Apparently due to the holidays, the deadline for getting $500,000 pledged to Delta Airlines tickets was extended from Friday to this Wednesday. According to this article in the Eureka Reporter, RREDC is very close with $479,000 pledged. That’s pretty astounding in such a short time.
We don’t do much flying, at least not on purpose. So, I couldn’t see pledging even the minimum $2,000 for our company. But apparently there are plenty of businesses that do fly enough to make this plan appealing. And the prospect 0f Delta opening another flight route to Salt Lake City encouraging even more flying seems to have upset some people.
The only place I’ve actually seen this opposition was on the Redwood Technology Consortium’s mailing list (this links to the December archive by subject, you can join the list here). A lot of time was spent over a couple days last week arguing over the degradation of our environment caused by airline travel. Before the argument devolved into grandstanding and name calling (at which point I called a halt to the whole thing), the discussion did raise an interesting larger question. On one side were a couple people who insisted that the only way to save the planet is through personal commitment to stringently reducing our carbon footprint and further, imposing that stringency on everyone through government policy. On the other side was the opinion that such interventions are unnecessary since the market, if left alone, will produce sufficient technological innovations to solve all the global warming and energy problems we now face.
This is an age-old battle that will never be won by either side simply because there has never been a way of testing either theory. Progress has always been the result of a mixture of personal change, government intervention and market forces. In the case of global warming and the energy crisis (I see them inextricably joined) personal commitments will help find new paths and create new markets; governmental leadership will be needed to encourage change and innovation, and the ever pressing need will certainly drive businesses to create new products and services.
The real questions with global warming/energy are: Even with all these forces marshaled to solve the problem, will the effort be too little too late? Can we change fast enough to fend off the worst effects?
My step-dad was telling me about Energy Victory recently. He heard something on NPR, I think. From the book’s cover and website, it looks like it is more about energy security than global warming and other issues. Biofuels may be a good energy security policy, but they don’t solve the all the problems from emissions.
New technologies in our vehicles is important, as well as regulations to drive technology improvements. I usually think the best approach is to affect the market via pricing, without passing too-prescriptive policies (ex: to promote energy security, simply raise taxes on imported oil significantly, and manufacturers will respond by producing more efficient and flex-fuel vehicles).
However, I vigilantly remind people that improved vehicles don’t offer all the health, economic, social, and environmental benefits that walkable, bikable, and transit-oriented cities do: See “Don’t buy the hybrid hype”, my column that appeared in the Eureka Reporter and Times-Standard.
On Book TV I just watched a talk by Dr. Robert Zubrin on his book Energy Victory. He has a simple one-step proposal for the government to mandate that all new cars be manufactured to be flexible fueled. That is will run on various forms of ethanol and methanol. He claims this would could be done quickly and inexpensively and would a) Drastically reduce our dependence on foreign oil b) Go a long way in reducing our carbon footprint. I thought his arguments were pretty compelling.
Glad this moved to a blog!
Once again, I’ll say that I have no position on the introduction of Delta Air service to ACV. In fact, I secretly hope they begin serving our area, so I can benefit from increased price competition and service options (on the very infrequent occasions when I do fly).
It’s put me in a classic “Tragedy of the commons” situation. Since everyone else is spewing greenhouse gases, and since there is no cost associated with doing so (beyond the cost of fuel built into the cost of airfare, etc.), it is in my rational self-interest to take advantage of the atmosphere as a free landfill for my greenhouse gases while I still can.
On the list, some folks urged us not to underestimate the ingenuity of the free market to solve problems. However, markets will not solve problems created by invisible costs. The approach we need to take is to use government regulation to create markets designed to achieve appropriate environmental and social goals. For example, a carbon tax would provide incentive for airlines and aircraft manufacturers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and would also spur growth in travel by other modes.
Once such a regulation is in place, we’ll see amazing ingenuity and aggressive competition save the day.
For more, see chapters 12 and 13 of Natural Capitalism, “Climate: Making Sense and Making Money,” and “Making Markets Work.” You can download these chapters online as PDFs.
Now that we have an appropriate venue (a blog) for comments of the sort which went out to everyone on the list, I wonder if anyone will comment?