Deron Lovaas's Blog: U.S. Law and Policy

Building a Bridge to Somewhere

2008-10-14T15:00:00Z

"We built a really inefficient environment with the greatest efficiency ever known to man." -- Andy Karsner, Asst Sec for Energy and Efficiency and Renewable Energy at Department of Energy, as quoted in Tom Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded

Driving our economy and our nation forward requires that we glance in the rear-view mirror to take stock of where we've been, and Karsner's words regarding our land-development practices sum it up well. Our infrastructure development was not the product of laissez-faire; policy was the engine that got us here.

And where are we, exactly? We're in a nation where traffic and the distances we drive keep growing- in large part as a result of our neighborhoods being built in a way that leaves no choice but for us to drive our car for even the most mundane of errands. We've built our way into oil addiction and ever-increasing pollution from a growing fleet of cars and trucks, thanks to impressive infrastructure like this intersection of two Interstate highways in Atlanta, Georgia appropriately dubbed "Spaghetti Junction" (Thanks to USGS for the image).

How did we get here? Fifty years ago we embarked on a huge national project: building a world-class interstate system. President Eisenhower worked with leaders in Congress - interestingly, the key Senate leader was none other than Al Gore, Sr. - to enact new policy aimed at building a "National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" made up of more than 40,000 ribbons of asphalt criss-crossing the country. That project was completed almost twenty years ago.

Congress then enacted the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991. "Intermodal" is a fancy name for "not just highways" ("modes" is a wonky way of referring to means of transportation, auto or rail for example). This landmark bill gave more power to regions as a counterbalance to state highway agencies, provided more funding for transit and other alternatives that improve air quality, created a huge pot of money that could be "flexed" away from highway-building to other modes, such as light rail, etc.

While a recent GAO report found that most states have not taken advantage of this provision with a paltry 13 percent of available funds actually being "flexed" for building transit between 1991 and 2006, there were some exceptions such as Pennsylvania where rail systems have been bolstered with this new funding (California and New York are standouts too). The bill was also bound by powerful amendments to the Clean Air Act, which required that regional and state transportation plans not undermine state plans to implement federal clean air requirements.

Current law expires almost exactly a year from now, on September 30, 2009. As I said in testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in June, the new law absolutely can't be just another lame "echo-TEA" bill, meaning we need to focus more on providing people with more transportation options. Although the ISTEA bill drove some changes, including more transit lines, bike paths and improved compatibility of clean air and transportation plans, it didn't do enough. By most measurements, we're in the same fix as before: We have world-class interstate roads complemented by remedial-class public transportation. We need some serious policy reform that moves us towards a balanced system that provides an array of real choices for businesses and consumers so we won't be forced to burn a gallon of gas every time we need a gallon of milk.

NRDC is proud to be a founding member of a coalition that is focused on building such a high-performance system: Transportation for America. This growing coalition of developers, housing advocates, transportation experts and conservation groups is tired of business as usual.

What would serve America better? Transportation for America demands policy that will:

1) Build to compete. I just got back from a two-week tour of England, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden and have seen transit-friendly projects like this, this, and this that show we have fallen woefully behind.

Just take a look at the Copenhagen Metro (Thanks to Gadgetbox for the photo):

Among the remarkable features of Metro is that the wait between trains is a mere three minutes, it has a 98 percent on-time departure record, the trains are driverless and the whole system actually turns a modest profit! As with other international cities, this is just one means of public transportation. It is complemented by regional as well as intercity rail systems (One of which is integrated into the bridge between Denmark and Sweden), along with a bus network.

Not to mention the commitment to rail made in the Far East, especially Japan and China. All these countries are attracting top-notch employers and development in part because they take transportation seriously. Rail, buses, bikes - you name it, they've got it, and they are building more.

2) Invest for a clean, green recovery. We can build our way out of the economic downturn. There are ready-to-go rail and rapid bus projects in 78 metro areas across the country, investing in them creates almost seven million good jobs.

3) Fix what's broken. This is a no-brainer, especially after the disastrous Minneapolis bridge collapse. Too much of our infrastructure is in poor repair. And guess what? A thorough restoration program would generate almost 15 million good jobs.

4) Stop wasteful spending. Many road projects in the pipeline should be reviewed and ultimately cancelled. That's exactly what the Pennsylvania and Tennessee transportation departments have done in recent years, saving scarce taxpayer dollars.

5) Save Americans money. Building more public transportation will give consumers the option to skip costly trips to the gas station and spur economic development that expands the tax base in communities (by asking private developers to contribute towards new service) across the country.

In short, we need a 21st-century transportation policy that drives down our oil addiction, cuts pollution and makes us economically competitive again. We need a bill without wasteful "bridges to nowhere," and that instead builds a multi-modal bridge to somewhere worth the trip.

What's Cooling the Price of Oil? We Are.

2008-08-06T18:19:59Z

Greetings from Washington, D.C., where some policymakers are becoming delusional about energy. Take the recent drop in prices. Some claim that President Bush deserves credit for simply talking. Even more hot air is comes from a small band of Congressmen blathering away in the U.S. Capitol, who claim their talking is affecting the enormous 85-million-barrel-a-day oil market.

Get real, folks. The biggest news is that as a supplier of only 2-3% of global oil, Americans are starting to realize this talk about drilling is looking at the problem from the wrong end of the stick. Since we are by far the largest buyer in the global marketplace, the best way to affect global prices is by making more efficient use of this resource, for example with more efficient vehicles. And in fact, as I've written about before, economics backs this notion.

Up until June, with global supply lagging expectations by 1.5 million barrels a day (mbd), supply/demand considerations favored higher and higher prices. Now that we are reacting by lowering consumption, however, this equation has broken down and so have oil prices.

Collectively, as U.S. consumers we have curbed oil consumption by 860,000 barrels a day over the first seven months of the year. This reduction in US demand has helped offset a 1.26 mbd increase in global demand over the same period, giving global supply a chance to finally catch up and check further price escalation. As can be seen in the table below from Energy Intelligence, the US reduced consumption by 4.2% during the second quarter of 2008, helping to offset a 7.9% increase from China during the same period.

Latest Demand Trends

000 b/d		Chg. vs.		Chg. vs.
Main Markets	Jul-08	Jul-07	2Q 08	2Q 07
United States	20,037	-3.4%	19,878	-4.2%
Japan	4,505	-1.3%	4,695	+1.8%
Europe Big 4	7,899	-0.0%	7,723	+0.6%
OECD G-7	35,156	-2.3%	34,938	-2.0%
Other OECD	12,691	+0.7%	12,715	+1.9%
Total OECD-30	47,846	-1.5%	47,652	-1.0%
Ex-USSR	4,045	+1.2%	3,906	-2.7%
China	8,074	+5.3%	8,317	+7.9%
Other Non-OECD	25,889	+3.2%	26,518	+5.0%
Total Non-OECD	38,007	+3.4%	38,741	+4.8%
Total World	85,854	+0.6%	86,393	+1.5%

While it might seem strange that the US has been the main driver of reduced oil demand over the past few months, it makes sense since the US consumer is far more exposed to higher gas prices than consumers in other countries. As can be seen in the graph below, lower fuel taxes and a weakening dollar have made higher oil prices far more painful at the pump for Americans than Europeans over the past several years.

This ability of the US to influence oil prices from the demand side, even with China showing little sign of slowing their demand for oil, must be remembered by those scrambling to develop an effective policy response. Putting policy in place to push down the oil intensity of our economy – particularly surface transportation – also has the benefit of lowering consumer vulnerability to high prices in the future.

The bottom line is that we need to slash our reliance on gasoline, which as I wrote recently on the pages of another web site remains a commodity unlike most others. We have to use a lot of it, and there are few substitutes. The sustainable way to break the habit is to adopt aggressive policies that generate more choices for consumers, in the forms of efficient cars and trucks, transportation alternatives like commuter rail, and new energy sources for our vehicles.

Efficient oil use and clean substitutes for gasoline can solve our energy problem in a way that drilling never will and should be front and center for any credible policy response to our pain at the pump.

I'm exceedingly grateful to my colleague Andy Stevenson, who performed the analysis above and co-wrote this post.

Reaching Out to Get the Job Done

2008-01-02T00:12:27Z

My New Year’s resolution for 2005 was the biggest one yet, and the one I’m proudest of keeping: I quit smoking, a habit I took up in college almost twenty years ago. It was REALLY hard, but unbelievably rewarding. Like tossing aside a huge burden on my body.

It was also a relief in another sense: I’m committed to natural resource protection as a career, and the contradiction haunted me: An environmentalist who couldn’t resist polluting himself.

It also meant that I supported companies and politicians with whom I disagreed. Big tobacco contributes a great deal to political campaigns, and I was pouring money directly into their coffers. Former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, a conservative firebrand, was rumored to greet smokers in the halls of Congress by shaking their hands and thanking them for their support. Some may remember that Helms was jokingly mentioned as one-half of a Presidential ticket in the funny-and-sadly-defunct comic strip Bloom County, along with liberal icon Jesse Jackson (“Let's Alienate Everybody! Jesse and Jesse in ’84!”).

Which brings me to the new year’s resolution I propose for all of us who labor to protect the environment: Reaching out beyond the choir in our work.

This is a challenging resolution to make on the eve of the most open Presidential election (i.e., where neither a current or former President or Vice President is on the ticket) since 1952. Partisan and ideological tempers will flare, no doubt.

But it’s necessary if we’re to win the race against such global threats as climate change and species extinction. First, because as I’ve written about before we need policy reform in order to respond in proportion to the scale of such problems. Second, because the reality is that when you aggregate up from state and local policymaking you find that the much-hyped division between political ideologies is not so new, and certainly not transient. A synthesis of findings from 2006 Harris Interactive polls found that

...the percentages of liberals and moderates have stayed very steady in the past four decades. Only the number of conservatives has changed, up from 32 percent in the 1970s, to 38 percent in the 1990s and down to 35 percent in this decade.

In order to win -- at least at the national level -- we must reach out to those who inhabit parts of the political spectrum besides our own. Fortunately, environmental protection offers one of the best opportunities to do just that. Another Harris poll found that 53 percent of adults agree that there is too little “government regulation or involvement in the area of environmental protection,” including 68 percent of Democrats, 51 percent of Independents and 36 percent of Republicans. Given traditional American suspicion of “big” forces in society – both government and corporate – this is a pretty strong signal of support for environmental safeguards. Harris also found that an overwhelming 81 percent of adults agree that America “needs to set the lead when it comes to controlling greenhouse gases and pollution.”

Outside of polls, we see signs of widespread support for the defense of natural resources, from well-known books by former Democratic Presidential candidates Gore and Kerry to Republican governor Whitman and House Speaker Gingrich. The consensus becomes even stronger when the subject is our reliance on one particular fossil source of energy: petroleum. Small wonder. As the World Resources Institute shows in a recent analysis, there is a lot of overlap in the means for breaking this habit, with 95 percent of the solutions helping to meet both security and climate objectives. We sweat the five percent that involves tradeoffs here at Switchboard, but it is still just five percent, which is why tackling this problem in particular resonates with greens, hawks as well as green hawks.

And this is the not-so-secret reason we broke the 30-year logjam on Federal fuel economy standards for autos in 2007: It resonated with a majority of lawmakers due to economic, security and environmental benefits.

The New Year’s resolution I propose for all of us working to protect the environment is to reach out to those with whom we may not agree, in both the physical and virtual worlds. Contribute to conversations in blogs we may not normally visit. Drop in on events we may not normally attend. Check out groups we tend to dismiss because they have a different viewpoint. In order for our outreach to bear fruit, we must remember a fundamental rule (according to the Harvard Negotiation Project, Dale Carnegie, Stephen Covey, and others): Listen and work to understand where others are coming from before making ourselves understood.

In 2007, we got started with several new environmental projects such as pushing energy-efficient technology into the marketplace with the new energy bill, and committing to putting caps on carbon dioxide pollution in place. But the job is far from finished. And it’s pretty clear we need more hands on deck to get it done.

Here’s to working together to build that critical mass in 2008!

An Oily Mess

2007-10-18T21:15:38Z

Contracts for an important crude oil type called a "benchmark" -- West Texas Intermediate (WTI) -- reached another landmark today: $90, for the first time EVER.

Why? Concerns about energy security, specifically that Turkey may intervene in Iraq.

This means that consumers and businesses will continue to feel the pain of high prices due to our overreliance on this resource. We remain shackled to the volatile Middle East, which holds all the trump cards in the global oil game with about 2/3 of the world's proven reserves.

Meanwhile, at a conference in Oklahoma -- smackdab in the middle of the U.S. oil patch -- former CIA Chief Jim Woolsey discussed the implications for national security, and laid out some cleaner domestic substitutes for oil in transportation: Plug-in cars and biofuels.

He probably talked about the bumper sticker he proudly sports on his Prius:

This striking statement and eye-popping oil price runups frame the message that Congress and the Administration must heed as they hammer out an energy bill: Tackling our oil addiction won't just cut pollution, it will provide consumer relief and make us more secure as a nation.

A Vote for the Future

2007-06-22T03:52:13Z

Heads are still spinning here.

This transpired in just the past hour: After a press conference announcing a compromise on fuel economy standards, featuring enough Republican supporters to protect it from an assault led by Senators Pryor, Levin, Bond and Voinovich, Senators went to the floor and approved by voice vote an amendment by Senator Stevens to the base bill.

While the amendment waters down the original proposal, it preserves the requirement to achieve 35 miles per gallon across the car and truck fleet by 2020. That will save hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, cut billions of tons of global warming pollution and save consumers billions of dollars.

Barring eleventh hour theatrics of some kind it appears that, for the first time in eons, the auto industry lost in their bid to cast raising standards as the end of the world, in chicken-little fashion. Instead, they will now provide us with more efficient (and cleaner) cars and trucks. This was a vote for our families and for our future.

As a friend in a Senate office who fought to make this happen said ecstatically: "There is hugging and kissing going on here."

On track to energy security

2007-06-22T00:11:08Z

The Senate is debating the energy bill again, and fuel economy is likely to come up. Amazingly, Senator Barbara Mikulski of my home state of Maryland just announced her position, which as the Washington Post pointed out is a key event. It looks like Senators might vote to increase fuel economy standards for cars and trucks substantially for the first time in a couple of decades. That should spur the market to provide more fuel-efficient choices like my family's Honda Civic hybrid.

And in case you missed yesterday's post, today is "Dump the Pump" day, with events being organized across the country by public transit agencies. So beat the heat by getting aboard a train, and keep an eye on the Senate...