Loosening Our Belts to Consume More Oil
There is a favorite saying among transportation planners that building more freeway lanes to fight congestion is like loosening your belt to fight obesity. This idea comes to mind when considering the most recent Mitt Romney plan to achieve energy independence in the United States. Romney proposes drilling our way out of foreign oil dependence despite the fact that the math is not on our side. As New York Times editor Robert Semple points out, the U.S. holds less than t...
CONTINUE READINGIs Romney Building Sand Castles Based on Fantasy Oil and Gas Production?
I posted yesterday about Romney's energy plan, which makes some remarkable claims about future energy production and its economic benefits. If you look at the sources cited by the campaign to support this plan, the campaign seems to rely heavily on Citigroup report called Energy 2020: North America, the New Middle East?. A number of their other sources are basically just touting the Citigroup report. I'm planning to dig into Citigroup's economic projections more, bu...
CONTINUE READINGRomney Calls for a Fossil Fuel Feeding Frenzy
The Washington Post reports that Mitt Romney will announce a new energy plan centering on explosive increases in oil and gas development, combined with greater use of coal. I've read the staff briefing paper, and the Post's account is an accurate summary: Mitt Romney on Thursday will outline a plan that he projects would achieve North American energy independence by 2020 by opening new areas for offshore oil drilling, starting in Virginia and the Carolinas, and by empo...
CONTINUE READINGIs King Coal in Decline?
This revealing graph from Wonkblog has some important lessons. First, power plants last a long time. Most of the generation fleet is twenty to sixty years old. Second, at this point, coal is basically a legacy fuel. It exists because it pays to keep old plants open. They are grandfathered and don't have to use state-of-the-art pollution control. New coal plants, however, have not been appealing because of the pollution control requirements. The era of coal-fire...
CONTINUE READINGShould the University of California Be Part of the AB32 Carbon Cap?
The OC Register reports that UCLA may face a large bill (over $5 million per year) for its current carbon dioxide emissions under AB32's cap and trade. If true, will the faculty at UCLA continue to support this regulation? Several issues arise. First, UCLA is a non-profit. While UCLA is "big", should non-profits be part of the cap? This cap will act as a tax on growth. If UCLA was considering expanding its children's hospital, it may now build a smaller hospi...
CONTINUE READINGThe Irony of Todd Akin
Todd Akin's views about rape and pregnancy are crazy, and he deserves his current political plight. The irony is that Akin is by no means the most extreme of the current crop of Senate candidates. In fact, in a recent blog post, I decided not to lump him with the other tea party candidates because his environmental views were more mainstream. For instance, he gives EPA credit for helping to clean up the environment, and he favors some limited actions to address possibl...
CONTINUE READINGThe ADB’s New Essay on “Green Urbanization in Asia”
Over the last few months, I've been working with economists at the ADB on the annual Key Indicators Special Chapter. "Green Urbanization in Asia" was recently published. This chapter covers a lot of ground but I think it does a very good job in presenting the core issues and challenges and discussing a number of specific examples. As I try to do more work on topics related to Asia, this experience was very useful for me....
CONTINUE READINGMore monitoring problems
Here in the Bay Area we had a nasty fire at the Chevron refinery a few weeks ago. One of the questions is what, exactly, might have been in the smoke from the fire and what kinds of health effects we might expect from that smoke. Unfortunately, state and local officials haven't been able to give a good answer to that question because, it turns out, the air quality monitoring network in the area around the refinery is inadequate. This apparently isn't news to enviro...
CONTINUE READINGGenetically Modified Foods & California’s Proposition 37: What’s All the Fuss About?
Largely lost in the shuffle of the current presidential election campaign and several more heavily-publicized state ballot measures, California's Secretary of State recently announced that the "California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act" has qualified for the state's November 2012 election ballot, where it will appear as Proposition 37. (The text of Proposition 37 can be found at pages 110-113 of the preliminary November 2012 California Voter's Pamphlet; th...
CONTINUE READINGThe Ryan Consumption Tax and the Environment
One of the interesting elements of Paul Ryan's budget plan is the proposal for an 8.5% consumption tax to replace the corporate income tax. Consumption taxes, like the European VAT, have well-known pluses and minuses, described in a Brookings discussion. They are appealing to economists because they encourage saving. As the European example shows, they can be also be appealing to progressives as a way of financing a robust public sector. They also encourage exports...
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