"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.