As easy as 1 . . . 2 . . . 87 Ways to Save the Earth

So I have arrived safely in Aspen. I'm listening to Thomas Friedman urging America to lead the way towards "abundant, cheap, clean, reliable electrons". His approach sounds like the approach near and dear to my heart--can the talk of a "Green Manhattan Project" and use prices to signal inventors to get cracking on the problem. But it's not clear whether he's talking about a tax or subsidies. Taxes I like. Subsidies are going to replicate many of the worst features of a "Manhattan Project"--the government will pick the winners, with no guarantee that it will do a very good job.

He's also talking about reconfiguring the power companies to shift their incentives away from selling you more dirty power. A regulatory shudder is going up my spine. I mean, it sounds nice, in theory. But imagine a food processing company paid not to sell you fattening food, a bar paid not to sell you liquor, a doctor paid not to give you healthcare. The opportunities for unpleasant unintended consequences.

At this point he sort of goes off the deep end and talks about how great it would be if we could be China for a day--have the government get in, totally reorganize the energy market, and then go forward from there. He bases this on a conversation with Jeff Immelt, who thinks the world would be a better place if this happened.

Where to start? Very few people think that China is succeeding because of its awesome industrial policy--China is succeeding very much in spite of its industrial policy. Indeed, its industrial policy is threatening to drag down important sectors of the economy, like the banking system, which may well cause the whole thing to implode.

There's also this dodgy belief, fervently embraced by many liberals advocating regulations--"Look, even a big business head who would be regulated believes it's a good idea! It must be!" Au contraire, mon frere. The heads of big businesses often love big new regulatory bodies, because they have the resources to best negotiate a complex regime. The end result of this kind of radical regulation is usually that the big companies capture the regulator and use it to shut out competition.

A government reorganization of the energy market might produce a fabulous new system that saves us ton of energy and money. It's much more likely, however, to become a sclerotic boondoggle that will soon spend most of its time in petty arguments between bureaucrats and regulatees over small rule changes. And it's not necessary. You don't need to reorganize the energy market to get companies to make people save energy. If you raise the price of pollution, consumers will demand less of it. Better yet, they will save the energy in whichever way is least painful to them, minimizing the loss of consumer surplus from the intervention.

Maybe it's just that I'm a natural pessimist, but these sort of optimistic attempts to change the world by easy fiat seem like cheap escapism to me. No one wants to write a book saying "Do this--it will really suck!" So instead we get promises that the whole thing can be practically painless. It won't be. We don't waste most of the energy we use. It goes to heat and cool our homes, wash our clothes, cook our food, and transport us and the stuff we consume from Point A to Point B. There are some things we can do that are easy--but most of them will involve having less of stuff we like, such as personal space.

Ultimately, I think we will find cleaner forms of energy, and also, I think we'll find that living a little denser isn't nearly as bad as most people imagine it will be. But rest assured, during the transition, we'll notice. The changes will be right up there in our faces.

Comments

Hi Megan:

I think giving China control of the US for a day would certainly help. Last I checked, it is still legal to build stuff in China, while the US (or at least the part I live in, California) has outlawed construction since the 70s.

That said, I cannot comment on whether China is succeeding because of, or in spite of, it's industrial policy. My understanding of China's industrial policy is:
- build stuff that builds stuff
- don't worry if your sky is green, and your rivers are purple
- don't beat your workers if they actually, you know, work

This is the opposite of industrial policy in the US, and it's pretty clear where all the new factories are being built

-winterspeak

Posted by winterspeak | July 3, 2008 7:39 PM

How can anyone with even a slight respect for liberty want to be China even for a minute? This is the kind of shit that scares the piss out of me when liberals utter them. This and "the fierce urgency of now" kind of talk serves only to remind me why I'm not a lefty. When will they learn that the government can, in no way, have enough information in the short term to make such long-lasting policy changes with obviously unforseeable unintended consequences. I guess it just provides them with more of an excuse to meddle afterwards.

Posted by DDP | July 3, 2008 7:59 PM

if you, MM, or anyone else, thinks This current incarnation of our Economy is the result of Free Markets, you, one, should think again, after doing further Fact Checking..

this: "But it's not clear whether he's talking about a tax or subsidies. Taxes I like. Subsidies are going to replicate many of the worst features of a "Manhattan Project"--the government will pick the winners, with no guarantee that it will do a very good job." though, is the Real barn burner..

MM, obviously, doesn't care to ask: "Who (What) is writing the Tax Policy?" -- if not the same Gov't that would be crafting the Subsidies that she is decrying??

"Taxes I like."--MM

What are Taxes, if not Regulation? v. "A regulatory shudder is going up my spine"--MM

and too many more examples, in the above post, to begin thinking it's worth contemplating..

Posted by Mark E Hoffer | July 3, 2008 8:04 PM

Excuse my grammar and punctuation. Been drinking.

Posted by DDP | July 3, 2008 8:14 PM

thank your for this:

The heads of big businesses often love big new regulatory bodies, because they have the resources to best negotiate a complex regime. The end result of this kind of radical regulation is usually that the big companies capture the regulator and use it to shut out competition.

that's the difference between your local, independent coffee shop and Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks.

What do you think of offering prizes? Say a million dollars for someone who develops a home-heating/cooling method that frees us from our need for home-heating oil or oil-generated electricity?

Posted by zic | July 3, 2008 8:21 PM

zic,

it's already been done. try Geothermal Heat Pumps aided by Solar Thermal and powered by Solar PV and/or Wind. Preferably within an ICF shell.

see: www.forms.org for ICF

Also, ICF, if we had a free market in Insurance services, would dramatically lower your Home Owner's Premium, especially in Tornado/Hurricane belts..

Posted by Mark E Hoffer | July 3, 2008 8:53 PM

The heads of big businesses often love big new regulatory bodies, because they have the resources to best negotiate a complex regime. The end result of this kind of radical regulation is usually that the big companies capture the regulator and use it to shut out competition.

I still don't get who you were trying to impress by not reading Goldberg's tome, since you've managed to re-write almost half of it in the interevening months. I mean, you could do what I did -- remove the dust jacket to avoid strange looks from people who haven't heard of it.

Posted by aMouseforallSeasons | July 3, 2008 8:55 PM

"But imagine a food processing company paid not to sell you fattening food, a bar paid not to sell you liquor, a doctor paid not to give you healthcare. The opportunities for unpleasant unintended consequences."

But I go to a bar to get drunk, and I go to a doctor to get well. I go to a food processing company to get food - not fattening food.

Posted by rapid | July 3, 2008 9:12 PM

Rapid - processing food generally makes it less healthy, though in some cases it does add nutritional value.

Perhaps a less ambiguous way of stating her point would be to say "...Hostess was paid to not sell you fattening food."

Posted by DPT | July 3, 2008 9:22 PM

Megan writes,

It goes to heat and cool our homes, wash our clothes, cook our food, and transport us and the stuff we consume from Point A to Point B. There are some things we can do that are easy--but most of them will involve having less of stuff we like, such as personal space. Ultimately, I think we will find cleaner forms of energy, and also, I think we'll find that living a little denser isn't nearly as bad as most people imagine it will be. But rest assured, during the transition, we'll notice. The changes will be right up there in our faces.

Yes, the transition to new and more diverse energy sources will involve some pain. But in the end, we'll probably be better off. Why will we have to give up personal space? Why will we have to live more densely? Malthusian predictions have always been thwarted by technological advances. If energy costs double, but the energy efficiency of cars and housing triples, the likely result will be less density and more personal space than we have now, not the other way round.

Posted by Mixner | July 3, 2008 9:42 PM

To rework an old metaphor, the question in energy progress is whether we take a fox or a hedgehog approach. (Do I sound like Friedman yet?) The fox approach means a thousand different programs, grassroots, corporate, and government, which achieve a common goal each in its own way. The hedgehog approach is like that adopted in people's fantasy of China - one big national policy which sets not just the goals but the means for achieving them.

Megan supports the fox approach, and indeed there is much to be said for it, in terms of its exploiting the best features of an open society. And if there is a big breakthrough technology which everyone will be willing to adopt, it is more likely to emerge through experiment and diversity rather than through top-down direction.

The problem, though, is time. No one knows how long it will take before all that experimentation yields the results we need to surmount the peak oil/global warming crisis. If it were five years, that would be great; but one could easily see it taking decades. Do we have that much time?

Whatever the drawbacks of the hedgehog approach, the fact is that it would, if run by smart people, get us where we need to be much faster. Certainly the Manhattan and the Apollo projects achieved incredible results in a stunningly short period of time - four years, eight years respectively, I think. Whereas just muddling along in the usual manner would have given us the bomb and the man on the moon in who knows how many decades.

Anyway: I want to hear Megan address the time-scale issue - an urgent one in the case of climate change/peak oil.

Posted by lampwick | July 3, 2008 9:47 PM

DDp, been drinking...well let me say "In Vino Veritas."

Excellent post, Megan.

About being China for a Day, I suspect they don't understand what China does...which is to use state power to avoid regulation in many cases, i.e. seize land illegally to build roads, ignore environmental planning, etc. So, if this is so great, just de-regulate the US a bit and we too will flourish and we could still keep rule of law etc. to avoid their excesses.

I think the best example of the problem was the solar power plants had to have 2 year environmental impact reports (now waived, wrongly, in my opinion.)

Posted by Aaron | July 3, 2008 9:52 PM

Friedman comes across like John Phillps Souza on the Fourth of July when he really is the dog playing Souza on a cloth piano. Atlantic in an issue about a year ago did a story on industrial production in China, nice article with a (industrial) production broker going around to various sites explaining things to the author. At the end, the author asked him to conclude with possibly a government officaial who was insturmental in what was going on. His contact didn't know of any.

Posted by Michael | July 3, 2008 10:06 PM

Regarding the hedgehog approach... NASA got us to the moon, but is now a sclerotic employment agency run by Congress that can barely get to LEO, let alone the moon. They are going back to rockets as the shuttle replacement, for goodness sake. The Manhatten Project is a better example, but it wasn't run by Congress. MP took a couple of billion 1945 dollars to build a few crude devices by going off in the corner and saying cost was no object. I doubt the military could repeat this miracle today because of the "help" Congress would insist on providing.

Posted by John | July 3, 2008 11:10 PM

lampwick,

Your argument makes no sense. How do you know that a massive government program would be faster than tax-incentivized market forces at developing new/clean energy sources? What basis is there for thinking that is even likely?

And your comparisons to the Apollo and Manhattan Projects are specious for the same reason. Those projects were about national defense/prestige. They could only realistically have been done by the government. No private company stood to make any money by developing the atomic bomb or landing a man on the moon.

Posted by Mixner | July 3, 2008 11:11 PM

"Last I checked, it is still legal to build stuff in China"

Actually, I was just hearing today about China's effort to prevent a housing price bubble through a new rule that each family can have no more than 90 square meters (less than a thousand square feet, and not adjusted for family size). So, if you're thinking of large family homes, apparently it's not 'still legal' to build there. But given the massive corruption, it's not clear that legality matters - if you have the right connections and/or pay the right bribes, you can do what you want. If a Party member wants to get you, it doesn't matter how strictly you've followed the laws.

"China is succeeding very much in spite of its industrial policy"

Very true. Their recent moves away from fostering competition will cause them problems in the future. The Chinese have always liked the Japanese/South Korean model of the government 'guiding' industries. When one points out to them that these policies eventually caused some problems in Japan and South Korea, their response is basically that the Chinese will get it right, because they're Chinese.

"Whatever the drawbacks of the hedgehog approach, the fact is that it would, if run by smart people, get us where we need to be much faster."

IF run by smart people... Ah, there's the rub.

Posted by Ann | July 3, 2008 11:33 PM

"have the government get in, totally reorganize the energy market"

We have a model for that remember. The California legislature "deregulated" the electrical power market. That worked real well.

Posted by William | July 3, 2008 11:36 PM

I've always found invocations of the Manhattan Project to be a little off, with the whole 'science vs. engineering' thing. If someone sets a real engineering goal (e.g. carbon sequestration by the generation of huge blocks of polyethylene and their subsequent burial), then the Apollo/Manhattan comparisons start to make sense.

I'm reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Rhodes and I'm struck by an odd historical fact: all the relevant scientists (Bohr, Fermi, Szilard) escaped Europe and headed for America. That is, the American nuclear bomb project was really helped out by suddenly getting many of the world's experts. That sort of incredible personnel boost simply is not replicable.

Posted by Klug | July 3, 2008 11:46 PM

I'm just speculating. It strikes me that another problem with the Manhattan and Apollo projects is that the goal of the one was to make a device that would impress by killing large numbers of people, while the goal of the other was to make a device that would impress by sticking one person alive on the moon. Both had practical side applications, but neither was 'practical' by itself; they were ways for the nation to 'show off'.

Whereas the goal in tackling climate change/peak oil is not to impress anyone, but to change some of the fundamentals of our society.

Posted by lampwick | July 4, 2008 12:15 AM

All one has to do apparently is post the name China and the whole conversation shifts to the Far East. The rest of the article becomes meaningless.

Well back to topic, when it comes to power generation I'm a sucker for regulation. My ordinary market thought shifts to the desire to make Saudi Arabia as poor as I can. We need to stop the Oil, this not just for energy independence or "greening" the environment, But because we are funding a large group of people's lavish lifestyle so they can hurl it back at us through terrorism, or insult us and the way we live while they go about their own ideological fantasy supported by inflated Oil profits("I want America's streets, cars, houses,"What I'm hearing "I want its stuff without any of the consequences of having it: women working, kicking people off the dole, working hard) and say that we're the reason they keep making bad moral decisions.

I'm willing to push/kick the US towards clean coal, solar, wind, fuel cell and Nuclear through incentives, taxes, subsidies, everything and the kitchen sink. I do think a large new regulatory entity is a bad idea. Hopefully it will become cheaper to plug in than to fill up. Automobiles are the golden fleece of Green and we need to get the prize. We can do this right, its not a mirage, the reason we usually have so many unintended consequence and gaffes stems not from a good plan. But the disjointed responses of several different competing government entities and the market. What we need on this issue is a clear vision of where we want to go, the focus to get there, and the will to implement it.

Whoo a little too much pathos in this one, feel free to call me on it.

Posted by ben | July 4, 2008 12:23 AM

Government can have a two pronged approach that would help rather than hinder. First, fund basic research into energy related science - fusion, nanotech, etc. Second, some prize funds for engineering challenges. DARPA has had excellent results with their vehicle prizes and the Ansari X prize was a success. McCain's proposal for $300 million for vehicle battery tech is a good idea.

Posted by ech | July 4, 2008 1:29 AM

winterspeak,

OK, except you forgot point four:

- don't notice if a lot of people get harmed or killed

lampwick,

I completely disagree with your fox/hedgehog comment: not only is the hedgehog approach subject to just as much time uncertainty as the fox approach, but the supply of "smart people" (clever ruse, that, when you really mean "benevalent dictators") just as sparse as it's ever been.

less than a thousand square feet, and not adjusted for family size

Isn't family size itself already fairly strongly regulated?

Posted by Kirk Parker | July 4, 2008 1:33 AM

I'm not sure Tom Friedman is the best source of insights into energy policy. If I were Megan, I'd try to interview someone with a hands-on knowledge of the energy industry. There's this city in Texas called Houston that's chock-full of folks like that.

I'd also try to land an interview with John Hofmeister, the recently retired president of Shell's U.S. subsidiary. It might be too much to hope for, but I'd buy tickets to see a live discussion between him and Friedman on energy policy. It would be fun to see Friedman have to defend his ideas against someone like Hofmeister, instead of just lecturing credulous audiences.

Posted by DaveinHackensack | July 4, 2008 3:01 AM

Since this thread is being driven by the current high prices of energy, I found this little tidbit interesting (which I came across in the June 27th issue of "The Week":

"Bad week for: Incovenient Truths, after it was revealed that Al Gore's energy consumption at his spacious Tennessee home rose 10 percent in 2007, despite the installation of solar panels and more efficient light bulbs. Gore still consumes 50 percent more electricity every month than the average American does in a year."

If Al, or his ilk, is anywhere near those making the tax or subsidy decisions on this issue, I don't want anything to do with it.....

Posted by jwh | July 4, 2008 4:56 AM

Since this thread is being driven by the current high prices of energy, I found this little tidbit interesting (which I came across in the June 27th issue of "The Week":

"Bad week for: Incovenient Truths, after it was revealed that Al Gore's energy consumption at his spacious Tennessee home rose 10 percent in 2007, despite the installation of solar panels and more efficient light bulbs. Gore still consumes 50 percent more electricity every month than the average American does in a year."

Yeah because he's my idol. Al Gore lost to George W. Bush... let that hang out there for a minute for the full effect. That is his most important legacy. I don't care if all the electricity he uses is green.

Consumption of electricity is a problem, with our current power system. If it was all sustainable energy (Fuel Cell, solar, wind, water, nuclear) I wouldn't care how much he used.

What I don't understand is that there is an overwhelming desire in this country to continue to do "business as usual." Don't solve the problem just put a finger in it. Don't do long-term and short-term planning. Just find one blanket catchphrase idea and run with it, don't take the time to think it through. Our continued method is lazy and foolish.

Posted by ben | July 4, 2008 7:38 AM

[T]he disjointed responses of several different competing government entities and the market.

Yes, having a centrally planned, top down approach is by far the best for all large problems with significant uncertainties. Look at the long term success of NASA, or fusion research, speak for the advantages of tight government control. The astonishing success of the Soviet Union and China just reinforce the lesson.

Seriously, on one knows the answer. No one. That is why "disjointed" responses are a good thing, not a defect. No group can possibly know which approaches are best in the long term and which are ultimately unworkable. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and have someone really, really interested in the success of each flower.

Posted by John | July 4, 2008 10:12 AM

Hmm... now why would Gore's house be drawing abnormally high amounts of electricity... hydroponics, maybe?

Posted by lampwick | July 4, 2008 10:14 AM

Wanted to get your thoughts on this idea:

So it seems to me, the major problem with high gas prices is that they came upon so many unexpectedly, leaving them with no adequate alternatives in the short run. These people want lower gas prices now. However, lower gas prices now will merely delay the pain of transitioning away from fossil fuels (if one believes that to be inevitable, like I do).

From the environmentalists, "energy independence" point of view, higher gas prices are a good thing to the extent that they induce changes in gas consumer behavior. However, in the market now, much of the surplus is captured by oil companies and the petro-states of the world. So economists, environmentalists, and national security types all think that an increased gas tax would serve the dual function of pricing these externalities (carbon, political costs) into the cost of gas and keeping that money at home. But we all know that Washington, D.C. could never pass an increased gas tax due to the political consequences.

So here is how it could be done to make everyone happy:

Lower the price of gas immediately to say $3.00 a gallon using government subsidies. Then set a schedule of price increases every 6 mos for the next 5 years. Say $0.50 per 6 months. So say you started in September 08:

9/08: $3.00
3/09: $3.50
9/09: $4.00
10/10: $4.50
...
9/13: $8.00

The benefits of this plan are too many to mention, but the main ones would be: a floor in the gas price that would greatly spur investment in alternative energy and reduce transition costs associated with moving away from an oil based economy (for instance, by allowing local governments to get support for mass transit investments, encouraging energy efficient consumer decisions that can't be made in the short run).

The increased government spending to initially subsidize the price of gas would be offset by the subsequent revenue increase from higher gas taxes. One idea to mitigate the regressiveness of gas taxes would be to put any net revenue from this plan directly in to the Earned Income Tax Credit plan.

Is this too simple, or could this really work? (Of course the numbers are pliable.)

Posted by leftist libertarian economist | July 4, 2008 10:58 AM

LLE,

The first thing I would do is arrange to buy all the gas I need for the next 10 years and store it (I am guaranteed a profit). I am sure there are others with even larger scales of operation that would buy now and sell later on the black markets (might even consider that one myself).

However, your idea falls prey to the restriction you mentioned right up front- people hate paying more for gasoline. They want cheaper gasoline today, they will want cheaper gasoline in 2013- especially when you have priced it at $8.00/gallon.

One improvement you need to make in your proposal is that all of the net revenue from the tax/subsidy needs to be returned, at a minimum, to the taxpayers on an equal basis. Personally, I would do this on a per capita basis to the citizens and legal residents of the US. Attempting to use it for tax progression makes the entire idea even more politically impossible.

Posted by Yancey Ward | July 4, 2008 11:36 AM

If I were Megan, I'd try to interview someone with a hands-on knowledge of the energy industry. There's this city in Texas called Houston that's chock-full of folks like that.

I've heard several high-level energy executives speak on this topic -- including some who are directly involved in non-food biofuels -- and they all make the same point:

Wind, solar, hydrogen, etc. are all valuable and all should be pursued with vigor. But they all have drawbacks ... including the biggest issue of all, scale.

The energy industry is huge, beyond the comprehension of most pundits. New forms of energy are beneficial but the expense and time needed to scale up to meaningful volumes are giant hurdles.

Look how long it has taken for the hybrid engine to become mainstream, and yet hybrid cars still represent just a tiny slice of the market (it takes about 18 years for the nation's automobile fleet to turn over).

In the meantime, companies have to be willing to invest billions of dollars to build infrastructure, and consumers have to be willing to pay a premium for the product.

Every energy exec I've ever talked to says that we need every form of available energy possible -- plus conservation and improved efficiency -- to solve this problem. But there are no magic bullets, at least not yet. Some of this technology is decades away from being commercially viable.

Posted by poolside | July 4, 2008 11:41 AM

It's interesting, no it's amusing, that Friedman would cite China. Does he have any idea how polluted it is? Aren't they now the number one Global Warming villain?

We can't do what they do. I believe AGW is a hoax, but I'm not lobbying for polluted air and water.

Posted by MarkD | July 4, 2008 12:27 PM

MarkD,

Friedman makes the same assumption people like him always do: the dictator will favor MY policies, the obviously right ones, and no no more.

Posted by Skullberg | July 4, 2008 1:21 PM

Having the government pick winners is a feature, not a bug.

In the Manhattan Project there were at least 2 strategies which would produce a bomb (the plutonium track, and the uranium gas-diffusion track). They didn't know which would work, so they pursued both.

The result was extraordinary cost (I believe 1% of US electric power consumption at the time was Oak Ridges) and 'waste'.

The result was 3 working bombs using 2 different technologies.

Science, and especially applied science is like that-- you don't know what works until you get to the end, until you are standing at White Sands watching the mushroom cloud.

On Wind, the Danish government obsessively pursued wind power, until there was wind power at a competitive price with fossil fuels. (California did something similar at the time, but abandoned it).

If we are to achieve feasible carbon sequestration, there are at least 3 main choices (IGCC- Intermediate Gas Combined Cycle (pre combustion gasification and capture); post combusion amine capture; and oxy-fuel combustion). The US government has already funded the first carbon capture and storage facility (a coal gasification plant built in the Dakotas, which now injects CO2 into an oilfield in Weyburn Saskatchewan).

We don't know which will work. Someone (the government) is going to have to fund all 3 tracks, simultaneously, and drive each technology to commercial status.

The same is true over the 3rd Generation nuclear reactors.

And the amazing success of solar power: solar cells will, by 2012, probably reach the same retail price of power as grid delivered power. *that* is the consequence of the German (and Spanish) 'feed in' tariffs driving demand, and hence economies of scale.

Most of these technologies will be dead ends, most will fail commercially. But out there, somewhere, are the right answers. We can't just wait around for Wall Street to decide to invent them.

The Erie Canal, of course, encountered similar objections from the 'free marketeers' of the early 19th century who opposed an expansion of the role of government. Yet it was critical to opening up the West to settlement.

It takes big money to create technological options, and lots of 'waste' and 'duplication'. Government does that well, by being motivated by the end goal, rather than by short term financial considerations.

Posted by Valuethinker | July 4, 2008 1:35 PM

poolside

The great advantage of wind is that it does scale, massively.

In fact much better than say nuclear or coal, which have huge minimum sizes to generate any power at all. Plus all the supply chain issues of getting coal to the plant in all weathers, let alone the complex nuclear fuel and waste disposal cycle.

Solar will, in its time, also scale massively. We will come to see a roof as an opportunity for a solar panel, rather than as a way of keeping the rain out (we'll use low efficiency thin-film technologies, which will make solar roof tiles not a lot more expensive than conventional ones).

Similarly that gas boiler in the back of your kitchen will, in time, generate electricity as well as heat water.

I agree the scale of the necessary transition is titanic, but that's because of the amount of pre-existing plant and capital that exists.

Posted by Valuethinker | July 4, 2008 1:42 PM

... it's already been done. try Geothermal Heat Pumps ...

Had one. The maintenance cost more than a conventional heat pump. Then, the underground pipes leaked and had to be replaced. That event wiped out all the energy savings and more.

Posted by RJ | July 4, 2008 3:04 PM

The firearms industry illustrates your point nicely.

Early 1960s: mail order houses are importing surplus military rifles, which can easily be converted into decent hunting rifles, and selling them nationwide for $15-40 each. Domestic sporting rifles are priced at about $100, and the domestic industry is getting killed.
The manufacturers began to push for what became the Gun Control Act of 1968 (I have the documentation and have written it up in a law rev. article). This (1) forbade import of military surplus (a ban relaxed in the 1990s); (2) required a person (other than a licensed dealer) to purchase only from persons and dealers in their own state, wiping out the mail order houses; (3) required a person wishing to transfer to a resident of another state to go thru a licensed dealer (relaxed as to rifles and shotguns in 1986). Basically, guns were to be traded thru the manufacturers' distribution system and not otherwise.

1990s: but at least dealer licenses were easy and cheap to get (the original idea being that the dealer had to keep detailed records of all sales, a nondealer didn't, so why not let lots of people become dealers?). Many folks took one out just so they could buy for themselves and their friends. The National Assn of Stocking Gun Dealers, I believe it is called, backed pushes to get rid of the "kitchen table dealers." Dealer's licenses were made subject to a number of restrictions that drove about 2/3 of licensees out of business -- you had to be in an area zoned for business, have various security measures, etc., and license fees were increased.

Along the way, many mfrs supported assault weapons bans. Their guns weren't included in the ban. You could have two firearms firing the same cartridge at the same rate of fire, same weight and size ... and yours was OK, the other guy's was illegal. A perfect setup.

Posted by Dave Hardy | July 4, 2008 3:30 PM

Big business loves barriers to entry to limit competition. It's a form of rent seeking when a business seeks regulation that benefit it or handicap competitors.

On a related note, we should be getting the government to regulate less not more. The government has its fingers in regulating (and worse subsidizing) so many industries it is idiotic not to expect people will want to spend money seeking to influence the regulators. People who rail against lobbyists while pushing more regulations are the opposite numbers of people who cry about $140 but won't let you drill for more.

Posted by frege | July 4, 2008 3:42 PM

The great advantage of wind is that it does scale, massively.

The problem with wind turbines always has been that their output varies so much that it must be supplemented with inefficient peak power generators. The Danes have reduced their carbon emissions largely by importing power from neighboring countries, much like California does with neighboring states.

Windmills are basically built so yuppie tree-huggers can feel good.

Posted by maguro | July 4, 2008 3:52 PM

People forget but not just the Manhattan Project was military (rather than govt bureaucrat).

The Apollo program in its day was also led a by a military man. NASA was under the gun with the end of the decade (re: Kennedy's vow) and an *Air Force* general was borrowed to lead the progam and get $hit done. Since then its been bureaucrats and politicla appointees.

Re: Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer was the lead scientist but Gen. Leslie Groves was the organizer.

Re: Apollo -- Major General Samuel C. Phillips, Apollo Program Director

The military is about the only arm of governemtn that can get big things done successfully and relatively quickly.

So be very, very afraid when politicians cite those projects as evidence the gov't "can do anything if we just put our minds to it".

Posted by newscaper | July 4, 2008 4:30 PM

"On Wind, the Danish government obsessively pursued wind power, until there was wind power at a competitive price with fossil fuels. (California did something similar at the time, but abandoned it)."

Why didn't CA use the Danes "efficient" method? Surely, call me skeptical (but don't call me Shirley).

"If we are to achieve feasible carbon sequestration, there are at least 3 main choices (IGCC- Intermediate Gas Combined Cycle (pre combustion gasification and capture); post combusion amine capture; and oxy-fuel combustion). The US government has already funded the first carbon capture and storage facility (a coal gasification plant built in the Dakotas, which now injects CO2 into an oilfield in Weyburn Saskatchewan)."

And, what benefit does carbon sequestering give? You want the government to spend more like that?

Oh, yeah, AGW, sorry I forgot. I forgot that the temperature of earth varied before man by natural processes, and now it only varies because of man- released CO2. I'm so stupid.

--------

Posted by mockmook | July 4, 2008 4:59 PM