Articles by Andy Brett

The perfect storm is here, but politicians aren’t acting

The perfect storm is here, but the Senate isn't doing anything about it.

That's my one sentence paraphrase of this morning's Washington Post editorial.

Calling the energy bill "nothing to be proud of," they cite the big three:

• the skyrocketing market for crude and gasoline;
• instability in the nations that produce it; and
• an ever-growing consensus that global warming must be dealt with.

My question is, if the Senate doesn't take action to shift away from oil with this kind of impetus, what will it take?

This shift can be accomplished in two ways, as the editorial notes:

[The energy bill] still doesn't shift this country as far in the direction of alternative fuels as it should go, and of course it does not dare raise taxes on petroleum use in any way.

Any senator who wants to keep her job is going to pick promoting alternative fuels over taxing gasoline or ending the "de facto subsidies" it receives. Unfortunately, this course will inevitably take longer to have impacts.

On the other end, the skyrocketing market for gasoline is a mixed bag -- while it will make people look for long-term solutions to end their own dependence on petroleum, it will make politicians even less willing to hike gas taxes.

Eminent domain was strong enough for good urban planning already.

As promised, I have been thinking further about the Kelo decision, and I have fallen pretty decidedly into the dissent camp. My ambivalence before fell into a few main categories:

• The government can already take property if it deems it necessary and hey, economic development does help a lot of people out.
• There's a market distortion that takes place because of the fact that often it's "all or nothing" for the developer.
• If a city planner wants to make her city more "green," this decision could help -- a private company could essentially be given this task and the city would allow them free reign over a certain chunk of land.

I will refute these below the fold but I want to put this up here: The ruling doesn't prevent states or cities from passing laws against this sort of thing. Check out the Castle Coalition if you are not in agreement with the ruling and want to do something.

Reason number 5,233,294,049 …

... why it's great to be a vegetarian.

Beyond Econ 101.

The ongoing Euro-spat has pushed the debate over agricultural subsidies to the forefront. While the US does not quite have the highest ratio of farm subsidies to GDP, it's pretty close.

When it comes to subsidies, I'm of the opinion that there had better be a very good reason for them, and I don't see a good reason for farm subsidies in the US or any other developed country. I believe it was this article that led me to my current position; there are many other arguments that take the Econ 101 approach to subsidies -- they're an unnecessary distortion of the market.

Tom Friedman today resorted to calling us all French because both the US and France are clinging to these outdated subsidies.

But setting these traditional arguments aside, I think there is a distinctly environmental line of argument against farm subsidies: