Daily Score Blog

Oh Noes!  McKinsey Global Institute is predicting that  "Liquids demand tightness could return between 2010 and 2013" (pdf link, registration required).  For those who need a translation, that's econo-geek-speak for "Cheap oil will not last." 

As anyone who's visited a filling station recently knows, gas is a heck of a lot cheaper now than it was last summer.  But when the economy tanked last fall, demand for oil plummeted -- and when demand fell, prices fell too. 

But McKinsey Global predicts that, as the global economy recovers, demand for oil will pick up again.  And when demand increases, oil will get more expensive -- perhaps the way it did during 2008, when prices shot through the roof.

I think the message from McKinsey here is clear:  don't think of cheap oil as the new normal.  Instead, volatility -- and the potential for sharp, disruptive upward price spikes -- could be with us for quite a while.

Heads up, Salem & Olympia.  Looks like tiny Maryland is inching ahead of the Northwest in climate leadership:

A key committee in the Maryland House of Delegates today passed HB 315, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act....The bill requires the state to reduce its global warming pollution 25% below 2006 levels by the year 2020.  To achieve those reductions, the bill directs the Maryland Department of the Environment to finalize regulations by 2012.

Now, I'm not saying that we should be embarrassed if Maryland leaves us in the dust.  No, wait, strike that:  we absolutely should be embarrassed if Maryland leaves us in the dust!!  Are you listening, legislators??

Sustainable transportation geeks give trains lots of love, but tend to overlook buses.  That's a mistake:  buses are surprisingly green.  This report, for example, finds that buses are pretty much the most fuel efficient way to travel between cities -- better, on average, than rail, cars, or airplanes.

Of course, you can't just trust one report -- especially one that was funded by the American Bus Association.  But plenty of other people have found the exact same thing.  Our research on greenhouse gas emissions per mile of travel found that inter-city buses have the lowest climate impact of any form of travel.  The authors of the Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices -- which is a bit out of date now, but still excellent -- found the same thing.  So did the Environmental Defense Fund. I could go on; but the bottom line is that people who care about sustainable transportation find that intercity buses are a pretty good deal for the climate.

There are two key reasons why intercity buses are so fuel efficient.  First, the average intercity bus in the US carries about 21 passengers at a time (calculated form tables 1-32 and 1-37 of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics National Transportation Statistics report.)  Second, they get between 6 and 7 miles per gallon (figure of ~6mpg from table VM-1 of the Federal Highway Administration's Highway Statistics Series, and 6.7 mpg from WRI's GHG protocol.)  Put those two numbers together, and you find that a bus gets well over 120 passenger-miles per gallon of fuel.  Not bad -- that's nearly as good as a Prius carrying a driver and 2 passengers! 

So it's probably a good thing that the intercity bus industry was reporting a record increase in travel in 2008.  And if higher ridership meant more passengers per vehicle, then buses probably got even more fuel efficient than the numbers I ran would suggest. 

Obviously, bus travel isn't for everyone.  But I've found that the service between Seattle and Vancouver is about as fast, and at least as reliable, as the train.  All of which suggests that buses deserve far more attention than we give them.

Update:  Some of the figures in this post were updated from an earlier version, thanks to the attentive eyes of Matt Leber.

Double update: I looked more closely at the guts of WRI's GHG protocol -- and they actually estimate that intercity buses get 9 mpg.  The 6.7 mpg figure is for the average bus, which includes transit buses (which get poor mileage because of stop-and-start driving) and intercity buses (which do considerably better).  That brings the passenger-mpg for a bus up above 180 passenger miles per gallon -- about what you get from a Prius with 4 occupants.

When it comes to regional climate policy, things are not moving as fast as we'd like. But as my colleague Eric de Place pointed out last week, the regional conversation about energy policy -- and cap and trade in particular -- has leapt forward at an astonishing pace.

A year ago -- even a few months ago -- cap and trade was a relatively unfamiliar concept among NW legislators and journalists. Today, a range of leaders -- from faith organizations to ed boards and top NW businesses to utilities and legislators -- truly get it.

Of course there are those who aren't yet on board, and the legislative roadblocks have been frustrating, but the fact is, we've witnessed (and been part of) a major shift in the conversation.

Let's stop and take stock of some of the ground that's been gained -- especially in WA and OR. Here it is from NW leaders and journalists themselves. (Of course, you might say we're cherry-picking here, but the fact is, this isn't even an exhaustive list -- there are plenty more examples of NW opinion leaders calling for cap and trade. Too many to list here.)

So, in no particular order; emphasis mine:

Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial board, January 30, 2009:

Lawmakers and the governor should look beyond the painful necessities involved with budget tightening to the opportunity to put the state in position for a robust recovery that is environmentally and socially healthy.

There are encouraging signs. Two bills that [Gregoire] requested, HB1819 and SB5735, would move the state ahead significantly on creating a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

President Obama has made it clear that he will work with Congress to develop a national cap-and-trade program. At the federal level, a greenhouse gas program is coming. If Washington leads, we are at the table shaping the program.

Maybe I've been reading too much punditry lately, but I find myself annoyed with the self-important tone of pretty much everyone who writes about politics. Everyone knows something about the bailouts, Obama's "handling" of the economy, how health care will play out, or the timing of federal climate policy.

Note to everyone: shut up.

Feel free to have an opinion, but please express it as an opinion or belief. Perhaps you have some analysis or evidence to support your belief. But whatever else you may know, you do not know what will happen in the future. And this goes double if you're talking about politics.

(To clarify: I'm not saying you can't make predictions that turn out to be right. I'm saying you can't know the future. Highly surprising and counterintuitive things happen all the time. There is nothing irrational about imagining a future that looks a lot different from the present.)

End of rant.

Image appears thanks to my friend Paul Gettmann. It's from an advertisement in a 1980s-era National Geographic.