LA Is The Most Carbon Efficient Major City

Josh Patashnik goes over the basic reasons for this somewhat surprising result - air conditioning as opposed to heating, LA is actually pretty dense - but there may be something else at play. It’s important to note that much of the West Coast is very dense, when you look at where the people live. That’s because the major areas - LA and the SF Bay Area - are hemmed in by hills and mountains on one side and ocean on the other, which leads to fairly dense living arrangements. But LA may be getting a bit of a free ride because the survey didn’t count the entire metropolitan area that has sprung up around the city. Although the city itself may be rather hemmed in by the geographical constraints of the LA Basin and San Fernando Valley, there are still millions of people who live far away from LA itself, and drive huge distances to get there. These would be people mainly in Orange, Ventura and San Bernardino counties. I don’t think inclusion of those areas would affect the basic direction of the rankings, but I don’t think anyone can pretend that the Inland Empire is some paragon of energy efficiency.

Oh Johann, You’re The Best

In case you didn’t know, everything Johann Hari writes is true. Especially what he has to say about population growth. Hari is correct to blast the top-down, borderline misanthropic and all-to-apocalyptic approach of Ehrlich and his contemporary followers. Especially when it comes to global warming, it’s incredibly myopic to say that we should be worrying about population growth when the areas with the highest birth rates are contributing the least to the problem. I’d go farther than Hari and say that we should stop talking about “population control” or over population at all. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned with over population - I can think of no better way to improve the lot of people in developing countries than by giving women control over their reproduction. Also, the other way that birth rates get driven down is by economic growth. So the two main ways to deal with overpopulation - economic growth and reproductive autonomy - are incredibly worthwhile on their own right. But when we talk about overpopulation as the core of our food or environmental problems, not only are we wrong, it  practically begs the use of totalitarian methods that “population control” has historically wrought. I’ll leave you with Hari’s nuanced and sensitive conclusion:

There is a far better way – and it is something we should be pursuing anyway. It is called feminism. Where women have control over their own bodies – through contraception, abortion and general independence – they choose not to be perpetually pregnant. The UN Fund For Population Activities has calculated that 350 million women in the poorest countries to have didn’t want their last child, but didn’t have the means to prevent it. I’ve met these women – from the slums of South America to the warzones of Africa to the shanty-towns of the Indian subcontinent. We should be helping them by building a global anti-Vatican, distributing the pill and the words of Mary Wollstonecraft.

There is a fat menu of other policies that will bring down population numbers, simply as a consequence of doing something that’s already desirable. One – which might seem counter-intuitive at first – is to make sure more babies live. As the economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs explains: “You want poor households to cut their fertility and to have fewer children – assure them the fewer children they have will survive, they won’t be carried off by a mosquito bite.” It has been proven repeatedly: rising infant mortality makes birth-rates fall. Another population-reducing policy is to introduce pensions for the poor world. If people know they will be secure in their old age, they don’t feel the need to have so many children to look after them. One of the reasons why Europe has a declining birth-rate is because we have achieved all these goals.

So after studying the evidence, I am left in a position I didn’t expect. Yes, the argument about overpopulation is distasteful, it is often discussed inappropriately, and it is far from being a panacea-solution – but it can’t be dismissed entirely. It will be easier for six billion people to cope on a heaving, boiling planet than for nine or ten billion – and we will only get there by freeing women to make their own reproductive choices. To achieve this green goal, it’s necessary need to mix some oestrogen into the environmentalist palette.

Or, just read the whole thing.

Voluntary Doesn’t Work

Milton Friedman once said that “”there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” Whether this is true as a normative claim is up for debate, but it certainly is (and if you’re a stockholder, you better hope so) from a positive claim. In the long run, corporations will do (or least will try to do) what is best for its stockholders.

So what happens to companies that volunteer to reduce their carbon footprint? Some new research by Karin Thornburn of Dartmouth indicates that their stock prices go down:

Specifically, we studied the stock market’s reaction when companies joined Climate Leaders, a voluntary government-industry partnership in which firms commit to a long-term reduction of their greenhouse gas emissions. Importantly, when the firms announced to the public that they were joining Climate Leaders their stock prices dropped significantly. Controlling for general market movements, the average abnormal stock return was -0.9% over a three-day window and -1.5% over a five-day window around the announcements. For the 46 sample firms that joined Climate Leaders, the total loss in market value was $16 billion. The stock price decline was smaller for firms in carbon-intensive industries, where regulatory action is more likely (and thus partially anticipated in the stock price), and greater for high-growth firms, suggesting that the green investments crowd out growth-related capital expenditures.

Firms joining Climate Leaders conduct a careful inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions before they subsequently announce a reduction goal. The average firm in our sample set a goal to cut its total emissions of greenhouse gases by 17%. Interestingly, the stock price plummeted even further (on average -1.3%) when the greenhouse gas goal was announced, and the more aggressive the goal, the greater the price decline. The study also included 22 firms joining Ceres, a network addressing sustainability challenges whose principles are adopted by its members as an environmental mission statement. Stock returns were largely unaffected by the Ceres announcements, perhaps reflecting—in contrast with Climate Leaders—the lack of specific environmental investment commitments in Ceres. In addition, we looked at portfolios of industry competitors, but found little movement in stock prices when their rivals joined an environmental program.

Of course, we all knew that only coordinated, mandatory action could ever convince corporations to reduce their carbon footprint, but it’s nice to have some empirical data showing that voluntary action will never work.

Lab Grown Meat

When most people think of lab grown meat, they immediately think “eww.” After all, our meat is supposed to come from healthy, fat, happy, grass fed cows, not some industrial chemical laboratory in New Jersey. The disgust with the prospect of lab grown meat makes sense, until you consider the alternative.

I hardly want to regale everyone with the horror of industrial farming from an ethical perspective so I’ll just leave you be with the fact that animals, especially complex mammals like cows and pigs, can feel pain. I’m not saying that they should have “rights” the same way humans do, but I am saying that there should be some moral consideration for their protection against excessive harm. There are also other significant negative effects of industrial meat production. The animal waste from industrial pig farms poisons water supplies and the air, for just one example of the negative environmental effects of meat. And most importantly, meat production is a meaningful contributor to climate change due to the methane emitted by the livestock themselves, as well as the changes in land-use due to expanding pastures for more animals.

In an ideal world, a carbon tax would make meat more expensive so as to reflect its environmental cost, but that wouldn’t deal with the ethical issue. For that, we would need to see some sort of sea change in either our attitudes towards the morality of industrial farming or some sort of alternative. And hopefully, some day, lab grown meat can be that alternative.

Well That Takes Care of That

After much Strum und Drang surrounding TNR’s decision to have their Environment and Energy coverage be “powered by BP”, they’ve gotten rid of the tag and BP’s logo is now relegated to a mere banner ad. Although I don’t think that the placement of the ad  had any signifigant implications for their coverage, it certainly looks a lot better, which is important because hopefully more people will take a less jaundiced view of TNR’s environmental reporting, which I think has generally been quite good.

Some People Believe Things That We Disagree With, Just Deal

Think Progress’s new blog, Wonk Room, is very, very good, but they seem to be making a mistake in trying to explain AEI envirohack Kenneth P. Green’s opposition to the standard environmentalist/liberal global warming policy agenda agenda as a function of AEI receiving money from Exxon-Mobil. Although these types of attacks may be good idea from a short-term, purely polemic standpoint, it does great injustice to those that actually believe that massive public investments, higher taxes and a bunch of new regulation are not the best ideas.

There are plenty of people that receive no money from Exxon-Mobil who believe these things. And their argument, on the surface, can be quite persuasive. After all, the impacts of global warming are highly uncertain and so it might make sense to focus on adaptation and coping technologies instead of preemptively decreasing the wealth of current generations with new taxes and regulation. After all, if we put off dealing with global warming and let future generations incur the cost, it’s better off for everyone because those future generations are sure to be much, much richer than us.

Now, I don’t buy this argument, but I also don’t think that Ken Green, Jim Manzi, Reihan Salam and Will Wilkinson are afflicted by false-consciousness either. Ultimately, there’s an intellectual debate about what to do about global warming, and ad-hominem smears of our opponents don’t exactly get us particularly far, especially because, as I’ve written before, the Manzi approach to global warming could be very politically popular, at least insomuch as it could damage the prospects for a more aggressive policy response. So I think we should take it a bit more seriously, instead of just saying “but, but Kenneth Raymond gave them a bunch of money and John Yoo has a fellowship there!!!”

Bad Environmentalism - Kangaroo Edition

As humans destroy more and more wilderness to habitate it, the first animals to get eliminated are large predators who need large areas of untrammeled wilderness to support them. One effect of eliminating large predators, as well as a decline in the willingness of humans to kill charismatic megafauna, is that large herbivores start to run wild and overbreed. Just look at deer in any suburban area that abuts wildlife. When my family lived somewhat deep in the Oakland Hills, they couldn’t grow flowers because deer would always eat them. When I drive to school, it’s not uncommon to see a deer carcass on the side of the rode. There’s just too many god damn deer. But there’s an even more extreme example of live-venison populations getting out of control to detriment of their environment and to themselves. These would be the infamous caribou of St. Matthew’s Island. This is the classic story of “overshoot” told in every high school biology class.

The story begins in 1944, when the Coast Guard brought 29 caribou to the Alaskan for emergency food supply for their radar station. The coast guard soon left, meaning that there was no one around to kill the reindeer or limit their population in anyway. By 1963, there were 6,00 reindeer of the 138 square mile island. Within two years, the population was back down to 40, by the 80s, there were no more reindeer. What happened? Quite simply, the reindeer bred out of control, overshot the island’s carrying capacity and when, faced with some nasty weather, the island’s ability to support the reindeer was exhausted and they all died. The possibility for overshoot is certainly increased on an island - whose ecosystems are much more closed off than a mainland (this, incidentally, is a pretty key criticism of Jared Diamond’s Collapse).

Although St. Matthew’s Island is an extreme example of what happens when large herbivores can run rampant through an ecosystem, we appear to have something similar going on in Australia. Except instead of caribou, it’s Kangroos. And instead of an island Coast Guard radar station, it’s an old naval transmitter station near Canberra. The Defense Ministry and the Environment Ministry, headed by former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett, want to cull some 400 of the kangroos. This seems like an entirely sensible plan, if there are too many kangaroos, they could hurt themselves or exhaust the surrounding environment. There are lots of roos in Australia, killing of 400 wont’ really affect the national population. Hell, state governments issued permits to kill 3.7 million kangaroos last year. But high porfile environmentalists are up in a frenzy about killing 400, saying that it destroys Australia’s credibility to campaign for biodiversity internationally. This is just asinine.

Getting rid of 400 kangaroos won’t affect biodiversity, it won’t affect Australia’s standing to say that whale-killing is wrong, it won’t really do anything except help out the local environment. In a world where humans have so throughly changed their natural environment, environmental management like culling wild animals is not only sensible, but damn near mandated. And environmentalists, who have very important battles to fight on world-wide biodiversity and global warming, really make themselves look silly when they go into hysterics over 400 kangaroos. It reenforces the stereotype that greens are wealthy, soft, silly people who just love the environment for purely emotional reasons and see any offense against it as necessarily awful. So shut up and lets kill the roos.

Awesome chart of St Matthew’s caribou population below the fold

Why Does the EPA Hate Its Own Staff So Much?

I guess at this point, the Bush administration doesn’t even care how cravenly it ignores the advice of the professional staff in the executive branch so as to push through more industry friendly policy. First we had the unprecedented denial of a special waiver (Once I read about it more, I stopped defending it, so I disown this post) for California to have stricter auto emissions standards, and now the EPA is refusing to listen to its own staff in setting up ozone emission regulation:

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday limited the allowable amount of pollution-forming ozone in the air to 75 parts per billion, a level significantly higher than what the agency’s scientific advisers had urged for this key component of unhealthy air pollution.

While this is certainly the bad part about allowing the executive branch to effectively write laws, it’s still refreshing that Stephen Johnson’s bid to rewrite the Clean Air Act so as to consider the interests of polluters more in the emission-standard setting process still has to go through Congress. And with Barbara Boxer being the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, it’s unlikely that industry favorable statutory language is going to be passed by Congress anytime in the foreseeable future.

What’s really annoying about all this is how the President personally intervened to overrule the unanimous opinion of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, which initially wanted a 60 ppm standard and at worst a 70 ppm. Johnson, is statutorily not allowed to consider the costs of setting a new emission standard and is supposed to just consider what is the best for protecting the health of the population. And the scientific evidence seems to indicate that there are real gains between a 75 ppm and 70 or a 60 ppm standard. So he clearly was considering the costs - some 8.8 billion - of compliance. Now say what you will about the way the EPA formulates its standards and what it’s supposed to consider when writing regulation, but it’s pretty damn obvious that Johnson isn’t following the spirit or perhaps even the letter of his own agencies guidelines. Of course, I can’t say I’m all too surprised.

Environmental Justice

I like my movements nice and focused. I don’t think it’s good for gay groups to also be anti-war groups or that environmental groups should be particularly concerned with anything that isn’t the environment, fairly narrowly construed. By making a group’s area of concern too large, they become unfocused on their original goals and are likely to achieve little at all. Also, by taking extraneous stands on issues not related to their core concern, they can alienate potential supporters and unncessarily limit their appeal.

California environmental justice groups, I feel, are doing exactly that when they declare that they are opposed to cap-and-trade because they think it’s wrong for polluting companies to be able to purchase the “right” to pollute — oftentimes in areas that are mostly populated by poor, minority and indigenous populations. It’s not true, however, that all environmental justice concerns are misstated. One only needs to look at Cancer Row on the southern end of the Mississippi to see how concerns about pollution interact with problems of power and political agency. But in the case of being opposed to cap-and-trade, I feel like there isn’t much of an environmental justice case to be made against it. Most of the complaint is that a cap and trade system would basically concentrate pollution in the areas it is currently, which isn’t exactly where all the rich white people live. There are two problems with this.

One is that a cap-and-trade system, if implemented correctly, with the number of permits being adjusted and the permits being auctioned, then the effect of measures these groups support like a carbon tax, alternative energy investment or mandatory carbon reductions could all be achieved by a cap-and-trade system that auctions off the permits. In fact, that’s a unique advantage to cap-and-trade as opposed to mandatory carbon reduction. Also, for the time being, as Kate Sheppard noted, cap-and-trade is the most politically feasible mechanism to implement something approaching a long-term, noticeable emission reduction, or at least leveling off. And, when it comes to environmental justice, if it is to have any meaning, the quickest and most effective reduction of carbon emissions should be the overwhelming concern.

There are two simple reasons why just the speedy and effective reduction of emissions should override concerns about carbon pollution being concentrated in certain areas or businesses having “rights” to emit an amount of carbon they pay for. The first is a rather elementary one. Carbon pollution, as opposed to stuff like Sulfur Dioxide or Ozone, isn’t especially polluting in the local, hard to breathe sense (with the exception of coal plants, which are even getting better). But as far as automobile fuel and most carbon dioxide emissions go, the same environmental justice claims that work for dumping toxic sludge in a river upstream from a poor, urban community just don’t apply in the case of carbon emissions. But that’s not to say that environmental justice isn’t an important consideration for global warming. It’s just that global warming’s impact on environmental justice is similar to its impact on the environment, diffuse, global and concentrated on places far away from the United States. There are compelling arguments from a justice perspective that because global warming is likely to seriously screw over Bangladesh in a way it won’t affect, say, Chicago that would lend itself towards recommending that the countries that emit the most carbon should reduce those emissions…but it wouldn’t really matter how said emissions were brought down.

By pursuing this rather sketchy line of argumentation, these environmental justice folk are really driving an unncessary wedge between poor/marginalized people and environmentalists. What’s weird is that they support things like a carbon tax which would have not-the-best distributional impact on poor people, but that’s true with just about any politically feasible thing you can to decrease carbon emissions. What this appears to be, instead of any honest attempt to deal with the distributional problems of carbon emission reduction, is just groups who have cultural issues with the mainstream environmentalist movement and who want to stake their claim as contrary badasses by opposing some commonly respected policy.

The Folly of “Energy Strategy”

Tyler Cowen links to a study showing that only are ethanol subsidies inefficient, but that reliance on biofuels like corn could increase CO2 emissions due to the deforestation encouraged by high corn prices. While everyone has known that corn-ethanol is one of the largest boondoggles in recent memory, it’s a good example of why energy investment strategies, absent some sort of increased pricing for carbon, are bound to fail. When you just invest in “clean” technologies, absent making CO2 emitting energy sources more expensive, you have the government picking winners. And you don’t have to be a hard-core public choicer to know that the decisions for who gets massive amounts of government money are often guided by less than enlightened motives.

This is why I’m confused by people like Jim Manzi, Bjorn Lomberg or Nordhaus and Schellenberger who emphasize investment so heavily while criticizing reducing emissions through pricing mechanisms. Especially because the two strategies are so complementary — we could fund our new energy investments with the revenue raised from a carbon tax or cap-and-trade! But absent some sort of external way to drive up the price of carbon, there’s no way to discipline these investments to make sure they’re something else than hand-outs to politically well connected industries.

America’s Power

This is all bad.  “AmericasPower.org” is sponsoring the debate.  The website promotes “clean coal” and is full of all sorts of ill-informed propaganda on behalf of the filthiest energy source.  Here’s the list of sponsors for America’s Power. Some prominent ones are Buckeye Industrial Mining, Duke Energy, CSX and Arch Coal.

What Does “Really Clean” Mean?

Debates about nuclear power can be endless and frustrating. On one hand, you have environmental contrarians that see nuclear power as some sort of panacea largely because it’s a fun, contrarian argument to take, while on the other hand, you have people with a hysterical fear of nuclear power that is simply inappropriate for these times. Yglesias doesn’t seem to fall in either court, but he’s more skeptical of nuclear power than he ought to be. While we both agree that nuclear power should be implicitly subsidized by raising the price of carbon emission, I don’t see a problem with explicit subsidies or at least regulatory fast-tracking of new plants.

With the amount of petty hostility the nuclear power industry has faced in the 30 years, some sort of governmental kick-start seems necessary if we’re serious about reducing reliance on carbon-emitting energy sources. As of now, besides hydro power, which is basically maxed out, nuclear is really all we have right now that can provide for a large portion of America’s electricity generation with no carbon emissions. For instance, France and Japan essentially get all their electricity from nuclear power, I don’t see why we can’t try to at least match their output in gross terms, if not in proportion.

Yglesias also waspishly suggests that nuclear advocates tell us all sorts of tall tales, like”We’ll be weaned off the dastardly power, perhaps, with nuclear powered cars?” The day of nuclear powered cars may be far off, but nuclear power could help reduce automobile emissions if more people drive plug-in hybrids which could be powered by nuclear energy.

The Edwards Nuclear Non Option

It was no surprise that all three candidates would come out for closing Yucca Mountain — the debate was held in Nevada after all, but only one of them, John Edwards, came out against building any new nuclear power plants.  When I first read references to this, I was baffled.  Though Edwards is a bit too populist for my taste, he’s struck me as a smart, serious man who addresses issues in an honest fashion.  He also acknowledges that global warming is a real problem, so I would expect him to want to pursue the only mass electricity source we currently have that is carbon free.  But no, John Edwards expects us to somehow transition to a carbon-reduced economy without any more nuclear power.

For a balanced look at the costs and benefits of expanding, MIT’s study is basically definitive.  Though it is cautious about nuclear power and doesn’t see it as some sort of panacea for dealing with climate change, the lead author concludes that, “Taking nuclear power off the table as a viable alternative will prevent the global community from achieving long-term gains in the control of carbon dioxide emissions.” And while there are cost, safety and proliferation worries about expanding nuclear power, those are all solvable problems. Declaring that there shall be no new nuclear power plants is indicates an un-serious approach to climate change.  As I see it, this is a major demerit about Edwards.  If he’s so obtuse about nuclear power, then what other issues does he approach in such a fashion?

Ramesh Ponnuru and I are Befuddled…

Ramesh proves why he’s the shit as far as conservative pundits goes, and explains to us why John McCain’s vision on climate change makes no sense:

 A few times over the weekend, he said that we should avoid a carbon tax because it would function as gas-tax increase. Instead we should go with his plan for “cap and trade”: The government would set a cap on emissions and create an artificial market in carbon-emission permits. There is a debate between proponents of each approach, but for the most part people who want the federal government to discourage emissions see them as interchangeable, and so do people who oppose any such federal intervention.

Even though among the Republican candidates, McCain views AGW as real, his plan to deal with it is incredibly flawed and confused.  I find it hard to believe, or perhaps this is wishful thinking, that McCain doesn’t realize that cap and trade, would also raise gas prices.  Or, at least, it should, or else it wouldn’t really be working at incentivizing people to use less gasoline. As Ponnuru points out, oil companies or refineries would have to buy the permits and pass along that cost to the consumer, thus functioning as a tax would.  McCain’s confusion continues:

  McCain says that gas prices will go down, because cap and trade will stimulate the development of new green energy sources. I don’t see how this works at all. If the prices go down, won’t consumption just go right back up, defeating the whole point of the exercise? And if this fanciful model worked, carbon taxes would have the exact same effect, right?

Ponnuru is right to point that any carbon strategy whose ultimate goal is for gas prices to go down is a flawed one.  Ponnuru’s anecdote here reminds us that in all likelihood, McCain probably isn’t a very intelligent guy, especially as presidential candidates go.  If he really doesn’t understand how cap-and-trade are the same, and that getting gas prices to go down is a bad idea to combat global warming, it shows that he’s either stuck in the “gas prices must be low” frame OR he really just doesn’t get it. I’m opting for the latter; in 2000 and now, McCain has never really struck me as nuanced, wonky or particularly smart.

Arson and Inevitability

It looks like the cops have a suspect for who set off one of the wildfires in Southern California:

Officials blamed a wildfire that consumed more than 38,000 acres and destroyed 21 homes last week on a boy playing with matches, and said they would ask a prosecutor to consider the case.

The boy, whose name and age were not released, admitted to sparking the fire on Oct. 21, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Sgt. Diane Hecht said Tuesday. Ferocious winds helped it quickly spread.

It seems weird to prosecute someone for playing with matches and starting a fire, in this case. There was going to be a fire anyway - the area is full of dry brush, there aren’t that many buildings, and there hadn’t been rain in nearly a year. To go after the poor kid who may have started the fire because of playing with matches seems besides the point. The reason there are wildfires, isn’t because of arsonists, but because of the underlying ecological conditions. There was a high probability of a large fire in that area — it doesn’t really matter if it was a kid playing with matches, a motorcycle accident, a inadvertently left on pilot light. THe point is that cracking down on “arson” isn’t going to prevent wildfires in an area so prone to them

Does Big Organic Scare You?

Because it scares Kay Steiger

To me, this isn’t a problem specific to the grocery industry or even Big Organics. This is more of a problem with how our economy is set up. We reward stores that resemble the corporate structure, even if they’re advocating something that theoretically liberal. Consumers look for chain stores because that’s what’s familiar. We really don’t give much credit or support to independent retailers. Instead, it’s not enough to be a good corner store. If you have a good business model, you aren’t supposed to inspire other store owners in other cities, you’re supposed to form a franchise and open up your own stores in other cities. We’re far too dependent on the brand name.

I’m very confused by this argument. How is our economy set up? Who is doing this setting up? What reforms would Kay introduce so that it would be “enough to be a good corner store.” The reason people like chains is because they have lower prices, a wide variety of goods, higher average quality of goods, constant high volumes and because one can basically get the same quality of product in a wide variety of locations. The reason we don’t “give much..support to independent retailers” isn’t some kind of “choice” in the way Steiger seems to conceptualize it, but because the chains can offer standardized high quality and variety at lower prices than the independent retailers. Independents deserve all the credit they get, that’s how a market works.

Steiger’s second contention, that good corner stores turning into franchises is somehow undesirable (wait, I thought corner stores were good!) is even more baffling. Let’s say I run a successful organic grocery in Oakland. I have good deals with suppliers, high quality products and offer competitive prices. Should I try to “inspire” potential organic grocers in Berkeley and San Francisco to follow my business model and start poaching my suppliers? No, my business model kicks ass, I’m a good grocer, my brand is becoming respected, of course I should start the new grocery stores. How could that be bad? This is a feature of how our economy is set up, not a bug.

I think the base of our disagreement is her assertion that the “corporate business model” is somehow illiberal or unprogressive. I see no reason to think this is always and necessarily true. The success of Whole Foods, the spread of organic foods to Wal Mart and the proliferation of fair trade coffee at Starbucks would seem to prove otherwise. If organic foods and the like are good things, which I imagine Steiger thinks they are, don’t you want them to be sold in the most widespread and efficient manner? The model isn’t good or bad in and of itself, it’s a question of how good it is at providing the goods we like. If corner stores and indepedent retailers can’t do that as well as Big Orgnaics like Whole Foods and Wal Mart, too bad for them.

It’s also important to remember that many of these “corner stores” big box centers and Wal Marts replace aren’t that great. In urban areas, it’s not all that uncommon to see rotten produce that is much more expensive than what is being offered at Wal Mart. Yglesias wrote a superb column on horrible mom and pop grocery stores can be, and it should be read and reread by all.

Obama’s Black Mark

Since I wasn’t in his super-secret blogger meeting, I might  not the best person to express an opinion on this, but if Brian Beutler is right that Obama does indeed support further subsides for coal ” to segue into a green energy future,” than I’m incredibly disappointed.  Obama’s spat with Hillary over the meetings with bad guys, what to do first in responding to terrorist attack, his disavowal of nuking Pakistan and his using his opposition to the Iraq War as a pivot to outflank the right on security and terrorism have left me very impressed with him, but now my doubts are creeping back.
I hope this talk on coal subsidies is just his Illinois politician instincts coming out (there’s a city in southern Illinois called Carbondale), but if we’re going to be serious on climate change, our next president will have to eventually tell the Coal lobby and their Kentucky, West Virginia and Illinois constituencies to go fuck themselves.  If Obama is serious about being a “transformational” candidate, he’ll show some balls and do this.  I know Democrats have to pander to all sorts of unseemly types during the primary, so we’ll wait and see.

On another note, when compared to the amount of opprobrium Chuck Schumer recieved for his pandering to Wall Street on the carried interest issue, Obama’s pandering is much, much more serious and worrying.  Maybe in his next double secret blogger meeting he’ll be reproached for this.

The Problem(s) With “Right Wing Enviromentalism”

It has long been a joke among the left that conservatives should be a tad more interested in “conserving” things - namely the environment. Alas, the idea of conservatives going green might not be such a joke anymore. The British conservative tradition- built upon aristocratic Burkean notions of preserving a natural order built around “permanent things” - always seemed amenable to some sort of local conservation program, with a focus on ruralism and the preservation of green space. At the same time, evangelicals are becoming greener and there’s a nascent conservative movement, which recalls almost forgotten conservative ancestors like the Southern Agrarians - maybe based around one book - of “crunchy cons” who also view cultural and environmental “conservation” to be at the heart of what conservatism ought to be. There’s a fascinating discussion, worth many blog posts, essays and books about the connections between 19th century Romanticism, Romantic Nationalism, the Green movement and “conservatism,” but I’m more concerned about how “green conservatism” can provide an ethos for actual sound environmental policy.

Roger Scruton’s cover story for The American Conservative puts out a vision of green conservatism, one that is at the same time hopeful in its desire to stop the degradation of the Earth and maddening in its unfair and vastly overblown description of the “environmental movement” - whatever that is. And his alternative to left Environmentalism, or the Green movement, or whatever Scruton decides to direct his ire towards, is frustratingly vague and ethereal, it indeed reflects the worst tendencies of some left wing environmentalists - a vague hope for some sort of cultural, behavioral or ethical shift among people that will render government coercion, protection, taxes, incentives, subsides and treaties irrelevant and unnecessary. Scruton’s critique is a manifestation of what makes his retro, Burkean flavored conservatism so frustrating, it’s quietism and unwillingness to actually deal with the world. But let’s get back to the roots of his ill considered criticism.

And all the lights that lead us there are blinding

Reading the lovely and talented GFR’s post about “astronomy villages” got me thinking about those fascinating maps you see showing which parts of the world are lit up. Of course, the East coast of the US, Western Europe and Japan are lit up like a box of firecrackers, while Africa is the dark continent and entire stretches of Russia, Australia and Latin America are dim. The most striking spot on the map is the Korean peninsula, the south is very light while the North is strikingly, immediately dark.

I first became familiar with this map as a poster in the physics hallways at my school, it’s supposed to show the harms of light pollution. But look again, where would you rather live? The masses of people in Africa would surely like some light pollution, China’s people have benefited from it’s massive increase in light pollution. This is just another example of how environmentalism is a rich man’s or more accurately, industrialized countries’ game. You don’t really give a crap about being able to see stars if you can’t feed your family or have steady employment. The issue, of course, is that the “light” countries are putting the most carbon in the air. Hopefully there doesn’t have to be a strict choice between the great expansion of positive liberty that industrialization brings and the environmental havoc it could wreak, but environmentalists should recognize that industrialization has brought more good to humanity that anything, and it’s really our choice to make responsible decisions now.

Full Disclosure: I love going to Tahoe and seeing the clear night sky