Jay Yarow at The Business Insider’s “Green Sheet” takes issue with my K Street column today, because I’m skeptical about the barrels-blazing federal government push for electric cars.
Yarow defends plug-in cars with some decent points, and some points I find weaker:
- “Sure, we get lots of energy from coal today, but tomorrow will be different.”
- “If CO2 is really a worry, a driver can buy some solar panels for their roof and power their plug-in that way.”
- “Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, says he’s willing to work with foreign companies, but he wants Bolivia to retain 60% of the earnings from any lithium production in his nation. We don’t have any problem with that. Why can’t the U.S. or Korea or any nation work in a productive manner with Bolivia, if it has the natural resource in its ground?”
- “The fundamental problem with oil is that it’s a finite resource. Plenty of experts believe we’ve passed peak oil. So the price of oil will only go higher in the future. If we don’t start planning for that reality now, it’s spells trouble in the long run.”
I could rebut some of those points (lithium for the plug-ins’ batteries is a finite resource, too; and Yarow’s “We don’t have any problem with that” on Evo Morales seems a bit flip to me), but–to borrow from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld–he’s addressing the known unknowns while ignoring the unknown unknowns.
The problems with mass production of ethanol–the effect on food prices (which were overstated, I admit), the tortilla riots, the effect on ground water, the effect on the Gulf of Mexico, the effect on third-world forests, and more–didn’t become very apparent or even destructive until the 2005 and 2007 energy bills bumped ethanol from being a small player to a big player in the fuel industry. And remember, ethanol was pushed as green energy.
This highlights the folly of central planning and the danger of Big Ideas. Prudence would dictate that if something new is being tried, it should be tried on a smaller scale before we artificially push to adopt it on a larger scale.
If corn ethanol didn’t enjoy the federal subsidies and mandates, it might be concentrated in Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas. In those regions, growing corn requires less irrigation, less fertilizer, and less shipping–making it more economical. But Congress needs big answers to big problems.
I don’t object to electric cars or even their getting a slice of the corporate welfare pie Obama is passing around. My column was just warning about the potential for unintended consequences of the latest Big Idea.
[add: Let me be clearer: we can’t exist on oil forever. But the more we use subsidies and mandates to prop up alternatives, the more likely we are to run into dead-end after dead-end. The more the market–or even state-level energy policies–try to find answers, the more likely we are to strike on the best ideas (note the plural).]
