Thank You to the "50 Fray" Discussion Group

Thank you to the "50 Fray" Discussion Group for a great meeting tonight in Arden Hills, Minnesota.  This State Senate District 50 organization was kind enough to invite me as part of their program this evening.  I had a great time discussion state energy policy!

Time for Sackcloth and Ashes

The world's elite are once again gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum.  David Ignatius of the Washington Post reports that this year they are wondering how it all went wrong.

"The anger begins to boil.  Rage against the elites is a global phenomenon these days--as powerful in America as it is in Egypt.  People resent a system that offers increasing returns to power and privilege, and they take to the streets in protest."

Just wondering though, it is not as if they are going to change anything.  Don't look for sackcloth and ashes as the new fashion statement at the next global confab.  Last time I checked, hairshirts were not on offer next to the fluffy bathrobes in the Four Seasons' gift shop.

There is concept called a Bonfire of the Vanities.  It has nothing to do with the (good) book or (terrible) movie of the same name.  It is a ritual burning of objects that are symbolic of the temptations to sin.

Perhaps the Davos crowd could burn their membership cards to the elite airport lounges and their copies of The World is Flat.

In his weekly syndicated column, Mark Steyn suggested an alternative to the State of the Union address address for this year,

"The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter.  Thank you and goodnight!  You've been a terrific crowd!"

If only the final communique from Davos was as forthright.  We don't get brutal honesty from our elites these days (or any days).  Just more green jobs silliness, more Eurozone bailouts, and more tax hikes.

If our elites expect to continue to enjoy the high pay, prestige and limitless perks they have come to expect, then they had better start performing miracles.

The European Crisis

Perhaps an unlikely candidate for the "undernews" category, the ongoing European financial crisis has not gotten, in my opinion, nearly as much attention in the media as the gravity of the situation would warrant.  Today, Walter Russell Mead writes about how the Germans may finally decide to stop subsidizing the rest of Europe through these serial bailouts.  Today's UK Guardian reports on how the crisis is producing another "lost generation" in Europe, as young adults are unable to begin careers.

Meanwhile, Fitch Ratings cut the credit ratings of five European countries, including Spain and Italy.  My advice is to follow this story carefully.

No Need to Panic

Sixteen scientists take to the Wall Street Journal's Opinion page today to reassure everyone "No Need to Panic About Global Warming."

Trading Land for Energy

Today's Minneapolis Star Tribune carries a story today in the business section on a new 2 megawatt solar farm to be built near the wind-rich zone in the far southwestern corner of Minnesota.

The Star Tribune's pitch seems to be that the intermittent nature of solar power will compliment the intermittnent nature of wind power.  So on cloudy and windy days and nights we will get the wind power, and on sunny and calm days, we will have the solar power.  Left unsaid is what happens on cloudy and calm days and nights, when we have doubled down on power sources that produce no energy or on sunny and windy days when the double output would overwhelm the local transmission infrastructure.

My concern is more with the land use.  Unreported in the article is what the 13 acres needed for the solar project are doing today.  Are the 13 acres currently productive farmland or ranchland?  Or just marginal scrubland?

Two megawatts sounds like a lot, but it only equals about one standard-sized large wind turbine.  The wind turbine would have a ground footprint of just a half acre, 1/26th the amount of land used by the solar farm.

Large-scale solar energy is usually placed on a flat roof of a commercial or industrial building, using largely non-productive space.  A few projects have been developed in parking lots, where sun and rain covers for the automobiles double as platforms for the solar power.

In an earlier life, I helped develop a 50 megawatt natural gas-fueled power plant, that (coincidentally) covered 13 acres of land, reclaimed from a former sugar processing plant.

In addition to being a land hog, the project requires $2 million of direct subsidies from Xcel electric ratepayers and more money in indirect subsidies from ratepayers for the still above-market-price electricity.

The problems with solar, then, are two-fold:  too costly and too land-intensive.  Energy author Robert Bryce has been pointing out these drawback for years, yet we need to relearn these lessons day-by-day and project-by-project.

The Future of Liberalism and our National Discourse

At his magazine, the American Interest, Walter Russell Mead discusses the future of liberalism.  Mead makes a point that I have been contemplating for a long while,

"The gaps between the social system we inhabit and the one we now need are becoming so wide that we can no longer paper over them.  But even as the failures of the old system become more inescapable and more damaging, our national discourse remains stuck in a bygone age. The end is here, but we can’t quite take it in."

Read the whole thing.

Redesigning Government: More Local Flexibility

Minnesota Public Radio reports that groups representing local governments and schools are asking the State of Minnesota for more flexibility.  MPR says,

"The three main organizations that represent local governments in the state released a report today that health and human services, education, transportation, public safety and government operations and boundaries all can improve if state leaders take a number of steps to let local leaders do more to collaborate and come up with innovations."

Race to the Bottom

The editors of the Chicago Tribune (!) explain why Illinois has the nation's lowest credit rating.  They name names, too.

The Great Minnesota Pension Scam

Over on his blog, Walter Russell Mead discusses our home-grown pension scandal.

The New American Divide

The American Enterprise Institute's Charles Murray has a large and important piece in this weekend's Wall Street Journal on the new class divide in America.  It is well worth your reading time.

Murray is rebuilding from the bottom up, "One family at a time."

What Happened to 'Women and Children First'?

Mark Steyn explains in his weekly syndicated column.

Joel Kotkin Sees Some Hope for the Future

Over at New Geography, Joel writes that recovery could be at hand, if we only let it.  What we need is a new "American Style Strategy,"

"So this is where we now sit.  With all the essential elements for a strong, sustained recovery place, the big question is whether we will find political leaders capable of tapping this country’s phenomenal potential."

Rebuilding from the bottom up...one library at a time.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press updates us on the efforts of three East Metro communities rallying to keep their neighborhood libraries open in the face of County budget cuts.

Washington County, located in the eastern suburbs of the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, recently decided to close the county's three smallest local libraries to help balance the county budget.

The City of Lake Elmo chose to set up their own independent library.  Newport and Marine-on-St.-Croix chose to staff the existing libraries with volunteers.

All three great examples of local communities pulling together to preserve local institutions.

Niall Ferguson on the Class Divide

Writing at Newsweek, columnist and historian Niall Ferguson discusses the class divide and what to do about it.  Some suggested solutions,

"Scrap the failing welfare programs of the ’30s and ’60s before they bankrupt America.  Ensure that everyone has a basic income.  Then simplify the tax code to restore the incentives that used to exist for everyone to work hard.  Finally, end the state monopolies in public education to launch a new era of school choice and competition."

The European Crack-up

Theodore Dalrymple writes about the breakup of the European Union over at City Journal.

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up: Buffalo, NY

The Manhattan Institute's Steven Malanga has a piece in the Saturday Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition on the re-development tribulations of the rust belt city of Buffalo, New York.

[On a personal note, I believe that the dying Great Lakes port cities, including Buffalo, are great candidates for a modern version of the medieval-era Hanseatic free trade league.]

Malanga examines the root causes of Buffalo's decline and explains why wave after wave of stimulus spending and other top down approaches to revitalization have failed.

Key passage,

"Back in 2004, the Buffalo News estimated that the city had garnered more federal redevelopment aid per capita than any other city in the country, a total of more than half a billion dollars since the 1970s.  Yet, the paper noted, the city had virtually nothing to show for the money."

Also instructive was the city's experience with light rail, after banning cars the city has returned to...allowing cars.  Malanga writes,

"Opened in 1985 and anchored by a transit mall that banned cars, the rail line fell well below ridership projections—and downtown businesses suffered mightily from the lack of traffic.  As Buffalo landlord Stephen P. Fitzmaurice wrote in 2009: 'Walk down Main Street on the transit mall; aside from a few necessities like drug and cell phone stores, blight dominates.'  Last month the city received a $15 million federal grant to restore traffic to Main Street."

But in the end, it was good-old-fashioned high taxes and wasteful spending that brought Buffalo to its knees.

Will We Ever Reach 8 Billion?

An interesting take on world demography from New Geography.  Shorter version:  since WWII, the world population has been growing.  As growth turns to population decline, much will change.

Let There Be Light, Part 2

This opinion piece, in last Sunday's New York Times ("Return to a Darker Age"), touches on some of the same themes of my post on the non-problem of light pollution.  Written by a Virginia Tech history professor, he makes the following points,
"artificial illumination has arguably been the greatest symbol of modern progress...So it is all the more remarkable that, in what appears to be a spreading trend, dozens of cities and towns across America— from California and Oregon to Maine—are contemplating significantly reducing the number of street lamps to lower their hefty electric bills."

In the neighborhood where I grew up, our house sat on at an intersection of two streets.  Our family got together with the neighbors on the other three sides to split the cost of a dusk-to-dawn streetlight, which was hung on an already standing wooden electric distribution pole.  We split the monthly cost 4-ways.

Of course anyone coming through the intersection (cars, bicycles, pedestrians) at night benefited from the free safety and convenience our light provided.  Perhaps neighbors in these communities will get together to do something similar. 

Street lighting is such a basic public good that neighbors (such as mine) would spontaneously assemble to arrange such a service.  Curious, then, that a city's first reaction to tough budget times would be to cut lighting.

Our good professor makes a further point as to the ominousness of this trend,

"Indeed, efforts to eliminate street lighting represent a rare instance in modern history in which a technology of longstanding benefit has been restricted, if not completely discarded."    

The Secret of Our Success?

As Arthur Brooks reports, the answer turns out to be freedom.

Transit Doesn't Save Energy

You read that correctly:  mass transit does not save energy.  [Pause to allow the heads to explode.]

From whom did I acquire this heretical knowledge?  Surprisingly, it was Barack Obama's U.S. Department of Energy.  Each year the department publishes its Transportation Energy Data Book, a must-have for every well-stocked personal library.  The 30th Edition was published in June 2011 and Table 2-13 makes for interesting reading.

In 2009 (latest data available) the average amount of energy it took (in British Thermal Units (BTUs) to move a single passenger one mile in an automobile was 3,538.  A city bus took an average of 4,242 to move a single passenger for one mile.

Although it may sound counter-intuitive, it really isn't.  When driving alone, I use 25 percent of my (four-seat) automobile's passenger carrying capacity.  Next time you are out-and-about around 9 p.m., look to see how crowded the city busses are:  are they using 5%? 10% of the capacity.  Bus transit fares so poorly because so many busses are driving around with empty seats.  [Note: I prefer the old spelling of the plural.]

The comparison did not always appear so favorable to the car.  As late as 1990, the advantage was with the bus.  But as cars have gotten more fuel efficient (and the bus has not) automobiles are the more energy efficient transportation mode.

The Cato Institutes's Randal O'Toole (The Antiplanner), has run the numbers in more depth, and developed figures for individual cities.  Randal concludes that our fair metropolis of Minneapolis-St. Paul actually runs its transit system (including rail) at a slight advantage to the automobile, with an average energy requirement of 3,333 BTU per passenger mile.  Of course, this 6 percent advantage over the car is purchased with untold millions in operating subsidies from local, state, and federal taxpayers, and billions of dollars in duplicative infrastructure.  With automobile efficiency growing each year, it's not clear how long the transit advantage will last in Minnesota.

As Randal points out, we would be better off, not with more transit, but getting more people into hybrids and other high efficiency automobiles (Prius, 1,700 BTU/passenger mile).

Since much of the recent rationalization for transit "investment" centers on its potential to solve every problem from dependence on foreign oil to global warming, it is past time for a rethink.  Like so much else in that agenda, it falls apart in the face of mathematics.

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up

In Cottage Grove, Minnesota.

Lileks on the Suburbs

Glenn Reynolds, the InstaPundit, reprints a passage written ten years ago by Minnesota's-own James Lileks on life in the suburbs.  It was true then and it is still true today,

"Everyone I know who lives in the suburbs loves where they live.  That's why they live there.  The government did not put a gun to people's heads and demand that they pack up, head out on these new-fangled freeways and get out of Dodge.  If people leave a city, there's a reason, and it behooves the city to find out what it was.  Bad schools; small lots; taxes; crime; stupid civic leaders more interested in patronage and extortion than governing - that's why people leave.  And they're not going to come back because a light-rail line passes 15 blocks from their house.  They're certainly not going to be impressed by urban theorists who want them to walk to the corner store every day and schlep home the groceries instead of driving to a big store and buying a week's worth of foodstuffs.  I did that for four years.  I dreamed of a day when I could buy those big 24-roll packs of toilet paper instead buying a single roll every other day because I also had to carry beer, meat and milk."

David Brooks on the Missing Liberals

New York Times Columnist David Brooks follows up on George Will's column with his take "Where Are the Liberals?"

Key Mancur Olson sentence,

"Why don’t Americans trust their government?  It’s not because they dislike individual programs like Medicare.  It’s more likely because they think the whole system is rigged.  Or to put it in the economists’ language, they believe the government has been captured by rent-seekers.  This is the disease that corrodes government at all times and in all places.  As George F. Will wrote in a column in Sunday’s Washington Post, as government grows, interest groups accumulate, seeking to capture its power and money."

Government: The redistributionist behemoth

Catching up from the weekend:  George Will's column channels the late economist Mancur Olson.  The frenzy and the futility.

EPA Green Book, Part 3

[In this series I examine in depth the Green Book Sustainability and the U.S. EPA, commissioned by the EPA from a committee of the National Academy of Sciences.]

If you, Dear Reader, undertake any part of the Green Book itself, you should, of course, read the Summary.  In six pages it helpfully explains, in fairly clear bureaucrat/scientist language, what the book is about and what role the Academy urges for "sustainability" at the EPA.

The Academy claims that the exercise was not to "address laws pertaining to the EPA" (p. 3).  However, the next sentence reads as follows,

"The committee did, however, examine the benefits, where EPA has statutory and discretion in regulatory and nonregulatory programs, of building sustainability into its administration of these statutes."

But, please, you are not supposed to misinterpret that clear sentence as any sort of "power grab." 

"Sustainability," you see, "is our true north," as the Green Book quotes an agency official.  The committee merely wishes to help EPA "institutionalize sustainability" (p. 2).

You may be tempted to think of "sustainability" as ensuring that future human generations have a quality environment to sustain life.  Or, perhaps, you just associate the idea with the fight against global warming.  It is so much broader than that, according to the committee (p. 2), as it will help tackle "the complex problems,"

"including population growth, the widening gaps between the rich and the poor, depletion of finite natural resources, biodiversity loss, climate change, and the disruption of nutrient cycles."

Keep in mind that--although the word "sustainable" does appear in EPA's mission statement--the words "population," "rich," and "poor" do not.

The Academy urges the EPA to engage with a wide range of stakeholders (p. 5) including the following,

"state regulators, local officials, industry, academia, community and advocacy groups, and the international community."  Voters, citizens, Congress, (or any elected official), business, and the media, need not apply. 

EPA's Green Book, Part 2

[In part 2 of this series, I review the beginning of Sustainability and the U.S. EPA, a book written by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences for the EPA.  In this "Green Book" the Academy makes the case that the EPA has the authority to regulate any and all activity, in the name of achieving "sustainability."]

The Green Book includes two Minnesota connections:  the Committee credited with writing the book includes Dr. Stephan Polasky of the University of Minnesota and the Committee thanks Deborah Swackhamer of the U for making a presentation to the committee.

The preface to the Green Book covers about a page and a half (pages vii and viii).  In the preface's first paragraph alone, the authors use the word "sustainability" nine times without bothering to define the word anywhere in the preface.  Since the Academy is urging that most human activity be regulated by the EPA using this single word, it would help us to know what the authors mean by it.

The EPA itself provides little help.  On its website, the Agency defines "sustainability" as follows,

"Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations. Sustainability is important to making sure that we have and will continue to have, the water, materials, and resources to protect human health and our environment."

This feel-good vagueness is of little help in understanding whether the Agency will allow you to build a shopping center or drill for natural gas.

Let There Be Light

This Sunday's Minneapolis Star Tribune devotes the bulk of the first page of the Opinion section to a piece by one Peter Leschak decrying widespread "light pollution:"  city lights obscuring the night sky.  The piece is mostly a tribute to the majesty of the stars and constellations, but it also calls for all kinds of new regulations on security lighting, etc.
Now I could regale you, Dear Reader, with my own tale of epiphany:  the night sky, the possibility of the infinite revealed in the Big Dipper.  Except my story takes place at the crest of the Blue Ridge rather than Montana's Big Sky country.  No matter.

We've all seen the famous night-time satellite photo of the Korean peninsula,

showing the well-lit, prosperous cities of first-world South Korea (GDP Rank:  No. 12) and the almost completely dark Hermit Kingdom of North Korea (GDP Rank:  No. 96).  Since the invention of civilization, night light and prosperity have gone hand in hand ("Bright Lights, Big City").

Keshak proposes some familiar solutions to the "night pollution problem."  "Switch off the useless lights," "phase out conventional lamps in favor of LEDs," intall a "motion detector."  It's always the same set of solutions in search of a problem.

Online commenters on the piece point out the role street lighting plays in enabling the pedestrian and bicycle traffic encouraged by this same agenda.  It's not just that the light is needed for crime prevention, but for basic navigation on long winter nights.

The same people who call for these sort of solutions are the same people supporting the trial lawyers' efforts to sue you into oblivion if someone were to come to harm on or near your property, which lacked the proper eyeball-searing security lighting. 

But don't worry, the streetlights will be gone soon enough.  Last fall, the Detroit enclave of Highland Park lost its streetlights when it was unable to pay a $4 million bill to the local utility.  At the rate our nation's financial problems keep piling up, lights will be going off all over place.

In the meantime, let's not add to the list of our problems.

Joel Kotkin on the New Authoritarianism

Joel writes on Obama's latest power grab over at the City Journal.

Whatever happend to liberal compassion?

Mark Steyn asks the question in his weekly syndicated column.

Bicycles on Snelling Avenue?

Finance and Commerce reports on plans to study the construction of a bike path on busy Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Now designated as State Highway 51 and a Truck Route, the road is scheduled for a $2 million resurfacing project this spring.

"Complete Streets" advocates want the state to install bike lines as part of the process.  The F&C article declares, without support or attribution, that the “Complete Streets” philosophy is "increasingly popular."  We'll see how popular the philosophy becomes once speeds are reduced, street parking disappears, and trucks begin navigating 10-foot-wide lanes.

Get ready, Central Avenue in Minneapolis and Highway 96 in White Bear Lake are next.

Why is Europe Going Broke?

From the New York Times Sunday Magazine of all places.

Via Instapundit.

The Post-Modern Lawmaker and California's "Useless Laws"

From time to time I have written about the seemingly innocuous, but actually dangerous, practice of "post-modern" lawmaking.  European parliamentarian Daniel Hannan defines the practice as when a legislature passes laws where,

"the real purpose of such initiatives is to make the law-makers feel good about themselves.  Europe has reached a form of post-modern law-making, in which legal acts are designed to indicate disapproval rather than to produce effect."

California Governor Jerry Brown has let everyone in on this dirty little secret:  he signs many bills because of (not in spite of) their uselessness.  As quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Governor Brown admits,

"Just because a bill is useless doesn't mean I should veto it, because there's a certain comity required.  That's the word, comity, between the two branches," Brown said, adding later, "It's a bit discouraging sometimes to be a legislator and all you have is a few bills."

One would hope that at this point in the history of the Republic, the California State Legislature would function as more than a self-esteem factory for discouraged pols.  But as Hannan points out, there is real danger to this exercise in feel-good lawmaking,

"The trouble is that declaratory, aspirational laws are likelier to have unintended consequences than laws passed in order to remedy specific problems."

For those of you keeping score, the Chronicle reported on New Year's eve,

"A total of 745 were passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor this year and when lawmakers return next week for a new session, the lawmaking will continue."

Could it have anything to do with this Tuesday headline from an Investors Business Daily editorial, "The Great Golden State Business Exodus"?  IBD's editors write,

"California's in trouble.  Businesses are leaving along with intellectual and investment capital and skilled workers.  But rather than face up to serious problems, legislators pass silly laws.  One would think that given the serious nature of the state's problems, the legislature would focus on solutions at the exclusion of all else. Instead, lawmakers—what would we ever do without them?—found the time in 2011 to trespass even deeper into Californians' personal lives."

IBD puts the 2011 total at 761 new laws, but who's counting.

More Brown Jobs

The Wall Street Journal's editors write of the growth in "brown" jobs associated with the booming shale oil and gas industry (subscription retired).

Sustainability and the U.S. EPA, Part 1

In this new year, I will be starting a new series on this site, posting about this book, Sustainability and the U.S. EPA.  Because the printed version has a green cover, it is known informally as the the "EPA Green Book."

Published last year (2011) by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, it promises to lay the foundation for a complete reworking of the EPA's mission by placing "sustainability" at the center of everything the agency does.

Stay tuned...

Undernews: Walter Russell Mead on Today's Media

Starting off the new year, Walter Russell Mead dissects everything that's wrong with today's media.

George Will on the "Specter of Abundance"

In the Washington Post.