The Good Conservatism
Have you read the last G7 statement? (I know, I sometimes have weird reading tastes…) Well, it contains a list of commitments regarding energy.
The seventh point is particularly interesting : “Seventh, we support energy conservation”.
Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think it's the first time that the Bush administration has committed itself to promoting energy conservation in an international forum. Until this G7 meeting this weekend, Dick Cheney had presented energy conservation as a hobby for tree-huggers: "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy," he said in 2001.
Energy conservation is a very old policy in Europe. When I was a kid, we were taught to be very careful not to spend too much electricity, especially after the first oil shock. We couldn’t leave our bedroom without turning off the light. The government funded broad education programs to curb energy consumption. One of them was called “la chasse au gaspi” (“hunting the wastey-wastey”?). One generation later, la “chasse au gaspi” is still rooted in our heads. In Europe, one of the most common devices (in staircases, in public bathrooms...) is the time switch.
Tax on gasoline is another way to fight energy waste. In Europe, about 80% of the gas price is made of tax (compared to 15% in the US). So people own small cars, and they avoid using them to go buy bread at the store 300 feet away...
Now that I'm living in the US, I have been astonished to see some of my neighbors using their SUV to go a distance of only three blocks, or leaving their lights on, all the night long—sometimes even during their vacation. A large budget motel chain, Motel 6, even picked up this slogan: “We'll leave the light on for you”! (yes, I know, Motel 6 is a US subsidiary of a French corporation...)
When American experts talk about “energy conservation,” they refer above all to technological means to reduce energy consumption. Very rare are those who suggest education programs, and almost no one dares to advocate for a tax on gasoline. Yet this would be a very efficient way to boost energy conservation: each 10% increase in price induces a 4% reduction in gasoline purchases. By one estimate, the US could save as much gasoline with a 5 cent a gallon tax as it would by raising the CAFE mileage requirement from 27.5 mpg to 40 mpg.
I can already hear an objection coming from the left: higher gasoline prices are more harmful to low income people. But the tax revenue can be redistributed to finance services for these families.
With a gallon flirting with 3 dollars today, I understand it’s not exactly the best moment for proposing such a tax. Although, actually, the best time to implement it is when the oil prices, after having increased, begin to go downhill...
Comments (11)
You're wrong. "[W]e support energy conservation" doesn't "commit" the administration to do anything. Supporting "conservation" doesn't rule out any pattern of energy use other than outright waste (which by definition no one supports).
September 26, 2005 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I grew up in a western plains family during the depression where the watchword was, "Waste not; want not." We have generally practiced conservation most of our life. Because we lived in an arid area, water conservation was included on our lists to save. We saved and 'made do' with food, clothes, water, and energy. Today, we carefully stick to our community's recycling regulations.
I will confess that the automobile is one stain on my rectitude. I do make more use of the auto than is absolutely necessary and I don't have a the most fuel economical model. At least I don't drive much each year. I do try to organize my trips so that I can do a number of shopping stops on each outing.
I recently heard a doomsday scenario by a futurist discussing what happens when our economy suddenly discovers that there really is a limit on petroleum. Think of the long commutes that will no longer be feasible. Think of the urban McMansions that can no longer be economically occupied due both to heating/cooling and commuting distances. Think of the wealth that is destroyed when houses decline in value. His suggestion was that we were in for a rude shock and enormous changes in our living standards when this happens. I think he's right.
I long for leadership that insists that now is the time to build an alternative energy system to sustain our society. Such a program would have to be accompanied by an immediate conservation program: fuel tax increases; fuel economy publicity; raised CAFE standards. The next step in this leadership would be to get a development program going not just say it's a good idea. [Bush gave it some lip service today.] Surely hydrogen, ethanol or other renewable fuels could be successful. The sooner we get started on it, the shorter the time we will have to spend in the dark when petroleum becomes too precious to burn.
September 26, 2005 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
And when I am nominated and finally confirmed to fill O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court (see http://www.hairytruth.blogspot.com for details), I intend to enforce my interpretation that mandatory conservation is required by the plain text of the constitution.
September 26, 2005 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can hear an objection coming from the left: higher gasoline prices are more harmful to low income people. But the tax revenue can be redistributed to finance services for these families.
With a gallon flirting with 3 dollars today, I understand it's not exactly the best moment for proposing such a tax.
First, the "conservation" statement is nothing more than lip service. If the world were to try and call us on it, we'd be sure to claim the G7 is as irrelevant as the UN.
Next, you won't hear complaints coming from the left. It will be from the right. The same old "can't raise taxes" trickle down crap we've been hearing for years.
The real reason, of course, is that higher taxes mean less consumption which means lower profits for oil companies.
Because what's more important that profits, right?
September 26, 2005 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans still believe what Reagan said, "Conservation means freezing in the dark." Conservation and efficiency, of course, are nothing like that and the US used to be resource and energy conserving. In fact, I have a copy of a great WWII poster with the headline, "All fuel is scarce - Prepare for winter now" and gives a fine precis of what we still have to do in order to prepare for the heating season.
Bush et alia are talking up conservation because they are afraid of the effect of rising oil prices. That fear may drive them to draconian methods - with consumers. Producers get a free pass.
September 26, 2005 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pascal:
I wish I could introduce you to my grandmother. She was a sturdy first generation American of Bavarian parents. She lived through the Great Depression and World War II. She never wasted a thing, never bought a thing she didn't need, and never paid someone else to do something she could do herself, even when we begged her to.
When I was growing up, those were Conservative values (with the capital C). My dad, her son, identifies himself politically as a Conservative exactly because he identifies with her values. When I was growing up, the heat did not go on before Thanksgiving (in Pennsylvania). And it went off on March first, no matter what the Groundhog said on Candlemas.
As an adult, I now identify myself as lowercase-c conservative because in my 20's, I moved to Texas. In Texas, energy consumption is a virtue. I had Conservative identifying friends who would set the air conditioning at 70 in the summer and the heat at 85 in the winter. The state proudly runs its own energy grid. It accounts for something like half of the Chevy Suburbans sold in the US.
But my dad is still with us. And he hasn't moved to Texas. It has not yet dawened on him that the Liberals he likes to deride are actually more conservative than he is, as a Conservative.
Liberals tend to congregate in more energy efficient cities and Conservatives in more energy-wasting suburbs. The reason you know people who get in their SUV to get a loaf of bread is because they would get killed if they tried to walk across the 8 lane highway that hems in their subdivision to get to the supermarket that has a parking lot atol filled with speed bumps because people can't be trusted to slow the hell down.
I guess I'm saying that the US has changed a lot in three generations but we haven't yet adjusted our images of people to that change. Your take is a dead-on snapshot by someone who doesn't have the image history of a put-on-a-sweater dad and a reuse-that-wrapping-paper grandmother. My generation has not yet come to grips with the shift.
September 26, 2005 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
"As an adult, I now identify myself as lowercase-c conservative because in my 20's, I moved to Texas."
There is actually something physically wrong with your brain, isn't there?
September 26, 2005 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well honestly, when world production capacity is about 85 million barrels per day and world demand is about to go to 88 million barrels per day, what choice do you have?
September 26, 2005 6:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, sometimes we get wholly unrealistic about numbers.
By one estimate, the US could save as much gasoline with a 5 cent a gallon tax as it would by raising the CAFE mileage requirement from 27.5 mpg to 40 mpg. I don't know whose 'estimate' this is, but even a 50 cent per gallon tax on gasoline wouldn't do that. After all, we have already gas prices having risen more than $1 per gallon. With the same number of miles driven, a 50% increase in automobile mileage would mean a reduction in gasoline consumption of one third. We haven't seen any such thing.
The US is layed out to require the use of cars more, and to increase both car and gasoline usage. Gasoline useage per price is not therefore very elastic. Also, any tax on gasoline at the federal level (blue states might try it, especially when in a fiscal jam) would be too unpopular to sustain, and probably couldn't even pass in a Democratic Congress.
I have suggested, however a tax-and-subsidy structure designed to raise gasoline mileage to 40mpg and beyond. This would involve a $3000 automatic subsidy to any car purchased in the United States minus $150 per mpg for every mpg lower than 60 mpg. Thus at 40 mpg there would be no net tax or subsidy. But SUVs would pay through the nose. This is a price increase where it would seem people are very price sensitive -- when buying a new car.
Consider in particular cars run on metallic hydrides. There isn't enough cheap hydrogen to fuel much more than 10% of the overall fleet. But if the federal government mandated that cities couldn't get more federal money that fall more than a certain amount below federal air pollution standards unless they mandated metallic hydride (magnesium hydride is the most common so far) vehicles where feasible in all city-owned new purchases of vehicles, including public buses (no more belches of ugly smoke, either!) and also required it of all exclusive contractor vehicles with the city, like private garbage collectors, private bus services including school buses, and even licensed vehicles like T & LC (taxi and limousine commission) in NYC.
Boy, although nationally, it would be under 10% of overall consumption of gas, you would have lots of public vehicles that could run effectively (eg in an emergency) when gas supplies are curtailed or unavailable; you would have much less air pollution in cities like LA and Denver and NYC; you would create a mass market both for metallic hydride (no oil, only water vapor emission) vehicles, thus getting the ball rolling, and you would reduce gasoline consumption by about another 5%-10% nationally over and above the mpg tax/subsidy policy. Note that the tax/subsidy policy could be adjusted upwards once the mpg average in the fleet reached 40mpg and the net income from the tax went to zero. Further, the continuing incentive to increase mileage would continue beyond 40 mpg; with the money spent on R& E & D (research and experimentation and development) to find cheaper hydrogen sourcing, the reduction in national gasoline consumption in the US could approach 50% in a politically feasible manner.
There are also issues of redesigning cities to be more bicycle-and-pedestrian friendly, and increasing the efficiency and cleanliness as well as the extent of public transportation.
There are many other ways to reduce energy, including in the NON-automotive areas.
September 26, 2005 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cloudy, the estimate is over a 10 year period!
September 27, 2005 4:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
1. Winters are much harsher in the US than in Europe, requiring more oil and coal for heating.
2. Population density patterns almost everywhere but on the East Coast spread people out such that mass transport is not a practical way to get to work. People living in large towns and medium sized cities (pop. 50,000-200,00) largely do not live in the suburbs and work downtown; but rather live in one suburb and work in another, making rail transport impractical.
3. Bus transport might work, but no one is going to wait 20 minutes for a bus in 20 degreee weather if he can possibly avoid it. Even if one were willing to do such a thing for work, all other activities (grocery shopping, going to the movies, etc.) would become extremely difficult.
To change any of these, we either need to develop weather control or relocate the bulk of the population from the suburbs to the cities.
For us poor rubes in flyover country, a car is a necessity and this is quite unlikely to change. The approach the author describes, seeking technological innovation to make cars more efficient is the correct one for the U.S.
Noel
September 27, 2005 6:43 AM | Reply | Permalink