Search Results

This essay presents the results of an international effort to compare the actual outcomes of pollution control policies using economic incentive (EI) instruments with those using direct regulation or “command and control” (CAC). For six environmental problems, the policies used by the federal government in the United States are compared with the policies of one or more Western European countries. To the extent possible the problems and the policies were chosen so that a CAC policy on one side of the Atlantic is paired with an EI policy on the other. The six problems are: (1) SO₂ emissions from utility and industrial boilers, (2) NO_x emissions from utility and industrial boilers, (3) point source industrial water pollution, (4) phase out of leaded gasoline, (5) phase out of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting substances (ODSs), and (6) chlorinated solvents.

This essay uses the case study of the phasedown of lead gasoline in the United States to argue that market-based instruments can be effective in meeting environmental objectives at a lower cost than uniform standards, and can do so more quickly where permit banking is allowed. The performance of the lead phasedown program is assessed along several dimensions, including its overall effectiveness, static and dynamic efficiency, revelation of costs, and distributional effects. It is argued that the program likely saved hundreds of millions of dollars over policies that would not have allowed trading and banking, and also provided incentives for the development of new technology.

Invention and commercialization of automotive internal combustion engines was a multistranded process that began during the 1880s in Germany with design by Benz, Daimler and Maybach, and then received critical contributions from France, the UK, and the United States. Otto-cycle gasoline engines became the dominant prime movers in passenger cars as well as in the first airplanes, while diesel engines were initially limited to heavy-duty maritime and railroad applications. Line assembly introduced by Henry Ford provided a long-lasting solution to the mass manufacturing. The car industry eventually became the leading sector of modern economies and car culture has had a profound effect on many facets of modern life.

This chapter provides methods for estimating a variety of retrospective measures of causal effects in systems of dynamic structural equations. These equations need not be linear or separable. Structural identification of effects of interest is ensured by certain conditional exogeneity conditions, an extension of the notion of strict exogeneity. The covariates ensuring conditional exogeneity can contain not only lags but also leads of suitable proxies for unobservables. The chapter focuses on covariate-conditioned average and quantile effects, together with counterfactual objects that are associated with these, such as point bands and path bands. The latter are useful for constructing confidence intervals and testing hypotheses. The chapter shows how these objects can be estimated using state-space methods, and illustrates with a study of the impact of crude oil prices on gasoline prices.

Chapter 1 begins by stressing the severity of climate change (CC) and showing how, contrary to popular belief, atomic energy is not a viable solution to CC. Many scientists and most market proponents agree that renewable energy and energy efficiencies are better options. The chapter also shows that government subsidies for oil and nuclear power are the result of flawed science, poor ethics, short-term thinking, and special-interest influence. The chapter has 7 sections, the first of which surveys four major components of the energy crisis. These are oil addiction, non-CC-related deaths from fossil-fuel pollution, nuclear-weapons proliferation, and catastrophic CC. The second section summarizes some of the powerful evidence for global CC. The third section uses historical, ahistorical, Rawlsian, and utilitarian ethical principles to show how developed nations, especially the US, are most responsible for human-caused CC. The fourth section shows why climate-change skeptics, such as “deniers” who doubt CC is real, and “delayers” who say that it should not yet be addressed, have no valid objections. Instead, they all err scientifically and ethically. The fifth section illustrates that all modern scientific methods—and scientific consensus since at least 1995—confirm the reality of global CC. Essentially all expert-scientific analyses published in refereed, scientific-professional journals confirm the reality of global CC. The sixth section of the chapter shows how fossil-fuel special interests have contributed to the continued CC debate largely by paying non-experts to deny or challenge CC. The seventh section of the chapter provides an outline of each chapter in the book, noting that this book makes use of both scientific and ethical analyses to show why nuclear proponents’ arguments err, why CC deniers are wrong, and how scientific-methodological understanding can advance sound energy policy—including conservation, renewable energy, and energy efficiencies.

This chapter concentrates on transportation finance. The enormous energy demands of the motor vehicle revolution prompts the central question of this chapter: Why did highways replace mass transit so completely and so rapidly in California? California imposed two gasoline taxes and increased motor vehicle registration and license fees in the 1920s. The gasoline tax and motor vehicle fees supported a wide-ranging governmental enterprise that, after education, constituted the largest single expense in the California budget during the late 1920s and the 1930s. The political impact of California's new financing program equaled the financial benefit of eliminating interest on bonds and enabling long-term financial planning. As with railroads in the nineteenth century, government assistance developed the highway network in ways that private capital never would have supported. Federal, state, and local governments directly subsidized highway expansion and granted generous tax exemptions to the “public” roads.

In neighborhoods well to the north of the Salt River channel, Phoenix’s artist communities and downtown advocates fought for mixed-use zoning that would allow places of residence to coexist with commercial storefronts. South of the river, where housing was placed in close proximity to dirty industrial facilities, mixed land use had an altogether different meaning. Residents in South Phoenix, long regarded as the city’s human and natural sacrifice zone, were fighting for the right to enjoy clean air and water, unencumbered by the toxic hazards that government permitting had allowed to fester in their neighborhoods. The disparity between these two battles with City Hall spoke volumes about the environmental challenges facing Phoenix, and almost every other city divided by race and class. Hydrologists talk about water “flow” in the West, but very few of the rivers flow naturally anymore, and many, like the mighty Colorado itself, rarely reach their destinations. Except for spasmodic floods, the Salt River has not really flowed through the Phoenix Basin since the early twentieth century, and it exists today primarily as an orderly system of canals. In its natural heyday, it was a wildly erratic river, and so its flood plain was several miles broad. Today’s riverbed is a vast moonscape of sand and cobbles, though it is far from deserted. Cheap land and laissez-faire regulation have drawn in the region’s worst polluters over the years. For decades, it was used as a dumping ground for all manner of waste, some of it exported from neighboring states, like California, with more oversight over disposal of hazardous materials than Arizona. From a commercial standpoint, the riverbed was the mother of all brownfield sites, zealously eyed by developers hoping to cut a deal with government agencies with fast-track access to federal cleanup funds. Dreams of converting the urban portions of the Salt River into a waterside attraction dated back to the 1960s when ASU design students conceived a restoration project under the alluring name of Rio Salado.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the introduction of internal combustion gasoline engines improved land transportation, particularly in terms of durability, power capacity, efficiency, and reliability. By 1899, gasoline engines were increasingly in wide use on small fishing boats and pleasure crafts. The USLSS took note of this advance as it attempted to create alternate propulsion forms for its larger lifeboats so that transit time to the rescue scene could be reduced, and their response range increased. Foreign lifeboat services have attempted to test various forms of mechanical power such as steam propulsion for lifeboats. The modern era of motor surfboats and lifeboats initiated in September 1899 in Lake Superior in Marquette, Michigan, as Lieutenant McLellan expressed interest in using internal combustion engines.

This chapter examines the U.S. Congress' drafting of as energy legislation in June 1975. The bill was developed after former President Gerald Ford's angry television performances and actions concerning the Congress' lack of action on the energy crisis. The provisions of the proposed bill included measures to enforce gasoline conservation, a reduction of dependence on foreign oil, and the right turn on red policy.

A marketer should follow the maxim of the 4th century BC strategist Sun-zi, who said “Know self, know opponents, hundred battles, hundred victories.” We are the chemical processing industries (CPI), which is a collection of firms that manufacture and sell a range of products that involve chemistry and employ many chemical engineers. The buyers are consumers, businesses, governments, and foreigners. When we consider selling a product to a buyer, we pay particular attention to profitable and growing markets where our product has a relative advantage over competition. It takes a bold pioneer to introduce a new product that requires the creation of a new market. Let us study the sellers of chemical products, which are collectively called the CPI. These manufacturers are skilled in the use of chemical reactions and separations to make their products, and they employ many chemical engineers and chemists, often in highly responsible positions. Many of the firms in the CPI are also our suppliers of raw materials and intermediates, our customers for our products, and our competition in making and selling their products. The Statistical Abstract of the United States is published annually by the U.S. Census Bureau, which groups all the economic activities in the United States into 11 divisions by the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC). The manufacturing division is divided into 20 sections designated by two-digit numbers. The manufacturers that involve chemistry intensively are listed in table 9.1, by two 2-digit numbers, such as: 20 Food, 28 Chemicals, and 29 Petroleum Refining. The table lists the number of establishments, the number of employees and value of shipment in 1996. The SIC 28, “Chemical and Allied Products,” is the basic supplying industry to the other sectors. Table 9.1 also gives the subdivision of SIC 28 into three-digit subsectors, such as: 281 Industrial Inorganics, 283 Drugs, and 286 Industrial Organics. The subsectors of 281 and 286 form the core of the Chemical and Allied Products, as they provide raw material and intermediates for the rest of the subsectors, such as 282 Plastics and 287 Agricultural chemicals.

Previous chapters in this book focus on the production of energy from different sources and how we might increase the supply to meet the anticipated growth in demand. In this chapter we focus on options to manage the energy demand. There are many ways—other than complete avoidance of the use of goods or services that demand energy—by which we can “save” energy; actually, we are not saving but reducing the growth in the demand of energy. It is often convenient to think of savings arising from two categories: energy efficiency and energy conservation. Energy efficiency reduces the energy necessary to perform a desired task, and energy conservation includes all actions that avoid unnecessary use of energy. To use the automobile as an example, development of techniques that reduce the fuel needed to go from one place to another is an example of improved energy efficiency. Substituting the automobile with a more efficient mode of transportation or the avoidance of the activity entirely would be examples of energy conservation. Thoughtful use of both conservation and efficiency will be necessary if we are to achieve substantial reductions in our future energy use as individuals, nations, or the world as a whole. As discussed in chapter 4, the global energy use projected for 2050 under three scenarios with three differing growth rates ranges from a high of 9.4 CMO/yr to a low of 3.9 CMO/yr. Our recent energy use of approximately 3 CMO/yr (since 2000) is on a growth curve that follows the trajectory of the high-consumption scenario. Improvements in energy efficiency have of course been made steadily over the past century and will likely continue in the future. Much of that improvement has already been taken into account in arriving at the projections for future growth. The 2.6% annual growth in energy consumption has taken place notwithstanding steady improvements in efficiency. To bring the projected 2050 consumption down from more than 9 CMO, we will need savings that would not happen without a rededicated effort.

One particular interpretation concerning the outrage over high gasoline prices is a prevalent cultural sense of entitlement to wasteful energy consumption patterns. This chapter demonstrates how the pain at the pump discourse argues that such outrage is not plainly caused by American “excess” and “profligacy” but is rather about the increasing economic insecurity and anxiety under neoliberalism. In general, life under neoliberalism is distinguished not by excess but by dissolving wages, mounting debt, longer work hours, and nonexistent job security—the only social context in which the demand for cheap gasoline can be understood. The insecurity of life under neoliberal class rule led to implicit consent for the imperial control of global oil flows.

This chapter analyzes the history and current state of air pollution in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China. It describes the health and environmental impacts from various pollution sources, and includes a particular focus on diesel and particulates. It identifies the research and action that has been undertaken in all three places, how they differ and how they overlap, and the policy agendas and initiatives to eliminate, reduce or control air pollution that have been developed. It also explores cross-border pollution issues, particularly between the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong, and how policy changes in one place (e.g., Los Angeles) have influenced the other places (e.g., Hong Kong and China). It also identifies where policy changes have been successful and where they remain incomplete or poorly implemented.

This chapter examines the longevity of comic strips. The oldest known American comic strip that is still being published, and not in reruns, is the The Katzenjammer Kids, which started on December 12, 1897. Incidentally, two of the oldest strips are continued by the same cartoonist: Hy Eisman produces both Popeye and The Katzenjammer Kids. Although The Katzenjammer Kids at 116 in December 2013 is the longest-running American comic strip still being published, it appears only once a week—on Sundays. Others were published seven days a week; Gasoline Alley is the oldest of these, turning ninety-five in November 2013. The longevity of comic strips depends upon the public pulse. Newspaper editors are conscious of changing times and public tastes, and are always on the lookout for new strips that will keep their comics pages “contemporary.”

This chapter explores the decline of the use of the public utility model for traffic with respect to the “floor space” problem. Street railways added to discontent over traffic problems. By the time Herbert Hoover became U.S. Secretary of Commerce, attraction to a new model known as “associationism” was gaining ground. This model mobilized private interests and gave them a direct role in solving social problems. As a result, the National Chamber and Commerce Department opted to work together in solving the problem of big business, taking into account the problem of traffic. A number of experts gathered at the Hoover Conference and sought to come up with new means to improve traffic rather than traffic surveys or other similar investigations on street conditions. Other measures that were taken include a gasoline tax and parking meters, which eventually led to the free-market model of city traffic.

This paper analyzes empirical economic and political determinants of gasoline and diesel pricing for about 200 countries over the period 1991-2010. A range of political and economic variables are found to systematically influence fuel prices, and in ways that differ with countries’ per-capita income levels. Fuel prices are set lower by more corrupt, and more centralized, governments; and higher in countries with direct presidential elections, and with plurality voting systems, than with parliamentarian systems and proportional representation. Higher GDP per capita levels lead to higher fuel prices, while export income from selling fossil fuels reduces fuel prices dramatically. Higher motor fuel consumption also appears to reduce fuel prices, most for gasoline. “Pass-through” of crude oil price changes to fuel prices is found to be high on average.

This chapter brings to light the risks – and at times grave costs – for human health and ecosystems of companies introducing new technologies and products to compete for profits and markets. New technologies and products can cast dark ecological shadows onto distant ecosystems, poor communities, and future generations. Sometimes these shadows arise from genuine ignorance, as with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) drifting skyward from refrigerators, hairsprays, and air conditioners to deplete the ozone layer. But other times these shadows arise from arrogance and intentional risk-taking, as in the 1920s when Thomas Midgley, Jr., working for General Motors and DuPont, put tetraethyl lead into gasoline. As this chapter shows, corporations have a long history of deploying anti-environmental rhetoric to subvert calls for precautionary measures. Since the mid-2000s, however, the executives of multinational corporations have been avoiding straightforward greenwash, preferring a rhetoric of corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility. To some extent this eco-business strategy is improving efficiency and reducing waste (on a per product basis), but it is not translating into a stronger precautionary approach for the introduction of new technologies and products.