Environment

“Why Sustainability Standards for Biofuel Production Make Little Economic Sense”

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This new paper (pdf) by Harry de Gorter and David R. Just, published in the Cato Institute’s journal, Policy Analysis, looks interesting.

From the executive summary:

Sustainability standards are based on “lifecycle accounting,” in which ethanol is assumed to replace gasoline; but in fact, it may be replacing coal or other energy sources. Life-cycle accounting also fails to recognize that if incentives are given for ethanol producers to use relatively “clean” inputs (e.g., natural gas), the “dirtier” inputs (e.g., coal) that might otherwise have been used for the ethanol production will simply be used by other producers to make products that are not covered by the sustainability standard. Sustainability standards reshuffle who is using what inputs—with no net reduction in national emissions.

Stimulus Money

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This is where the stimulus money actually is being spent… on new curbs and sidewalks here in Chicago. In the modern version of “ditch digging” these are the transformational projects that seem to have been chosen. On virtually every street in my neighborhood they are breaking up the sidewalks and installing ramps or fixing curbs in the corner. And I was told that they were going to use these funds to fix the US transmission grid for electricity, but apparently that’s “too hard”.

Note also the mandatory “Green” label on the side of the cement mixer. Right…

Cross posted at LITGM

Can’t Even Clear Brush

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I am used to writing about how our country can no longer site any sort of electricity transmission line or coal, nuclear or hydro generation plants because of our broken system that allows for endless delays and legal challenges. And pretty much any kind of significant public infrastructure project like a new highway or subway line takes literally decades from design to implementation, if they occur at all.

But I didn’t really realize how bad it had gotten until I read that a possible cause of the wildfires raging in California is that this sort of situation is so bad that you CAN’T EVEN CLEAR AWAY BRUSH. From this article titled “Feds Didn’t Clear Brush In Wildfire Area”

Steve Brink, a vice president with the California Forestry Association, an industry group, said as many as 8 million acres of national forest in California are overgrown and at risk of wildfire. He said that too few days provide the conditions necessary for larger, prescribed burns and that the Forest Service needs to speed up programs to thin forests, largely by machine.

“Special interest groups that don’t want them to do it have appeals and litigation through the courts to stall or stop any project they wish. Consequently, the Forest Service is not able to put a dent in the problem,” Brink said.

This story pretty much speaks for itself.

Cross posted at LITGM

Hillary vs the Industrial Revolution

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Saw a snippet of an interview last night in which Secretary Clinton was saying that: When America (and also Europe, presumably) built all those coal plants and other fossil-fuel-based infrastructure, we just didn’t know what a bad thing pollution was. With the pretty obvious implied mesage to India being: YOU, on the other hand, have no excuse.

Set aside for the moment the second part of the above and focus on the first part. Suppose that, beginning around 1800, we had known everything that we know now (and think we know) about pollution, the possible effects of CO2, etc. What does she think we should have done?

As factories began to emerge, should we have restricted them to those locations in which they could have been powered directly by waterwheels, in order to avoid the use of coal-burning steam engines?

Should we have similarly restricted the use of electricity to areas in which waterpower was feasible? (Bear in mind that during the great age of electrification there were no photovoltaic cells available for solar power generation…also, of course, may environmentalists are almost as opposed to large-scale hydro projects as they are to coal plants.)

Should we have continued to rely on the horse and the mule for transportation? (Remember, without a robust electrical grid, electric cars are not an option…indeed, without fossil-fuel-based power, even electric streetcars would have been out of the question in most places.)

For an individual with Hillary’s wealth and connections, of course, things wouldn’t have been too bad under this scenario. Even if clothing cost 5X what it does today, for instance, she would surely have been able to afford everything she needs. And I imagine that even if fossil-fuel-generated electricity had been banned for the masses, people like Clinton and Gore would have been able to get special permits for coal-fired generators for their homes. (At least if people like them were running the government.

But a large and affluent middle class–on which the Democrats say they place such value–would never have come into existence.