Comments Clark Williams-Derry has made

Thanks!

Thanks for all the super-helpful comments, everyone!!On How much power do Americans guzzle for lighting? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 18 Responses

Actually --

I'm pretty sure that I've done the income-gas consumption elasticity calculations wrong, now that I look at them again.  I'm sure that it's less than 100%, by a substantial margin (from 1969 to 2002, total personal income went up by 250% in constant dollars, and gas consumption went up 87%).  But I'm not sure the elasticity is really .48; perhaps it's more, perhaps less.  

Either way, it seems like it would be wise to take a look at the issue...On Fuel tax magic, part one posted 3 years, 5 months ago 3 Responses

too quick to judge?

I may have been premature in dismissing this out of hand.  Apparently, there's some promise in using hydrogen as a gasoline additiive to boost vehicle efficiency while reducing emissions.  See, e.g.,
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/hydrogenenhance.html

There also seem to be a bunch of "hydrogen boost" kits available on the interent -- caveat emptor.

Stll this is not about cars that run on water (duh), which is what the news story seemed to suggest.  They still run on gas, but perhaps a little more efficiently.On Water power posted 3 years, 5 months ago 7 Responses

My new goal, dave...

...is to convince someone other than me to refer to you as "mega-pundit Dave Roberts."

This op ed should make a good start.On TomPaine op-ed: 'The Alt Fuels Distraction' posted 3 years, 6 months ago 17 Responses

Anti-hybrid stories -- mostly journalistic habit?

I agree, the anti-hybrid thing is a bit weird.  But it seems to me to be largely a function of a journalistic preference for counterintuitive angles -- a "man bites dog" story (e.g., hybrids don't actually save gas) is more interesting to write (& read) than "dog bites man."  There's probably other motivations in there as well, but that seems to me to be one of them.

What interests me in all this, though, is a more general theme: that the effects of new technologies are hard to predict; and in particularly, energy-efficient techologies don't necessarily reduce overall energy use.  For nearly 3 decades our growing appetite for energy has almost perfectly matched efficiency improvements; per capita consumption (at least in my part of the world) has remained astonishingly flat.  Our TVs are more efficient, but we have way more of them; our cars are more efficient, but our cities sprawl more, so we have to drive them more.  And so on.  

Which means, to me, that waiting for a technological silver bullet is a mistake.  And all those good-hearted souls who are willing to plunk down an extra $5-7K for the latest super-efficient car, hoping to make a difference for the planet, might be better off saving their money for political contributions, donations to advocacy groups, and the like.On More evidence that individual purchases mean less than changes in the system posted 3 years, 9 months ago 12 Responses

Let a thousand flowers blah blah

LOL!

On a more serious note...to Tom Philpott -- trains are nice, but the bigger and probably more important trick is to arrange our lives so we have to travel a lot less than we do now.  Which--if global examples mean anything--probably means living in much denser cities and neighborhoods.  Manhattan-style living is pretty darn fuel efficient; and it also creates the densities that can allow trains (or other transit) to actually be cost effective.

I'm very interested in what Iogen is doing in Idaho right now -- they're actually developing a cellulosic ethanol plant (see, e.g., http://www.aginfo.com/reportView.cfm?recordid=1505). A little experience there should give some clues about whether the marketplace--not to mention the landscape--will sustain this sort of thing.On It's biofuel realities that matter, not airy scenarios posted 3 years, 10 months ago 15 Responses

Numbers, numbers, numbers

Just to play around with the numbers a bit...

Google says that the drive from Fresno, CA to downtown Chicago is 2,209 miles long.  Let's assume that you're right, Umbra, and that a 1,638 mile truck trip carrying 38,000 pounds of produce emits 6,000 pounds of CO2.  Then a 2,209 mile trip emits about 8,000 pounds.  That's a little over a pound of CO2 for every 5 pounds of produce carted from the Central Valley to Chicago.

Using your freezer for 9 months emits 332 pounds of CO2.  I have no idea how much food you can pack in a freezer.  But I'd be surprised if it were more than a couple hundred pounds.  Let's be generous, and assume that we are freezing around 300 pounds of food.

Which means that shipping the veggies is...wait for it...about 5 times more carbon efficient than buying local and freezing.  

Now, obviously, there's lots of uncertainty here.  The actual trip can be longer (or shorter) than 2,209 miles.  Food grown in California & Illinois may use different amounts of fossil fuel inputs (fertilizer, tractor diesel, pesticides, seeds, etc.).  Cooking frozen foods can use more energy than fresh foods.  Refrigerator trucks may get worse mileage than regular diesel vehicles.  Ad nauseum.

But unless I'm mistaken, it looks like the numbers you present don't make much of a case for buying local.  Sadly enough.On Umbra on freezing local foods posted 4 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

I think that's basically right, daveslutzkin...

...though I don't think you necessarily need to couple roadway fees with better public transport.  You could also reduce or eliminate other taxes that fall most heavily on the poor -- say, for example, the sales tax.  (The strategy is sometimes known as tax shifting, for obvious reasons.)

In the alternative, you could increase tax credits for low-income wage earners, or increase assistance to low-income folks through other means (housing vouchers, subsidized day care, better funding for public education, etc.).  

Or you could mix and match -- some cuts in regressive taxes, some spending targeted to the needy.

Now, better public transportation would probably make my short list of ways to use the money to help those hurt by a roadway tax.  But not necessarily. Of course, there may be good political reasons to link the two -- the promise of cheap, reliable transit might make people better able to swallow road tolls. But on a substantive level, folks at the bottom end of the income scale might be better served by, say, an across-the-board sales tax cut than by cheaper transit.On The U.K. is trying a huge toll-road pilot project posted 4 years, 1 month ago 5 Responses

Huh?

What could this possibly mean?

"they argue that the relentless focus on staving off suicide bombers has left crucial gaps elsewhere"

Look, what New Orleans shows is that the federal government is completely unprepared to deal with any realistic disaster scanario.  Does anyone -- anyone -- seriously believe that if New Orleans had been attacked by a nuke, a dirty nuke, or a series of strategically placed conventional bombs, that FEMA & Homeland Security would have been better organized than they've proven over the past week?  If anything, the city would be worse off and the rescue plan even more poorly organized, since nobody would have evacuated in advance.

This sort of idea -- that the administration has simply focused on the wrong priorities -- is pernicious, since it suggests that the administration is basically competent but just a little misguided.  This is clearly wrong.   Homeland Security has proved itself to be fundamentally useless, even for the priorities that it's supposed to have been paying the most attention to.On BusinessWeek on Katrina posted 4 years, 2 months ago 3 Responses

Eh...

I should quit with the Friday night quarterbacking.  But I can't help myself...

Stipulated:  Kerry could, in theory, give a clear, succinct, values-based answer on the environment.  He had a great chance in debate 2, and flubbed it.  But he could have given a much better one.  

Still, given the choice between a clear, succinct, values-based answer on the environment, vs. having him talk about things that are of actual import to undecided voters, I'd prefer the latter.  

And apparently, Kerry and his handlers preferred the latter, too--which is why he responded to a softball question about the environment by not talking about the environment, at least not at first.  

I'm not saying that their political judgment is infallible, so therefore whatever they do must be right.  But the fact remains that experienced campaign hands decided that, on balance, it made more sense to use the question as an opportunity to rebut the "liberal" label & to attack GWB, than to make a 90-second attempt to reframe a whole class of issues to his/our benefit.

But you're right...the flu?On The environmental issue in the debates posted 5 years, 1 month ago 4 Responses

So am I...

...the only greenie who doesn't care that the environment didn't come up in the debate?

My take:  Debates have 2 purposes--rally the base, and sway undecideds.  And since JFK more or less has the green vote sewn up (some Nader holdouts notwithstanding), the best tactical use of the debates was to convince undecideds.  

Now I could be wrong, but I'd bet that people who haven't decided which candidate to vote for by now just won't be swayed one way or another by the candidate's views on the environment.  They've got other issues on their minds (jobs, health care, Iraq).

So from the point of view of undecideds, every moment JFK talks about the environment is time he should be spending swaying undecideds -- attacking Bush's weaknesses, defending himself against Bush's attacks, and seeming presidential and focused on the top priorities of the undecideds.

The bigger question -- why 's such a large swath of the electorate doesn't consider environmental issues when casting their vote -- is worth asking.   It's troubling.  But at this point it's no surpise.  So given that fact, I'm confused that anyone would be shocked--shocked!--that the debates gave  green issues such short shrift.On The flu? posted 5 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses