Month: May 2008

A good friend of mine, with whom I share many political sympathies, directed me to this Bill McKibben editorial in the LA Times. Sensationally titled "Civilization's Last Chance", the author talks about the growing and empirically-documented problem of increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. I'm unusually conflicted.

I agree with the author's premise without hesitation. I have serious reservations about his tone and method of delivery, though. Using the "Sky is Falling" approach to increase awareness of environmental issues seems ineffective at best or counterproductive at worst. Let's use an analogy, because I love analogies.

You have a friend who is seriously overweight. Concerned, you decide to tell him that losing some weight might be good for his health. You tell him that he is in imminent danger of dropping dead and doing irreversible damage to his body if he doesn't lose 100 pounds right away. That message could have a powerful impact and inspire positive changes. Conversely, it could be overwhelming, creating a feeling of hopelessness and resignation. "I can't lose 100 pounds right away. I guess I'm fucked. Pass the Ho-Hos." Even worse, you could be dismissed as a serial exaggerator, especially if, for example, the person was not inclined to believe that weight affects health in the first place.

McKibben's message will generate responses that fit into three broad categories. First, he could scare a reader into becoming very concerned. This is his goal. Second, he could create a feeling that the problem is as dire, overwhelming, and incomprehensibly large as he suggests. The likely results are apathy and resignation. Third, people who are inclined to believe that climatology and global warming are "junk science" could find all of the keywords they'd need to disregard him as a crank or a tinfoil-hatted cult leader predicting the apocalypse. Hell, just looking at the alarmist title might be enough.

Going back to our overweight friend analogy, let's say you take a different approach. You tell him that it might be good for his health if he cut out soft drinks.
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Sugar's bad, after all. He finds that living without Coke and Sprite really isn't too awfully hard. Hell, he barely even misses them. And he loses 5 pounds. He feels good about the fact that he lost some weight. So you suggest getting more exercise or maybe cutting out fast food. Since losing a little weight no longer seems impossible, he's willing to give it a try. He keeps building on small victories until, at some point in the near future, he has what could be described as a healthy lifestyle.

I wonder why people like McKibben don't spend more time presenting these problems in a way that doesn't overwhelm readers' feelings that they can do something concrete about it. Not "write your Congressman" or "vote for environmentalists" but actually do something measurable. When he says "The planet is going to die and you have to fix it" there aren't many people who think that's a realistic goal. Maybe, for example, he could write a column about how re-usable canvas grocery bags can save 300-500 plastic (made from oil, of course) or paper bags per shopper every year.
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Even though suburban America is resistant to anything that asks for a lifestyle change or suggests that profligate consumption is not our birthright, most people will read that and think "Well that's not so fucking hard.
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" I mean, honestly, how hard is it to use a different bag to carry groceries? It isn't. At all. It's so goddamn easy that….people might actually do it.

So we wean ourselves off of plastic grocery bags as a nation.
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McKibben has a tangible victory. An example toward which to point. "See? We changed something. And it was easy! Now let's try….." Because the problem here is not SUVs or lack of public transit or McMansions. Those are symptoms. The problem is that our entire national mindset is fucked up. We simply do not think about conservation, waste, or efficiency at all. We ask only two questions: What do I want? What is easiest/most convenient for me?

Telling people, as the author does, that they have to run out to buy a $35,000 hybrid tomorrow does nothing to alter that mindset. It's just overwhelming. People will have an excuse to ignore it. We need to start at the bottom of the mountain and get people to put one foot in front of the other, not point at the mountain and say "Get to the top by tomorrow or you're fucked." This isn't about CO2 or the urgency of climate change. It's about tricking people into changing the way they think, to replace their standard modus operandi – doing whatever is most convenient for them as individuals, be it driving everywhere, throwing out 12 plastic Evian bottles per day, or running the furnace at 80 while no one's home – with a new set of questions. Is this efficient? Is this wasteful? It can be done, just not overnight.

We all know that gasoline is plowing toward /gal.
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I bet you didn't know that the price of corn, which was $2/bushel in 2005, is now over $6/bushel. Part of that is increased fuel and transportation costs. And part of it is in your gas tank.

One of my particularly conservative friends asked me recently why dirty liberals don't get excited about ethanol the same way they get excited about recycling, hybrids, and David Sedaris. A superficial understanding of the issue suggests that we should be excited – it's renewable, it gives farmers an expanded market for their commodities, it aids in "energy independence" or whatever, and so on. Unfortunately my response is pretty straightforward: no one gets excited about ethanol because it is a monumental crock of shit and a terrible product. By the time we wrap up this ludicrous half-century experiment it will hold its own against the greatest boondoggles in history, somewhere between the Concorde and the Iraqi Reconstruction.

Ethanol has been the "fuel of the future" for about 40 years, enjoying a surge in popularity every time the cost of gasoline shocks America. It remains "the next big thing" for the same reasons it never actually becomes the present big thing: it's a quick-fix, politically expedient solution that promises not to make Americans change their habits. We can drive the same idiotic vehicles, only with different fuel in the tank. This is why foot-dragging behemoths like General Motors (and Congress) are pimping E85 like it cures cancer. It's "clean", it subsidizes the idealized vision of rural America, and requires a minimum of mechanical changes in gasoline combustion engines.

Corn grown in the United States may be the single most heavily subsidized commodity on the planet. Since 1995, corn farmers have received over $60 billion in Federal subsidies. The vast majority of corn still goes into the food chain (either directly or as feed) but the amount diverted into the ethanol white elephant has grown five-fold since 2003. Despite banal promises that "new technologies" and more research will suddenly turn ethanol into a miracle cure for our energy needs, nearly four decades' worth of effort have yet to overcome the fundamental flaws in the product. Yet Congress has mandated that by 2022 we have to increase our production of this shit from 6 billion barrels per year to 36 billion (and remember, we're using 150 billion gallons of fossil fuels every year according to the DoE). You're welcome, Iowa Farmers / Welfare Queens.

What's wrong with ethanol? First, ethanol evaporates when mixed with gasoline. Mandating a blend of the two products (almost all gas sold today is E10, i.e. 10% ethanol) dramatically increases the costs of refining to compensate for this problem. Second, ethanol costs more energy per gallon to produce than is contained in the gallon of ethanol itself. Third, a gallon of E85 contains almost 1/4 less energy than a gallon of gasoline, so you need to use more of it. It kills fuel economy. This more than offsets the fact that E85 costs less at the pump. Fourth, it is only cheaper (or economically competitive with gasoline) because of a truly staggering level of government subsidy; almost $1.40 per gallon, compared to subsidies of 0.3 cents per gallon for gasoline.
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In other words, without Uncle Sam underwriting every stage of the process from planting to pumping, the cost of ethanol would make regular gasoline look cheap. Real cheap.

A deep flaw in the American character is the blind faith that technology is going to save us. In the 1950s nuclear power was going to be too cheap to meter. Then hydrogen power was going to be more abundant than air itself. Now biofuels are the magic ticket.
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Ethanol is nothing more than a fad – one whose staying power is attributable to the enormous political influence of agribusiness (and ethanol king ADM in particular). But ethanol, which is nothing more than the grain alcohol you put in fruit punch to make weddings more bearable, is a terrible product with absolutely no potential to replace gasoline. To replace our gasoline usage gallon-for-gallon, we'd have to plant corn on every square inch of the United States – and part of Canada. And more efficient ethanol crops ("cellulosic ethanol" produced from switchgrass or sugarcane) are nothing more than pipe dreams at the moment. We are to believe, of course, that shoveling money into this black hole for another 20 years will make cellulosic ethanol a reality. And that's our national neurosis – our behavior doesn't need to change because the solution to all our problems is (always) right around the corner.

I am not going to sit here and tell you that gasoline is a good product or that our use of it is sustainable.
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But suitable replacements should be things that pollute less, cost less, and are more efficient. Since ethanol is inefficient to produce, pollutes just as much as gasoline, and costs far more, this endeavor amounts to little more than Chuck Grassley, ADM executives, and a bunch of Iowa farmers breaking it off in your ass while exchanging high-fives and lighting cigars with government cash.

Death Valley, CA has one of the (if not the) highest pump prices for gasoline in the Lower 48. On my vacation there in 2004 I distinctly recall staring open-jawed at a Shell sign advertising regular unleaded for $3.20/gal – shocking, given that the rest of the nation was at $2.

Gas stands at $5.16/gal at that same Death Valley Shell station today. Insane, right? Why in the hell does it cost so much? The second comment on the linked video resolves this for us:

Perhaps CA should have less tax.

You could set your watch to right-wing rhetoric, so constant (not to mention grammatically incorrect) it is. Yes, California has the highest gasoline taxes in the nation. State and Federal taxes add up to 62.8 cents. In the example at hand, eliminating these taxes would drop the regular unleaded price to $4.53/gal. For fuck's sake, that's practically giving it away!

Ahh, the "gas tax holiday." I've been to two State Fairs and a Carrot Top show, yet this proposal is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Everything you need to know about how Hillary Clinton has gone off the rails (and McCain was there to begin with) is encapsulated in this half-assed pander. In fact, to describe it as "off the rails" is too generous; this idea missed the train altogether, sleeping through its alarm after another long night of angrily masturbating to Milton Friedman's Essays in Positive Economics.

The Federal excise tax on gasoline is the same in every state: 18.4 cents per gallon. I drive a 2000 Nissan Sentra with a 1.8L engine. As I drive very little, I fill up once per month with a 12 gallon fuel tank. The Federal tax costs me $2.20 per month. I spend more on gum.

Maybe I'm atypical. Replace me with a person who has an average sedan (15 gallon tank) and drives a ton (weekly fill-ups). This person pays $11.04 per month – on $231 per month of gasoline (assuming $3.85/gal). A "holiday" would reduce this person's costs to $220 per month. For three months. Total savings: $33. Half a tank. Over three months.

That McCain pimps this steaming ball of suck is unsurprising. I'm just embarassed for Clinton at this point, though. Transparent pandering. The amazing thing is that even right wing economists think this is a bad idea. The only people who think it is a good idea are A) people who respond to the phrase "tax cut" like salivating dogs and B) desperate politicians.

So many questions, so few answers. How does this pittance amount to "relief for working families?" How are the Federal Highway Trust funds, upon which Congressional pork relies, to be replaced? What makes anyone think that gasoline producers and retailers will pass the savings on to consumers? More importantly, can anyone point to a single argument or economist willing to state that this isn't a terrible idea? That question has been put to both Hillary and a McCain surrogate:

Clinton: "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists. We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans."

Carly Fiorina: "No, I can't, but, you see, I don't think it matters. … An American family who is sitting around the kitchen table wondering how they're going to pay for groceries, fill their gas tank, whether they're going to stay in their home, whether or not they can send their kid to college this fall. For them, the economy is in difficulty, and all the theoretical discussion is, sort of, irrelevant."

Translation: two different flavors of Argumentum ad Populum with some anti-Ivory Tower rhetoric (from two people with Ivy League postgraduate degrees) for good measure. Who cares what those eggheads say about the tax – Americans really want it! I suppose that when my 6 year old nephew really wants to eat gummy bears for dinner his argument has about as much merit.

The right loves to use the "liberal nanny state" as a combination Straw Man/insult. If they dislike maternalism, maybe they should stop acting like fucking children. I'm not sure I can think of a non-maternalistic way to put things when forced to explain concepts like "What's popular isn't always right" or "Just because you want it doesn't mean you can have it" or "Don't fill up on Twizzlers." Present an argument or proposal that isn't an adult expression of the childish See-Want-Get-Put in Mouth impulse and maybe my rebuttal will not sound like it is coming from a babysitter.