Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (John Tierney Edition)

John Tierney snipes at Al Gore:

Gore Pulls His Punches - New York Times: Gore isn't exactly likable in the film -- he still has that wooden preachiness and is especially hard to watch when he tries to be funny. Yet you end up admiring him for his nerdly persistence. He turned out to be right about something important: global warming is a problem worth worrying about.

But the story he tells in the movie is hardly "an inconvenient truth." It's not really true, and it's certainly not inconvenient for him or his audience....

[E]ven as propaganda, the film is ultimately unsatisfying. Gore doesn't mind frightening his audience with improbable future catastrophes, but he avoids any call to action that would cause immediate discomfort, either to filmgoers or to voters in the 2008 primaries.

He doesn't propose the quickest and most efficient way to reduce greenhouse emissions: a carbon tax on gasoline and other fossil fuels. The movie gives him a forum for talking sensibly about a topic that's taboo on Capitol Hill, but he instead sticks to long-range proposals that sound more palatable, like redesigning cities to encourage mass transit or building more efficient cars and appliances...

Would it have strained John Tierney's brain to tell his readers that Gore did propose a carbon tax back in 1993, got no backup at all from John Tierney and company, and lost? That the topic is "taboo on Capitol Hill" in large part because John Tierney and company gave Gore no backup when he tangled with the American Petroleum Institute a decade ago?

But that would undermine John Tierney's narrative, wouldn't it? John Tierney is in the business of trying to paint Gore as an unlikeable coward, isn't he?

Comments

[Jonathan Goldberg]

Tierney hated for Gore to be right in 1993 (although not even the Howler documents the War on Gore that far back, it obviously was in the air) and he hates for him to be right now.

I'm unbearably tired of hearing fuel use talked about in terms of gas guzzlers when it's space use patterns that drive all else. If all the SUVs were magically turned into Corollas it would be of only limited help. Americans like to spread out; that's why we have much higher mileage per person/year than anywhere else, and why each of our miles takes more energy to traverse. It's why goods and services need to be sent to diverse locations, why our heating and cooling bills are high. Etc.

It's true that a carbon tax would be good policy. However, we got to our present situation via sixty years of public policy. Radically changing it without policy changes is a pipe dream, with some pretty good stuff in the pipe.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/movies/22gore.html?ex=1305950400&en=c752fedf61256b8a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

May 22, 2006

'An Inconvenient Truth': Al Gore's Fight Against Global Warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The frustrations of a man whose long-sought goal remains out of reach are vividly on display in the first few minutes of "An Inconvenient Truth," a new documentary about former Vice President Al Gore's quest to spur action against global warming.

And the scene has nothing to do with the Supreme Court vote that denied Mr. Gore a chance to win the 2000 presidential election.

He is tapping on his laptop, adding yet another tweak to the illustrated climate lecture he has given more than 1,000 times since 1989 in ever more sophisticated ways: first with flip charts, then slides, then a mix of digital imagery, animation and high-tech stagecraft, and now through this film itself, which was screened at Cannes and opens on Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles.

He laments being unable so far to awaken the public to what he calls a "planetary emergency" despite evidence that heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases are warming the earth, and even after Hurricane Katrina and Europe's deadly 2003 heat wave, which he calls a foretaste of much worse to come.

"I've been trying to tell this story for a long time, and I feel as if I've failed to get the message across," Mr. Gore muses.

The question now is whether the documentary, with the potential to reach millions of people instead of a roomful of listeners at a time, can do the job.

For the moment, opinions on its prospects range from hopeful to scornful, not so much a reflection on the film's quality as the vast distance between combatants in the fight over what to do, or not do, about human-caused warming.

In a recent interview in Manhattan, Mr. Gore said he was convinced that Americans would move on the issue, not just because of his documentary (and companion book), but also because of the vivid nature of recent climate-related disasters.

"The political system, like the environment, is nonlinear," he said. "In 1941 it was impossible for us to build 1,000 airplanes. In 1942 it was easy. As this pattern becomes ever more clear, there will be a rising public demand for action."

"An Inconvenient Truth" came about after Laurie David, a prominent Hollywood environmentalist, saw Mr. Gore give a short version of his presentation two years ago at an event held just before the premiere of the climate disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow."

Ms. David said she was stunned by the power of Mr. Gore's talk and helped organize presentations in New York and Los Angeles for people involved in the news media, environmental groups, business and entertainment. By the time she had done the Los Angeles event, "I realized we had to make a movie out of it," she said. "What's the guy going to do? There are not physically enough hours in the day to travel to every town and city to show this thing."

She helped recruit a team of filmmakers and investors and, after pressing Mr. Gore, persuaded him to be followed by a film crew.

In the film, directed by Davis Guggenheim, Mr. Gore comes across as a professorial guide who uses science, humor, his own life lessons, depictions of perilous climate-driven events and even cartoons to make his case.

Mr. Gore — who said he had veto power over all elements of the film but did not exercise it — tries just about every possible tactic to make his points....

[Mike]

Jonathan,

You make a reasonable point and seem to be quite a sensible guy.

I recommend you change your name. Or at least use an alias while on them Internets.

Mike

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/books/23kaku.html?ex=1306036800&en=aa3b3a70cee6cc07&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

May 23, 2006

Al Gore Revisits Global Warming, With Passionate Warnings and Pictures
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Lately, global warming seems to be tiptoeing toward a tipping point in the public consciousness. There has been broad agreement over the fundamentals of global warming in mainstream scientific circles for some time now. And despite efforts by the Bush administration to shrug it off as an incremental threat best dealt with through voluntary emissions controls and technological innovation, the issue has been making inroads in the collective imagination, spurred by new scientific reports pointing to rising temperatures around the world and melting ice fields in Greenland and Antarctica. A year ago, the National Academy of Sciences joined similar groups from other countries in calling for prompt action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A Time magazine cover story in April declared that "the climate is crashing and global warming is to blame," noting that a new Time/ABC News/Stanford University poll showed that 87 percent of respondents believe the government should encourage or require a lowering of power-plant emissions. That same month, a U.S. News & World Report article noted that dozens of evangelical leaders had called for federal legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and that "a growing number of investors are pushing for change from the business community" as well. And even Hollywood movies like the kiddie cartoon "Ice Age: The Meltdown" and the much sillier disaster epic "The Day After Tomorrow" take climate change as a narrative premise.

Enter — or rather, re-enter — Al Gore, former vice president, former Democratic candidate for president and longtime champion of the environment, who helped to organize the first Congressional hearings on global warming several decades ago.

Fourteen years ago, during the 1992 campaign, the current president's father, George Herbert Walker Bush, dismissed Mr. Gore as "Ozone Man" — if the Clinton-Gore ticket were elected, he suggested, "we'll be up to our neck in owls and out of work for every American" — but with the emerging consensus on global warming today, Mr. Gore's passionate warnings about climate change seem increasingly prescient. He has revived the slide presentation about global warming that he first began giving in 1990 and taken that slide show on the road, and he has now turned that presentation into a book and a documentary film, both called "An Inconvenient Truth." The movie (which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday) shows a focused and accessible Gore — "a funnier, more relaxed and sympathetic character" than he was as a candidate, said The Observer, the British newspaper — and has revived talk in some circles of another possible Gore run for the White House.

As for the book, its roots as a slide show are very much in evidence. It does not pretend to grapple with climate change with the sort of minute detail and analysis displayed by three books on the subject that came out earlier this spring ("The Winds of Change" by Eugene Linden, "The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery and "Field Notes From a Catastrophe" by Elizabeth Kolbert), and yet as a user-friendly introduction to global warming and a succinct summary of many of the central arguments laid out in those other volumes, "An Inconvenient Truth" is lucid, harrowing and bluntly effective.

Like Mr. Gore's 1992 book "Earth in the Balance," this volume displays an earnest, teacherly tone, but it's largely free of the New Age psychobabble and A-student grandiosity that rumbled through that earlier book....

[vj jhruio]

They used to have this joke in Russia. The bottle of vodka was 3 roubles. Than it increased to 4. So one asks the drain cleaner:
- Will you drink if it becomes 5?
- Yes
- 10?
- Yes
- 100?
- Yes
- How?
- You need drain cleaned?
- Yes.
- A bottle.

The moral in case you missed it is that while consumption will slow down a little bit unless you provide alternaitive ways for people to move themselves and freight around all you done was imposed extra tax on the whole economy.

[Davis X. Machina]

But that would undermine John Tierney's narrative, wouldn't it?

On the tombstone of the Republic will be written the words 'Died of a Story Arc'.

[bncthor]

Al Gore is an Earth patroit. We should all hope that enough such patroits will emerge from around the world in time to prevent the Earth from becoming simply a vast, uninhabitable rock circling the sun.

[anne]

"Died of a Story Arc." Please, if we have to die, not that I plan to, but if we have to die killed by a story would be a fitting way. Glug, glug....

[kharris]

vj,

Nope. The whole story behind economists prefering taxes to internalize externalities is that government does not need to supply the alternative to the taxed behavior. It is assumed (with fairly good reason) that people will do the best job of figuring out alternative behaviors for themselves. When the government provides an alternative, we end up stuck with it, rather than having the chance to hunt around for a number of good, either competing or complementary, alternatives.

[sd]

Brad,

Do you have any evidence for John Tierney opposing a higher carbon tax in 1993, or are we supposed to take "John Tierney and company" as evidence that he consorts with the wrong sorts of people on other issues and thus is somehow morally tainted?

In any event even if John Tierney did personally and publicly oppose a carbon tax in 1993, would mocking him and attacking him now better serve the interest of:

1) Helping to build a broad coalition of support for a carbon tax across traditional ideological lines or

2) Making people who supported a carbon tax in 1993 feel really good about themselves?

Put another way, John Tierney has a regular column in the New York Times. He has twice in recent memory used that space to argue for a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is a policy that, as far as I can tell from reading your blog, you support. Its also a policy that feels more comfortable for people who have a generally left of center political orientation, but which is nonetheless attracting a lot of attention from people with a right of center political orientation as a way to slow down the emission of greenhouse gasses without allowing the government to micro-manage the economy.

If I support a policy, and all of a sudden find that a lot of people who have tended to disagree with me on a lot of other issues start supporting the same policy, then I can either welcome them into the fold and work with them to implement said policy, or I can throw a tantrum, insisting to all the world that only I had the courage, intelligence and good judgment to support the policy from day 1, and that those who have had the temerity to disagree with me in the past need to perform ritual mortifications of the flesh to purify themselves enough to stand in my presence. Or something like that.

[anne]

Actually, Brad DeLong is entirely right for John Tierney spent the 1990s mocking and sneering at the least attempt at conservation even to the merest recycling programs. Attacking Al Gore is what Tierney is always about and I could care less what attitude Tierney might finally have about carbon though I have always thought carbons useful if messy for making copies.

[WatchfulBabbler]

But haven't you seen CNN's front page? There's an inventor in Florida who's invented a magic car that runs on water. WATER, I tell you!

Ah, the classics never die -- they just get reused into new hoaxes.

As for Tierney, he's never really gotten past the whole Simon-Erlich bet, and the putative lesson learned from that little anecdote. Treat with caution.

[andres]

"John Tierney spent the 1990s mocking and sneering at the least attempt at conservation even to the merest recycling programs."

I didn't read John Tierney in the 1990's (did I miss anything?), but yes, this does sound like Tierney is another would-be analyst who never got past chapter 4 of a micro principles textbook. At least he's not saying that a carbon tax is a bad thing, so if even he can make progress, then there's hope.

Free market advocates claim that environmental worries and resource depletion are overhyped because when resources do become scarce, their prices will go up and will thus reduce quantity demanded, and everything will be fine.

This is like saying that one need not worry about falling from 20,000 feet, because the deceleration you experience when you make contact with the ground guarantees that you will stop falling. Someone needs to teach free market advocates about the biological (and social) effects of sudden and drastic deceleration.

[andres]

"John Tierney spent the 1990s mocking and sneering at the least attempt at conservation even to the merest recycling programs."

I didn't read John Tierney in the 1990's (did I miss anything?), but yes, this does sound like Tierney is another would-be analyst who never got past chapter 4 of a micro principles textbook. At least he's not saying that a carbon tax is a bad thing, so if even he can make progress, then there's hope.

Free market advocates claim that environmental worries and resource depletion are overhyped because when resources do become scarce, their prices will go up and will thus reduce quantity demanded, and everything will be fine.

This is like saying that one need not worry about falling from 20,000 feet, because the deceleration you experience when you make contact with the ground guarantees that you will stop falling. Someone needs to teach free market advocates about the biological (and social) effects of sudden and drastic deceleration.

[PaulC]

It seems that in the world of national politics, the worst thing is to be a "nerd", while being right or wrong about objective reality is largely irrevelant.

The last place I remember being subject to such criteria was back in high school. Fact: college was suddenly much better, despite the fact that I went to an academically oriented prep school and a big state U known best for its football team; go figure. The workplace is better yet. At least in my limited experience, people are appreciated for getting a job done and all kinds of personality quirks are overlooked. (I speak as a software engineer. YMMV)

I had generalized prematurely that people, ya know, GREW UP after they got out of high school. I still believe this is true in many cases, but obviously not in the upper echelons of power.

[arl]

Aren't we giving JT a little too much credit?

[PaulC]

I once heard Al Gore on an NPR program, giving a rather engaging speech about the environment, starting with his thoughts on a famous picture of earth from space. I tuned in without knowing who was speaking, and thought it was somebody with a more direct connection to science. If I had actually known it was Al Gore, I might not have listened as long. It certainly wasn't wooden. It was clear and occasionally a chuckle-level funny. It also came out as sincere and enthusiastic. The guy cares about this stuff.

In the interest of fairness, I'll add that I heard Gore give a speech at the 2000 Democratic convention, also on the radio. It did strike me as a bit forced. Clinton also spoke, and the contrast couldn't be greater. I would have to conclude that Gore's effectiveness depends a lot on subject matter, and his preferred subject matter does tend to be what the DC elite considers "nerdy."

[anne]

Conservatives have curiously found the magic cure for all our problems, only I was slow to notice. The sweetie pies have decided that what we need is what is impossible, a tax to take gasoline to $4 or $5 or, um, $10 dollars a gallon replacing driving with thinking about driving. That a solution to any social problem is impossible is especially satisfying to conservatives, so let us all be for higher gasoline taxes while we build cars that run on water and hope for canals to float them on :)

[Auros]

Jonathan Goldberg: Your point about use of space is well made, and is one of the reasons I'm working for Phil Angelides, one of the earliest proponents in our state of smart growth and sustainable development:

http://www.angelides.com/meetphil/biography.html
http://www.angelides.com/issues/envir.html

(From the latter link, see the "Promoting Livable Communities" and "Creating Wetlands" headings, near the bottom, for extensive detail.)

Phil was also, incidentally, the CA chair of the Clinton-Gore '92 campaign, at a time when CA had gone for Republicans in presidential races six times in a row.

If you're in California, and if you'd consider signing up for the campaign, drop by my website (auros.org) and send me an email... We always need of more people making phonecalls and talking to their neighbors...

[Auros]

Andres -- I love your metaphor.

There was a PBS special in the early '90s, produced by my hometown station (Maryland Public TV -- I grew up just west of Baltimore), called After the Warming:
http://www.documentary-video.com/displayitem.cfm?vid=641

At the end of the show, Burke analogized our reaction to global warming to a man who is falling from the top of a tall building, and as he passes each floor, people are trying to throw ropes and nets out so he can grab on and be saved, but he ignores them because, he thinks, he's doing fine. He doesn't need any help -- so far, so good... (It's phrased rather more humorously in the show, as I recall, but you get the point.)

[bakho]

How much carbon tax would it take to drive conservation? My calculations put the tax at least $7 to drive gasoline into the $10 range. 20,000 miles/y at 20 mpg is 1000 gallons/y. Would driving the fuel cost from $3000 to $10000 be enough? Driving a 40 mpg car would cut the cost in half to $5000 per year. Many people commute daily from the suburbs because many private urban schools cost $10-$20 K more per child than good suburban schools.

Is a $7 / gallon carbon tax politically possible? The Republicans raised holy hell when Clinton increased gas tax by $0.04 /gallon. I don't think the Democrats will support a carbon tax either. The other political option going forward is to invest in conservation and alternatives.

http://www.conservativecartoons.com/cartoon.php?toon=44

[Ginger Yellow]

The funny thing is that while only reasonably sporty I was never a nerd at school and university, yet now I find myself aspiring to such a status. I write about finance for a living. I read policy wonk blogs for fun. Hell, I'm even a bit of a sci-fi buff these days. Being called a nerd should be a compliment in politics, as in law or journalism. It means you care and you're paying attention to the details.

[anne]

What is happening that the idea of a harsh tax on gasoline is suddenly the answer to already high prices for gasoline? Happily the idea would be quite impossible to legislate, for it would destroy the party that tried, but that the idea has taken such life is startling. A tax that would be most felt in lower income households, has suddenly become an answer to catering for decades to the industrial wish for as little conservation as possible. Huh?

[anne]

These last years we have watched as the tax system has slanted away from the wealthiest even as the wealthiest have soared in income and additional wealth. We have created a structural deficit with too little revenue through tax breaks to the wealthies, while borrowing to wage a needless war and occupation. The borrowed funds will in time come to be at the expense of the middle class. No matter, the cry is we must have $5 or $10 or whatever price gasoline for the sake of the tax forgiveness for the wealthiest to add to the burden of the middle class to bear the lunacy of Iraq. Yuch.

[Eddie]

Brava, Anne, brava!

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=6534&u=4|2|...

Cedar Waxwing Bathing in a Waterfall
New York City--Central Park, The Pool.

Thank you, Eddie :)

[Linkmeister]

anne, I quoted that entire comment over here, as you said it very well.

http://www.linkmeister.com/blog/archives/001911.html

[Jonathan Goldberg]

Mike:

They can have "Goldberg" when they pry it loose from my cold, dead hands.

[liberal]

kharris wrote, "It is assumed (with fairly good reason) that people will do the best job of figuring out alternative behaviors for themselves. When the government provides an alternative, we end up stuck with it, rather than having the chance to hunt around for a number of good, either competing or complementary, alternatives."

Right, _except_ for the valid point that Jonathan Goldberg makes above: "Americans like to spread out; that's why we have much higher mileage per person/year than anywhere else, and why each of our miles takes more energy to traverse. ...
It's true that a carbon tax would be good policy. However, we got to our present situation via sixty years of public policy."

Or, to put (what I think is) his point more directly: American's do _not_ get to choose zoning regulations, most of which are too restrictive and lead to low density.

By "choose" I'm referring only to consumer choice, not democratic means. Then again, given that zoning issues are intimately tied to land rent and its recovery (*), and (cf our exchange back on Angry Bear awhile back) given that not even economists (in general) can be counted on as understanding the economics of land, democratic means won't IMHO produce very good results here until understanding of the relevant issues improves.

----------------------------
(*) Meaning that to increase density, you need to invest in public infrastructure. The most efficient and just way to do that is to tax land values, as landowners otherwise capture much of the value of the improvements.

[dp1]

The regressivity of a carbon tax is the reason it should be implemented as a revenue-neutral measure. Simply return all the revenue raised on an equal per-capita basis, either by a refundable tax line item, or by a direct check. That should produce a mildly progressive tax shift, as energy usage does correlate positively with income.

I don't understand why revenue-neutral tax changes are such anathema in America when it seems they could solve so many political stalemates over taxation.

[Tom Marney]

"I don't understand why revenue-neutral tax changes are such anathema in America when it seems they could solve so many political stalemates over taxation."

Three reasons:

First, many Americans don't understand what a revenue-neutral tax change is. It isn't merely a matter of having it explained to them-- after you do, they still don't get it.

Second, of the Americans who do understand what a revenue-neutral tax change is, many of them believe that actually implementing one would simply be a ruse for raising taxes.

Third, and most important, many Americans are deeply emotionally invested in the status quo and will not support a carbon tax (for instance) because doing so would require them to admit that they have been wrong about something important.

[Pithlord]

Tom,

We can add that even people who should no better, like Ezra Klein, ridicule revenue-neutral tax cuts when it is in their partisan interest.

[some1]

Bush I remember remarked that America is addicted to oil. like addicted to cigarettes perhaps? if the govt is serious about reducing oil consumption, we should be taxing oil addicts like we tax smokers? no?

[Tom Marney]

I wish I'd veiwed Brad's morning coffee before posting. He pretty well hit it on the head.

[christo]

"Free market advocates claim that environmental worries and resource depletion are overhyped because when resources do become scarce, their prices will go up and will thus reduce quantity demanded, and everything will be fine."

Rebuttle.

One word book title for a long book, Collapse. The Bush-Cheney energy policy is the free fall from the 40th to 1st floor. We just passed the 20th and found out we'll have to pay $3 a floor.

[Tom DC/VA]

"What is happening that the idea of a harsh tax on gasoline is suddenly the answer to already high prices for gasoline? Happily the idea would be quite impossible to legislate, for it would destroy the party that tried, but that the idea has taken such life is startling. A tax that would be most felt in lower income households, has suddenly become an answer to catering for decades to the industrial wish for as little conservation as possible. Huh?"

Oh come on, anne, get real. Obviously there are all kinds of ways to mitigate the impact of a gas tax on the poor, including exempting the first $2000 dollars of wage income from FICA, or raising the EITC. The reason the gas tax is the best solution to the petroleum overconsumption problem is that directly alters people's problematic behavior - overconsumption of petroleum products - without mandating how they reduce their consumption.

[vj jhruio]

Posted by: kharris | May 23, 2006 at 09:12 AM: economists, bah, blah, blah

That is a question of elasticity of the demand. On the evidence, gas prices are significantly higher than a few years ago. I see lots of inflation - apples for $3/lb, air ticket prices raising etc. What do you see - people walking instead of driving?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/movies/24trut.html

May 24, 2006

Warning of Calamities and Hoping for a Change in 'An Inconvenient Truth'
By A. O. SCOTT

CANNES, France — "An Inconvenient Truth," Davis Guggenheim's new documentary about the dangers of climate change, is a film that should never have been made. It is, after all, the job of political leaders and policymakers to protect against possible future calamities, to respond to the findings of science and to persuade the public that action must be taken to protect the common interest.

But when this does not happen — and it is hardly a partisan statement to observe that, in the case of global warming, it hasn't — others must take up the responsibility: filmmakers, activists, scientists, even retired politicians. That "An Inconvenient Truth" should not have to exist is a reason to be grateful that it does.

Appearances to the contrary, Mr. Guggenheim's movie is not really about Al Gore. It consists mainly of a multimedia presentation on climate change that Mr. Gore has given many times over the last few years, interspersed with interviews and Mr. Gore's voice-over reflections on his life in and out of politics. His presence is, in some ways, a distraction, since it guarantees that "An Inconvenient Truth" will become fodder for the cynical, ideologically facile sniping that often passes for political discourse these days. But really, the idea that worrying about the effect of carbon-dioxide emissions on the world's climate makes you some kind of liberal kook is as tired as the image of Mr. Gore as a stiff, humorless speaker, someone to make fun of rather than take seriously.

In any case, Mr. Gore has long since proven to be a deft self-satirist. (He recently told a moderator at a Cannes Film Festival news conference to address him as "your Adequacy.") He makes a few jokes to leaven the grim gist of "An Inconvenient Truth," and some of them are funny, in the style of a college lecturer's attempts to keep the attention of his captive audience. Indeed, his onstage manner — pacing back and forth, fiddling with gadgets, gesturing for emphasis — is more a professor's than a politician's. If he were not the man who, in his own formulation "used to be the next president of the United States of America," he might have settled down to tenure and a Volvo (or maybe a Prius) in some leafy academic grove.

But as I said, the movie is not about him. He is, rather, the surprisingly engaging vehicle for some very disturbing information. His explanations of complex environmental phenomena — the jet stream has always been a particularly tough one for me to grasp — are clear, and while some of the visual aids are a little corny, most of the images are stark, illuminating and powerful.

I can't think of another movie in which the display of a graph elicited gasps of horror, but when the red lines showing the increasing rates of carbon-dioxide emissions and the corresponding rise in temperatures come on screen, the effect is jolting and chilling....

[Slocum]

"I'm unbearably tired of hearing fuel use talked about in terms of gas guzzlers when it's space use patterns that drive all else. If all the SUVs were magically turned into Corollas it would be of only limited help. Americans like to spread out; that's why we have much higher mileage per person/year than anywhere else, and why each of our miles takes more energy to traverse."

An I'm unbearably tired of having energy used as a proxy for trying to coerce people into living an urban/mass-transit life (that proponents think we all should be living *anyway* regardless of energy issues).

And it is simply not true that very little difference would be made by making changes in driving habits. Switching from a Suburban to a hybrid Civic means a 2-3x improvement on the highway and more than that in town. And what if you increase the number of passengers from 1 to 2 or 3? A hybrid Civic with 3 passengers is more than 10x as efficient as a Suburban with just a driver. That's a huge difference. And telecommuting is almost infinitely more energy efficient than any form of transport.

I think it's an excellent bet that Americans will be MUCH more willing to change the type of vehicle they drive, to share rides, and to telecommute than to abandon their cars and suburban homes (who is going to live in these homes--are they all going to be bulldozed or left to rot?), and move to urban apartments and ride the bus. Mass transit is NOT going to be the solution (but we do have the 'opportunity' to waste billions building and subsidizing more mass-transit systems that nobody wants to use).

Oh, and for what it's worth, I believe both the Canadians and Australians are worse on these measures (energy use per capita, greenhouse gas emissions) than is the U.S.

[tegwar]

Of course Tierney criticizes Gore for not suggesting "the quickest and most efficient way to reduce greenhouse emissions: a carbon tax on gasoline and other fossil fuels," instead opting to discuss "long-range proposals... like redesigning cities to encourage mass transit or building more efficient cars and appliances..."

If Gore would just talk Policy, rather than Vision, System, or Regime, Tierney and everyone else with a knife could take their stabs. But Vision, well that's so much harder to deflate. If he'd just talk about the Lockbox rather than the Social Insurance system...

[andres]

Time to add in a few thoughts of my own:

"An I'm unbearably tired of having energy used as a proxy for trying to coerce people into living an urban/mass-transit life (that proponents think we all should be living *anyway* regardless of energy issues)."

Err, Slocum, no one is necessarily in favor of urban/mass transit life. A large number of smaller cities, imho, are better than a few huge megalopolises. _However_, if we want the luxury of grossly huge and overcrowded cities such as L.A., Houston, Chicago, and NY, then we have to admit that giving every resident their own car as the only means of transportation is both highly polluting and highly inefficient. Whatever other problems they may have, cities such as Tokyo seem to have dealt with the problem at a reasonable level, whereas we have not, and the result is the unhealthy air in L.A. and Houston, to say nothing of global warming and gasoline depletion.

A higher gasoline tax _would_ have a disproportionate impact on the lower middle class. But the thought that such a tax can be offset by reducing FICA payments or increasing the EITC is, in my opinion, political wishful thinking; the chances that these would be passes are about as small as either political party committing suicide by raising the gas tax.

If there's any sane energy policy to be adopted, it's going to have to be through a large range of small measures rather than a single fix all. Some of these measures would include:

* An inverse mileage and/or a weight tax on the sale of new and used automobiles.

* Increasing the tax credit for the purchase of hybrid automobiles, and possibly instituting a permanent credit for each year that someone owns a compact hybrid as indicated by their title.

* A "sky trust" redistribution which would act similar to a gasoline tax _but_ would not be used as tax revenue and would instead be returned to all U.S. citizens and residents on a per capita basis, regardless of how many cars are owned and how much they are driven. (I'll have to look up the source on this one, as it's definitely not my idea).

* A yearly tax credit for those individuals whose home address is within walking distance of their workplace.

* An investment subsidy for the production of hybrid, diesel, ethanol, and other gasoline-saving models.

That most of these measures are not in place, or are only at a minimum level indicates how far government policy is dominated by both wishful thinking and the oil industry. Oh well.

[twice around]

Ah yes,

Brad Delong worried about all the "poor" Bangledeshians swept away by some Biblical rising tide. when? 2070 or so?

Brad, you can attend science classes at Berkley for free. Please sit in on a few. Ask the profs if they think 2070 will look anything remotely like today.

Then drop by your own econ department and ask around what the GDP of Bangledesh will likely be in 2070....