http://www.govlink.org/biodiesel/real-biodiesel-video.htm ...

A few months ago this refinery announced that 1% of its oil will come from Washington State, if consumers are willing to pay a premium for home grown. Most will come from Canada and Malaysia. This whole biofuel, global warming thing has opened my eyes to the general incompetence of politicians. They have no idea what they are doing. I didn't realize that until recently.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Don't ever think that just because you don't know what they're doing, that they don't know what they are doing.

Meaning that it is a huge mistake to ascribe to incompetence that which is also explicable by self-interest/venality.

The 5% Project

You guys rail on corn ethanol with good reason.

When there are other, much more energy efficient strategies available and apparently being put in, you rail on it too.

What the ...?

1. Soy biodiesel (what we use here in the States) uses five times as much cropland as corn to move a car the same distance. Canola, three times as much. Americans driving soy based biodeisel cars  are usurping 10 football fields worth (14 acres) of vegetable oil (removing it from food futures markets) annually to feed their car. That is almost an acre a month. To get a feel for the immensity of 10 football fields, go stand in the middle of just one.

2. Ever hear of a thing called an ecological footprint test? It provides a rough feel for how much of the planet you are claiming as your own. The average American is purported to have a score of about 24 acres, which as you might guess is the highest in the world. The average American would have to add all but a few of those 14 acres mentioned earlier to the mobility part of their test score if they drove a car that uses 100% biodiesel made from soybeans, which would increase their score from 24 acres to about 38 acres, which is an increase of over 50%

http://www.biodieselrealitycheck.com/

Put that in your car and smoke it. A crop is just one species short of being as biologically impoverished as a mall parking lot.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

1. Biofuels do not imply only corn or soy.
   
2. Either the legislature is poor in its phrasing or the journalist did not elaborate on what they meant.
   
3. It seems like a credit to homeowners burning wood for heating is a good thing: The bill also gives consumers a tax credit for ... heating their homes using biofuel.
   
4. This creates jobs, while potentially having a positive climate effect: And it requires gas stations to sell ethanol blended gas or biodiesel once in-state production of those fuels reaches target levels.

I agree with food-based ethanol or biodiesel as a negative, but the phrasing of that article does not imply anything about food grade ethanol.

Furthermore, corn that is farmed throughout U.S. is hardly food grade, and this basically means that we're already farming for sh!ts and giggles otherwise known as the burger industry. And if corn ethanol is legislated to be the case, this will do two things: bring up the cost of beef, and bring up the cost of gas. Both are not bad from a policy standpoint, while not good from a consumer perspective.

I'm against corn and soy based on the energy efficiency aspect of using these as an energy source. If, for example, this was willow, or some other woody source, I would be all for it.

When there are other, much more energy efficient strategies available and apparently being put in, you rail on it too.

How is cellulosic any more realistic than running on corn?
http://greyfalcon.net/ethanol.png

I mean it's "better", but it's still pretty damned crappy.

What do you eat? Do you ride your bike to every farm in the area? Or do you own a farm, so that you can get the food just like that? And if you do own a farm, how do you exactly pay the taxes on it?

These questions are aimed at asking, how do you avoid using petro fuel? If you don't avoid using it right now, maybe you should try to think about the reduced carbon footprint that cellulosic will afford you.

Instead of adding the same link every time?

Over the past year I have kept up a correspondence with one of the advisers to one of the biggest promoters of biofuels in the Senate.

"Do you guys monitor what the states are doing to promote biofuels when proposing new federal incentives?", I asked him once.

"Of course," he bridled. "But we're the federal government, and we can't let State policy determine federal policy. They can do what we like. That's just an add on."

"So, if you are monitoring the situation, is this database, like, public?", I asked. (Of course he didn't have any such database.)

So, no matter how generous the feds are, the States are under no restraint to add their own subsidies.

When you sum up all the incentives, as we have attempted, from local tax holidays for plants to volumetric tax credits, to subsidies for biofuel blending and distribution, it paints an amazing picture. When we wrote that study, last year, there were only a couple of states that were subsidizing crops specifically for biofuel use, and the few examples were small.

Atreyger, your optimism is charming:

I say potential, under the assumption that eventually these plants will be producing biodiesel from wood residue.

For one, the transesterification process is completely different from biomass-to-liquid (BTL) processes (to which I assume to are referring). So, no, any plants built to produce biodiesel are not likely to be converted to BTL.

The Oregon legislation is not all about wood. If it has not changed much since May (see earlier report), then it would provide a substantial incentive -- 90 cents a bushel, a 15-25% price premium -- to divert grains (wheat, corn, barley and triticale) towards biofuel production and away from other uses.

Is that moral?

These are only my personal opinions.

Yea, transesterification method is drastically different from gasification or cellulysis, and I meant to say ethanol.

It also appears that the cellulysis pathway, such as the enzymatic pathway, is not drastically different from the regular pathway with a pretreatment step added. Thus it seems that while my optism may be charming, your pessimism is stifling.

To help Oregon's rural communities provide economically viable feedstocks for Oregon-consumed biofuels, HB 2210 establishes state production tax credits for such feedstocks as woody biomass, canola, barley, triticale, straw, camelina and flax. And in a companion bill, HB 2211, the Business Energy Tax Credit is expanded to provide for greater capital investment in biorefineries.  HB 2211 still awaits passage in the Oregon Senate.

Like any industry, biofuels production has environmental impacts. The Oregon Environmental Council worked with the legislature on this bill to ensure that the renewable fuel standards can't be met by biodiesel produced from imported palm oil (palm plantations are supplanting tropical forests) and supported complementary legislation that ensures corn production does not receive feedstock tax credits (conventionally grown corn requires heavy pesticide application and irrigation). There will also be a two-year delay for wheat tax credits.

In the coming months, we here at OEC will work to ensure that the rules implementing this legislation are written to favor the biofuel feedstocks and biorefinery operations that are most environmentally beneficial.

Here in Oregon, wheat prices are up from $3.50 / bu. last year to $5.50 today. That's over a 60% increase and it is a much needed change for Eastern Oregon's economy.  Although you may have to pay a little more for your loaf of bread.  The fuel crops are putting a little bit of a spark into the agricultural community.  Ask any Eastern Oregon wheat or hay farmer and they might even tell you that its overdue. From a consumer standpoint that means that the cost of Wheat in a $1.39  - one pound loaf of bread is up from $0.05 to $0.075 approximately.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And try not to post anonymously.

best regards,
-Jeremy

I am not saying she was totally right. Pilot cellulosic plants are already being bolted onto sugar-ethanol distilleries in Brazil, to be fed by bagasse. Similar technologies will no doubt be applied to some corn-ethanol plants.

But many plants will not be so easily converted, unless money is no barrier. Which brings us back to the issue of subsidies. Throw enough money at any technology and you'll get some results. But is it cost-effective?

Jeremy: Thanks for the further information. But in all the discussion of environmental effects, has the Oregon Environmental Council thought about the spill-over effects of biofuel production in the United States, even when its feedstocks are entirely locally sourced? Corn acreage in the USA has expanded this year by 15%, while soybean acreage is down by 11%. And, each year, more of the soybeans that the USA produces are going into biodiesel. To make up the shortfall in supplying world demand for soybeans, the industry is expanding rapidly in Latin America, including in the Amazon. So no matter how much one tries to protect the local market, spill-over effects on the wider world cannot be easily avoided.

These are only my personal opinions.

To help Oregon's rural communities provide economically viable feedstocks for Oregon-consumed biofuels, HB 2210 establishes state production tax credits for such feedstocks as woody biomass, canola, barley, triticale, straw, camelina and flax.

You mean "economically viable" if you don't count the cost of the subsidy as a cost, right?

The 5% Project

JMG,
Subsidies are everywhere, and they are especially useful for industries at their start-up, such as the biofuels industry. Subsidies are a way to level the market for a newcoming technology or an underrepresented sector, which otherwise may not be economically feasible.

I do not specifically condone subsidies, because there may be better ways of doing things: Libertarians (preferably with a big L for the individual freedoms) might be right about the free market. Or maybe not. Our system is not libertarian. And there are already some heavy handed players.

So with due respect to all of Ron's failed subsidies, it does not appear that this one will lead to Armageddon.

Artem

Hell, even Corn Ethanol in US causes more rainforrest descruction.

It's all about fungability.

Sadly most people don't understand fungibility/leakage.

The conclusion, if I recall correctly (Ron may have the link), was that corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, and biodiesel were all, to a greater or lesser degere, far more expensive fuels than petroleum fuel and far inferior to simply a 1 mpg increase in fleet mileage as far as CO2 reduction.

The issue is not the subsidy per se --- people can light their BBQ grills with $100 bills if they want  --- it's that the need for a subsidy should be interpreted as a sign that the technology is inferior, and that there are better ways to get to the goal.

So, unless biofuels are an end in the themselves (and it's worth asking why that should be), then it's reasonable to ask why Oregon thinks it wants them.  From the comments posted above, it appears to be about giving farmers more money; well why not simply create a state commodity price support program and cut out the biofuels middleman?

The 5% Project

What is needed is a clear vision of what sustainability criteria need to be addressed, such as land use changes or impacts on biodiversity, water resources, soil quality, buying locally first, energy balance analysis and so on. There is not yet an agreed-upon set of sustainability standards for biofuels. Eventually all biofuels should have a sustainability certificate that outlines their carbon savings and their ecological impact so that the public can use their dollars to support more local and sustainable practices over those which are destructive.

We are attempting to create an established biofuels sustainability criterion to provide guidance for the industry and the public; it is a dialogue for ways to address the need to develop low carbon fuels and a way to address global warming pollution.

1.      The most important priority of a new energy policy is to manage current energy usage and to focus efforts first on conservation and efficiency.  Conservation is the cheapest way to save energy at the source. Vehicle efficiency standards must be improved for the true impact of sustainable biofuels to have the needed impact of reducing America's dependence on foreign oil.

2.      New sources should be not only environmentally sound, but developed in a socially responsible manner and production facilities locally-owned when possible.  The public benefits of an agriculturally based biofuels operations must be able to adhere to established sustainable agricultural practices.  These standards specify that they are economically viable, attentive to water quality and land-use regulations, locally owned and managed when possible, ecologically sound and a provider of family-wage jobs.

3.      Biofuel feedstocks must reduce greenhouse gas emissions and analysis of the amount of GHG emissions reduced must be agreed upon by a consensus of crop scientists and academics so that low carbon fuels thrive.

4.      All crop-based biofuel developments should be analyzed to assess the individual impacts to: wildlife and wetlands, land preservation and topsoil loss, nutrient management, appropriate water use and fossil energy inputs (including pesticides and herbicides) required to extract renewable energy.

5.      Cellulosic and other biomass energy should not outweigh the need for wildlife habitat and recreational uses and no extraction should occur unless all appropriate regulations and safeguards have been formally addressed.  Watersheds should similarly not be negatively affected by biomass extraction. Biomass must be renewable on the lands where it was originally grown.

6.      Biofuels feedstocks cannot be grown on environmentally sensitive lands like old growth forests, native grasslands or on ecosystems that support a rich diversity of species and life.

7.      Byproducts of biofuel production should be utilized in an ecologically sound manner.  Handling these products in a responsible manner should promote sustainable livestock production rather than factory farm production.

Quite different. Especially if you're an accountant.

It's also worth noting that the incentives are sunsetted out once Oregon production reaches a defined threshold.

"We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops for 70-300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest destruction."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1909827.e ...

Quite different. Especially if you're an accountant.

At best thats just semantics.

It is very easy to say, "Everything is subsidized, so why not this." First of all, it would be an amazing coincidence, and contrary to all the rules of political economy, if the incidence of subsidization were uniform across all industries. We know, in any case, that certain ones get more favored than others.

Subsidies to coal-ethanol are a very expensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our estimate was that they cost over $500 per ton of CO2-equivalent avoided for the USA as a whole. (We are seeing similar orders of magnitude in other countries.) Researchers at Oregon State University more recently estimated (based albeit on a plant that would import corn from the Midwest) that the full social cost (market price plus subsidies) of reducing CO2 through the production and local consumption of corn ethanol in Oregon would exceed $10,000 per ton of CO2 avoided.

Cellulosic ethanol has much more to offer in terms of CO2 reduction, but its costs are much higher (and so are the subsidies being proposed).

At the end of the day, can any country -- or state government -- afford to NOT consider cost-effectiveness?

As for the infant-industry argument, there is nothing new about fermenting and distilling sugars or grains into ethyl alcohol. People have been doing that for millennia. In any case, corn ethanol has been produced for fuel for almost 30 years in the USA. The Energy Information Administration has labelled corn ethanol as a "mature industry".

The biodiesel transesterification process also uses old, tried-and true chemistry. You can make the stuff in your kitchen, for cripes sake! Hardly a poster child for an infant industry.

If you want to consider cellulosic ethanol an infant industry, fine. But the normal policy prescription is R&D assistance and perhaps some initial grants to build demonstration plants, not production-related or input subsidies (which are just the types of subsidies that tend to be extremely hard to end), and especially not subsidies that do not distinguish between the infant and grown-up forms of the industry.

Jeremy,

All nice criteria, but I still don't see how they address spill-over effects, or as GreyFlcn so nicely puts it, the fungibility question.

These are only my personal opinions.

What strikes me is that this all has the air of starting with an assumption -- more biofuels -- and working backward from that, attempting to mitigate the environmental and economic downsides.

But why start with biofuels? If you have the dual goal of a) helping Oregon farmers, and b) using less oil, why not put wind turbines on their land to power plug-in hybrids? Or put money into production credits for farmers and public transit for cities? Or focus on land use, to prevent farms from being bought up by developers? Etc. etc.

I'm sure all these things are on your radar, but they all strike me as more promising -- more bang for the buck -- than pouring money into biofuels. If you started from a clean slate, with no presumptions or biases, would biofuels really be your choice to achieve your goals?

grist.org

Why not instead promote organic farming in Oregon, with a focus on reducing fossil fuel inputs.

That would do the most good for farmers.

_

However the real question there being.
Are you trying to benefit farmers as people, or "farmers" as corporations.

Whats good for ADM and Cargill might not be so good for the actual people who do the work.

http://greyfalcon.net/farmers
http://greyfalcon.net/farmers2
http://www.relocalize.net/more_on_ethanol

But more-so because Organic is about the only food sector which is showing major growth.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070 ...
http://feedroom.businessweek.com/index.jsp?fr_story=FEEDR ...
http://asap.sustainability.uiuc.edu/members/dananderson/d ...

There's money to be had.

Yes, as a carbon sequestration project, cellulosic ethanol is a relatively poor money investment. But that ain't the end all...

Also, as Jeremy pointed out, these aren't subsidies (whew, thank heavens I don't have to talk about these any more), these are tax breaks. There is a blatant difference between getting a welfare check every month and not having to pay taxes. THIS IS THE POINT OF INCENTIVES!

Sorry for all the caps there. Incentives are supposed to start a program, which otherwise might not be attractive due to initial starting costs. If there were more positive incentives on production of fuel efficient vehicles, we might have some sort of an efficiency increase.

Anyone willing to pay $6.90 for gasoline?

http://www.energybulletin.net/30685.html

as Jeremy pointed out, these aren't subsidies ... these are tax breaks. There is a blatant difference between getting a welfare check every month and not having to pay taxes. THIS IS THE POINT OF INCENTIVES!

He, I've got a job for you working for a Washington lobbyist, Artreyger! Everybody, even Congress, talks about all the "subsidies" to the oil industry. Guess what: the value of actual direct "welfare checks" to the oil industry is small. Most of the "subsidies" to the industry actually take the form of special tax provisions in the tax code that reduce their tax bill compared with what they would pay were they engaged in another business. That, and reductions in royalty payments.

The main "subsidy" that was being proposed to promote coal to liquids was actually a 51 cents per gallon (the same as for ethanol) tax credit.

But if you don't believe me, how about the World Trade Organization (WTO)? The WTO's definition of a subsidy, as set out in its Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, states the following:

"1.1  For the purpose of this Agreement, a subsidy shall be deemed to exist if:

... (ii) government revenue that is otherwise due is foregone or not collected (e.g. fiscal incentives such as tax credits);" ... [My emphasis]

Gee, there it is, "tax credit". I wonder why?

Tax credits are a way to reduce government revenue otherwise due. If you normally pay $10,000 a year in taxes, but the government says, "if you produce liquids from coal, you can reduce that tax bill by 51 cents for every gallon you produce", it may have different implications for the budget process, but from your standpoint as a producer it differs little a situation in which the government were simply to pay you a bounty of 51 cents for every gallon you produce.

The difference is mainly optical. Thanks to people like you, Artreyger, politicians have figured out that John Q. Public pays less attention when a subsidy is provided through the tax code than through a more-transparent budget. But the Government knows better, which is why it requires various bodies, such as the Joint Committee on Taxation to produce periodic estimates of the value of these tax expenditures.

You write, "Incentives are supposed to start a program, which otherwise might not be attractive due to initial starting costs." Again, that begs the question of whether the particular program (or industry) should take priority over other programs or industries. What I and others have been arguing here is that while some headline subsidies (worth just under $400 million dollars) may have been allocated to support a half-dozen demonstration cellulosic ethanol plants, the big bucks -- TAX CREDITS FOR ETHANOL, ANY ETHANOL, EVEN CORN ETHANOL PRODUCED IN PLANTS FUELED BY COAL -- continue to flow, are where the real action is, worth billions of dollars a year and are set (especially assuming current proposals in Congress to extend them) to grow to double-digit billions a year in the not-too-distant future.

These are only my personal opinions.

Moreover, rare is the tax code subsidy that has an actual cap---I think the subsidy for the Prius did (only so many per year), but most are wide open to all comers, so we really don't know what the cost will be.  Sometimes a subsidy is even sweeter than people realize, and it's not until later that you find out that your state has blown a wad that it didn't plan to because it crafted a tax subsidy that it didn't intend.

Also, according to Jeremy above, these subsidies sunset at a certain level of production. Nice trick.  This means that, instead of an actual sunset (i.e., a date), the subsidy can continue FOREVER.  Once production starts to approach the threshold, producers will back off, keeping the gravy train running another year.  The plant owners aren't stupid -- which one of them is going to build a plant that would cause the state to reach the production threshold?  I'd be seriously worried about "accidents" during construction if I were to start building a plant that threatened to cause the state to overshoot the threshold and break everyone's rice bowl.

And, of course, there's just the plain sweet invisibility of a tax subsidy as opposed to an honest appropriation.  An appropriation has to be passed again and again and again as part of the budget; you get a tax subsidy through and boom, you're set forever.  The tax code never changes unless the Legislature changes it, and it doesn't have to be readopted year after year.

The 5% Project

These "sunset" provisions require Congress to make explicit choices about extending the tax benefits. While sunset would appear to promote better budgetary control of tax expenditures, that is not always the case. In some instances, including an expiration date for a provision creates the illusion that its long-term costs are lower than those of permanent provisions, when in fact the provision is so popular that Congress will never allow it to end.
...
[S]pecific design aspects of a proposal matter much more than whether recipients claim benefits when they file a tax return with the IRS or receive a check from a program agency. These specific design questions include whether it is a matching subsidy or direct grant, whether or not there are budgetary ceilings and expiration dates, the criteria for eligibility of beneficiaries and requirements for certifying eligibility. Nonetheless, on administrative grounds, there may be reasons for preferring either a tax incentive or a direct spending program.

We have seen that in the case of the current set of federal tax credits for biofuels (and the tariff on imported ethanol): once in place, they tend to be renewed ... again and again and again.

If people think that tax credits are cost-free, then why not create tax credits for everybody, and for everything? I mean, why are we denying ourselves a delicious free lunch?

These are only my personal opinions.

Don't tax you,
Don't tax me,
Tax that fellow
Behind the tree.

Verse 2 through 2^Nth power (as N tends to infinity) same as the first.

The 5% Project

The most powerful force in the human part of the universe?  Confusion.

Even some dedicated Gristmill readers/writers still do not grok the problems with guzzling gas made with fuel farming.  And try to confuse this simple issue once again.

That is the unbelievable power of confusion.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Clearly, I was being facetious when I said that about tax breaks. I was just kidding because I want to get off Ron's subsidy horse. But if you were king, Ron or JMG (not amazin), and you had to make an immediate decision about our energy sector, what would you do? And where would you get the liquid fuel? Cause the hundred million plus cars on the roadway, they ain't leaving any time soon.

Plus, I like how you both skirted the issue of $500/ton (ooooh) as going strictly to sequestration, instead of a number of positive outcomes.

Sure there are lots of claims about what great things biofuels will do, and all of them (at least as regards first-generation biofuels, with the exception of biodiesel made from used cooking oil, and perhaps tallow) -- air pollution benefits, regional and rural-employment benefits, national-security benefits -- have been and continue to be challenged. The debate rages on.

Yes, biofuels have raised crop prices, which has increased the income of many farmers. But it has cut into the costs of others, not only livestock farmers, through pressure on land prices and prices of key inputs, such as fertilizer. In short, there are winners and losers.

Among the losers are other crops competing for land with corn. For example, in Minnesota:

Hmong farmers, who immigrated to the U.S. after the Vietnam War, grow vegetables using organic and biodynamic techniques on rented land in Minnesota. With the ethanol boom driving up demand for corn, the landowners are pushing the Hmong out, even though their farms are three times more profitable than a typical Minnesota farm.

If it were only high oil prices that were driving the biofuels boom, I think that many of us would feel sorry for those affected by such trends, but otherwise accept it and look for ways to minimize any collateral damage. The point is that the phenomenal growth in the industry -- and therefore all the consequences that flow from it -- are largely the result of government policy, not market forces.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I gather that you don't put much truck in market forces. Else the clear answer would have occurred to you already: raise taxes on fossil-derived transport fuels. And help cities plan for alternative means of getting around (like better sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and public transport).

These are only my personal opinions.

I recently put up a post about what I'd do if I were Climate Change Czar, and I invited others to contribute to the list; sorry to say it didn't get much interest.  

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/6/11/224214/140

However, the list from that post (edited to delete those not relevant to liquid fuels) responds to your query I think:

Here's a small handful of mine, in random order (i.e., not ranked by priority), just to get you started:

    * government managers have to start justifying travel from a carbon perspective, not just a cost perspective;

    * more teens have working bikes than cell phones; all schools teach bike safety and repair;

    * "design for bikability" required on all public ways

    * schools charge students through the nose for automobile parking (where parking is provided at all);

    * all urban mass transit is free; interurban rail and bus systems kept at low cost;

   * "free" parking for cars is outlawed; all registered autos to have a smart chip that talks to the "parking meter" chip on the curb or in the parking lot and reduces your parking balance (stored on the chip) automatically; the rates can be set according to time of day and length of stay (where extended parking is undesired);

   * minimum passenger percentage for jet flights: flights not allowed to take off unless at least 95% of the seats are filled with regular, pre-ticketed flyers;

  * states require insurance companies to offer vehicle insurance by-the-mile (where the state doesn't adopt pay-at-the-pump entirely, per Andrew Tobias)

A couple other other ideas I saw recently that I would support:

    * 55 mph top speed limit

    * Make gas stations offer to check and inflate tires to the proper pressure, and check air filters.  Require commercial parking operators to offer the same (so that tires can be checked cold).

As for the $500 per ton CO2 reduced, if I understand your position (and I'm not sure I do), it's that the fact that reducing CO2 emissions through biofuels costs $500 per ton is not a negative for biofuels, because biofuels are an energy source.  (And please correct me if I have mischaracterized what you are saying).

If I have the question right, then the answer is simply that what Ron's study shows is that whether your priority is reducing supply-demand mismatch for liquid fuels or dealing with climate problems, biofuels are not nearly as good as the alternatives, particularly the efficiency alternative.  Using less is the cheapest thing to do and reduces greenhouse gas emissions the most, while reducing pressure on supplies the most.  What's so hard to understand about that?

US energy demand is like a blast furnace in a steel mill.  Biofuels are like trying to power that blast furnace by making school children feed it with hand-carried buckets of coal (since that is the power source, ultimately, of most of the energy content in biofuels made today) or diesel oil (in the always-just-around-the-corner cellulosic ethanol world).

The only way to get ahead of either problem (peak oil or climate disruption) is to use lots less energy, and use the rest far, far more efficiently.

Eliminating biofuels subsidies and redirecting the money into the kinds of things suggested above would do more for all concerned.

As Roberts put it, if you didn't start with biofuels as the goal, what would make you get there?  (Answer: nothing.)

The 5% Project

The irony is, with the kind of massive public money we're talking about shoveling to biofuels and liquid coal, we could get those cars off the road. We could buy every one of them, scrap them, and replace them with plug-in hybrids! If that strikes you as an absurd solution, well, that just goes to show how absurd the level of subsidies under discussion are.

grist.org

Just like the tobacco lobby fought for decades to defeat one simple idea (cigarettes kill), the auto gang (a HUGE cross-sector complex that includes the oil industry, the manufacturing sector, the highway (concrete/asphalt) lobby, the sprawlbuilders lobby) continues to fight for the primacy of one key idea (meme):

  Cars aren't going anywhere.  They are central to our culture and we cannot give them up.

The auto gang are like the Japanese on Iwo Jima on this point.  They know that, when enough people realize that we can have a pretty darn nice country, with a lot better health, wealth, and environment without personal cars, things are going to change in a real hurry.

So their job is to enforce the meme at all costs (as long as those costs are shifted to others).

Therefore, they equate cars with "freedom" and "independence," "virility" and "fun" and all the other positive things (just like cigarettes were sold on every one of those same traits).  They do everything possible to keep the true costs of car culture from becoming widely understood; they work tirelessly to train kids in the ways of car culture and to make auto-free living seem like a weird and undesirable state.  They prey on the poor, who bankrupt themselves to stay in the car culture, just like the people smoking through their tracheotomy holes.

Flex-fuel vehicles, hybrid electrics, etc. are all just the auto gang's version of the "low tar cigarette" -- a way to keep the junkie on the line.

The 5% Project

1. We don't have to keep using cars.
   
2. Practically speaking, we have to accept cars for the foreseeable future, but we can insure they use much less oil.
   
3. We have to accept cars, and we have to keep running them primarily on liquid fuel.

As far as #1 is concerned, my position is that it should always be preceded by a fairly large number, like "in 20 years" (or 30, or 40) we should have a train-centered society -- which also sounds better than "carless",it's pushing the alternative instead of concentrating on negating the current option.

When I bought a car our lives improved by orders of magnitude. Getting somewhere could take half a day by bus now takes a hour or so. My wife is going to by a second car as her job requires her to travel around town. Again with the buses that would mean spending 3 hours or so every day in buses.

You can say what you want. I like my car. It has made my life a lot better. No propaganda required from the car lobby.

Thing is, when we make the infrastructure and urban planning and land use changes necessary, people will naturally migrate out of their cars. No moral suasion will be required. Until then, moral suasion just bugs people.

Switching out present-day cars for plug-in hybrids, however, is a marked and immediate increase in quality of life, no matter the other circumstances. That seems like the low-hanging fruit, even as we work in parallel to reduce the need for cars.

grist.org

You all got that?  Isaiah 2.4:
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And he [the Lord, aka Yahweh] shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
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Not one of the favorite texts of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their neo-con entourage.  Unknown if W. himself ever stumbled upon it while doing his Bible-roulette games.

Anyway, I am definitely on Jon's side, in supporting car-to-train re-adaptation (CTT).

But JMG is right about the deep-rootedness of the private car in our culture and indeed in our sense of identity and self-worth.

And Hollywood has a great responsibility in that.  TV too.  Where does it start?  James Dean?  Segueing into "Route 66"?

Iconically, it ought to have ended with "Thelma and Louise": car as platform for a rape, car as suicide instrument.  But I guess not; that was just a chick-flick. : (

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

The bus system in many places (not all, such as SF or NYC), were the miserable systems that GM et al. put in place after they bought the trolley systems and ripped them up.  I have not owned a car in 20 odd years, but I lived in NYC and now downtown Evanston, where I can walk.  Even so, if we could magically not be so lazy and get our drivers licenses renewed (yes, we let them lapse) we would do it, because this society is simply not set up to be completely car-free.  

So, push for more light rail -- if salt lake city likes it, what's not to like -- push for more transit-oriented development, with the argument that life will be better, more pleasant, with lots of rail and walkable neighborhoods.  Even Al Gore, in his recent rolling stone interview, used the example of being stuck in traffic for hours as an example where a emissions-reduced world would be superior to the current one.

More people in cities is a good idea. Less travel and rail makes more sense.

There are no plug-in hybrids. Creating a product that satisfies a demanding and complex market is not simple.

Americans base their car-buying decisions on a broad array of triaged factors. The fuel-economy factor is far peripheral in most car-buyers' triage geometrics. The single-most important reason for that is that liquid-fuel is available for virtually-free throughout the United States.

A rise in the general longitudinal price of liquid-fuel would change that. One important factor in terms of liquid-fuel price is the price of oil futures. Another important factor is fuel-tax level. To strengthen the former factor, a government might reduce futures-trading taxes -- perhaps even to the point of subsidizing futures-trading. As for the potential helpfulness of the latter strategy, it might be profitable to keep in mind that futures-trading involves significant investments in terms of time (for research and analysis), costs-of-capital, and transaction-costs. The maximum benefit of futures-trading to society might be realized if these costs were minimized by the benefitting society.

Currently, long-term capital-gains are taxed at 15%.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United_States

One factor that affects the perception of liquid-fuel cost is the ratio of driving's fixed-costs to liquid-fuel costs. One fixed-cost that might easily be transformed -- and overall reduced in the process -- to a variable-cost is car-insurance. I have mentioned this before. So have others:
gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/8/31/13446/5810

But a pay-as-you-drive car insurance system (or PAYD for short) would automatically create incentives to drive less. PAYD would effectively double the marginal cost of driving a mile, which would curtail driving as much as a gas tax of $2 per gallon

Q:  Why would we make any of those changes to obviate cars before we're committed to getting rid of car culture?  

A:  We wouldn't.  And we won't.

Technologic niches work just like ecological ones--the toys don't share any better than species do.

Look at all the effort being expended to maintain car culture:  we're willing to fight wars to do it, we're willing to starve people to do it, we're willing to destroy climate stability to do it, to pave over fertile land, to mine the last few inches of topsoil, etc.

The 5% Project

So, what are these things called "cars" that you are all talking about?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Recharge plug-in and electric cars with solar/wind power, and/or NW hydro.

The car does not have to die, just make it stop smoking so much fuel.

Just a couple questions so I can plan ahead:

(1) How long will my current 30-mile commute be via horse? Via horse and buggy?

(2) How expensive is it to care for a horse vs. an automobile?

(3) How much pasture is required for each horse if I want him or her to get some fresh air, sunshine, and quality forage?

(I'm actually  replacing my crown vetch -- see alien plant thread -- with a mix of pasture grass. This was going to be a temporary measure, but I could skip the native plants if it will reduce America's dependence on fossil fuel and give me an excuse for caring for another animal.)

(4) What will urban planners have to start thinking about in order to facilitate the transition?

Why would there not be oil at a decent price forever?

I just hope other people try different methods, because I don't hold out a lot of hope for that one.

grist.org

I cannot earn a living via telecommuting, consulting, blogging, or writing novels. I have to go somewhere to work. I might be able to grow enough food for my family, but there would be no way to pay for heat, electricity, a photovoltaic system, healthcare, clothing, fabric, books, tools, property taxes, telephone, et cetera.

We've already purchased -- and must pay back the loan for -- the house. If I return to an urban area, I would have to sell the house. I would probably have to sell it to someone just like me, so I might as well live there. At least I'm taking care of the land.

If there is a massive migration from rural areas to urban areas because of the rising cost of transportation, I won't be able to sell the house. There wll be no market for houses in rural areas. I would have to declare bankruptcy and have no means of starting a new life in an urban area.

So... the commute is non-negotiable. I have to make it work. Millions of American have to make it work. Whine all you want. But unless there is a state or federal program to buy houses, raze them, and replace them with natural areas, commuters are here to stay. The alternative, in my opinion, is a landscape dominated by the wealthy who can afford energy and littered with abandoned homes the wealthy are not interested in living in.

By the way... the remarks regarding horses... I'm serious.

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/headlines/temporary_continua ...

The 5% Project

you also said

unless there is a state or federal program to buy houses, raze them, and replace them with natural areas

Parenthetically, Kunstler and even more so, many peak oilers think everyone will just wind up eating doo-doo, so my proposal is actually less wild than many.

I once heard Barney Frank on Bill Maher basically say that people bought their homes on the assumption that they could make a 45-minute commute, and implied that gas prices need to be kept at the appropriate level.  So if someone on the "left" is defending Americans god-given right to liquid fuels, you can just imagine what the other politicians are feeling -- and if suburban commuting becomes unsustainable, the right will accuse the left of being behind a conspiracy to destroy the suburbs.

The automobile was adopted as a solution to the environmental, health, and animal-abuse problems of horse-based transport.
google.com/search?q=automobile+horse+abuse+pollution
enviroliteracy.org/article.php/578.html

The most severe problem was that caused by horses defecating and urinating in the streets, but dead animals and noise pollution also produced serious annoyances and even health problems. The normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty-five pounds of manure a day and about a quart of urine, usually distributed along the course of its route or deposited in the stable. While cities made sporadic attempts to keep the streets clean, the manure was everywhere, along the roadway, heaped in piles or next to stables, or ground up by the traffic and blown about by the wind. In 1818, in an attempt to control the manure nuisance, the New York City Council required that those who gathered and hauled manure, so-called "dirt carting," to be licensed, also restricting aliens to this type of carting activity. Thousands of loads of manure were gathered on special "manure-yards" to undergo a process of "rotting," and "gangs" of men were employed to overturn the manure and to expose it to weathering. In 1866, the Citizen's Association Report on the Sanitary Condition of the City observed that, "The stench arising from these accumulations of filth is intolerable."
[...]
Increasingly [...] it became obvious that the most effective way to eliminate the "typhoid fly" [...] was to eliminate the horse.

The ASPCA was created as a reaction to the urban-horse-abuse problem:

Other issues arose. The ASPCA was founded in 1866, and almost all cities soon had humane societies with police powers, which kept a close eye on street railways. The latter, however, found ways to manipulate these groups, for example by having officials serve on their boards and getting them to lobby for municipal regulations which required cars to stop only at corners, instead of wherever flagged down. This made the horses' lives easier, since fewer stops meant less wear and tear on their legs, and also increased route speed. Street railway owners also hoped that these societies would restrain driver cruelty, since they feared that their employees would damage their stock. However, the actions of such organisations were hardly predictable.

Gradually well kept statistics demonstrated that horses were not as safe as people had once thought; for example, per vehicle, horse transport killed more people than internal combustion engine travel would do later. (Machines do not bite or kick, or take fright at pieces of flying paper.)

Additionally, horses walk about 4 MPH.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_gait

Even a rudimentary and inexpensive (read: equipped with minimal batteries) converted-electric-car could travel a long way at 4 MPH (electric cars are more-efficient the slower they travel). A simple electric-bicycle, equipped with a single-wheel BOB trailer with a lead-acid deep-cycle battery in it, might suffice.

What I believe, as I wrote, was that we have been sold a dysfunctional system and we pay the price for it every single day, in hundreds of ways, from our taxes to our air quality, to our loss of species diversity, to the tens of thousands of people who die every year from automobility, not to mention the pedestrians and bicyclists killed by cars.  I know of very few people who argue in favor of any of these things, which would truly be morally reprehensible.

DDT and leaded gasoline were once both popular and completely accepted uses of technology.  That changed because people were willing to actually look at the evidence of the harm they caused and talk about it, despite a fierce rebuttal from the industries involved.  The personal automobile is quite similar in my view.

Like you, I hope that others find more effective ways to get people to rethink cars; if you have suggestions for that, I'm all ears.

The 5% Project

Confusion reigns, in this rhetorical playground.  But mother earth is not confused.  A 300+ mph tornado indicates that quite forcefully.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

As for himself, it wa