Expect to hear the word "terraforming" more and more often in the coming years as our environmental crises deepen and multiply.  Terraforming is the manipulation of other planets and their moons to make them more like earth – with the goal of making them habitable for human life. 

Physicist Lowell Wood contends that Mars could be successfully terraformed by the end of the 21st century, which might convince some that we need to invest our efforts there instead of in saving our earthly habitat. 

This would turn our planet into the ultimate disposable commodity, and would bring validation to this disturbing characterization of the human species from The Matrix.

What’s on your mind tonight?

Toby Wollin will give us her take on the holiday, which I’ve been assured has a twist to it, as is to be expected.

alanaclaire will have pumpkin Mexican hot chocolate, which sounds just about right for the season.

Jessica Glasscoe will have recipes for pomegranate pork chops with winter tabouleh.

And we’ll have a look into Thanksgiving traditions as it relates to health, politics, the environment, and more. So make sure to stop by on Sunday and bring your comments, recipes, and appetites.

The signers included:

Minnesota’s Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Michael Bennet and Mark Udall of Colorado, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Russell Feingold and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Roland Burris of Illinois, and Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

It’s amazing what a $47 Million PR Spending Spree will buy you.

The letter referenced above, in a nutshell, asks that life be made easier for coal-burning utilities under a cap and trade CO2 scenario. This is despite the horrible things coal is responsible for, as diaried in this great diary posted yesterday.

In addition, a new study by Physicians for Social Responsibility states:

Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the U.S.: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. This conclusion emerges from our reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal. Each step of the coal lifecycle—mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of postcombustion wastes—impacts human health. Coal combustion in particular contributes to diseases affecting large portions of the U.S. population, including asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development,
increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity.

So, yeah, I’m not a big fan of coal.

I get it that coal is a big jobs provider and that many of these jobs are union, so Democrats probably feel that they need to pay lip service to coal. However, if our liberal Democrats in Washington don’t start telling folks the truth about coal, how are we ever going to wean ourselves from it?

I wrote to my senators, Levin and Stabenow, telling them this & got a response from Senator Stabenow. It reads, in part:

I share your commitment to protecting our environment and creating new jobs through a low-carbon economy.

Global climate change is a real threat to Michigan. Not only are temperatures rising, but increased evaporation could cause Great Lakes water levels to drop significantly, affecting water supplies, fish stocks, shipping, and recreation. There is no question that now is the time to act.

However, comprehensive climate legislation must be done right and with great care. Michigan’s economy has suffered greatly during this economic downturn, and climate legislation must not make our situation worse. I believe that by making the right policy choices and the right investments, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a way that revitalizes Michigan’s economy and creates new jobs.

And to that end, she is sponsoring tax credits for solar power (who doesn’t love tax credits). From that article:

Lawmakers on the House and Senate tax-writing committees offered identical bills this month that provide a new 30 percent credit for investments in equipment used to manufacture solar energy system components.

The bills would make these investments eligible for the existing 30 percent credit for installation of residential and business solar energy systems, which is available through 2016.

Personally, I don’t know how renewables are ever going to be able to fully compete w/ dirty energy like coal until the full costs (health effects, CO2, etc.) are factored in. Making things easier on coal burning utility companies ain’t going to help that.

But don’t worry, we’ll have "Clean Coal" to save us, right? Well, from
Mother Jones:

But for all their expensive efforts to sell the public on the wonders of clean coal, ACCCE isn’t working quite as hard to make the technology a reality. The coalition’s members have committed the comparatively paltry sum of $3.6 billion to research the technology between 2003 and 2017, according to an April report from the Center for American Progress. That’s just $257 million on average each year to develop the technology to capture and sequester carbon. To put that in perspective, ACCCE’s members made a combined total of $297 billion in profits between 2003 and 2008—meaning, as the report notes, that they’re spending less than two cents on clean coal research for every $1 of profit.

Think they realize it’s not a good investment?

How do you solve this problem?  Kozol says one important step would be to make sure public schools in less affluent areas get the same funding as schools in affluent areas.  That could be solved if the current system, which makes public school funding largely dependent on local property taxes, were changed.  Perhaps a tax targeted at high income earners statewide could be used to close the gap.   Public school systems in less affluent areas would have more money to hire better teachers, purchase up to date equipment, and repair crumbling facilities.  The problem, of course, is that in 21st century America it is nearly impossible to raise taxes for any purpose (a point Principal Seymour Skinner made clear in a memorable Simpsons episode).

People who’d like to see better public schools may wait forever if they are hoping education will be made a priority, with corresponding resources allocated to improve the system.  The Morning Joe crew suggests an alternative solution: perhaps public school systems can best be served by a natural disaster.  Jason Rosenbaum provided this partial transcript from today’s Morning Joe:

SCARBOROUGH: There are of course so many negatives with Katrina. But you said one of the positives had to do with the education system here.

JULIA REED (Newsweek) Rarely do you get the chance just to completely rebuild a very broken education system from the ground up. I mean, you can’t politically just say OK we’re gonna level everything, we’re gonna fire every teacher, we’re gonna start over. I mean, it was so broken that right before the storm the state had taken over the school board, which has basically looted the schools – I mean, a leaky roof was the least of the problems across the board. And now we’ve got all this great money from Eli Broad, from Bill Gates, from all kinds of foundations to build this new network of charter schools, working with the public schools led by a brilliant guy named Paul Vallas. I mean, there’s hope that we might actually have an education system that works.

BRZEZINKSI: An opportunity for –

SCARBOROUGH: New Orleans could go, because of this tragedy, from one of the worst school systems in America to one of the best and one of the most exciting and one of the most innovative. And we’re gonna be talking to Arne Duncan and also Valerie Jarrett. I know they’re looking at what’s going on down here as they tackle education reform next year. That’s an exciting opportunity for the White House and Republicans to work together in a really meaningful way.

This discussion made me think of an op-ed David Brooks wrote just after Katrina hit, entitled "Katrina’s Silver Lining."  Brooks said that Katrina provided a "blank slate" when it came to urban poverty in New Orleans, and he suggested that there was an opportunity to take on urban poverty–not just in New Orleans, but nationwide.  President Bush agreed that "we have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action."  Unfortunately, as the Washington Post noted nearly a year later, "poverty’s time in the presidential limelight was brief."  On Bush’s watch, poverty increased.

I think the jury is still out, so to speak, as to whether New Orleans schools will really emerge from Katrina as "one of the best" systems in the country.  I hope they improve, but I think it’s unfortunate to suggest that failed school systems have to wait for their own Hurricane Katrina before they have an opportunity to improve.  If it’s the right thing to improve broken schools in New Orleans, why isn’t it the right thing to improve schools across the country?  Or do they have to patiently wait their turn for their own natural disaster–and possible influx of private dollars from donors like Bill Gates, which may or may not lead to improvements?

The disaster model for education reform seems like a way to escape responsibility: it suggests that we can’t possibly solve problems in urban school systems unless a natural disaster helpfully "wipes the slate clean".  If we’re serious about fixing schools nationwide, we could decide to prioritize education and put the public resources behind it that are needed to give every child an opportunity to succeed.  We wouldn’t even have to wait for a hurricane.

Reasonable people can differ on the question of whether the health reform bill in the Senate is worth passing. Certainly, I’d strenuously disagree with people who believe health reform won’t solve our country’s health care crisis, or that the status-quo is worth preserving. However, it’s hard to put together a reasonable argument that the Senate shouldn’t at the very least talk about health care reform, or allow it to come up for a simple vote.

And indeed, America agrees. Health Care for America Now has released a poll showing that voters in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Nebraska overwhelmingly agree that the Senate should debate and have a fair, majority vote on health care.

Here’s the relevant questions, via TPMDC:

"In the Senate, before a bill can be voted on, there must be a vote to allow it to be debated," reads the first survey question. "Regardless of whether you support or oppose the health insurance reform plan itself, do you believe that it should be debated on the floor of the Senate?"

In all states, voters overwhelmingly said the Senate health care reform bill should be debated on the floor. Nebraska: 88-9, Louisiana: 82-9, Arkansas: 84-11.

"Once a bill has been debated in the Senate, Senators must then vote on whether to allow the bill itself to be voted on," HCAN asks. "Regardless of whether you support or oppose the health insurance reform plan, do you believe that Senators should allow it to be voted on."

The results are similarly striking. Nebraska: 80-14: Louisiana: 77-14, Arkansas: 77-14.

The American people are looking forward to the opening of debate on the Senate health care bill tomorrow evening. There is no excuse not to give them what they clearly want: A debate and a vote on historic health reform.

(also posted at the NOW! blog)

I’m proud to work for Health Care for America Now

It is clear the Framers wanted the Senate to be different from the very start. There are no other Federal elected offices that have a six-year term. The term of office is longer than the President and three times longer than Representatives. It seems the Framers wanted the Senate to be check on the Peoples House in Congress. By making the term of office this long, they put an element of stability into their legislature. The House was designed to be responsive to the will of the people, but the Senate was more an instrument of State Governments.

Up until 1913, Senators were elected by State legislatures. This was intended to give the Senators an ability to focus on the issues at hand without the direct pressure of the populous. The thinking is they would be able to look more dispassionately at the issues if they did not have to face the voters of their States.

I think the change to a more direct election of Senators is a good thing. The people should choose their representation as directly as possible. Still, if we were still electing Senators by vote of the legislature, there might be more cohesion in the Democratic caucus, then again there is no way to know if we would have a Democratic majority or not.

Another problem with the Senate is the pace at which is does business. The rules of the Senate combined with parliamentary procedure ensure the “Greatest Deliberative Body in the World” moves with all the agility of a Mastodon wallowing through a cold ice age swamp. As we have seen even a small minority can hold up and delay legislation, as long as they are disciplined.

This is compounded by the nature of the people in the Senate today, namely they are old. The average age for a sitting U.S. Senator is 63 years old. Now there are plenty of folks who are active and focused at this age, but you have to remember that this is the average age, not the top end. 60% of the Senate is 60 years old or older. 25% are 70 or older. It is a fact of life that folks tend to slow down as they age. It has very little to do with whether they are mentally sharp or not, older bodies tend to move slower.

This creates an issue as well with mental flexibility. In general, older folks are set in their ways. They have made up their minds about issues long ago and are less likely to let new information influence their thinking. Again that the Senate would be older and more thoughtful is a feature the framers intended, not a bug. It is part of why they set the minimum age for the Senate higher than the House.

However, in our fast paced and accelerating society this might not serve the interests of the nation as well as it did in the past. The pace of life has increased almost immeasurably from the time of the found of our nation. The Framers did not even envision the Congress needing to be in session all year long when they wrote the Constitution. They had no conception of their fledgling nation growing to over 300 million citizens and covering nearly 1/3 of North America. Even with a large staff the ability to correlate huge amounts of information and come to a good decision is a difficult thing.

All of this leaves us with a Senate that is often behind the public on issues of policy. We see this in the Health Care Reform debate where public opinion polls show a strong majority of the nation wants a Public Option and reform, yet Senators seem to feel it is too much too soon. Now obviously there is a role that the 1 million dollars day the Insurance industry is pumping into lobbying plays in this, but even that goes to long terms and old folks.

Senators who are set in their ways, who are not as accountable as the President and the House to the people of their state, are clearly more likely to fail to understand the urgency of the problems the nation faces. They work in an environment where it is okay to take a long time, where things are set up to take a long time. They work where most of the folks are retirement age or better. They are a hugely powerful group, given there are only 100 of them. All this leads to a detachment from their states and from the needs of the voters. They can even make choices which they know their constituents don’t like, since most folks are not going to remember or be fired up about a vote made four years previously.

This leads to a problem, the Senate, while designed to be more deliberative, is now too much of a drag on the ability of the nation to address its problems. It has been too successful in slowing the rush to change. This is not just a problem for Health Care Reform but a problem for all the issues we face currently.

I never detail a problem without offering a solution. One solution would be to change the term of office for Senators. This would make them more responsive to the will of the voters and bring them in line with the President. However, it would take a constitutional amendment to change this and there is very little chance such an amendment would be passed by the Senate.

Luckily there is another way, which is already provided for in the system we have. Every Senator should have a primary challenge, every cycle. There are those in the party structure who will tell you this is insane. The cost of a primary will just add to the cost of running and winning. They will also tell you primaries can tear a party apart and make it more likely the Republicans will win. To all of this I say “Piffle”.

Six years is an eternity in our fast paced world. Six years ago the Republicans held both Houses of Congress and the White House. They had a majority of the State Houses and legislatures. Now this is completely reversed, with the Democrats holding all of those advantages. To say the political thinking of the nation has change is an understatement on the level of saying the burning of the Library of Alexandria was minor property dispute!

Given that things can and do change very quickly in our politics and nation, why shouldn’t every Senator start out by having to reaffirm the support of the party members of their state? Just look at what a strong primary challenger has done for Sen. Specter’s point of view. When he changed parties this year, he was acting and talking as though he was still a Republican. He was willing to talk the Republican line about many issues and act as though he would not vote with his new caucus. Now he is not even on the list of troublesome Democratic Senators. Having Rep. Sestak announcing and running for this primary has moved Sen. Specter closer to the views of the people of Pennsylvania than he ever would have on his own.

The other reason to have more primaries is to get fresher, younger, more connected Senators elected. By moving the median age of Senators down, we get a Senate, which will be slowed only by procedure and not a natural slowing down. This opens up progressive Senators, since we do not have to wait for them to retire, die or be elected to other office to get them out of the way.

By making Senators get the approval of their party and by making it clear they do not have a free ride just because they managed to get elected once, we return the functioning of the Congress to something closer to what the Framers envisioned. There is still the long term which gives them a little leeway to put the best interest of the nation first, while still having them be accountable to the people of their states and the nation.

This will not be easy, the party structure is highly resistant to the idea of primaries for incumbents. Still, no positive change in governance is ever easy. If we are to have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people,” then the people must be involved and work to make it happen, at least as much as the politicians who do the day to day work. A primary for every Senator would ensure the next major issue we face will be faced with more attention to the will of the people than Health Care Reform has been.

The floor is yours.

Housekeeping: I am taking a break from the First Amendment Friday series. After half a year of writing about the law on Friday’s the old hound is a little burnt out. However look for the series to resume after the 1st of January.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

What I found, under the byline of Aaron Gray-Block, was a very strange description of a situation that was so lacking in its historical footing as to border on historical revisionism. Here are the opening paragraphs:

U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues Stephen Rapp made a debut appearance for the United States at the world’s war crimes court Thursday and said the U.S. remained wary of politically driven prosecutions.

The United States is not a signatory to the 2002 Rome treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, and Rapp’s attendance at meetings this week and next is the clearest sign yet of Washington engaging with the court.

Entirely missing from the "not a signatory" language regarding the United States and the International Criminal Court is a background that puts today’s story into proper perspective. Nowhere in the article do we learn that in December of 2000, Bill Clinton signed the treaty establishing the Court, only for George W. Bush to withdraw US support for the court in May, 2002.

Here is a portion of a statement from the United Nations Foundation when Clinton signed the treaty:

US President Bill Clinton on Sunday signed the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC), just hours before the 31 December signature deadline. The action is seen as a tactical maneuver to keep the United States involved in negotiations over the court’s potential establishment, the Washington Post reports. Sunday was the last day nations could sign the treaty without first having ratified it.

"We do so to reaffirm our strong support for international accountability," Clinton said in a statement. "We do so as well because we wish to remain engaged in making the ICC an instrument of impartial and effective justice."

Clinton signed the treaty with an understanding that its ratification was far from assured, but said this in the statement accompanying his signature:

The United States has a long history of commitment to the principle of accountability, from our involvement in the Nuremberg tribunals that brought Nazi war criminals to justice to our leadership in the effort to establish the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Our action today sustains that tradition of moral leadership.

Under the Rome Treaty, the International Criminal Court will come into being with the ratification of 60 governments, and will have jurisdiction over the most heinous abuses that result from international conflict, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Knowing that the Senate as composed then would not ratify the treaty, Clinton added this:

The United States should have the chance to observe and assess the functioning of the court, over time, before choosing to become subject to its jurisdiction. Given these concerns, I will not, and do not recommend that my successor, submit the treaty to the Senate for advice and consent until our fundamental concerns are satisfied.

In signing the treaty, Clinton sought engagement with the court over a long enough period to convince the Senate that prosecutions would not be politically based, but would be pursued only in the case of real international crimes. Contrast that with the attitude displayed when the Bush administration withdrew from the treaty:

Bush administration officials said today that the new International Criminal Court should expect no cooperation from the United States, and that its prosecutors would not be given any information from the United States to help them bring cases against any individuals.

On the day the Bush administration formally renounced support for the treaty, as expected,Pierre-Richard Prosper, the State Department’s ambassador for war crimes, said ”If the prosecutor of the I.C.C. seeks to build a case against an individual, the prosecutor should build the case on his or her own effort and not be dependent or reliant upon U.S. information or cooperation.”

Knowing the history of the two previous administrations provides much better perspective for the discussion in the Reuters article. For example, this quote from William Pace makes little sense without the background information:

William Pace, one of the conveners of a coalition of groups supporting the ICC, said although the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was not calling Rapp’s attendance at the ICC meeting a policy change, he welcomed what was "essentially a constructive speech of re-engagement."

"We are not surprised that every permanent member of the United Nations Security Council wants to keep as much control over the power to determine whether an act of aggression has occurred as they interpret the U.N. charter to give them," he said.

But Pace said most other countries do not believe the Security Council’s permanent members should have sole control over determining whether an act of aggression has occurred.

The Reuters article ends with a statement from Human Rights Watch that essentially addresses Clinton’s original concerns, and states that the court has now proven itself to be apolitical:

Elizabeth Evenson, counsel at the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, dismissed the United States’ concerns, stressing the independence of the prosecution and ICC judges.

"We are hoping the U.S. will see that there is nothing in the experience of the ICC that would give them the hesitation to think that this is a politically motivated court," she said.

Gray-Block provides highly significant quotes from relevant parties in his coverage of this historic development. Unfortunately, he provides none of the historical perspective required for understanding that significance.

The United States has great reason to be concerned that the invasion of Iraq would qualify under the International Criminal Court as the war crime of waging a war of aggression. The US wants to hide behind its "authorization" from the UN, but the ICC argues that the UN, with its domination by the permanent voting members of the Security Council, should not be the sole arbiter of what constitutes a war of aggression. Granted, having a representative appear at the ICC to make a statement is a far cry from the US ratifying the treaty and submitting to ICC jurisdiction, but even resuming any kind of engagement with the court is a very important step in the Obama administration’s huge task of moving the United States back into good legal standing in the international community.

Update: While this post was being composed, AP went even further in historical revision. Here is the relevant paragraph from the AP article by Mike Corder:

The United States refused to ratify the court’s founding treaty, the 1998 Rome Statute, partly because of fears the court could become a forum for politically motivated prosecutions of troops in unpopular wars like Iraq.

So Corder says the US "refused to ratify", while conveniently leaving out the actions of Clinton and Bush. I guess we just don’t need to know that.

The way most people in the US feel about Goldman Sachs hovers around the homicidal these days, and the good folks at GS are going to try to do something about it.

"The bank said that it was working with its largest shareholder, the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett, in a $500 million project to help 10,000 small businesses by offering them business and management education, mentoring and access to capital."

Why, this..this..this sounds just like…one of those barnyard fables of yesteryear….

"Oh, yes, said the fox to the hen as he talked to her through the chicken wire on the hen house. "I can teach you so many things."

"Can you teach me how to scratch," asked the little red hen.

"No," said the fox, "I don’t scratch for my food; I kill smaller animals."

"Can you teach me how to lay eggs," asked the little red hen.

"No," said the fox. "I can’t lay eggs; I eat what I can find, though."

"Can you teach me to fly up into the trees at night to stay safe," asked the little red hen.

"No," said the fox. "I can’t fly – but I can dig under fences."

"I have no use for animals who dig under fences," said the little red hen and she flew up into the nesting boxes at the top of the chicken house, far, far away from the fox, who stood outside watching a young, foolish rooster preening himself in the sun out in the yard right next to the fence.

Sidling up to the colorful young fellow, the fox said, "Say there rooster, could I interest you in some derivatives?"

I’m convinced that when we look back on the key events on the road out of Afghanistan, we’ll mark Matthew Hoh’s resignation as one of the milestones. Hoh’s resignation letter is a devastating four-page indictment of the misguided U.S. policy in that country, and his experience in Anbar, Iraq gave his views heft in the debate about whether an Iraq-style "surge" provided a template for "success" in Afghanistan. Do yourself a favor: if you haven’t yet read the letter, do so.

Matthew Hoh recently sat down with Daniel Ellsberg for a Brave New Conversation, the trailer for which you can see above. I’ll interview Hoh later this week to get his thoughts on the way forward in Afghanistan and the reaction to his resignation. For now, though, enjoy the conversation.

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal.

A Siegel has a good piece up describing John Doerr’s suggestion to use federal dollars to pay individual homeowners and big box retailers (like Lowe’s and Home Depot) to spend money on supplies and construction workers to retrofit houses to make them more energy efficient.

I am going to argue that’s not a very efficient use of public resources. Or to say that differently, we should spend the money on something else.

When we have disagreements about a particular course of action, it is usually because we either disagree on the end result, or we disagree on how to get there. This simple model helps us examine where we have room for compromise, and where we have to resort to more fundamental, majority rules decision-making.

One way to approach this perspective is through the framework of opportunity costs. The relevant question is not the absolute value of a particular course of action, but instead, the relative value of a particular course of action compared with possible alternatives. For example, society could choose to give me $1 billion. That would improve the economy; I would go spend some, which would have multiplier effects, and I would invest some, which would have multiplier effects. If the question was, ’should we give this diarist a billion dollars and instruct him to stimulate the economy?’, the answer might actually be yes if we did not consider the opportunity costs of that money. As a non-random commentator, I would heartily endorse such a proposal, extolling the virtues of my ability to create jobs while adding value to the community. I would suggest I could do this much better than some other unidentified citizen.

But ultimately, on balance, that would not be a good policy**, because it conflicts with two core premises most Americans share about economics, the allocation of scarce resources in society:

1. All other things being equal, private parties know best how to allocate their resources

2. Government expenses should go toward things that benefit the public commons, not enrich private property owners (ie, the preamble to the Constitution – common defense, general welfare, etc)

I agree heartily with Doerr, A Siegal, and others on a great many end goals. But I do not think this particular approach is a good use of the money. It effectively is a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to homeowners, and not just any homeowners, but those who have been the most irresponsible in addressing improvement needs on their property. If we do not trust property owners to make competent decisions about their property, then I would suggest the problem is the concept of private property itself. Perhaps people are just too emotional, or too short-sighted, to handle treating their home as both an asset and shelter. Perhaps government should just directly control the housing stock. (And if the obstacle is that property owners don’t have money to improve their property, that’s a wage problem, not a weatherization problem.)

Personally, I do not believe ownership itself is the problem. Rather, I would suggest the problem is the price of energy. We have large, leaky homes in part because consumers do not pay the full price of their electric, gas, and water bills. At the margins, energy prices can play a big factor in decisions people make about where to rent and buy, and how to manage their energy usage therein, but that marginal factor is not sufficient to drive more substantial reductions in home energy usage.

Here’s a simple solution that harnesses private, market-based incentives to get property owners to make their own decisions about the best ways of reducing their energy usage: introduce tiered rate pricing, so that the marginal cost of energy usage each month rises as the total amount of energy used rises. It’s revenue neutral, affecting the proper group of people: energy consumers, not taxpayers. It gives people multiple ways of adapting, from behavior changes to home weatherization to choosing smaller residences. It ensures that we protect the poor from suffering too much by ensuring that basic levels of utility usage are not priced prohibitively.

Finally, it addresses the core issue, the total energy used, rather than a tangential issue, how much energy of the total is wasted. After all, if consumers are sensitive to energy prices, and this program reduces wasted energy, then some of that wasted energy will still be used as it is translated into behaviors that consume more energy. The net savings is less than the waste because consumers will use more energy if the price is cheaper. However, if consumers are not sensitive to energy prices, then the only way for programs like this to work is if the government pays for 100% of the cost, plus handling the hassle of coordinating the improvements. An easy way to think about this is the thermostat. Some people set their thermostats lower in the winter and higher in the summer to save energy. Well, if we make meaningful reductions in how much energy is wasted, some of these people will modify their behaviors to set their thermostats higher in the winter and lower in the summer than they previously had them set.

Tiered pricing allows us to use the federal monies for investments in the public commons, from parks and bike paths to regional transit and passenger rail lines to safety net support like unemployment insurance and health insurance. Utility companies are already heavily regulated, including the prices they can charge, so this is not any new kind of government intervention. By providing additional revenue to utilities through increased prices, we can provide funding to couple with mandates they expand usage of renewable power sources like wind and solar energy.

If we combined this with bigger policy changes, from more diverse and comprehensive transportation policies to reducing or eliminating tax subsidies for McMansions to expanding walking and bike trails to enhancing high density affordable housing options, we could have a significant impact on energy usage in our residential communities while putting people to work in sustainable jobs, not jobs dependent upon government tax credits.

After all, as A Siegel quotes Doerr, the pricing mechanism is at the heart of the situation

In closing on this idea, I don’t want to lose sight of the big picture, and that is the most — and we recommended it to you before — we agree the most important thing we could do to have America lead in this industry and generate a lot of jobs fast is to put a price on carbon

** This is a good insight into one problem of bargaining. Frequently, the people who benefit from a redistributive policy are concentrated, while those who are harmed are widely dispersed, so there is an ability for the few who benefit greatly to lobby for their view because it is costly for the many to pool their resources in opposition. Giving me $1 billion would be a great policy for me, my close friends and family, businesses in my neighborhood, my employer, my church, local charities, and many other economic actors within two or three degrees of me. If this were a policy that had a reasonable chance of gaining traction, I would have a significant incentive to spend millions of dollars lobbying for this, while any other individual taxpayer would have a hard time organizing an opposition, because the costs of that $1 billion are dispersed amongst the general taxpaying population, obscuring the cost for any particular individual.