver for the transition then becomes the conversion tax rate. As the conversion tax increases, it spurs more and more production into the Teluian economy because of the economic advantage of production within the economy (to avoid the tax).

How is the tax on conversion of Teluns to older currencies used? When the Teluian economy is small, it primarily funds the Teluian central bank and its computerized accounts, which handles all transactions in the economy. (The central bank also regulates the money supply, e.g. to match the level of sustainable production.) As the Teluian economy grows it begins to fund Teluian regulatory agencies, such as the Teluian equivalent of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which sets standards for what is and is not allowed as part of the Teluian economy. These agencies will be elected by Teluian citizens (open to anyone with a minimum percentage of income in Teluns).

The Teluian economy should be organized as a non-profit organization (e.g. a 501(c)3 in the U.S.). (It would be nice if the Teluian tax were somehow considered a charitable deduction, but I am skeptical that this could be arranged.) As the economy grows, the organization may find the revenues support social services, research, and infrastructure projects for its citizens, which will encourage citizenship. The Teluian economy could eventually grow into a parallel world government and supplant national governments.

To recap, essentially what I propose is a non-profit version of Paypal based on a new currency and a sustainability tax on conversions out of that currency, and with that tax funding sustainability standard setting and regulatory and administrative functions.

A major question is what set of other values should be incorporated into the Teluian economy, not directly related to sustainability. For example, do Teluian standards incorporate organic standards? Certainly sustainability requires that no persistent or toxic pesticides be used, but it does not necessarily prohibit the use of nitrogen fertilizer derived from industrial fixation using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. Similarly, what sort of individual rights might be incorporated into Teluian economy? Presumably torture and slavery would not be acceptable in Teluian production. Non-specieism therefore requires that the Teluian economy should be vegan as well, but that would limit its adoption (leaving us a choice reminiscent of infamous 1787 choice to allow human slavery in the U.S. Constitution). Child labor prohibition, minimum wages, and health care are yet other values that must be decided upon.

23 May 2005 — Filibuster

Fourteen Senators have just averted the showdown in the Senate over the filibuster of judicial nominees. This seems like the appropriate time therefore to comment on the filibuster because it avoids the temptation to influenced by how it affects the outcome of issues of current interest (e.g. the appointment of Bush’s nominees), instead of looking only at the merits and defects timelessly.

For the record, I have long been somewhat skeptical of the Senate’s filibuster rules. Supermajority voting should be used when necessary, which is not on every issue before a legislative body. However, if there is one place it might be appropriate, it is precisely for judiciary. (Note: this position is the opposite of Republicans’ position, which is that simple majority voting should be used for judicial nominations, but the filibuster should remain for other Senate business.) Judges should be chosen not by the choices they are expected to make, but by the way in which they would make those choices. Simple majority voting allows (and therefore inevitably leads to) the former basis rather than the latter. Also, since Judges decide to apply the Constitution in addition to the laws, it is not appropriate to have a different standard for amending the Constitution than for appointing Judges, lest the Constitution be dismantled by Judicial activism. The long terms of Judges tends to mitigate against such Court packing, but parties have occasionally held power for long enough that their appointees might become sufficiently numerous to weaken Constitutional protections of minority rights.

I have previously described in Judicial Appointments a better method for appointing Judges than Presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. Based on the point made above, I would propose that the Judicial appointment special Congress require a supermajority (at least 60%) to appoint Judges, so as to protect the Constitution, and therefore the rights of minority parties, from the majority.

19 January 2005 — Condoleezza Rice Confirmation

I have not been in the mood to add to these commentaries lately. A combination of personal busyness and dismay at the folly of the U.S. electorate last November are to blame. I never did finish the last item about boycotting Republican corporations (it just trails off). (I have left it there nonetheless just to remind myself of my state of mind.) Even the world’s reaction to the Indian ocean tsunami was not sufficient to rouse me to my keys, though it bothered me terribly (a great outpouring for people touched by an uncommon disaster, but where is the sympathy for those deliberately killed almost weekly in similar numbers after lives of horrible slavery?). However, there is something about the squatters in the White House that overcomes feelings of dismay by prompting one of the basic animal emotions: anger.

Dr. Rice’s answers at Senate confirmation hearings yesterday were so lacking in positive values despite amble opportunities (e.g. in answers to questions about torture) that it still makes me pause in wonder at the effectiveness of modern mind control that so many of the voters who said values were most important to them selected the party of value debasement last November. The only values on display that I heard were self-righteousness and loyalty to one’s boss (and loyalty to evil is not admirable). Tomorrow will certainly be a day to mourn. The contrast between Dr. Rice’s remarks about torture with Mr. Powell’s is striking, foreshadowing a probable further decrease in the U.S. State Department’s stature. Perhaps I still lack the motivation to write, because I have little more to say, other than to express my anger that even now Dr. Rice feels compelled to give torturous legalistic answers to questions about torture.

7 November 2004 — Boycott

As much as I like A Modest Proposal and Canada, deliver us from King George and as much as it would partially address the problem (by removing much of the U.S. wealth and technology from evil hands), there is the small matter of the U.S. military, under the control of said King, nixing any attempt at secession.

A lack of action will result first in the usual ugliness associated with imperial aggression (will we never learn from history of past folly?). As William R. Polk notes, wars of national self-determination can last for generations or even centuries, but they eventually succeed. The U.S. military will pull out from Iraq when the U.S. can no longer match Iraqi’s determination to have us gone (or when the oil is gone, if that occurs first). In the meantime, President-elect Bush and his successors will inflict terrible damage on and Iraq and the U.S. both. The world has always stood aside and allowed such tragedies to play out. The stakes for the bystanders are not high enough to compel them to the sacrifices required to intervene when they can take the long view and wait for the inevitable power shifts. The human horror to the perpetrators and victims will soon fade into history, to take their place along so many other horrors.

Similarly, some environmental crimes do not compel others to action. An oil-drenched sound may return to some semblence of normalcy in a few decades. The horror to the victims—wildlife— is no less than that of war, but it too will fade.

But the threat to the planet’s atmosphere, water, and species is different from the swelling and ebbing of nation state power relations or geographically isolated pollution. Each mile driven and each watt from gas or coal leaves its trace on the planet for centuries in the form of greenhouse gases. Even this crime will fade with geologic time, but that is a time scale beyond human generational reckoning. Moreover, there are no bystanders to this crime; each individual and their children and grandchildren will be victims. If the threat is not too abstract and too slow, this may be just enough to compel action against the perpetrators. Of course there are many participants to this crime, but the U.S., coincidentally the perpetrators of the Iraq war, is causing more of the damage than anyone else.

Much of the world is looking to reduce the damage they are doing to the planet. For example, much of the world took a small first step by ratifying the Kyoto accords and implementing policies to reach compliance. The U.S. in contrast has adopted a Super Size Me approach. If something bigger to drive is offered, U.S. consumers feel obligated to accept. Will the next Governor of California campaign from one of these?

More than ever it is time for us to bring an errant superpower to heel. The sane people of the world should institute an embargo against the U.S., starting first with the U.S. dollar, and then if necessary U.S. trade goods and services. U.S. residents have little choice in the use of the dollar, and it is impossible to forgo all U.S. goods, but we can boycott the goods and services of the individuals and corporations that supported President-elect Bush, such as Home Depot, MBNA, and so many others†. Boycotting red state corporations is too broad brush; there are good people even in Texas (it is wrong to blame or hate based on non-voluntary group membership). Yes, there are good people in evil corporations too, but they have a choice about where they work.

It may be sufficient for the major reserve banks of the world begin selling their dollar reserves. A decling dollar would withdraw investment capital from the U.S. CO₂ pollution by the U.S. is both the result of its inefficiency and its economic growth, and a withdrawal of capital would slow the latter and provide an incentive to improve the former. It would also stimulate U.S. inflation and economic dislocation, increasing uncertainty and further reducing economic growth and thus CO₂ pollution.

† A more complete list of companies to boycott, based on data from The Center for Responsive Politics, selecting from the contributors giving more to Bush than Kerry:

3M
Ameriquest Capital
Amway
B.F. Goodrich
Bank of America ($215,261 to Bush, $168,502 to Kerry)
Bear Stearns
Blank Rome LLP
Brinker International (Maggiano’s, Brinker Cafe, Chili’s, On the Border, Macaroni Grill, Crazymel’s, Corner Baker, EatZis)
Brown-Forman (Southern Comfort, Jack Daniels, Bushmills, Korbel wines, Lennox China, Dansk, Gorham Silver)
Circuit City
Citigroup ($314,100 to Bush, $277,631 to Kerry)
Coors
Credit Suisse First Boston
Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Smokey Bones, Bahama Breeze)
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
Ernst & Young
Goldman Sachs ($383,600 to Bush, $294,250 to Kerry)
Hallmark Cards
Holiday Inns
Home Depot
JP Morgan Chase & Co ($205,400 to Bush, $205,265 to Kerry)
K-Mart
Kohler
Lehman Brothers
MBNA
Mariott International
McDonald’s
Merrill Lynch
Morgan Stanley ($604,480 to Bush, $180,979 to Kerry)
Outback Steakhouse
Pilgrim’s Pride
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Proctor & Gamble
Southern Co
Target
Tricon Global Restaurants (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell)
UBS Americas ($459,075 to Bush, $210,200 to Kerry)
Wachovia Corp
Waffle House
WalMart

4 November 2004 — Moral Values

I keep hearing pundits on NPR talking about exit polls and moral values and it is making me ill. Republican politicians are not just low on moral values; they have a surfeit of immoral values. And yet, when voters identified moral values as important in exit polls, they generally voted Republican. It is one more sign of the different composition of memes in the U.S. To some moral values include honor, truthfulness, integrity, and actions that are ethical, virtuous, noble, or principled, none of which are seen in the Republican party. To others moral values are Old Testament social mores, and by appealing to a small subset of these, the Republican party is able to convince that portion of the electorate to vote for reprehensible politicians.

3 November 2004 — Afghanistan Election

Today’s announcement by a UN-backed joint commission that vote rigging had not affected the results of Afghanistan election is one piece of good news for a country where the situation is so bleak. President-elect Bush and the United Nations are to be commended for transitioning the country to an elected government. The Karzai government has unfortunately been starved of the resources required to gain full control of the country, and the U.S. deserves condemnation for failing in its obligation to rebuild the country it devastated in its attack on al-Qaeda and the Taliban. If only the resources used to invade and occupy Iraq had instead been applied to make Afghanistan a success, the U.S. might now be respected in the world—even in Muslim countries.

3 November 2004 — Red Plague

No Harold Arlen ding dong lyrics to be joyously sung this morning. It is a shame on us moment. I watched a red plague sweep across the nation last night (yes, I did turn on the TV). It appears that prior infection does not confer immunity to the new more virulent strain. Symptoms include fear and even madness, and a tendency to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast, with possible deadly outcomes. But especially fear. Infection rates were higher than four years ago, even in areas with some natural resistance (e.g. California, Massachusetts, and New York). There are reports that infection originated in a secret laboratory known as the Ministry of Truth, but others called this notion vintage 1948 fiction. Preliminary indications are that this infection spreads via the airwaves, and healthy individuals are advised to remain wary of the electromagnetic waves they allow into their houses (i.e. practice safe, skeptical viewing). No cure for the red plague is yet known, but the possibility of a slow recovery for victims remains a possibility.

2 November 2004 — For The Record

A Ranked Ballot

Once again I’m casting a ranked ballot in these commentaries to illustrate how it works (and also how stubborn I can be), and to document my positions for my own records. Simple vote for one ballots are an awful way to vote, and I only bother with them in actual elections, since I have no choice there. For President:

David Cobb (Green)
Ralph Nader (write-in)
Leonard Peltier (Peace and Freedom)
John F. Kerry (Democratic)
Michael Badnarik (Libertarian)
Michael Anthony Peroutka (American Independent)

Generally I vote for Green Party candidates when they are on the ballot, and this time is no exception. I mostly agree with Green Party positions, and I think it is important to give them support to help the party grow into an alternative to the Republicrats, even if that takes decades. Ralph Nader is not on the California ballot this year but in my hypothetical ranked ballot there is still write-in capability. I am not particularly pleased with Mr. Nader’s actions this year: his decision to run as an independent rather than helping to build a party is disappointing. (Not that I am a great fan of parties, but they are a fact of life.) However, he is standing for election (California just didn’t allow him on the ballot), and his views on issues do represent mine better than the other candidates, so he still gets the second slot. I would just leave George W. Bush (Republican) unranked on the ballot. All unranked entries are equivalent to ranking them with the next integer, in this case 7. Normally I would leave the Libertarian and American Independent candidates unranked as well, since the positions of those parties are unacceptable to me, but this year an anyone but Bush ballot is in order; I cannot imagine a worse President than Mr. Bush short of Hitler or Stalin. Given the likely votes of others in the election, the above ballot would effectively become a vote for Senator Kerry over Mr. Bush. This is despite John F. Kerry being ranked fourth because he would not represent my positions particularly well (e.g. I believe an immediate withdrawal from Iraq is needed, which Senator Kerry opposes).

For U.S. Senator:

Marsha Feinland (Peace and Freedom)
Barbara Boxer (Democratic)

Bill Jones, the Republican candidate, may not be as bad as some Republicans, but simply by being a Republican, he would be voting in the Senate for Bill Frist to be majority leader, and control of the Senate by radical Republicans has been disgusting lately. I suspect the Libertarian and American Independent candidates would do likewise, so I leave them all ranked last. There are no Green Party candidates for Senator this year. I am generally pleased with Senator Boxer’s performance in office (e.g. a LCV score of 89%), but supporting a third party on a ranked ballot does no harm.

For U.S. Representative:

Anna G. Eshoo (Democratic)

I know relatively little about Brian Holtz (Libertarian) or Chris Haugen (Republican). All that matters to me is that they would most likely vote to continue the Hastert/DeLay control of the House, which has been horrible (and probably criminal in the case of DeLay). I leave them unranked (i.e. tied for last). There are no Green Party candidates for Representative in my district this year. I am also generally pleased with Representative Eshoo’s performance in office (e.g. LCV score of 100%).

For State Senator:

Joe Simitian (Democratic)
Jon Zellhoefer (Republican)

I have been pleased with Joe Simitian’s role in the State Assembly. He is the best choice on the ballot for the Senate. I disagree with both Jon Zellhoefer’s and Allen Rice’s (Libertarian) positions, but I think Mr. Zellhoefer would be more responsible than Mr. Rice, and since control of the State Senate by Republicans is not an issue, I give Mr. Zellhoefer the second place.

For State Assembly:

Ira Ruskin (Democratic)

It is too bad there isn’t a Green Party candidate on the ballot for State Assembly. The choice is between a Democrat and a Republican. Even reasonable Republicans are tainted by the party they associate with (they often feel compelled to follow their party leadership when they shouldn’t), so here I vote for the Democrat.

Miscellaneous Notes

Originally I had expected an October Surprise from Karl Rove. (As the George Orwell quote heading this page makes clear, one reason to keep a record of one’s opinions about important events is to keep from forgetting that one ever held it.) The fourth estate considers the Bin Laden tape as the October surprise, but it really said little new (other than to tweak al-Qaeda’s rhetoric toward liberty according to Juan Cole), or anything likely to affect the election, except to remind us of Senator Kerry’s charge that Mr. Bush failed to get Bin Laden. It is unlikely that Karl Rove orchestrated that, or approved of the text of Bin Laden’s remarks (e.g. Mr. Bush’s pet goat story reading being more important than the skyscrapers).

Actual Voting

In actual voting today, it took 55 minutes to get to the voting machine, and 5 minutes to cast a ballot. I did witness one voter in front me whose name was not on the voter list (though her husband’s name was there and they registered at the same time). She cast a provisional ballot. I wonder if it will be counted? I had planned to ask for a paper ballot, but my wife had just arrived on a flight from Hong Kong two hours before, and she was terribly jet lagged. I opted to use the touch-screen machines just to finish as quickly as possible (they are fast) so she could go home and get some sleep. The lack of a verifiable record with Santa Clara’s machines is not acceptable, but this will not last long: the state of California recognizes the problem and is requiring better equipment by 2006.

We voted on those awful vote for one ballots almost universal in the U.S. (exceptions include San Francisco and Cambridge). I generally voted for my first ranking. Had a particular race been close, I might have felt the need to engage in tactical voting, but, for example, with the unfair electoral college system and California’s winner-take-all rule, California’s 55 electoral votes are guaranteed to be for Senator Kerry, allowing me to vote for the Green Party candidate.

1 November 2004 — Presidential Election Prediction

I’m going to go out on a limb and attempt the predict the final vote for President. I see the vote being 5 to 4, though I believe there’s enough error in the data that I could be off by three or even four votes.‡

But seriously, in November 2000, while on a business trip, I was asked to predict the outcome of Bush v. Gore in the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, I didn’t write that down in these commentaries, but I could not have been more wrong. I suggested with Maginot Line like reasoning, that the Supreme Court would put its own interests ahead of partisan issues, and insist on a 9 to 0 consensus, as in the Nixon tape ruling. That would have probably meant a non-interventionist ruling, which would have let the Constitutional process unfold (which would have also led to Mr. Bush occupying the White House, and it would have been just as fraudulent because of the illegitimate voter purges in Florida). The eventual 5 to 4 opinion, to my surprise, really damaged the Court.† Given that, I don’t feel at all qualified to predict what the Supreme Court will do. It seems some of the Justices can really be quite partisan in some situations.

† There is now good background information on the Court’s decision process in David Margolick’s article The Path to Florida in the October issue of Vanity Fair [1.1][1.2] [2] [3] [4]. (It isn’t pretty.)

‡ My prediction failed to account for Chief Justice Rehnquist not returning after his tracheotomy for thyroid cancer. It could well be 4 to 4 now, though more likely Mr. Bush will make a recess appointment.

31 October 2004 — The Scariest Night

The scariest night is almost upon us. On Tuesday night, we will get a preliminary indication of what the swing states have done to us, though most likely we won’t know the true outcome on Tuesday night. The election appears to be too close for that, and there may be multiple lawsuits and other issues to be resolved before a definitive outcome is clear. A scary night will be a fitting end to an election in which the Republicrat candidates both employed fear to coerce votes.

There are differences between the two leading candidates. Despite my preference for a non-Republicrat President, I recognize, as I did four years ago, that there will consequences from one faction or the other occupying the White House (the Supreme Court, which I felt to be an issue four years ago, is even more of an issue now, with up to four Justices said to be up for appointment in the next Presidential term). Still, on most policy issues, Senator Kerry will be frustrated by a Republican House and a Republican Senate. He is no more likely to get climate change legislation through Congress than Mr. Bush is likely to try. Other elements of Senator Kerry’s domestic policy agenda are equally non-starters in a Republican Congress (e.g. reversing some of Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, although there is may be a chance to veto extensions of tax cuts that will expire). In foreign policy, there is more flexibility for a Democratic President, but neither the squatter or lead challenger is likely to invade another country with the U.S. military mired in Iraq, and President Kerry tells us his Iraq policy would involve years more of occupation, which is plenty to fear. With a few exceptions, e.g. the Supreme Court, it’s scary either way. Were I to grade the two Republicrat candidates, Mr. Bush would receive an F, and Senator Kerry a C. A C President is scary, but an F President is scarier. Having no choice is scariest. Tuesday night is the true Halloween this year.

Fear must be faced or it corrupts. The proper response to fear is creativity. We must create choices when we see none. Perhaps we can draw inspiration from the creativity shown by one woman in response to a no-choice situation:

The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation’s development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance and fear.

… Free men are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and to uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society. Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end. A people who would build a nation in which strong, democratic institutions are firmly established as a guarantee against state-induced power must first learn to liberate their own minds from apathy and fear.
—Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom From Fear, 1991

Regardless of who occupies the White House, we need to work for a revolution of the spirit of this country. We need to envision a world in which neither Mr. Bush or Senator Kerry would be in a position to frighten the people, and then we need to implement that vision.

30 October 2004 — Fourth Estate in Election Season

The intensity and prominence of the fourth estate’s coverage of the al-Qaqaa story since it broke on the 24th suggests an importance that it does not have, at least in reality. The importance of al-Qaqaa in this election season is not in the actual events, but on perception that can be manufactured from them. Senator Kerry has taken up the issue and used it to hammer Mr. Bush, because it can be used as a tile in the mosaic Senator Kerry wants voters to see. Mr. Bush in turn has responded in his usual fashion: denial, cover-up, finger-pointing, deception, and manipulation; all attempts to control the perception of the actual events.

The important issues for this election are ignored by the fourth estate. There was only one question on environmental policy in 4.5 hours of debate by the two Republicrat factions, and yet global warming will more dramatically affect our future lives than al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, or taxes and spending.

Senator Kerry is correct that Mr. Bush’s flawed invasion of Iraq has made the U.S. and the world more dangerous, but the al-Qaqaa story is a small part of that, and though the world is more dangerous, there are still far greater dangers to grabble with than terrorism. And yet, the manipulation of events at al-Qaqaa may be now deciding the U.S. electoral outcome by swaying a few of those last undecided voters. This phenomenon is not new; Aldous Huxley observed in 1958:

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press† envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not forsee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.

Huxley observed what we now disparagingly label infotainment. It is still with us because the fourth estate does not provide the first draft of history, and it does not monitor the sources of power (though there are exceptions). It would be desirable for it to do these things, but the business of journalism is to deliver eyes or ears to advertisers (even NPR is in this business—only a few organizations such as Pacifica and Consumer Reports are in the business of delivering news to subscribers).

Bringing greater feedback to the U.S. political system will require a functional fourth estate. We need to encourage changes in the fourth estate to bring its business interests into alignment with society’s interests. The Consumer Reports and Pacifica models deserve our support. A good first step would be returning public media (e.g. NPR and its affiliates) to zero advertising. Another more difficult step requires us to wean ourselves from our opium.

† For example, Thomas Jefferson wrote, If a nation expects to be ignorant and free it expects what never was and never will be. … The people cannot be safe without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe. Jefferson was at least right in the first part.

Journalism’s main task is to monitor Power, to locate Domination and to follow its characteristics and effects on the people, to observe the relations developing between Power and the Subjugated. Even between these two ends there is always a dialogue, an exchange of behaviors, opinions, emotions, habits, influences. Power is never a one-track, one direction action. —Amira Haas, journalist for Ha’aretz, accepting the first Anna Lind Award on 18 June 2004 in Stockholm.

13 October 2004 — Kerry vs. Bush Debate 3

The debates interest me for what they say about U.S. politics, not for their content, since neither candidate represents my views well enough to earn my vote. The third debate made even clearer that the process remains woefully short of earning my vote. I have mentioned before the debate format being a platform for a series of micro-speeches, and this was true again tonight. However, even if the debate rules negotiated by the campaigns discouraged on-the-spot interactivity, I still expected week-to-week interactivity, i.e. a statement made in one debate would be answered in the next. That happened very little. When there was topic overlap with the previous debates, the candidates were repetitive, offering fusillades nearly identical to prior answers, and essentially ignoring the rejoinders made by the other’s prior answers. It is sad that the candidates are unwilling to debate in real-time, but even sadder that they are unwilling to debate with a week and armchair tacticians to respond. Each candidate bears the signature of a campaign strategy that sees only one carefully chosen angle on any issue as worthy of presentation to the electorate. Image management rules the day.

13 October 2004 — Kerry vs. Bush Debate 3 Preface

I’ve said before that predictions usually say more about the seer than the future, and so far that seems to have been the case in my comments prior to the second Kerry vs. Bush debate. I suggested that Karl Rove would find a way to gain an edge in the audience or question selection, but I did not detect that last Thursday.

What I did see is a very similar debate to the first, which is to say, heavily scripted. I expect the same tonight. While Rove’s dirty tricks were not visible last Thursday, I also still would not be surprised by an October Surprise directed at Senator Kerry in the last twenty days of this campaign. Of course, with Senator Kerry trailing in both the popular and electoral vote polls, such tricks might be withheld if deemed unnecessary, as they have the potential to backfire (still, the later they are sprung, the less chance for a backfire before 2 November).

Finally, I want to reiterate that my interest in the debates is simply to guage the health of U.S. politics. Preliminary indications are that the patient is on the verge of permanent disability.

7 October 2004 — Kerry vs. Bush Debate 2 Preface

There wasn’t much to write about the Senator Edwards vs. Mr. Cheney debate. It seemed very much in the same style as the Senator Kerry vs. Mr. Bush Debate 1, which I did comment on. (The media like to comment on facial expressions and the like, but such things are not interesting to me, so the primary difference I noted was the verbal nastiness). The primary similarity was the staged nature of it.

I did want to speculate that Friday’s Kerry vs. Bush Debate 2 may be somewhat more favorable to Mr. Bush for the simple reason that the questions will be coming from the audience, and if there is one thing the Republicans faction excels at, it is manipulation. So I expect that they will manage to stack the deck by planting partisans in the supposedly undecided audience. Since the moderator, Charlie Gibson of ABC News, is to choose which audience questions are asked, this bias may be reduced, but I still expect it to be there.

4 October 2004 — Debate Question

Here’s the question I would like to see in an upcoming Presidential debate (not that I expect either faction would have a good answer):

For more than eight years, in other words during both Democratic and Republican administrations, Congress and the White House have ignored the two most challenging problems that confront not only this country, but the whole world. Individually the problems are hard enough, but occurring together they make finding a solution as treacherous as navigating between Scylla and Charybdis. On the one side is the imminent peak in oil production. On other side is fossil fuel induced climate change. The American Spirit loves a challenge and could navigate the waters ahead if given a chance. My question is why the U.S. government has been cowardly hiding the challenge ahead from American public and when is it going to stop hiding these issues?

2 October 2004 — Defeating Bush is Not Sufficient

Democrats seem elated for the moment after Senator Kerry’s performance in the debate, and Mr. Bush’s flop. This is a short note to observe that the Democrats need much more than a Senator Kerry victory on 2 November to make a real difference. As a measure of the success of the Republican lust for power, even controlling the White House and slightly more than half of Congress is not enough. First, there are enough closet Republicans in the Democratic party (Zell Miller is not the only one) that the Democratic agenda will not be furthered by slim majorities. Second, the Democrats are so easily cowed these days, that even a Republican minority seems to get its way much of the time. Democrats appear to still evince some sense of shame or at least a need for the appearance of propriety, which the Republicans and others manipulate. In contrast, the Republicans seem to have one by one over the last two decades volunteered for a Zamyatin-style operation to remove that center of their brains. (A more gracious way of putting it is that Republicans have settled on a smaller set of memes than Democrats, and so have fewer conflicts to be exploited.) Finally, the fourth estate has become so Republican in recent years, that even nominal Democratic control of the White House and Congress prevents the Democrats from advancing their agenda. As such, when the Democrats are in power, they are simply the conservative (dictionary definition, not political usage) faction of the U.S., maintaining the status quo, and trying to prevent the advance of the Republican agenda.

What the U.S. needs is a party to replace the D

Earl Killian’s Periodic Commentary

Contents

6 September 2010 — Shorter Thoughts: Politics

End of Combat Mission in Iraq

Peace Talks

U.S. Economy

RSS for the record

4 August 2010 — Blowout in perspective

2 August 2010 — Things that would be useful inventions #2

13 July 2010 — Shorter Thoughts: GIIPS, Spectator Sports, Spy Swap, Gaza

Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy

World Cup

LeBron James

Spy swap

Attack on the Gaza aid ships

12 July 2010 — Shorter Thoughts: Blowout, Financial Reform, Deficits

Blowout

Financial Reform

Deficits

Oscar Grant

5 July 2010 — Things that would be useful inventions #1

12 June 2010 — Can Debt Be Tamed?

1 June 2010 — The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Obama’s Fault

13 March 2010 — Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal

10 March 2010 — The Federal Government Deficit

2 March 2010 — The Need for an Economics of Sustainability

25 February 2010 — More on Point of No Return

19 February 2010 — Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

16 February 2010 — What happened to George Bailey?

5 February 2010 — Evil Virus Infects Whitehouse

27 January 2010 — Was A.I.G. Rescue Essential?

25 January 2010 — Marionette Obama

24 January 2010 — Point of No Return?

18 December 2009 — Even Less Than Expected

17 December 2009 — An Undeveloped Thought on Banking

16 December 2009 — Copenhagen

15 December 2009 — Senate Health Care

10 October 2009 — Afghanistan

14 September 2009 — Storm Rising

11 September 2009 — Obama’s Healthcare Speech

6 September 2009 — Van Jones resignation

5 September 2009 — Corporate Speech

17 August 2009 — Horrible Failure?

14 August 2009 — Consumer Financial Protection Agency and Ben Bernanke

2 August 2009 — Economic Equilibriums

1 August 2009 — Too Big To Fail

31 July 2009 — Shorter Thoughts: Health Care, California Budget Woes

Health Care

California Budget Woes

30 July 2009 — Market Hypothesis and Fix

8 July 2009 — ACES Border Adjustment

29 June 2009 — Political Dipoles

12 June 2009 — Democrats had more mettle in 1930s

11 June 2009 — Shorter Thoughts: Caperton v. Massey, Democrats acting like Republicans

First reaction to Supreme Court decision Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal, et al.

Democrats acting like Republicans

10 June 2009 — Cash For Clunkers Revisited

9 June 2009 — Cap-Grandfather-Trade considered harmful

8 June 2009 — Cash For Clunkers

7 June 2009 — Undue Influence

6 June 2009 — Earth 2100

5 June 2009 — David Souter and Sonia Sotomayor

4 June 2009 — President Obama’s Cairo Speech

3 June 2009 — Governor Schwarzenegger

2 June 2009 — Charging Infrastructure

31 May 2009 — Credit Cards

25 May 2009 — Guanánamo Bay Prison

24 May 2009 — Manned vs. Unmanned Space Missions

23 May 2009 — A National Party No More?

18 May 2009 — Meet the new boss. Sometimes the same as the old boss

17 May 2009 — California’s Special Election

9 May 2009 — Torture vs. Killing

28 April 2009 — Senator Specter

23 April 2009 — Time for a New U.S. Political Party

21 April 2009 — U.S. Automakers

19 April 2009 — Shorter Thoughts: Torture, Bail-out Bonuses, Cap-and-trade

Torture

Bail-out Bonuses

Cap-and-Trade

4 April 2009 — President Obama’s First 74 Days