When it comes to energy, investments in infrastructure are matched by institutional investments. For example, our local utility has two nuclear power plants. As a result, they have folks with nuclear educations and expertise sprinkled throughout the management structure (coal also applies here.)
Now let us assume that wind is cost competitive and the equipment is as reliable as anything else the power company buys. You still don't have any internal advocates for wind in the middle and upper levels of management. You don't have a staff that understands the unique problems of supplying a grid with an intermittent source of power. etc. And to convert someone on the inside to wind, you must first have the sort of personality who buys a sailboat before they would consider a motorboat.
Then if they have financed a nuke with 40 year bonds, they don't want to replace it before it has been paid for and then they want to run it for as long as possible because now it is so profitable.
The key to unblocking such an institutional logjam is to reintroduce an economics that brags about how much new infrastructure investment is taking place, and that this sort of economics is inherently superior to the slum landlord mentality that now rules our economic discourse. So in fact, the LARGEST impediment to a sustainable society is CULTURAL--the glorification of the economic model of the slumlord. "Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"
Still and all, biofuels is something relatively new. It doesn't correspond to nuclear or coal in the career-long habits of mind of people in management or political structures. If it really was identified with hippies it probably wouldn't get much traction. That it does, I think, is due to the very considerable leverage, in the US and the EU, of the farm/agro-industry people. Who can see how, out of the hidebound thinking above, to guarantee themselves long-term comfortable subsidy streams. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Because, at least in the decision theory, the way it works is that the politicians figure out a set of goals and then they ask the advisors how to attain those goals, and the advisors come back with a couple of alternatives and the corresponding tradeoffs. But in this case the whole thing looks very strange. The goal (10% biofuels) sounds more like a policy choice to achieve some unspecified goal, and it is not clear what question was asked of the scientific advisors.
But, of course, if the real policy goal here is the completely ass-backwards
we want recognisable liquid fuels in recognisable pumps that drivers will come back to to fill up the tank so they can use the new highways everyone knows we need.
For densely populated areas, and high traffic routes across less populated regions, train travel is perfectly suitable, and we need lots more of it. But for the travel conditions in much or most of the U.S., it's going to be really, really tough to provide adequate rail coverage.
Example: I want to go to Salida to Bongo Billy's for Sunday brunch. A nice little 100 mile, two hour scenic automobile trip for a sunny April day. Gas cost in new Ford F-150 at 13 MPG and $5 per gallon: $75. (Gas cost in my little Honda: $13.)
In train terms, even if there were still a train from Colorado Springs to Pueblo, and then from Pueblo to Salida, first you would have to deal with the schedule (the route goes up the scenic Royal Gorge, which means it is SLOW)--and then the ticket cost. Two people, 200 miles round trip: $???
It's a matter of, as Mr. Bush says, not changing the 'merkan way of life.
But that is not how rail reached the position that it originally did of providing "all but last mile" transport for the vast majority of the destinations of the vast majority of Americans.
First, dedicated transport corridors are developed where they are in the strongest position in the current marketplace, especially if we start whittling away at the massive subsidies to cars and level the playing field a bit.
Then those corridors attract differential development of retail and consumer service businesses, because the dedicated transport corridor provides a differential advantage in foot traffic that does not have to be provided with parking space.
How many years down the track is it before its taken for granted that Bongo Billy's is going to be located within easy walking distance of the rail or light rail or Aerobus station?
However long it is, we know that it does not hinge on the patronage of people living 100 miles away. Wherever they are in Salinas is close to the same thing for people driving in from 100 miles away. The location decision will hinge on whether Bongo Billy's can raise their local repeat business by 5% or even more fill in what used to be fairly dead time with people who happen to be changing at that station anyway.
So the example of the decision faced by someone making a one-off Sunday day trip is not an example of a business location driver.
And in general, since the dedicated transport corridors are both more energy and more capital efficient, on a full cost basis, as social institutions they do not have to be as greedy in terms of trying to monopolize all transport tasks in sight as the automotive transport system has to be. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
Why does it have to be government policy to make such insanity possible? When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
Americans. That's how they enjoy their freedom.
Snark aside, I have to say that driving in the vast expanses of the North American continent is a very nice experience. It's just that I just wouldn't do it "to go to Sunday brunch". But driving along the Pacific Coast Highway or through the Mojave Desert between LA and the Grand Canyon, just to name a couple of long drives I've been on is quite pleasant. But it's not a day trip, at least not in my mind. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
160 if I want Sainsburys.
There is a smallish co-op on a 8 km round trip, but its range is limited. Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
I want to go to Salida to Bongo Billy's for Sunday brunch. A nice little 100 mile, two hour scenic automobile trip for a sunny April day.
Yep, now we're talking about real problems. I'm still racking my brains for an answer to this one ;) When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Long range, our ONLY choice is convert all ground-based transportation to run on electricity. THIS isn't easy. THIS isn't cheap.
But what I cannot understand is why so MANY people believe that we can just back and fill, and patch things together with baling wire. There is NO virtue to being thrifty if it means the roof is falling in. So politicians dither about "saving" bucks on the systems necessary for survival because they believe themselves responsible citizens. And the people who actually could build the new systems sit without decent work, doing crystal meth, and fighting with the spouse.
Come the revolution, I want to see the heads of the defenders of the slumlord mentality on a few pikes somewhere. This sort of thinking is sick. So now we have biofuels and food riots. What will it take to discredit these fools??? "Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"
Thus we are so sensible, have schooled ourselves to so close a semblant of prudent financiers, taking careful thought before we add to the 'financial' burdens of posterity by building them houses to live in, that we have no such easy escape from the sufferings of unemployment. We have to accept them as inevitable results of applying to the conduct of the State the maxims which are best calculated to 'enrich' an individual by enabling him to pile up claims to enjoyment which he does not intend to exercise at any definite time. — J M Keynes in The General Theory
You just made my day. "Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"
