Then and now: View over the Charles River
View of Boston from Cambridge. Top, in the early ‘50’s; bottom, last year
Who’s paying that ‘think tank’?
Gustave Trouvé's personal electric vehicle (1881), world's first full-scale electric car to be publicly presented
Charging a BMW electric car
Inevitably the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity seems to oppose any effort to cut back on fossil-fuel use around here, be it the new regional agreement to cut transportation emissions or anything else. But then this outfit is part of a far-right network of “think tanks’’. They are connected to such operations as Koch Industries, which, among other things, is a major fossil-fuel company, and far-right individuals, many, like the Koch crowd, in bed with the fossil-fuel sector. That sector has long been the beneficiary of massive federal corporate welfare. (There’s far more socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor than most Americans realize.)
The Rhode Island outfit is a devoted promoter of heightened “freedom and prosperity” for billionaires, but not necessarily for the general public. Check out, among other sites, sourcewatch.org, guidestar.org and donorsearch.net for funding information.
As we follow the assertions and “research” of so-called think tanks and other advocacy groups, left, right or in the middle, we should always find out which special-interest groups are financing them. Often they do everything they can to hide their funders. You won’t get straight answers from the “think tank’’ beneficiaries. You have to dig. Lots of “dark money’’ out there.
Scientific realities are forcing the world to move at an accelerated rate away from oil, coal and gas in order to slow global warming, and thus the green-energy sector will be where most of the new energy-sector jobs will be created in the next decade. And the costs of generating and using green energy are falling at a faster and faster clip.
Elon Musk knows what he’s doing with his electric cars.
And note this from the Jan. 28 New York Tim
“General Motors said Thursday that it would phase out petroleum-powered cars and trucks and sell only vehicles that have zero tailpipe emissions by 2035, a seismic shift by one of the world’s largest automakers that makes billions of dollars today from gas-guzzling pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.”
Hit this link to read the story.
New England, with its famed technology sector and green-energy potential (especially offshore wind power), should be one of the nation’s biggest beneficiaries of the move away from carbon-based energy.
Meanwhile, don’t reject nuclear energy, which is clean except for the politically fraught matter of where to put the spent fuel. It must continue to play an important role in electricity generation, and if the waste issue can be appropriately answered, perhaps a growing one.
Llewellyn King: Social media, GameStop and the mob
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Social media has an unimagined, unequaled, uncontrollable and unpredictable ability to mobilize groups of people for antisocial action to take a sliver of society and turn it into a mob.
Last month this new force in society was on display, from mobilizing anti-vaxxers in Los Angeles to the U.S. Capitol riot, resulting in five deaths, to the run-up of a weak stock, GameStop, by 1,800 percent.
These events, coupled with some strains of political thought being restricted on Facebook and Twitter, along with the outright banning of tweets from Donald Trump when he was still in office, have some in Congress convinced something should be done -- often the precursor to ill-conceived legislation.
Conservatives want the protections granted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides Google, Facebook and others a liability shield from third-party content posted on their platform, to be reformed. They believe that they are disadvantaged by the networks.
The hot issue of the moment in Congress is the price run-up of GameStop and other companies’ stocks. The primary platform most fingered so far is Reddit, but the active enabler was the app Robinhood, which allows individuals (mostly day traders) to trade stock without commissions and in small amounts.
This Robinhood isn’t to be confused with the English folk hero, who stole from the rich to give to the poor, even though that is the intent of those who named the app. In reality, it is part of the Wall Street system, and makes its money selling all those little trades to market-making firms. Its purpose is to make money not to bring social justice to small traders.
I interviewed Sinan Aral, who studies social media at the MIT Sloan School of Management and is the author of The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy and Our Health -- and How We Must Adapt, for White House Chronicle, the PBS television show that I host. He said of GameStop that it is imperative to find out what really happened. For example: When was the GameStop stock run-up taken over by big funds which stood to make huge profits, and some of which did?
Rep. Maxine Waters (D.-Calif.), who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, has scheduled hearings. That is a beginning, but it certainly won’t be definitive. Congressional hearings seldom are.
Jarrod Hazelton, a University of Chicago-trained economist who once worked for a Connecticut hedge fund, concurred. It looks like GameStop was “the perfect storm,” he said, also on White House Chronicle.
Hazelton told me that this never was a sudden viral event: The groundwork for the Reddit-fueled frenzy over GameStop was laid by professionals nearly a year ago.
It was social media that drove the madness, even though it was the big financial houses, like BlackRock (which reportedly made $3 billion on GameStop stock) that were the big winners. Speculation in the stock was already underway when trades took off, enabled and fed by Reddit posts and other social media shouting in essence “free lunch here.”
MIT’s Aral takes issue with the idea that crowds have a kind of folk wisdom. That idea was endorsed in a 2004 book, The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki. But Aral points out that was the same year that Facebook was founded. In other words, a social media crowd isn’t the same as a fairground crowd trying to guess the weight of an ox, an example in Surowiecki’s book.
Crowds, it turns out, are wise if they are polled as individuals, but once they get on social media and have subscribed to a toxic idea, they aren’t wise. They are a single-minded mob, whether opposing vaccinations, trashing the great symbol of democracy or running up a stock.
What is to be done about social media? Probably nothing. It is here like gun ownership or pornography. This one, too, we will have to suck up and live with.
With time we may get inured to social media and get better at discounting a lot of its disingenuous outpourings. But, from time to time, it will be harnessed for evil. Crowds are healthy, mobs not so.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C
Old Man Winter's plot
— Photo by Raitisfreimanis
“Father Time rusts, usurped.
Clockwork mustache crusted with frost
By Old Man Winter’s avengement plot.
Pitch pines draped and scrub oaks well dusted….’’i
— From “Hush,’’ by Linda Ohlson Graham, a poet who lives in Provincetown, on outer Cape Cod, where pitch pines and scrub oaks are among the most common trees because of the sandy soil.
Pitch pine cone and needles
— Photo by Crusier
The space and time she needs
“I’m spoiled by the lack of traffic, the beauty all around me, the night sky, the wildlife, and having more space and time to think and be creative.’’
—Julia Moir Messervy, Bellows Falls, Vt.-based landscape architect, in Vermont Life.
The old factory town of Bellows Falls, part of the town of Rockingham, as seen in the early spring from Fall Mountain. Connecticut River is on the right.
Rockingham Town Hall, which holds the Opera House, was built in 1926 on The Square, and is part of the Bellows Falls Downtown Historic District.
Do not use for navigation
“Lighthouse Series V” (acrylic on paper), by Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), in the show “Helen Frankenthaler Late Works,’’ at the New Britain (Conn.) Museum of American Art, Feb. 11-May 23.
It’s the first museum presentation dedicated to the exploration of works from Helen Frankenthaler’s late life, and features 22 works on paper from 1990-2003.
New Britain’s flag. Note the bees, meant to refer to the work ethic of the former major factory town’s residents.
Chris Powell: Democrats might make sure GOP survives; revolving door keeps spinning for Conn. politicians
MANCHESTER, Conn.
As he skipped the inauguration of his successor and shuffled off to his resort in Florida, has Donald Trump destroyed the Republican Party? Some political observers think so and of course Democrats hope so.
Trump's petulant and even seditious exit from office did him no credit. But then he did not do so badly in the popular vote and the Electoral College, and even landslide defeats in presidential elections seldom knock a major party down for long.
Herbert Hoover led the Republicans to a landslide victory in 1928 over Democrat Al Smith but himself was ousted in a landslide by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrats in 1932.
Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee in 1964, was derided as far too conservative and was clobbered by Lyndon B. Johnson and the Democrats in 1964, but the Republicans still won the next presidential election, with Richard Nixon.
George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, was derided as too liberal and lost big to Nixon and the Republicans in 1972, but the Democrats still won four years later with Jimmy Carter.
The reversal of party fortunes in these cases was largely a matter of self-destruction. Hoover turned a stock market crash into the Great Depression. Johnson escalated and failed to win a stupid imperial war. Nixon and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, got caught in criminality. (Even so, Nixon's appointed vice president, Gerald Ford, nearly won the 1976 presidential election for the Republicans anyway.)
Both major parties have influential elements that many voters find objectionable if not repulsive and yet gain big roles when their party is in power. So it is not hard to imagine such elements bringing trouble to Joe Biden's new Democratic national administration even as the Republicans at last may be relieved of the daily embarrassments of Trump's demeanor, especially since, out of office, much civil and even criminal litigation may keep him busy. Additionally, Republicans in Washington may rediscover that being in the minority makes taking potshots easy, far easier than governing.
Will the Biden administration self-destruct with corruption, incompetence, failure, or politically correct nonsense? Maybe not, but with the Democratic margins in Congress being so thin, the new administration may have to be unusually successful to avoid losing control of both houses in the elections two years hence, since mid-term elections usually go against the president's party.
In any case, while good government is good politics, good government seldom lasts long, so defeated parties tend to revive faster than expected.
xxx
Having just left the speakership of Connecticut's House of Representatives, former state Rep. Joe Aresimowicz, D.-Berlin, has quickly moved into a position with Gaffney Bennett and Associates, which calls itself Connecticut's leading government relations firm. Connecticut's “revolving door” law prohibits Aresimowicz from lobbying legislators and government agencies for a year, but obviously the firm believes that he can bring in a lot of good business anyway.
Aresimowicz's transformation may dishearten advocates of the public interest but it's not unusual. The Connecticut Mirror notes that three former House speakers are already lobbying or working for firms that do government relations. The Mirror might have added that a former state Senate leader heads Connecticut's biggest teacher union.
As a legislator Aresimowicz himself was employed by a government employee union. While this presented more than the typical potential conflict of interest most legislators face, it was perfectly legal, since the legislature is nominally part-time work, most legislators must hold other jobs, and Aresimowicz's constituents knew who he was when they elected him.
Former state legislators aren't the only ones drawn to government employment in Connecticut. Many journalists have left news organizations for public-relations positions with government agencies or businesses. Indeed, there now may be more former journalists in government P.R. in Connecticut than there are news reporters.
Government is just where the money is these days. Former legislative leaders don't go to work for the Red Cross, Salvation Army, or Audubon Society, nor do former journalists. There always has been and always will be more money in subverting or deflecting the public interest than in pursuing it.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
The sounds and smells of his New England
Brant Point Lighthouse, on Nantucket Harbor
“Say the words ‘New England,’ and one person will think of a white church spire and a village green; another will see a covered bridge or the Vermont hills in the autumn; and still another will conjure up a farm along the Connecticut River. For me, the words evoke the sounds and smells of the sea, and the storms and the fogs that make life along the New England seacoast a good deal like living on an actual ship, subject to the whims of the weather.’’
— Nathaniel Benchley (1915-1981), in “The Sea,’’ in the book New England: The Four Seasons (1980). A writer himself, he was the son of the celebrated humorist and the father of Jaws author Peter Benchley. He spent his later years living on Nantucket. In his humorous novel The Off-Islanders, he wrote:
''The islands that lie to the south of Cape Cod are low and sandy, and the moors and dunes and bogs blend together in a rolling landscape that repeats itself in island after island. At one time, they were all part of the Cape: they now form a ragged chain behind the shifting sandbars that curve farther to the south. From the air, they all look very much alike. Through a periscope, they are indistinguishable.''
Nantucket from space. Chappaquiddick Island is at the left.
How Biden’s COVID relief and stimulus program could most boost New England’s recovery
Presidential Range of the White Mountains, taken a few miles west of Gorham, N.H.
— Photo by AlexiusHoratius
BOSTON
“On Feb. 1, The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com) sent a letter to each member of the New England congressional delegation regarding the urgent need for additional federal COVID relief and economic-stimulus legislation. In the letter, the council highlighted specific provisions of President Biden’s proposed American Rescue Plan that we believe would be particularly beneficial for our region’s continued recovery. The letter also outlines recommendations for additional relief measures based upon some of the feedback we have received from members over the past several weeks since the President’s plan was released.
We are grateful to the many council members who provided feedback on the American rescue plan through our policy committees, as well as those who offered other recommendations. We expect that there will be additional opportunities to weigh in on further relief and economic stimulus proposals in the weeks and months to come. We encourage you to communicate any suggestions or priorities that you’d like to see included in any future advocacy efforts to the council’s policy staff.’’
Walk in the snow in the middle of the street
February, from the Très riches heures du Duc de Berry (circa 1415)
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
February landscapes look more like drawings than paintings.
I’ve noticed in the past few days far more Christmas wreaths still hanging on front doors than last year at this time, and holiday lights are lingering later, too. A way to ward off evil spirits or at least viruses?
xxx
Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970), the nature essayist, famously wrote that “the most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February’’, that paradoxically short but seemingly long month. And yet, its sun is warmer than January’s, its days are noticeably longer and you get from time to time a cold but dry and windless day that can be exhilarating – a perfect day for the season. And in some years, you see snow drops and other early flowers popping out along the strips of road with a southern exposure and smell warming earth.
A couple of nice things about snowstorms, for all their inconveniences: the muffling of harsh sounds and that you can walk in the middle of the street.
Work site
By Alex Alderete, instructor of “Creating Fantastical Creatures,” at the New Art Center, Newton, Mass.
It’s productive to be hated
Triple H
Main Street in downtown Nashua
“If you go through life and no one hates you, that means you’re not good at anything.’’
Paul Michael Levesque (born — in 1969 — and raised in Nashua, N.H.), he’s better known by the wrestling ring name Triple H. He’s an American business executive, retired professional wrestler and actor. One of most famous professional wrestlers of all time, he is also the executive vice president of Global Talent Strategy & Development for World Wrestling Entertainment. He is also the founder and executive producer of NXT. He lives in Greenwich, Conn., among other places.
After a nuclear explosion
“Moonlight Scene” (oil on board), by Allan Freelon (1895-1960), at the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Mass.
'Loss cancels profit'
Winthrop Shore Drive, in Winthrop Mass.
“…The cries of scavenging gulls sound thin
In the traffic of planes
From Logan Airport opposite.
Gulls circle gray under shadow of a steelier flight.
Loss cancels profit.’’
— From “Green Rock, Winthrop {Mass.} Bay, ‘‘ by Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), American poet, novelist and short-story writer. She grew up in the Boston area.
URI student to seek 3 semi-aquatic animal species in Rhode Island
Muskrat
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
A University of Rhode Island graduate student will be scouring lakes, ponds and wetlands throughout Rhode Island over the next three years to search for signs of three semi-aquatic mammals.
Traveling via kayak, John Crockett will search for evidence of muskrats, beavers and river otters to document their distribution throughout the state.
“The main goal of the study is to get a good sense of the distribution of each species across the state,” said Crockett, a native of Fort Collins, Colo., who is collaborating on the study with URI assistant professor Brian Gerber. “To do that, we’re conducting an occupancy analysis, which means we’re going out looking for signs of tracks, scat, chewed sticks, lodges, and sightings of the animals.”
All three species have been the target of trappers in Rhode Island for many years — though the General Assembly banned the trapping of river otters in the 1970s — and most of what state wildlife officials know about the animals is derived from trapping data. But since trapping has been decreasing in popularity in recent years, less and less data about the animals are being collected.
Crockett will spend much of the next three years looking for signs of muskrats, beavers, and river otters Rhode Island.
“We want to make sure we have a good assessment of where these mammals are found,” Gerber said. “It’s been 10 or 15 years since anyone has spent much time looking for them, and we want to see if we find any changes in their distribution since those earlier surveys.”
Muskrats are in decline across much of their U.S. range, according to Crockett, and now they are difficult to find. He said the decrease in trapping activity has made it difficult to tell whether the animals are in decline in Rhode Island or if the lack of trapping just makes it appear to be so.
Since river otters haven’t been trapped for about 50 years, little is known about their distribution and population in the state.
River otters
Beavers are believed to have recovered well after being extirpated from the area because of unregulated trapping and forest clearing in the 1800s.
“Now they are creating conflicts with their dams causing flooding in some places,” Gerber said. “We’d like to be able to identify the habitat features where beavers are doing well and those areas where they are likely to cause conflict. To do that, we need distribution data.”
Beaver
Crockett expects to conduct his surveys from December through March for the next three years, as well as periodic summer surveys. He eventually hopes to be able to estimate the probability that any of the three species will be found in a given habitat. He started the project in December 2020.
“Part of what we’re doing is trying to relate their distribution to changes in land use,” he said. “We have pretty good data on how these wetlands have shifted over time, so hopefully we can find some hint of an answer about why these animals’ populations are changing.”
The URI scientists are working closely on the project with wildlife biologists at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management so the data can be used to help prioritize habitat for protection and inform management decisions on trapping limits.
Fisher
This is one of two research projects that Gerber is leading that focus on learning more about Rhode Island’s mid-sized predators (river otters are predators). The other is investigating the distribution and movement patterns of fishers in the state.
Video of author’s talk on a new JFK biography
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) in a football uniform at Dexter School, in Brookline, Mass., in 1926
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com):
“John Hancock Life Insurance Co., based in Boston, recently hosted a virtual discussion with Harvard professor and author Fred Logevall, who discussed his new book JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956. Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Harvard University. He is a specialist on U.S. foreign-relations history and 20th Century international history, and the author or editor of 10 books.
David Warsh: Mitch Daniels's dire fiscal fears -- and his hypocrisy
‘Anxiety,’’ 1894, by Edvard Munch
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
The Republican Party is in disarray. Its House minority leader, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, last week allied himself with disgraced former President Trump. Sen. Rob Portman (R.-Ohio), 65, director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 2006-2007, under President George W. Bush, announced that he would retire in 2022, after two terms. By current GOP standards, he’s considered a moderate.
But it was another G.W. Bush administration budget director who caught my eye, with an op-ed in The Washington Post last week. Mitch Daniels, who served George W. Bush as OMB director in 2001-2003, declared lost the battle to preserve the integrity of the welfare state that America fashioned in the 20th Century. That struck me as genuinely alarming.
In 2012, Daniels was a presidential hopeful, much in the mold of Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush. After leaving Washington, he had served two terms as governor of Indiana, in 2005-2013, where he was succeeded by Mike Pence. After deciding not to run, Daniels elected to become president of Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Ind.
“It’s no longer possible to say that, by starting now, we can avert massive, and massively unfair, changes in the promises we have made, or that current beneficiaries have nothing to worry about,” Daniels wrote. “That line was crossed even before the emergency budget blowout of 2020 added trillions to the debt tab we will dump on younger generations….
“No computer models are needed to see that there is zero chance of delivering on the promises already in place, let alone the fresh, astonishing proposals in Washington to make these commitments even larger,” he continued. The promises he has in mind are the Social Security System and Medicare, “so-called entitlement programs.”
Daniels is at least half right: There will be changes in promises that have been made, and they will be unfair. But the battle to preserve their outlines is still not fully joined. The preservation of the United States’ unwritten fiscal constitution is the single greatest crisis facing America in the 40 years ahead.
Worried about climate change? Deep forces are at work around the world, technological and political, which should gradually reduce carbon emissions to less dangerous levels. (That doesn’t mean we should stop pressing the matter.) General Motors’ announced intention to phase out gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035 is one scrap of evidence. Exxon Mobil’s plan to reshape its beleaguered board in response to shareholder pressure is another.
Inclusion? President Biden’s plan to put some 1.3 million so-called Dreamers on a fast track to citizenship will be the first test of the strength of support for his ideas. The measure will face resistance in Congress. Gallup polls consistently show more that 75 percent of Americans favor immigration, as long as it is orderly. Return to the closed-border policies espoused by Trump seems highly unlikely.
Foreign relations? China and Russia have demonstrated that autocratic rule has its advantages, but aspirations to democracy have ways of making themselves known. War among global super powers seems even less likely than in the past. The U.S. has a proven role – as an exemplar of democracy, if it can keep it. The fear that a Trump-like demagogue could again be elected in America will, unfortunately, persist for decades,
Civil war? Unlikely, despite the crazies in Arizona, Texas, California, Oregon and Washington. But the possibility cannot be discounted altogether if the United States is unable to resolve its fiscal problems. A reminder of the difficulty of the problem was the breathtaking manner in which Daniels in his op-ed piece excused his one-time boss, George W. Bush, from a share of blame for the developing crisis.
“From very different directions, either of the past two presidents could have led the nation to a safer place, but neither had any interest in doing so,” he wrote. “Instead, both perpetuated the ‘noble lies – ‘You’re just getting your own money back,’ ‘We owe it to ourselves,’ etc. – by which the public has been misled through the years.”
What about ‘tax cuts that pay for themselves?’ Remember President 4-Percent-Growth, who successfully lobbied Congress to cut taxes even as he invaded Iraq? Remember Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill who was fired by his boss for objecting?
Bush regained political sobriety in his second term, after trying and failing to privatize Social Security, when he appointed Ben Bernanke chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and, in 2008, backed him to the hilt in the financial crisis. Still: that a man so insulated from politics as the president of a major university should gloss effortlessly over the failings of the administration he served while decrying the failings of its successors indicates the magnitude of the problem.
I don’t think that any further evidence is necessary for today to say that macroeconomic arguments are likely to be the most important stories of the next forty years in America. But then I would think that. I am an economics journalist.
xxx
A group of 10 Republican senators has asked President Biden to work with them on a bipartisan coronavirus-relief effort , as Democrats prepared to move forward on without GOP support, Kristina Peterson reported Sunday in The Wall Street Journal.
In a letter, the Republican senators asked to meet with Mr. Biden to present details of their proposal, whose overall cost they didn’t state, and said they were coming forward in response to his appeal for bipartisanship.
A journey of a thousand miles begins, or fails to begin, with a single step.
David Warsh, a veteran columnist and an economic historian, is proprietor of Somerville-based conomicprincipals.com, where this column first appeared.
Spring IS coming
“Efflorescence” (oil on canvas), by Stacey Cushner, in her current show of the same name at Kingston Gallery, Boston
The gallery says: The work “was created as a means to provide daily certainty amidst global suffering. Turning to an almost scientific process to glazing with oil paint, Cushner used the pandemic lockdown to learn glazing techniques and keenly observe the natural world. Her study of plant life drew out the fundamental aspect of being wholly present at the moment, a realization found only once the pandemic changed everything. Using flowers, particularly tulips, to symbolize love and rebirth, Cushner seeks to remind viewers of spring’s endless possibilities.’’
He studio is in Boston’s South End. See: https://www.staceycushner.com/about
Aerial view of the South End
— Photo by Richard Schneider
South End street scene
Llewellyn King: Far too early to starve the fossil-fuel sector
The Mystic Generating Station, in Everett, Mass,. can burn both natural gas and petroleum, but mostly burns natural gas.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
In politics, any idea can be pressed into service if it fits a purpose. The one I have in mind has been snatched from its Republican originators and is now at work on the left wing of the Democratic Party.
The idea is “starve the beast.” It came from one of President Ronald Reagan’s staffers and was used to curb federal spending.
It was a central idea in the Republican Party through the Reagan years and was taken up with vigor by tax-cutting zealots. It was on the lips of those who thought the way to small government was through tax cuts, i.e., financial starvation.
Now “starve the beast’ is back in a new guise: a way to cut dependence on oil and natural gas.
This is the thought behind President Biden’s decision to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, bringing oil to the United States from Canada, even after the expenditure of billions of dollars and an infinity of studies.
It is the idea behind banning fracking and restricting leases on federal lands. Some Democrats and environmental activists believe that this blunt instrument will do the job.
But blunt instruments are unsuited to fine work.
It also is counterproductive to set out to force that which is happening in an orderly way. The Biden administration shows signs of wanting to do this, unnecessarily.
Lumping coal, oil and gas as the same thing under the title “fossil fuel” is the first error. In descending order, coal is the most important source of pollution, and its use is falling fast. Oil continues to be the primary transportation fuel for the world. World oil production and use hovers around 100 million barrels a day — and that has been fairly steady in recent years.
In the United States, the switch to electric vehicles is well underway and in, say, 20 years, they will be dominant. Likewise, in Europe, Japan, and China. That train has left the station and is picking up steam.
Government action, like building charging stations, won’t speed it up but rather will slow it down. The market is working. Willing buyers and sellers are on hand.
Every electric vehicle is a reduction in oil demand. But the world is still a huge market for petroleum and will be for a long time. What sense is there in hobbling U.S. oil exports? There are suppliers from Saudi Arabia to Nigeria keen to take up any slack.
Natural gas is different. It is a superior fuel in that it has about half the pollutants of coal and fewer than oil. It is great for heating homes, cooking, making fertilizers and other petrochemicals. Starving the production just increases the cost to consumers.
The real target is, of course, electric utilities. They rushed to gas to get off coal. It was cheaper, cleaner and more manageable. Also, gas could be burned in turbines that are easily installed and repaired. Boilers not needed; no steam required.
But there are greenhouse gases emitted and, worse, methane leaks at fracking sites and from faulty pipelines throughout the system. These represent a grave problem. Here the government can move in with tighter regulation. If it is fixable, fix it. But methane leaks are no reason to cripple domestic production.
The question for the beast-starvers comes from Clinton Vince, who chairs the U.S. energy practice and co-chairs the global energy practice of Dentons, the world’s largest law firm. He asks, “Is it better to sell natural gas to India and China or to let them build more coal-fired plants? Particularly if carbon-capture and sequestration technology can be improved.”
If we are to continue to reduce carbon emissions in the United States, we need to take a holistic view of energy production and consumption. Does it make sense to allow carbon-free nuclear plants to go out of service because of how we value electricity in the short term? A market adjustment, well within government purview, could save a lot of air pollution immediately.
The hydrocarbon beast doesn’t need to be starved, but a diet might be a good idea.
On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
New Hampshire's 'pinched little joykillers'
The New Hampshire quarter, minted in 2000. But the Old Man of the Mountain (which brooded over Franconia Notch) fell apart on May 3, 2003.
A composite image of the Old Man of the Mountain created from images taken before and after the collapse.
— Alexander Theroux (born in 1939 in Medford, Mass.), American poet and novelist. He’s a brother of the better known travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux.
The state seal. The ship is a reference to the state’s Port of Portsmouth, which long played a key role in the state’s economy.