Daily Score Blog

Update 12/30: I corrected some inaccuracies in the original version.

Updated12/30, part 2: Over at Slog, Erica Barnett politely takes issue with this post and has some smart ideas to improve the plan. My reply is below the jump.

Seeing as how this year's holiday overeating falls on the eve of a national health care debate, I give you an interesting idea from the land of all things deep-fried:

...the Alabama State Employees' Insurance Board approved a plan that will charge workers  an additional $25 to cover their insurance premiums, if they don't take advantage of free health screenings available to all state employees. The program, to begin in January, will require state workers to receive medical screenings for body mass index and health problems such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity.

Alabam's program is unfairly being called a "fat tax" but that's an inaccurate description. In fact, the $25 fee is optional -- at least at first.

The cost of oil has been a rollercoaster ride since the 1970s. Thankfully, we've hit a low in this season of recession, foreclosures, and a major Wall Street meltdown. But nobody expects the ride to be over -- and the only way to go now is up. 

Just ask oil industry insiders. A recent survey of senior oil and gas professionals by (auditing and consulting firm) Deloitte revealed growing concern among the top brass of the fossil fuel industry about the affordability and sustainability of oil and gas in the near future, along with a surprisingly strong belief in the viability of renewable energy.

Most participants in Deloitte's assessment group expressed a belief that oil and gas will no longer remain the world's cheapest energy source in the next few decades: 71 percent said that oil and gas is today's most affordable energy source, but only 23 percent feel it will still be the cheapest source 25 years from now -- a 48 percentage point drop.

Three-quarters considered it a good idea for the US to phase out fossil fuels for transportation.

Over half believe that transitioning away from fossil fuels is a reasonable goal for oil and gas companies.

When fuel prices are down, the inclination is to back away from energy policy that would get us off this scary ride. But even as we catch our breath (and our knuckles aren't white for the moment), the ride remains dangerous and unpredictable -- and it's likely not getting any better. I shudder to think what lies around the corner (a loop-de-loop perhaps?).

If oil execs -- of all people (!) -- are thinking about bailing off, shouldn't the rest of us?

At the risk of obsessing, check out this new report on "clean coal" from the Center for American Progress.

I'll let CAP do the talking:

...the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry group comprised of 48 coal and utility companies. ACCCE spent at least $45 million on advertising this year to convince Americans that “clean coal” is the solution to global warming. The ACCCE companies claim that they “are committed to making coal a clean energy source.” Yet the coal mining and electric utility industries spent over $125 million combined in the first nine months of 2008 to lobby Congress to delay global warming pollution reductions until clean coal technology is ready.

Despite the ads’ claims, an analysis by the Center of American Progress determined that ACCCE’s companies spend relatively few dollars conducting research on carbon capture and storage, the most promising clean coal technology to reduce global warming pollution from coal-fired power plants. This technology would allow power plants to capture 85 percent or more of their carbon dioxide emissions and permanently store them underground in geological formations.

Update: Check out this photo--what might be the best illustration of this phenomenon that I've seen.

Do “snow days” increase social capital--the strength of ties to friends, family, and community? That’s something I’ve been wondering about the past few days, while hearing all kinds of serendipitous Seattle snow encounter stories.

Some are commute related: A stranded co-worker who was picked up at a bus stop on Aurora by a spur-of-the-moment carpooler headed downtown, and ended up having all kinds of connections with the other casual car-poolers; another coworker who, frustrated with the long wait at a Ballard bus stop, stuck out his thumb and was soon picked up by an SUV headed downtown. (His conclusion: Snow makes hitchhiking acceptable.)

Some are neighborhood-related: Yesterday, my husband and I cross-country skied out our door onto what's normally an arterial, then through several neighborhoods, meeting more people in an hour of city skiing than we had in a year of living here. A West Seattle colleague says she's never had so much interaction with neighbors before--10 neighbors and 8 dogs ended up at an impromptu sledding party in front of their house.

Not surprisingly, if you Google “snow and social capital,” you don’t find much, though it does bring up a page on the Better Together website on 150 ways to build community. Tool lending libraries for things like snow blowers are one of the ways.

So in absence of solid academic research but in presence of numerous anecdotes, here's my two-part hypothesis on snow and social capital.

For installment number 9 million of "Sightline's obsession with gas prices and driving behavior" I give you this new report on vehicle miles traveled from the Brookings Institute. I'm a bit late on this, but it's still worth mentioning I think:

Driving, as measured by national VMT, began to plateau as far back as 2004 and dropped in 2007 for the first time since 1980. Per capita driving followed a similar pattern, with flat-lining growth after 2000 and falling rates since 2005. These recent declines in driving predated the steady hikes in gas prices during 2007 and 2008. Moreover, the recent drops in VMT (90 billion miles) and VMT per capita (388 miles) are the largest annualized drops since World War II.

What's especially remarkable to me is not the decline itself, but rather the timing of the decline. That it occurred prior to the big gas price run-up is, I'd argue evidence of at least two things:

We’ve come a long way since 1993, but our overarching goal remains the same: to arm change-makers with the independent research, ideas, and tools they need to shape the region in favor of a healthy, lasting prosperity for all.

In honor of our Quinceaños, we’ve taken a break from our usual modesty and decided to celebrate some of our biggest accomplishments by telling their stories. You can check out the whole article, but here are a few examples (and, surrendering to our wonky nature, we’ve got the by-the-numbers story, too):

Last time, I described a non-profit bank’s program for financing building energy retrofits, as a way to speed the green-collar recovery. Here, I describe two new, innovative approaches to financing efficiency upgrades in buildings—meter loans and local improvement districts—and one old-school, utility-run approach that may be the best bet of all.

First, though, a couple more points about the challenges of financing energy efficiency improvements in buildings.

I didn't get the memo, but apparently it's time to start making You Tube videos explaing cap and trade.

First up, via Yglesias, who got it from Dave Roberts, here's Captain Dividend explaining the cap and dividend approach in less than 2 minutes.

And in this corner, via my colleague Anna, here's the Sierra Club's Carl Pope on why giving away free permits is tantamount to bribery. He'll do it in 47 seconds flat:

I've got to admit that I'm not wild about either one of these presentations. (Nothing against the substance, mind you; I think the explanations are perfectly accurate.) But what do readers think?

Am I wrong? Or is it just that cap and trade doesn't lend itself to You Tube? Is there a better way to get this stuff across in less than 2 minutes? 

Earlier this year, the RAND Corporation, a non-profit think tank, put out a report on how to get traffic moving faster.  They considered lots of the standard solutions -- improving signal timing, clearing accidents quickly, encouraging telecommuting, and so forth -- and found that many of them could, in fact, provide some temporary congestion relief.

But here's the rub:  RAND found that over the long haul, these kinds of solutions simply don't have much effect on congestion.  They can briefly get traffic moving faster, but just about every improvement in travel time results in...more people taking to the road!  Over the long haul, apparently, most congestion relief efforts sow the seeds of their own destruction. Says RAND:

[W]hen traffic conditions on a roadway are improved during peak hours, additional travelers will tend to converge on that newly freed capacity from (1) other times of travel, (2) other routes of travel, or (3) other modes of travel, slowly eroding the initial peak-hour congestion-reduction benefits in the busiest travel corridors. Longer term increases in the demand for automotive travel resulting from population growth and economic expansion can further undermine a strategy’s effectiveness. This is why we often see, for instance, that flow improves for a short while when new lanes are added to a freeway but usually returns to former levels of congestion within just a few years.

In the end, RAND found that only a few strategies had any significant potential to curb congestion.  The thing these strategies had in common was that they raised the cost of trips on congested routes.  RAND singled out two basic tactics:  charging tolls for driving where congestion is heaviest; and making it more expensive for drivers to park.  See the chart after the jump:

In Retrofits for All, I described an ingenious plan for extending retrofits to whole neighborhoods of energy-wasting buildings. Today, I want to take another look at one piece of that puzzle: financing.

Energy conservation loans sound eminently reasonable: the loans pay for energy upgrades and, as long as the energy savings are bigger than the loan payments, property owners come out ahead (as do the climate and the local job market). In principle, this model could invest federal, state, or local stimulus dollars well; generate green-collar jobs in the construction trades; trim energy bills for property owners and renters; buttress sagging real-estate values; slash greenhouse gas emissions; and unlock a critical door to economic recovery.

But the challenges to successful conservation loans are daunting.

Alright, this website -- Climate Change Economics -- is basically my dream come true. (Sad, isn't it?) It's a growing collection of resources on, er, the economics of climate change, and specifically on climate policy. Even better, the site is explicitly designed for state legislators, state agencies, and governor's staff.

Timely, no?

I haven't waded through even a small fraction of the material yet, but it looks to be a handy tool. Enjoy.

Oh, I do have one criticism. The website's tagline -- "lowering carbon intensities, not standards of living" -- has got to be eligible for a prize of some kind. Now we need another website called "Climate Change Framing and Messaging."

Credit to Ross MacFarlane, Climate Solutions.  

Here's a neat idea from Portland: Sunnyside Neighborhood Energy. It's a district thermal-energy plan being shopped around by some folks who think they've solved several problems at once.

The problem? The neighborhood's old elementary school with oil-fueled boilers from 1917. Also, that climate thing that Al Gore keeps going on about. Plus, low income families often struggle to pay their utility bills.

The solution?

SunNE, would be centered at Sunnyside Environmental School, where a central plant would replace the school's 1917 oil-burning boiler with a solar-powered geothermal heat pump. The plant would then connect to a network of underground pipes circulating through the surrounding 38 blocks. The system wouldn't supply electricity to the neighborhood but would supplant the electricity and natural gas used to power hot water heaters and air conditioners.

Okay, I'm in love.

I'm not sure if "funny" is the right word here -- maybe something more like "tragic" -- but here's a good new website that clears up the fiction of clean coal: Thisisreality.org. It's worth checking out if you have the stomach for killing the same canary again and again. You'll see what I mean.

As I am fond of saying, clean coal is like a unicorn: it may be a groovy fantasy but it just doesn't exist. So everyone should shut up about its "promise." (That goes for you too, Obama.) The only people who have any business promoting clean coal are the coal lobbyists themselves -- and then only because their job descriptions include a line about "hastening the demise of the planet."

Anyway, go check out the website. It's better with the sound on.

Via Wired, the best YouTube video since Chocolate Rain:  an animated look at 24 hours of global air travel, compressed into 72 seconds.  Behold:

That's a heck of a lot of flying, no?

Dagnabbit! 

On the very next post after Eric gives you the good news on transit ridership holding steady, I have the bad fortune of bringing you the disappointing news.  Via The New York Times, MasterCard tells us that US gas consumption went up last week, apparently the first weekly increase in the last 8 months.  Despite an increasingly rocky economy, falling gas prices are making it a bit easier to fill up the tank.  And though I have no direct evidence of this, I imagine that some folks are filling up quick, before prices spike again.  (That's what I did.)

Still, the annual trends are clear: because of high gas prices and a souring economy, analysts are projecting that US gas consumption will have fallen by about 6 percent in 2008.  Whoopee, I guess.

Of course, none of this contradicts Eric's point.  Contrary to popular opinion from about 1985 to 2005, gas consumption isn't an imperturbable, universal constant.  Rather, fuel consumption is a function of gas prices and income trends, as well as the longer-term choices we make when we buy cars or design our cities.  Some of these forces take effect quickly; some act more slowly and more profoundly.  But they all lead to the same conclusion:  there many levers, both in our daily lives and in public policy, that affect how much fuel we consume.

So when it comes to gasoline, almost nothing is inevitable -- except that, sooner or later, we'll have no choice but to wean ourselves from it.