The Gas Tax - low hanging fruit for climate change action

This weekend the NYT has a duet of opinion pieces about climate change, the Saturday Editorial page and Friedman’s Op-Ed, both on the subject of the gasoline tax. Given the recent drop in gas prices levels, and the collective inefficiency of vehicles in the US, an increase in the gasoline tax seems the single most effective step we can take now towards reducing our emissions.

On BMG a few weeks ago, a fellow cape codder (PP) mentioned that he’s not sure he believes in climate change. That took a little bite out of my faith in humanity, or more realistically, made me start thinking seriously about scientists’ continuing difficulty in getting the message across. So since a picture is worth a thousand words: from the 2007 IPCC report:


Here's a figure about the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and projections under different CO2 reduction scenarios (from Pacala et al 2004):


When I give talks to school classrooms, I do a little class participation exercise that goes like this: atmospheric CO2 was ~280 ppm (parts-per-million) prior to the industrial revolution a few centuries ago. It is now ~384 ppm. What do they think it should be for a sustainable level? They usually give me numbers in the 250-300 range. Then I show this figure, and point out that we’re running higher than the black line, business-as-usual (worst case scenario). Given the inertia of trying to move away from fossil fuels, CO2 is likely to double pre-industrial levels to 450-500ppm within their lifetimes with significant efforts. If we continue to do nothing it could very well reach as high as 700 ppm. This exercise seems to work well to get the message across.

Back to the NYT Op-Eds: There’s been a lot of dumping lately on the big three US automakers for not producing fuel efficient cars. But that’s revisionist history, over the last few decades Americans have been wanting those bigger SUVs creating the demand. We, the American consumers, are the other dancing partner in our gluttonous use of fossil fuels for transportation. The big three have been happy to oblige – SUVs have a big profit margin. Plus even Toyota has been in the big vehicle game. Sure they developed the Prius and some great hybrid technology, but they hedged their bets with the popular Tundra truck. There is simply no other policy action that would be as effective in reducing US fossil fuel emissions in the near future as increasing the gasoline tax. And it should be revenue neutral, using those funds to reduce income taxes to build popular support. From the NYT Editorial:

Americans did not buy enormous gas guzzlers just because Detroit marketed them relentlessly. They bought them because they wanted big cars — and because gas was cheap. If gas stays cheap, Americans would be less inclined to squeeze their families into a lithe fuel-efficient alternative.
Furthermore, even if the government managed to convert General Motors, Chrysler and Ford to the cause of energy efficiency, cheap gas could open the door for a competitor — Toyota, perhaps? — to take over the lucrative market for gas-chuggers, leaving Detroit’s automakers eating dust once again.
Americans have flirted with fuel-efficient cars before only to jilt them when gas prices fell. In the late 1970s, for instance, they spurned light trucks as gas prices doubled. But as gas prices declined between 1981 and 2005, the market share of sport-utility vehicles, pickups, vans and the like jumped from 16 percent to 61 percent of vehicle sales in the United States.

Personally I find it hard not to feel like a broken record on this subject of carbon taxes, but as a scientist I think its easy to forget that the public isn't looking at the data every day, and they're also thinking about many other important issues. Here's a great cartoon by Justin Bilicki (via the Union of Concerned Scientists ) capturing this sentiment.



And a nice quote to sum it up from Ray at NPR's Car Talk:

I'm sick of people whining about a lousy 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline! I think its time has come, and I call on all non-wussy politicians to stand with me, because our country needs us.

An increase in the Gasoline Tax is just one of the tools in the toolbox. It gets the biggest bang for effort in reducing climate change impact right now. This is just the beginning though: We're going to need many such tools to get this problem under control.

Now is the time for a Massachusetts Automobile Carbon Tax

Today’s Op-Ed column by NYT’s Friedman has an emphasis on coupling a carbon tax with the financial and now potential Detroit bailout plans. There finally is a bipartisan national sentiment that reducing our imported fossil fuel consumption is a necessary component of any plan for our Nation’s future.

With the recent decrease in fuel prices, now is the time to step up to the plate and create a plan for increasing taxes on fossils fuels. As we know, Massachusetts can play a leadership role for the nation with regards to policy on a variety of important matters (Health Care, Gay Marriage, hopefully clean energy production). This is an ideal time for our Massachusetts legislators to show their vision again. We know Obama’s campaign is committed to working on the climate change and national security issues and their direct relationship to imported fossil fuels. Massachusetts can lead the way, showing it is possible, and giving political capital to the ideas of reducing fossil fuel consumption through economic incentives.

This could start with something as simple as raising the gasoline tax in Massachusetts. Currently we are taxing at 41.9 cents per gallon, lower than most states (see map), and much lower than other progressive states such as California (67.1 cents), New York (60.9 cents), and even Detroit’s own Michigan (59.4). Friedman champions the idea of “neutral-revenue” carbon taxes, where all revenue gained is returned as income tax rebates/offsets. This is the key to carbon and gasoline taxes: make them politically palatable by making it clear that all of the increased revenue will return to the taxpayers:

Many people will tell Mr. Obama that taxing carbon or gasoline now is a “nonstarter.” Wrong. It is the only starter. It is the game-changer. If you want to know where postponing it has gotten us, visit Detroit. No carbon tax or increased gasoline tax meant that every time the price of gasoline went down to $1 or $2 a gallon, consumers went back to buying gas guzzlers. And Detroit just fed their addictions — so it never committed to a real energy-efficiency retooling of its fleet. R.I.P.
If Mr. Obama is going to oversee a successful infrastructure stimulus, then it has to include not only a tax on carbon — make it revenue-neutral and rebate it all by reducing payroll taxes — but also new standards that gradually require utilities and home builders in states that receive money to build dramatically more energy-efficient power plants, commercial buildings and homes. This, too, would create whole new industries.

More on the revenue-neutral idea: Nationally, carbon tax rebate checks could be sent out like stimulus checks (although this is perhaps a little too contrived for our new President). Alternatively, simply announce very publicly that the income tax percentage rate will be dropped by 0.4% this year (for example). This could be done in Massachusetts now. Raise the gas tax 25 cents this year (for example), and another 25 cents every year for four years (to start). This creates an immediate long-term incentive for consumers to continue buying efficient cars the next time the need one, phasing it in with a time-scale similar to the long life cycles of automobiles. With gas prices having dropped below $2 in Massachusetts, now is the time to create take action: citizens have certainly noticed the amazingly high prices of $4 a gallon, so 25 cents on $2 gasoline doesn’t seem unreasonable, especially if it offsets income taxes. The offsetting the income taxes part is important: those who buy efficient vehicles or drive less will save more because the reduction in income taxes is uniform – hence those using less than the average will be rewarded. It’s just like that economists’ saying: tax what you don’t want (fossil fuel consumption) not what you want (income!).

Legislators should resist the urge to use this as a revenue builder. Keep it separate from our current state gasoline tax, so this revenue-neutral part is obvious. The political capital is here now for this. If it’s done right (through the revenue-neutral idea), it will have bipartisan support. Our Govenor Deval Patrick commented on this on his live-blogging last summer:

Danny wrote about the gas tax. I am not hostile to the gas tax, but it's not my first choice. But I think we owe the public every attempt and strategy to get savings and efficiencies out of the systems before we go out asking for broad-based tax increases. I also question whether the gas tax will produce the level of new revenues that have been projected, when we are at the same time pursuing strategies to reduce emissions and gain fuel efficiencies.

He’s clearly sensitive to the political difficulties of “broad-based tax increases”. But this is where the need for the revenue-neutral idea should be paired with it. As Friedman, and those writing at the carbontax.org group, and others have pointed out, there has to be some economic (dis)incentives in order to decrease emissions. Compared to outlawing inefficient cars (talk about political difficulties), carbon and gasoline taxes are the most agile policy tool.

Footnotes: Diesel and heating oil are another interrelated problem. You don’t want everyone to switch to Diesel (if it is not taxed), so automobile diesel should be included. But you don’t want individual homeowners to suffer with higher heating bills unless it is coupled with a program for increased home insulation and heating efficiencies. Automobile diesel could be taxed similarly to gasoline, but home diesel distributors/sales would not be included in the short-term (first few years), until a coordinated home fuel efficiency program is implemented.

I’ve been attending the US-Ocean Carbon and Biology Workshop in Woods Hole this week (see webcast during day). Here’s some highlights and thoughts that are of general interest.

There was a report about how the rate of CO2 emissions was increasing about 4% per year from 1960-1979, decreased to 1.5% per year from the 1980’s to 1999, and in this decade (since 2000) has increased again to 4% per year. This is obviously alarming because it shows that we are not any making progress at all in reducing CO2 emissions: things are getting worse not better. Also, last year was the first year that China has equaled or replaced the US as the nation with the highest CO2 emissions (it’s close enough to be difficult to tell if it is equal to or greater than). Don’t fret though, on a per capita basis, we’re still winning the CO2 emission game by a long shot because we have a third as many people as China.

I thought it was also interesting that today in the NYT there’s also a Freakonomics blog post about “Financial literacy” where you can take a brief quiz and it talks about how a scary number of Americans get many of these questions wrong. For example Question #1 is:

1. Suppose you had $100 in a savings account and the interest rate was 2 percent per year. After 5 years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow?
a. More than $102
b. Exactly $102
c. Less than $102
d. Do not know

I think these two pieces of information make an interesting juxtaposition. Maybe the CO2 rising doesn’t seem as alarming as it should because everything else in our lives is increasing. Population, the economy, traffic, computer speed… We’re used to things increasing. And this kind of acceleration is usually considered a good thing. There's even an urban myth that compounding interest was hailed by Einstein as humanity’s greatest invention (this appear to be a made up quote). With this perspective, maybe its not so bad that CO2 goes up 4% a year, basically increasing with compounding interest like a savings account?

Yikes is all I can say. And I can’t say it sincerely enough, I think I’d have to scream it to feel like I’m doing justice to the sentiment. Elemental cycles are not mutual funds. We started at 280 ppm in the 1800's (ppm=parts per million) and we’re up to 382 this year. Most think there’s no way we can get our emissions under control before we hit 500, and we’re beating the worse case scenarios already to surpass that (see above). We’re talking about more than doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere. Elements aren’t money. They have mass, I hate to say it, but they’re real. Money used to be backed by a real gold standard, but that was done away with - there isn’t enough gold out there anymore. The giant pool of money is (usually) increasing. That’s easy, its just digits on a bunch of hard drives somewhere. Money doesn’t follow conservation of mass (which is a discussion point in and of itself). The greenhouse gas and climate change problem is almost entirely caused by taking oil or coal buried deep in the ground and burning it and putting that carbon in the air. Not only do we have to stop putting the carbon it up there, we will likely have to figure out ways to pull some out of the atmosphere as well, “sequestering it” as it is known.

Last week Al Gore laid out an ambitious plan to stop become independent of fossil fuels by 2018. It’s very ambitious considering how broad the changes will have to be throughout our society. But, it is humbling to realize the kind of action that we need to actually solve the climate change problem. Our society has a choice: Do we decide it's too hard and pick a lesser path, or do we say that’s what we have to do and figure out how to get it done.

I particularly like that Gore is trumpeting this policy approach that we've talked about [before: http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=11381]

[Gore] said the single most important policy change would be placing a carbon tax on burning oil and coal, with an accompanying reduction in payroll taxes.

cross post: bluemassgroup

Gas-Tax Holiday Roundly Rejected: "The dumbest thing I've heard in a long time".

A week ago on BMG we had a lively discussion about what is now referred to as the McCain-Clinton "Gas Tax Holiday". We preceded the pundits by a few days, as this became a major story this week. This idea was pretty much universally rejected by Economists, Democrats, and Republicans this week. The criticisms come from all angles: Environmentally this hurts our fledgling efforts at reducing fossil fuel emissions when we are already exceeding worse case scenarios for emissions; Economically the savings, an estimated $28 per family, would like not even reach consumers because prices would stay high due to demand and the oil companies would actually get those funds as a result; Politically, this is pure pandering to the voter since no one thinks the policy is a good one, nor is Congress considering or willing to consider this "Gas Tax Holiday". I list a number of links here from pundits describing this:

Mayor Bloomberg:

"It's about the dumbest thing I've heard in an awful long time, from an economic point of view," Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. "We're trying to discourage people from driving and we're trying to end our energy dependence ... and we're trying to have more money to build infrastructure."

Gail Collins: A funny and sarcastic angle on this:

All this actually tells us something about the Democratic candidates, which has nothing to do with fuel prices. Obama believes voters want a sensible, less-divisive political dialogue, that the whole process can become more honorable if the right candidate leads the way. Hillary really doesn’t buy that. She has principles, but she doesn’t believe in principled stands. She thinks that if she can get elected, she can do great things. And to get there, she’s prepared to do whatever. That certainly includes endorsing any number of meaningless-to-ridiculous ideas. (See: her bill to make it illegal to desecrate an American flag.)

Paul Krugman: A Princeton Economist and rabid Clinton supporter (one of my favorite columnists for his Iraq war stance, but now I find him rather incoherent lately) who includes the sentence that the Gas Tax Holiday is a bad idea, and has also said so on his blog. I wonder if he's hoping for a Clinton administration cabinet position. He says:

"To be clear, both Democratic candidates have been saying things they shouldn’t; Hillary Clinton shouldn’t have endorsed the bad idea of a gas tax holiday."

Thomas Friedman:

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.” Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

NYT editorial "The Gas-Guzzler Gambit" on May 1st:

Neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. McCain have explained the inconsistency in their positions. We know pandering when we see it. We also know that suspending the gas tax for the summer won’t solve this country’s energy problems or even reduce the price of gas.

Salon's Alex Koppelman:

As I've said before, Clinton deserves the hits she's taking on this issue -- I've yet to see a single expert who thinks her proposal would do Americans any good... One of the principal objections to the holiday proposal has been that because the tax is not actually collected at the pump, there's no reason to believe that the oil companies will actually pass on to consumers the full savings from the suspension of the tax.

And the NYT had an article this week about how the high gas prices are creating significantly more demand for smaller fuel efficient vehicles. In other words, the high prices are working - we're starting to get more efficient (there's a long way to go though).

Finally we have a real policy issue difference between the candidates, and one that touches on the critical problems energy policy, national security and climate change. I think the Obama campaign should be more pointed in their response to the McCain-Clinton Gas Tax Holiday. After all if there's consensus that this is a useless policy, what does it mean that McCain and Clinton are basically trying to buy voters' support for a $28 that they will most likely not even get? Isn't that more than a little bit condescending to the voters? I've lived in the Midwest, people there are not dumb, but they may feel alienated from the East and West coast (rightly so oftentimes). As the pundits have pointed out: this just a case of Washington politics trying to pander to those midwest voters, not provide meaningful policies and vision.

Pundits: It's time to step up to the plate. Ask Clinton and McCain why they are calling for a gas-tax holiday that the experts roundly criticize as a bad idea. Ask Clinton and McCain if they really think they can trick voters with this bad policy, and does that mean they are condescending to the voters by not offering real solutions to our energy and environmental problems.

willis music video

I've always joked that music inspires my science. Well I've written two blogs while waiting for this music video to be processed in various ways tonight. Here it is: Penguin Fight Song



willis is our rock band. Apparently, we write deep songs about penguins. Bono eat your heart out.

Open Access in Environmental and Earth Sciences

A simple question: If you wanted to see the scientific papers on the state of Global Warming, or the cutting-edge papers directly addressing how society should respond (note: I can't believe this paper isn't open access, try it, follow the link), couldn't you just google scholar them and read them? Without a University or individual subscription, the answer is shockingly: no.

There is a movement afoot called the "Open Access" movement to allow the scientific literature to be accessible to anyone without subscription fees. The notion is simple: research is most often typically paid for by the tax dollars of nations of the world. That research should be freely available to the citizens who paid for it. Instead, much of that research is written in scholarly manuscripts published by private publishers who own the copyright (Note: the publishers own the copyright, not the authors) and is sold on a subscription basis to scientific libraries and interested individuals.

All that seems fine at first glance, and has largely been the business model for many decades. However, what about the parents of a sick child who want to examine the research papers themselves? Should they have to pay $30 for every article to a private (for profit) publisher? You can see the problem. This has been exacerbated by the increasing availability of the internet: many journals are becoming electronic only, or combination electronic/paper delivery. The electronic component is leased annually as long as subscription dues are paid. Unsubscribe, and the library typically loses electronic access to all the years it was a subscriber.

There's been a real tussle over this, and the Open Access movement has risen similar to the open source movement in computing (e.g. Linux), but with differences too, in particular, real editorial costs associated with publishing a scientific journal that make up the fixed costs that need to be considered. Public Library of Science (PLOS.org) is the flagship of this movement.

Earth sciences has lagged behind considerably. Our most exciting papers most often come out in Nature or Science (both are not open access, the former is For-Profit), and most of our smaller specialized journals are either Elsevier (for profit company that owns much of the scientific literature), or by the American Geophysical Union that has not adopted open access. There is Biogeosciences that has real open access, and Limnology and Oceanography, my favorite journal by far, that has pay-extra open access as an option.

The debate is starting to come to Earth and Ocean sciences. Pete Jumars, former editor of Limnology and Oceanography, wrote a truly excellent Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin piece about this recently. And interestingly, he seemed to be interacting with bloggers about it in the years before likely while formulating ideas. He seems to have come around in the intervening years between writing bloggers and writing his article. But many of my colleagues express reservations about open access, arguing that if the costs are moved to the author (e.g. $2500 author charges to publish in PLOS) then only researchers at major Universities with research grants will be able to publish (and similarly creating a problem for colleagues in third world nations). It is true the economics of open access are fundamentally different and challenging.

Yet, no matter how you view it public access to tax-dollar funded scientific research is clearly the right thing to do. Do we avoid doing something that is right because it is different and challenging? No. It will be interesting to see how this evolves in the coming years.

"Gas Tax Holiday": Clinton is going backwards on Climate Change Policy

Note: this was cross posted at Bluemassgroup and had a lively discussion (60+ comments). Also various news stories and editorials came out in the following days agreeing that the Gas Tax Holiday is a bad idea. Friedman's is great.

Original Post:
Hillary Clinton recently argued for the suspension of the federal gasoline tax. A Clinton ad airing in Indiana says the following:

Hillary Clinton knows it's time to act, take some of the windfall profits of big oil to pay to suspend the gas tax this summer, investigate the oil giants for price gouging and collusion

This is basically agreeing with McCain's similar plan just a few weeks ago, calling for a gas tax holiday from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Putting aside any kneejerk response to parroting the McCain campaign, this is bad climate change policy to the core. It is true gasoline costs are rising due to a variety of reasons including (continuing) Middle East regional instability, increased demand from China and India, and of course pathetic US efforts to conserve gasoline usage. Yet no candidate who wants to honestly claim to be a future leader in turning back the tides of climate change could offer a "Gas Tax Holiday".

Regardless of which candidate one supports, if we earnestly want to stave off climate change, then Clinton needs to be called out on being on the wrong side of this issue. In contrast, Obama has come out against the "Gas Tax Holiday", and stated:

The only way we're going to lower gas prices over the long term is if we start using less oil.

What is going on? It feels like Clinton is giving in to the notion that in order to win the midwest we have to ease their pocketbooks. That's a perfectly respectable goal. But in economics you want to tax things that you want to discourage. We desperately need to discourage fossil fuel consumption.

A much more effective way to accomplish both goals (easing pocketbooks and reducing carbon emissions) is to decrease federal income taxes by what the average household pays in gasoline taxes: basically redistribute the revenue from gasoline taxes back to the taxpayers as income tax decreases (or rebates, after all they are in vogue these days: call it the Thoreau Rebate or something catchy). And then let the people know: if you drive less than the average person, you'll get more money back. If you want to drive a Hummer, that's fine, you'll just pay more for your gas. Don't own a car? You'd make out quite well. And then this could lead to a five year program of gradual gasoline tax increases (with matching income tax rebates). If people knew gas taxes were going to steadily rise for five years, people would have a significant long-term incentive to choose more efficient vehicles whenever the need for purchasing a car came up. An issue is that current gas tax revenues are often assigned to road improvements etc. Of course the "Gas Tax Holiday" has the exact same problem.

Back to the kneejerk reaction of Clinton parroting McCain: Clinton is giving into the notion that to win as a Democrat, one needs to be more Republican-like. Didn't the Globe run a front page story today about how Republicans in Indiana are defecting from the Republican party?

Actually making a dent in climate change is going to take vision and leadership on a truly unprecedented scale. I've written previously here and here how Gore understands the magnitude of this issue and how the issue transcends politics. Obama recently confirmed that Gore would be part of his administration. To my great sadness, this primary campaign season has successfully vilified "hope". Yet, considering that we are already doing worse than the worst-case scenarios of just a few years ago for carbon dioxide emissions, I am cynical enough to wonder: are Obama and Gore our only hope?

Climate change: Massachusetts sues EPA (again)

Massachusetts lead a group of 18 states in an "unusual legal petition" against the EPA on the one year anniversary of last year's Mass vs EPA Supreme Court hearing.

"Once again the EPA has forced our hand, which has resulted in our taking this extraordinary measure to fight the dangers of climate change," Attorney General Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, which is leading the petition, said in a statement. "The EPA's failure to act in the face of these incontestable dangers is a shameful dereliction of duty."

I'm proud to live in a state where we're fighting the good fight. But, while this is so important, we just haven't begun to turn the tide on climate change. I heard a colleague speak this week and learned that humans are currently exceeding predicted worse case scenarios for carbon emissions from just a few years ago. This is with the Kyoto protocol in effect. That is certainly not progress.

There's also "the other CO2 problem" that scientists are just starting to realize the importance of: Ocean acidification (More here.) Carbon dioxide is acidic, and humans have put so much up in the atmosphere that the surface oceans are becoming more acidic. Scientists beginning to learn are learning that that has profound implications for marine life and fisheries.

Thank you Massachusetts for leading the way. It's only the beginning of a long series of significant and urgent changes though. Is there a plan for how (Massachusetts) will transition its climate change policy in the soon arriving post-Bush era?

cross-post: bluemassgroup

The mainstreaming of mixed race - and parallels to interdisciplinary science

The New York Times has an article on individuals of mixed race heritage in the US. The video is particularly fun to watch, seeing how these Rutgers students identified themselves. I had a real flashback to a similar group I participated in one meeting in college about mixed race. Notably, census data from 2000 showed 6% of married couples are interracial, and 3% of Americans are mixed race. And it is disproportionately higher among younger people (under 40). Obama is making mixed race mainstream (along with Tiger Woods, J-Lo, Karen-O etc...).

Being Japanese-Scottish, this has always been an issue for me, even when I didn't know it was (the Japanese family picnics, where I really didn't fit in...). But like many in the article, I find being mixed race much more of a strength than a weakness. I actually think it also really lends itself to interdisciplinary science, having a firm (racial) identity was just never an option. Having a flexible identity becomes the norm. Choosing what parts of different things you want to be your identity becomes subconscious. And, probably most importantly you get used to being uncomfortable, being in the spaces in between, and that's when you learn the most.

I wrote a lot more about this theme, early on in Obama's presidential campaign, at Bluemass group (link here). I got some really nice feedback for writing that (more articulate and passionate) essay.

Union of Concerned Scientists Letter

The Union of Concerned Scientists has an active letter:
U.S. Scientists and Economists' Call for Swift and Deep Cuts in Greenhouse Gas Emissions

It concludes:

A strong U.S. commitment to reduce emissions is essential to drive international climate progress. Voluntary initiatives to date have proven insufficient. We urge U.S. policy makers to put our nation onto a path today to reduce emissions on the order of 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050. The first step on this path should be reductions on the order of 15-20 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, which is achievable and consistent with sound economic policy.

There is no time to waste. The most risky thing we can do is nothing.

Follow the link above to sign it.

"We are in this together now, arts and science, or all out and lost."

Jeanette Winterson is one of my favorite authors. In one of her recent books she weaved in the evolution of cyanobacteria and the ancient earth into a revisit of the story of Atlas and Hercules called Weight. I liked how she mixed the science and mythology, and enjoyed the subtle irony that they (bacteria and mythology like Hercules) must have always coexisted. It's easy to forget that bacteria are so much older than we are since our civilization has only become aware of them relatively recently. And I thought it was coincidental that I too had once written about the evolution of cyanobacteria and the early earth. So I wrote a brief email to her fanmail website. And to my surprise she wrote back with this gem:

I love science too – and have been a subscriber to New Scientist for years – I think you will be interested in the new book The Stone Gods – about a beginning world. It is too late for factionalism and clubs – we are in this together now, arts and science, or all out and lost.
Best JW

Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

This is a post I wrote on BlueMassGroup last year (April 2007): American author Kurt Vonnegut passed away this week at age 84. He lived in New York City, but was once a resident of our own Cape Cod, Massachusetts. While there have been official obituaries (more and more) in the press this week, it didn't seem they quite did justice to the man, at least as I'd been thinking about him this year. Cat's Cradle and Galapagos are two of my favorite books. Yet his last book was a memoir of sort: A Man Without a Country, and I'd like to present some of his quotes from that here, which given Vonnegut's recurring focus on the future of humanity (both in fiction and now non-fiction) are timely on the eve of the National Day for Climate Action (there are all kinds of public events tommorow around the country). What was particularly striking to me is that Vonnegut announced in that book that he gave up on humanity at the end of his life, in his own cynical yet funny way. When I read that last year I wanted to go straight to New York and tell him that it's not too late for us, there still is hope. And hope there is: this is the week that Massachusetts and other states successfully sued the Bush Environmental Protection Agency to start regulating carbon dioxide and global warming, an issue clearly important to Vonnegut in his memoir. And there's another suit still pending for mercury pollution. Throughout Vonnegut's last book, it seems he is keenly aware of his coming mortality, and he has some things he would like us to hear about life, and maybe even some things to laugh at as well.

On the environment: Anyone who has studied science and talks to scientist notices that we are in terrible danger now. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint. The biggest truth to face now - what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life - is that I don't think people give a damn whether the planet goes on or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren. On reality TV: I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale." On humanity: Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the First World War. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the First World War so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you? Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people, too. I am a veteran of the Second World War and I have to say this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine. My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse." On smoking: Here's the news: I am going to sue the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only twelve years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me. But now I am eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick, and Colon. On the arts: We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding. If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. On his own epitaph: Do you know what a humanist is? ... We humanists try to behave as decently, as fairly, and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. ... I am, incidently, Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally functionless capacity. We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, "Isaac is up in heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now". That's my favorite joke. ... If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC

Beginnings

I've decided to start this blog. There's many a blog out there obviously, but relatively few by scientists. The ones I've read (for example http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/) I've quite enjoyed, gaining some insight and memes. Seems only reasonable to return the favor.