Here are the monthly average retail gasoline prices in the USA since 1976:

Take a few seconds to examine the overall price trend and the points where there are major changes in the price of gasoline.

Now that the price changes are fresh in your memory, consider some basic facts:

• Oil is a finite resource.
• Oil is a fungible commodity.
• Population is increasing.
• Car ownership in China and India has increased dramatically in recent years.

Now, consider the dates of several historic events, including:

• Important revolutions
• Market bubbles popping
• Major terrorist attacks
• Major recessions

This is enough to have a reasonable understanding of the price of oil, without a more detailed look. With this understanding of the context of gas prices, consider:

• Given the information above, how much control does the President of the United States have over the price of gasoline?
• If you had to choose one price or trend to represent the cost of gasoline under President Bush or Obama, what would be the most honest price or trend in prices?
• What points do the Republican presidential candidates reference as the price of gas under Presidents Bush and Obama?
• What (if any) price trend do the Republican presidential candidates mention as the trend under Presidents Bush and Obama?

It should now be clear that the major GOP presidential candidates are either misinformed about the price of oil, or are intentionally deceptive. Which is more probable? Is one of these alternatives acceptable?

There is an interesting discord between two protest groups that have been in the news in the past few months.

Many of the most vocal supporters of the annual March for Life—now in its 38^th year—are among the most vocal opponents of the Occupy movement. They claim the Occupiers are just ‘whiny protesters’ taking the ‘lazy’ way to stand against ‘perceived injustices’. They complain that the Occupy movement gets disproportionate press coverage, and that the March for Life doesn’t get the coverage it deserves. Similarly, the Occupy folks complain about poor media coverage. Both groups perceptions of media coverage are partially an example of the hostile media effect, but the animosity raises a clear problem:

The philosophies that give rise to the problems that the Occupy movement is protesting are the same philosophies behind the existence of legal abortion in the United States.

The problems combated by both groups are rooted in philosophies that celebrate avarice to the extent that the complete devaluation of others is encouraged.¹ Whether the majority of those in either protest group recognize this underlying commonality is another story; it appears that many don’t, but a little mutual philosophical examination could improve the progress of both groups.

Why the antagonism instead of cooperation? The main anti-abortion² advocates concentrate exclusively on one narrow effect of the root problem: abortion. This single-minded effort has worsened other consequences of the celebration of avarice. This is because the concentration has historically led to strange political alliances: instead of working with groups that fight other problems with the same root, they typically endorse the most vocal champions of avarice, with a claimed disapproval of abortion as the only condition for endorsement. Since this philosophical compromise has continued for decades, it appears that the most vocal anti-abortion advocates are actually unaware that many of the positions held by supposedly anti-abortion politicians are actually at odds with philosophies that necessitates the pro-life stance. This dissonance is likely partially responsible for the rise of those in the anti-abortion movement who are no longer concerned with social issues. It is also a consequence of a philosophical background that often appears to only be acquired in order to have rational arguments to back their initial, and correct, emotional revulsion at abortion. This disconnect has unfortunately led to the complete dismissal of the significance—and even the existence—of the injustices the Occupy movement protests, and to the ridicule of potential allies.

The Occupy movement is protesting a wide range of problems with the same root, but their goal is explicitly to raise awareness, not to propose specific solutions. This has the benefit of creating a wide base, but this also means that many are likely to miss the other implications of their implicit recognition of the problem of avarice. Many may only recognize the effects without connecting them to their root cause. This is one reason the movement is partially only in protest against obvious problems such increasing income inequality partially due to regressive taxes, unfair representation due to unlimited corporate spending in elections and the doctrine of corporate personhood, and so on. A more examined and coherent philosophy would add to this an effort to educate the public on the root causes of the problems, which are also the root causes of legal abortion. To be fair, while many in the movement appear to be just reacting against the bad economy caused by the celebration of unrestrained avarice, a significant portion of the Occupy supporters have certainly done more philosophical introspection than those who are causing the problems.

The Occupy movement has successfully raised public awareness of problems that even in the first years Great Recession didn’t receive enough attention. The March for Life plays a role in bringing attention to the problem of legal abortion, though it seems to be mostly a motivational exercise for those involved to do something at other times of the year. Neither movement is perfect, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t both beneficial. The common philosophical necessity should make the groups allies. Unfortunately, the most popular interactions I have seen are antagonistic. Real change to solve the problems caused by the celebration of avarice—protested by both the March for Life and Occupy—can’t come without correcting the mistaken philosophy that necessitates both groups, but some progress can be made.

But the silliness of SOPA/PIPA isn’t my point today. The outcry against SOPA/PIPA is good, and hopefully gets the attention of our “representatives.” But where is the outrage about even more important issues? A healthy planet is necessary to sustaining life, but other than some minor stories about the Keystone XL pipeline protests and fracking, climate change and other environmental problems aren’t getting much attention. Much of the coverage these problems get is uncritical repetition of various politician’s claims that the problems don’t exist. Or what about abortion? There are about 2200 abortions per day in the United States, even though the right to life is one of the most fundamental rights.

Protests and letter writing campaigns against bad laws such as SOPA/PIPA are good, but we must also take serious action against other important problems.

Now, for a funny thought….

If I was evil, I’d have created one of the anti-SOPA/PIPA JavaScript overlays. It would be a nice clean one that you can click to get around, and it would have a cookie for each site so you only see it once. But then, half way through the day, I’d insert an ad that must be clicked before viewing the site. Muhaha!

But I’m too ethical to do that, which is why I’ll never make any money.

Suggested reading:

• Google: More about SOPA and PIPA – End Piracy, Not Liberty
• Internet Archive: 12 Hours Dark: Internet Archive vs. Censorship
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: January 18: Internet-Wide Protests Against the Blacklist Legislation
• SOPA Blackout
• Slate: Why Should We Stop Online Piracy?
• John Peebles: Why Does This Have to Be So Hard?

I am pro-clean air. I am pro-clean water.
—Rand Paul

Libertarians invariably claim they want clean air and water, but then go out of the way to ensure that gratuitous damage to the earth continues. An example of this pattern is Senator Rand Paul’s recent attempt to prevent the EPA from regulating cross-state pollution from power plants. Paul opposes these environmental protections by using a typical libertarian objection:

I think we can have a clean environment and jobs, but not if we let this administration continue to pass job-killing regulations.

Senator Paul creates a false dichotomy between employment and limits on pollution, he then—following the universal libertarian environmental view—fails to propose a solution that is compatible with his libertarianism. This is a problem.

For any view to be part of a serious philosophy, it must be able to deal with reality. Science is clear on the causes and severity of environmental damage, and technology provides many options for practical solutions to many of our current environmental problems. Given the clear harm, any acceptable philosophy must be able to integrate an account of the cause of the problem and be able to suggest a self-consistent solution to the problem. If a philosophy is at odds with reality, it cannot be taken seriously, and should then be discarded.

If libertarianism is a serious political philosophy it must recognize the existence and severity of environmental damage, and it must be able to create a solution to stop the damage that is compatible with libertarian ideals. But libertarianism—at least in common practice—does not provide a path to solve our environmental problems. In fact, it typically ignores the uncontroversial science by denying the harm caused and its clear implications. This failure to agree with reality is what originally led me to conclude that libertarianism is not a valid position.¹

However, not that everyone who claims a political philosophy conforms completely to that philosophy or weighs each part equally. Rand Paul himself is a good example of this sort of inconsistency: he is one of the most prominent libertarians, but is pro-life. Many libertarians would consider the pro-life position to be an unjustified government intrusion on a woman’s liberty. But Senator Paul recognizes the sanctity of life, saying, “It is unconscionable that government would facilitate the taking of innocent life.” This position can be supported from a libertarian worldview by (correctly) saying that the pro-life position is protects the liberty of the unborn child. This is simply an case of attaching different weights to different liberties. However, to fulfil the requirement that a philosophy must be internally consistent, a person making this argument must recognize that the same line of reasoning is behind pollution regulations. That is, one person’s imagined liberty must be restricted in order to ensure the liberty of others.

The particular set of EPA rules that Senator Paul proposed rejecting—placing some limits on a narrow (but large) type of pollution—is a another clear example of a limit an one type of liberty outweighing another. Even if we oversimplify and use a merely economic analysis, these rules will create a healthcare benefit two orders of magnitude larger than their cost. The EPA estimates that these rules will save at least 13 000 people a year from premature death. As seen in previous posts, this sort of lopsided benefit is to be expected. Just as a child’s right to not be killed outweighs a mother’s liberty to change her mind about having a child, the right of millions of people not to be caused significant health damage outweighs the liberty of a few people to slightly increase their profit. Health issues are only one aspect of the many environmental problems, considering other impacts only widens the already 100 to 1 benefit to cost ratio.

A philosophy must be internally consistent, and must be able to explain and solve any problem. So, libertarian politicians want to be taken seriously by thinking people, they must acknowledge the problems and propose realistic solutions. If one’s philosophy causes one to ignore reality or be unable to propose solutions, one is obligated to reexamine it.

Sources:

• McClatchy DC: Senate defeats Rand Paul’s resolution to kill EPA cross-state rules
• EPA: Cross-State Air Pollution Rule
• Rand Paul: Issues: Sanctity of Life

The Bakken Formation is part of the Williston Basin Province. For a good short introduction, see the USGS Fact Sheet: Assessment of Undiscovered Oil Resources in the Devonian-Mississippian Bakken Formation, Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota, 2008. Note that while some of the oil is conventional, the Bakken Formation is largely a continuous source. This means special techniques such as hydraulic fracturing are required to extract this oil. It isn’t the conventional “drill a hole and start pumping” sort of source.

The current best estimate of the Bakken Formation is that it contains 3.65 (between 3.0 and 4.3) billion barrels of “undiscovered, technically recoverable oil.” As exploration continues, the estimate for undiscovered, technically recoverable oil will be replaced with an estimate of proven reserves. Both figures are typically significantly lower than (<1/10) the estimate of in place oil, but as we’ll see, this email constantly confuses these numbers.

Here is the quoted email along with my notes and corrections:

From: Jack …
To: …
Sent: Sun, Sep 25, 2011 1:53 pm
Subject: OIL- You better be sitting down when you read this !!!!!!

How many of you can I talk into calling your state senator/representative and suggest that they curtain the tree huggers and get folks working producing oil. Jack

OIL – You better be sitting down when you read this !!!!!! EVERYTHING HERE CAN BE VERIFIED: SEE THE LINKS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS MESSAGE.

Ah, linking to sources to provide credibility. As we’ll see, this is only prima facie credibility, checking the sources changes the conclusion.

As you may know, Cruz Construction started a division in North Dakota just 6 months ago.

Cruz Construction is an oilfield services company. It appears that this email may have started as a Cruz Construction marketing message, but if not, it is at least free advertising.

They send every Kenworth (9 trucks) we had here in Alaska to North Dakota and several drivers.

They just bought two new Kenworth’s to add to that fleet; one being a Tri Drive tractor and a new 65 ton lowboy to go with it.

They also bought two new cranes (one crawler & one rubber tired) for that division.

Dave Cruz said they have moved more rigs in the last 6 months in ND than Cruz Construction moved in Alaska in the last 6 years.

This is all irrelevant to the message.

Williston is like a gold rush town; they moved one of our 40 man camps down there since there are no rooms available.

Wait, “gold rush town” is a positive term?

Unemployment in ND is the lowest in the nation at 3.4 percent last I checked.

The unemployment for North Dakota is 3.5%, for the entire US it is currently 9.1. This is irrelevant, but true. ND unemployment rate is increasing.

See anything in the national news about how the oil industry is fueling North Dakota’s economy?

No, but this is because news means something changed.

Here’s an astonishing read. Important and verifiable information:

About 6 months ago, the writer was watching a news program on oil and one of the Forbes Bros. was the guest.

The host said to Forbes, "I am going to ask you a direct question and I would like a direct answer;

how much oil does the U.S. have in the ground?" Forbes did not miss a beat, he said, "more than all the Middle East put together."

The story is irrelevant and unsourced, but the claim about US versus Middle East oil is important to check. The numbers we need are easy to find:

The USA has ~20.68 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

The Middle East has ~753.36 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

This means that the Middle East has over 36 times the proven oil reserves as the USA.

The U. S… Geological Service issued a report in April 2008 that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big.

It was a revised report (hadn’t been updated since 1995) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota, western South Dakota, and extreme eastern Montana.

The USGS press release is real, but the way it is reported in this email is misleading.

Even if it is true that only these groups knew it was coming, this is irrelevant; are the ones who knew it was coming because they are the ones paying attention. The way this is stated it is meant to sound like the report was way out of date, but this isn’t accurate. Rocks aren’t exactly fast changing, so these studies don’t need to be updated often. The change in the estimate is due to the improved models and more advanced extraction techniques.

Check THIS out:

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable (5 billion barrels), at $107 a barrel, we’re looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

This paragraph has a number of problems:

We have been drilling Bakken since the 1950s, but drilling has recently increased. The Prudhoe Bay field was actually discovered in 1968, years after parts of Bakken were already producing.

I traced the 503 billion barrel estimate to a draft study by the late Leigh Price, who was a USGS organic geochemist. The study was never completed, but the draft was made available by the University of North Dakota’s Energy & Environmental Research Center. The study was clearly in draft state, with the estimates variously reported as 200–400 and 271–503 billion barrels. It is important to note that this is an estimate for the quantity of oil in place. This does not mean the amount recoverable, which is much lower. The current EIA Annual Energy Outlook estimate for unconventional oil fields is that 8% will be recoverable.

This email estimates 10% recoverable, or 50 billion barrels. Notice the factor of 10 error stating that 5 billion barrels (1%) will be recoverable. Using the 50 billion barrels number this puts the oil at $5.4 trillion, using the 5 billion barrels number in the email puts this at $540 billion. Using the current best estimate for a maximum of 4.3 billion barrels extractable, the maximum recoverable value of the Bakken oil is $500 billion.

Even the high estimate for total North American proved oil reserves is lower than than this email’s estimate for the amount extractable from the Bakken Formations.

"When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor.

They had no idea…” says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature’s financial analyst.

"This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years," reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

It’s a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the ‘Bakken.’

It stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada.

The reaction of politicians to this news is irrelevant.

For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end.

Even the ‘Big Oil’ companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago.

However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken’s massive reserves,

and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil,

those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL !!!!!!

As I’ve already shown, the 500 billion barrels is a significant overstatement of the recoverable oil in the Bakken Formation.

I don’t know where the $16/barrel cost came from, but it is an extremely optimistic number. The extraction of oil from the Bakken Formation has increased as higher prices support more expensive extraction techniques, so expecting this oil to be extracted at $16/barrel is unrealistic. Additionally, this ignores the fact that oil is sold on a world market.

That’s enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight.

Using the current rate of petroleum product consumption in the US (with no growth), the Bakken Formation would supply the US for less than one year. That’s a long way from 2041 years. The email is internally inconsistent with numbers, but if I’m generous and say it means 30 years, it is still off in US oil consumption by a minimum of either 4.2 or 42 times. That is, the email claims that USA uses either 24% to 2.4% of the oil we actually do. If we only used 24% of the petroleum that we actually do, we could stop importing oil and our domestic supplies would last twice as long. That’s a reasonable conservation goal, but that’s the opposite of what this email is promoting.

And if THAT didn’t throw you on the floor, then this next one should – because it’s from 2006 !!!!!!

U.. S. Oil Discovery – Largest Reserve in the World.

Stansberry Report Online – 4/20/2006

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world.

It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction.

In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted.

It looks like this section was modified from an earlier email. Notice that this is yet another internal inconsistency: this estimate is four times the estimate used earlier in the email, which was already over one hundred times the current best estimate of the quantity of recoverable oil in the Bakken Formation. And as seen above, we have been extracting this oil for decades at an increasing pace. 105 million barrels of oil extracted from Bakken between the 1950s and 2007 is a long way from “none”.

With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news:

We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.

Here are the official estimates:

8 times as much oil as Saudi Arabia

18 times as much oil as Iraq

21 times as much oil as Kuwait

22 times as much oil as Iran

500 times as much oil as Yemen

And it’s all right here in the Western United States !!!!!!

Also notice that once again, the email is comparing proven reserves to in place oil.

So what’s the real comparison? Comparing apples-to-apples: the Middle East has over 36 times the proven reserves that the United States does. Remember, the email is claiming that the USA has not only more oil than these countries combined, but the entire world combined. Here are the actual current estimates:

The email’s comparison of the US and Saudi Arabian reserves is off by a factor of 100: we don’t have 8x the oil of Saudi Arabia, they have 12x the proven reserves we do.

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy. WHY?

This is just false. As we’ve seen, we have been extracting this oil for decades, and the rate has significantly increased in the past few years. Even if we somehow had immediate access to the full supply of this oil Formation, it wouldn’t even let us be independent of foreign oil for one year.

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we’ve got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East, more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That’s more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.

Again?

Don’t think ‘OPEC’ will drop its price even with this find? Think again! It’s all about the competitive marketplace, it has to.

Now this is odd. The email recognizes that oil is an international competitive market, but wants OPEC to “drop its price” because of an old update to the estimate of the amount of oil found in part of the USA. This is a gross misunderstanding of the oil market. To oversimplify: Oil is a fungible commodity on a world market, so the price is determined by the total world extraction & refining rate and the total world demand. This means that for OPEC to “drop its price”, it would have to increase its extraction rate enough to significantly change the world supply, which it has no reason to do. (The EIA has a good explanation of the world oil market.)

Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists?

This is also an odd and irrelevant claim. Particularly since oil industry funding of anti-environmentalist organizations is so well documented.

Got your attention yet? Now, while you’re thinking about it, do this:

Pass this along. If you don’t take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you complain about gas prices. By doing NOTHING, you forfeit your right to complain.

Now I just wonder what would happen in this country if every one of you sent this to everyone in your address book.

If nothing else in this email raised your suspicion, the exhortation to forward it should.

By the way, this can be verified. Check it out at the link below !!!!!! http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

As shown above, while this news release does confirm a couple of the points in this email, it also contradicts the other 2/3 of the email. And that’s before you read the FAQ.

Curz Construction: http://www.cruzconstruct.com/services.php

It is interesting that instead of citing another source, the email cites a oilfield service company that is currently expanding its operations in North Dakota.

After researching my response, I found that Snopes had already debunked an earlier version. Independent verifications like this are why I recommend at least checking Snopes before forwarding this sort of email.

It is clear that there is nothing substantial to this email’s claim that we can have cheap gas and petroleum independence by simply extracting more oil from North Dakota. Even if we were somehow able to rapidly increase the oil extraction rate in the Williston basin, it wouldn’t significantly change gas prices. The way to free ourselves from foreign oil is through efficiency and alternative energy sources.

Update: After writing this, I looked at the article on Snopes. It appears that Snopes’ attribution of the origin of this email to a 2006 investment marketing letter is accurate.

1. ‘The Tyranny of Defense Inc.’ from The Atlantic about the insight of two of Eisenhower’s speeches.
2. ‘Light Out, Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You’ from the New York Times is about the latest edited edition of Huckleberry Finn. The original is public domain (as it should be), so an edited edition is legal, but that doesn’t mean it is a good idea.
3. It’s a little old, but you should read this interesting article ‘Covert Operations’ in The New Yorker about the Koch brothers and their political involvement.
4. Last weekend I watched ‘The Hunting Party,’ a 2007 movie about journalists on vacation looking for a war criminal in Bosnia. Tho movie was loosely based on Scott Anderson’s story ‘What I Did on My Summer Vacation’ which was published in 2000. As usual, the story is a bit different from the movie, and the story isn’t exactly a usual news piece.

Recommended reading:

• ‘Driver’s ed value doubted: Trained teenagers wreck more often, legislators told’ – Journal Gazette
• ‘Ex-ISU prof urges tougher driving standards’ – Tribune Star

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. —Jimmy Carter, 1979-07-15

This doesn’t match the distribution I expected. After looking at the House, I examined the results for the Senate:

This looks a little broader than the House, but still not quite as biased toward long times in office as I had expected. To be a little more thorough, I calculated basic summary statistics:

It turns out that careerism isn’t nearly as bad as I thought. Of course, the summary stats don’t quite give the true answer, because they don’t take into account that this is the time served so far by those currently sitting in congress. What I really want to see is the total time served by all those now in congress, after they have retired or lost an election. Basically, I’d expect this to show a result slightly lower than the true average.

A little reading shows that the average reelection rate is about 84% (for 1982 to 1994, I don’t have more recent data). Using this number with some simple statistics gives a theoretical mean time in the House almost identical to the average of those currently serving. However, the measured variance is significantly larger than the expected variance.

Now that I have a more accurate view of the makeup of congress, I can look at the reasons behind my previous misconception. The first reason is the number of times I have heard politicians and others talk about the need for term limits. The exaggerated view of careerism is reinforced by the fact that much of the congressional leadership has been in office for years. Since they are the ranking members, they appear to be disproportionately represented in national news stories. The fact that Indiana has only had three senators since I have lived here, and my House district has been misrepresented by Mark Souder since 1995, contribute to the appearance of a permanent congress.

This leads to the question of what should be done. The problem clearly isn’t as bad as I originally expected, but is it really a problem? A year or two ago, I realized that overly strict term limits for the Senate would undermine the purpose of having a bicameral legislature. But what about the House? There is evidence that strict term limits can create new problems. For now, I think that term limits in the Senate are unimportant, and I am undecided about the House. I’ll stick to my general rule of voting against incumbents that aren’t significantly better than their opponent. One final point to remember:

The founding fathers, by the way, did give us the best system of term limits there is. If you don’t like what they do, vote ’em out.
–Jack Lessenberry

Suggested reading:

• Throw All The Bums Out? Bad Idea by Tom Schaller on FiveThirtyEight
• The Entrenching of Incumbency: Reelections in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1790-1994 by Stephen C. Erickson in the Cato Journal. Being a Cato Institute publication, this talks about time in office tending to corrupt, but ignores other sources of corruption. Erickson writes about politicians bowing to special interests to be reelected, but ignores the role of special interests in getting them elected in the first place.
• Legislators and Administrators: Complex Relationships Complicated by Term Limits by Sarbaugh-Thompson et alli. Legislative Studies Quarterly isn’t open access, but a number of stories report on this paper.
• What ‘Permanent Congress’? by Mickey Edwards (R-OK) in the NYTimes. It is interesting how opinions shift according to which party has a majority.
• Reelection rates of incumbents By David C. Huckabee. This is where I found the reelection rate.

Future problems:

• Look at the age of representatives during their first term. A large portion of the drop off could be from retirement.
• Look at the careers of legislators before and after their time in congress.
• Look at how being chosen for appointed offices (e.g. the Cabinet) change the numbers.

My disagreements with Friedman are his technological over-optimism, solutions that increase complexity, and philosophy. I’ll ignore the philosophical differences in this review.

One example of Friedman’s overly complex, overly optimistic solutions is the smart electrical grid. I agree that we need a smart grid. The details are a problem I would like to work on. I disagree with Friedman’s vision of a smart grid. He basically says we should make the grid as smart as possible. This ignores the energy and reliability problems caused by unnecessary complexity. It is an example of a way of thinking common in engineering and politics: add a fix to what we have, even when fixing an underlying problem is easier and solves additional problems. This way of thinking creates unnecessary complexity and contributes to many of our problems. Unfortunately, it is easier to find support to add a law or feature than to change one. There are too many entrenched interests for a real solution to be likely without first moving through suboptimal answers, like the ones that Friedman proposes. Even though they can be better, these are the best likely solutions, so we should move forward as quickly as possible.

The section ‘Make the Word “Green” Go Away’ almost makes up for the rest of the book. Friedman says that green should be normal, so we should stop saying ‘green.’ This is an excellent point. The the word green has been abused recently, especially in greenwashing products. Adding an extra word makes it sound like being green is special. It isn’t. Sustainable practices must become the norm. There isn’t a good answer for this linguistic difficulty, but an improvement would be to drop the word ‘green’ and start calling other things ‘dirty,’ or some better term. It’s too bad stores won’t (or can’t) put soot symbols, or something, on boxes of anything that isn’t green. This would help make unsustainable products appear as different, and environmentally friendly solutions appear normal.

The solutions in this book aren’t always the best, but, Friedman’s proposals are pragmatic and more likely to be implemented than better solutions. While Hot, Flat, and Crowded makes some good points—and has some good quotes—I’d recommend reading a different book on Why We Need a Green Revolution. If you are interested in energy, I recommend Winning Our Energy Independence by S. David Freeman. For more on the business side, the best I have seen is Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Hawken, Lovins and Lovins.

BibTeX reference:

@book{friedman2008,
	Author = {Thomas L. Friedman},
	Publisher = {Farrar, Strauss and Giroux},
	Title = {Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a
		Green Revolution--And How it can Renew America},
	Year = {2008}
}