If it’s summer, it must be time for another energy bill, for which the Senate seems to have followed the strategy of Captain Renault to round up the usual suspects.
One nice thing when Congress keeps coming up with the same old ideas is that it allows us pundits to save energy by recycling our old comments on CAFE standards, ethanol mandates, and anti-gouging legislation.
You’re a pundit? I thought you were a Professor, or an economist, or something. 🙂
I don’t know, just going on some of the comments I heard on NPR from “callers” on this morning, I would say that this particular energy bill got quite a few people rip-roaring mad.
Americans – at least a few of those who listen to the news – seem to be paying about 6.7% more attention to the subjects you mention this year than last. When you factor in inflation and the price of gasoline this year relative to last, you will find this means were are slowly but surely making progress.
After your last CAFE thread devolved into “how dare those environmentalists tell me I can’t continue driving my excessively subsidized SUV which gets favorable tax and pollution treatment”, why bother?
Yes, it must be convenient. Our wonderful senate. Style over substance every time. Gas prices got you down? Never fear, underdog is here. We’ll just pass another one of those statute thingys that demands higher fuel economy from our auto manufacturers. Now, make it so, number one.
I am surprised they found the time. Seems Harry Reid spends more time praising fellow senators and handing out awards for their ability to be reelected for life than doing any real business.
We do have a real conspiracy in this country. A group of privileged old men (and now women) sitting around in cigar smoke filled rooms deciding our fate. It even has a name. United States Senate.
The public has a huge preference for CAFE standards over fuel tax increases. Economists to make themselves relevant to the debate need to understand why that is so and come up with options to reduce the rate of growth of carbon based fuel that reflect this prefernce (no matter how misguided it may seem to main stream economists).
Why is it that failed policies are just tried harder?
Keep your eye on the US corn market. This year the USDA estimates we’ve planted a near historic high 91 million acres of corn (out of total ag acreage of 130 million) and corn’s rocketed to more than $4 per bushel.
For all of our lifetimes, we’ve assumed that the US has an excess of farm acreage and the problem has been to discourage planting. Anarchus is now pronouncing that era semi-officially OVER.
My favorite ag expert says we’ve lost 30 million acres of prime farmland to RE development over the past decade or two, and that acreage is never coming back (though I think we’ll soon be wishing it COULD). Even with triple-stack hybrid seeds and aggressive use of nitrogen fertilizer, you probably can’t plant corn-on-corn more than 2-3 years in a row before busting down yields, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see $6-$8 corn before this madness stops . . . . . . . . stay tuned.
PS: not being a farmer by trade, I always thought that learning about legumes and nitrogen fixing in 5th grade social studies was totally useless knowledge! and from 1969 to present it pretty much was, useless. but not anymore.
Sonia wrote:
The public has a huge preference for CAFE standards over fuel tax increases. Economists to make themselves relevant to the debate need to understand why that is so and come up with options to reduce the rate of growth of carbon based fuel that reflect this prefernce (no matter how misguided it may seem to main stream economists).
Sonia,
It is this kind of hubris in economists that taint the profession. Economists should NOT come up with options on carbon based fuel. Economists should report what results will result from different decisions and then allow the public, that you say loves CAFE standards, to make policy decisions on their preference. We have too many economists “normalizing” their data to force the results they desire.
I fear you confuse central planning with economics, but you have a lot of company.
Anarchus,
Do you think that congress has any idea what they are doing to us mandating the major use of an energy source that is so dependent on weather conditions and other natural disasters. How many societies have burned their food source for energy? Is this really a better use?
Why does the public “love” CAFE standards? Because the standards appear like a free lunch. The costs of CAFE are hard to see, mostly more deaths in car accidents because cars are downsized. And if you’re not one of the unlucky few to die in a car accident, well, maybe CAFE standards ARE costless.
But a gas tax? You see those costs every time you fill up.
Anon:
1. Congress is pretty much clueless, though they do talk to people who understand the issue. The problem with ethanol, IMO, is that you have an unusual cross-spectrum political alliance that favors it – conservative farmers like the increased demand for corn while liberal eco-greens like the natural, renewable aspects of bio-fuels. [side note: for similar reasons, nothing can be done here in PA to cull the traffic-hazard sized deer herds – conservative hunters want lots of targets in season and liberals don’t want Bambi shot].
2. Pray for hurricane-free rain.
3. Brazil has a sugar-cane based ethanol program that’s not terribly uneconomical, in part because it’s also a social program for poor farmers and in part because Brazil is Brazil and we’re not.
4. Short answer: no. If ethanol was economic, it wouldn’t require subsidies. It got started as a subsidized oxygenate and it may be more enviro-friendly than MTBE; maybe it’s less unacceptable for that purpose – maybe we just need a better non-bio oxygenate.
When are the people who support CAFE standards going to realize that in terms of politics very little is going to happen with those, either? I don’t think the public prefers those over anything else. They just want something to be “done” (well, or at least the appearance of it) as long as the change doesn’t affect them or force them to pay.
Anarchus,
RE: your commentary on corn and crop rotation
It seems like there is a big reward for innovation if you are correct. A sustained increase in demand for corn should create a sudden surplus of its rotation partner.
He who finds a marketable new niche for that crop (soybean motor oil substitute?) will be rewarded well with a bumpercrop of otherwise unwanted supplies in three years.
I think all the seed companies (Dekalb, Pioneer Hybrid, Syngenta) sold out of their high end triple-stack seeds this year and will see booming demand the next couple of years.
What ought to happen is a large increase in US corn acreage and a corresponding reduction in US soybean acreage, followed immediately by a large step up in soybean acreage in Brazil in the Southern hemisphere growing season in October-February. Stay tuned.
Buzzcut
The heaviest cars are *not* the safest cars on the road.
That one is a myth.
And you could turn it round. By driving SUVs, the country makes sure that more people are killed on the road– they just happen to be in the other guy’s car.
(note that lethality would be true *even if* the SUV I am driving hits *your* SUV).
Valuethinker,
Would you rather be in a Geo head on with another Geo at 30 mph or in a Cadillac Escalade head on with another Cadillac Escalade at 30 mph?
All else being equal, heavier cars are safer cars for the passengers of that car.
Various studies have been done to estimate how many lives were lost due to the downsizing that occured with the first round of CAFE (where cars dropped about 1000 pounds on average over 10 years).
The loss of life due to downsizing was not insignificant (measured in the tens of thousands of lives).
You can bash SUVs all you want, but I just rented an Expedition that had all the safety bells and whistles (AWD, side and curtain airbags, ESC). You combine that with a 5500 lb curb weight and simply massive crush zones front and rear, and you have a VERY safe vehicle.
See the IIHS report on dath rates by model. It isn’t just size of the car. http://www.iihs.org/sr/pdfs/sr4204.pdf
This sort of information should be more readily available. Fuel economy is not just a matter of car weight; wind resistance, tire rolling resistance, motor efficiency, gearing and of course regenerative braking all play into the mix.
From the IIHS report:
“Among all types and sizes of
cars, the smallest 4-door models
have the highest driver death rate at 148 per
million registered vehicle years. Next highest
among cars is 137 in mini 2-door models. Midsize
(33) and very large (34) luxury cars have
the lowest rates.
There are exceptions to the general rule
that bigger is safer. For example, the driver
death rate is higher in midsize sports cars
(115 per million) than in mini (107) or small
(71) ones.
Another exception is very large 4-wheeldrive
SUVs. This group is mostly Ford Excursions,
which have a driver death rate of 115
per million higher than the death
rates in large 4-wheel-drive SUVs and
higher than in all but 4 of the midsize and
small counterparts.
Excursions so dominate the group of very
large 4-wheel-drive SUVs that they push up
this groups average death rate to 76 per million
compared with 47 in large counterpart
vehicles and 59 in midsize ones. About half of
the deaths in 2001-04 model Excursions during
2002-05 occurred in rollover crashes.
Vehicle size and weight are strongly related,
so its not surprising that driver death
rates generally are higher in lighter vehicles.”