variable carbon tax

This post explains how a variable carbon tax could work. In summary, it automatically adjusts when oil prices rise or fall, damping out the effects of price fluctuations and raising more revenue when prices are low. It can be designed so that the overall, average tax increases over time, with those increases happening when the economy can best handle them.

The tax would decrease gradually as oil prices rise, and then increase again when prices eventually come back down.

If the adjustments are asymmetric – larger increases when prices fall, and smaller decreases when prices rise – this system would gradually raise the overall carbon tax, even as it follows a counter-cyclical pattern. Such an incremental increase is what most models for controlling climate change call for…

The key to this strategy’s political feasibility is to launch it while prices are very low. Once it is in place, it will become a little-noticed, politically uncontroversial part of pricing for gasoline (and other products) – one that produces far-reaching benefits. Some of the revenue could be returned to the public in the form of tax cuts or research support.

Other forms of environmental harm could be taxed in this way too – for example, building materials (pavement) that cause pollution and habitat destruction, emissions of air pollutants other than carbon, consumer packaging not designed to be reused or recycled. You could make the whole thing revenue-neutral by reducing taxes on hard work and productive investment.

fire trucks

I want to start this post by thanking the fire department for what they do. Obviously, they save lives and property, and have one of the least morally ambiguous jobs out there. That said, they are so almost universally revered that you wonder if it is okay to voice any doubts about the way they do things. So I was surprised to see this article voicing some of my own questions about whether fire trucks need to be so big. When I lived in Singapore, I noticed that they didn’t use the huge fire trucks – they were more like vans, and used some kind of foam rather than pure water. Now, the buildings in Singapore are almost all very modern, and all have prominent water hookups, and streets are very wide. Singapore chose to bulldoze a lot of its older buildings and streets at some point and start fresh, and I would not necessarily want my home city of Philadelphia to do that – I love our narrow streets, largely 19th century housing including my own house, and the walkability, mom-and-pop businesses and odd scattered public spaces it leads to. Another thing is that as an engineer occasionally involved in aspects of street design, the fire department is sometimes a voice in opposition to change. Take bumpouts for example that create  a shorter crossing distance for school children at intersections. These will save lives. The fire department will say that these slow down fire trucks making turns, and anything that slows down fire trucks could cost lives. I am not saying this is the wrong dialog to have, but the fire department shouldn’t always be the bullies getting their way, the two safety issues should be weighed against each other and a rational (okay, at least political) decision made.

cold stratification

Mid-February, time for a gardening post. It’s kind of like when you start following your favorite sports team before the season starts, and you are excited because anything is still possible. I am especially excited though because I have a new house, it has a garden, and it is really the first time I have ever had a garden. I’m going to grow some annuals, mostly in pots, but what I really want to focus on is perennials. I’m picking mostly perennials, mostly natives, and mostly plants that are edible in a pinch, although garden for food is not my top objective (my top objective is butterflies and other pollinators, followed by interesting appearance including flowers, followed by food potential). Which brings me to cold stratification. I have started a bunch of seeds in the basement under lights over the last two weeks, but so far nothing has happened. These perennial seeds seem to be tougher than the annuals I have been used to in the past. One reason is some of them apparently need cold stratification.

Where I live the snow is rapidly melting, leaving behind a landscape that seems almost barren and asleep. However, for many native plants and quite a few garden perennials, it is this act of freezing and thawing that awakens them and actually increases their ability to survive and reproduce. Cold stratification is the term used to describe this very basic need; the need for winter.  Winter has the ability to soften the outer seed coat of some of nature’s toughest seeds through the action of freezing and thawing in a moist environment. For many plants that require stratification, this process can take up to 2 months and typically occurs between 34 and 41 degrees Fahrenheit. During that time, the seed coat softens and embryonic growth is stimulated. Eventually, the embryo bursts through the softened coat and begins the process of germination.

For those of us who enjoy starting our own flowers, there are some classic perennials that require a period of cold stratification to increase germination. One example is Echinacea, a personal favorite of mine. Echinacea is a plant gifted with many benefits. Most home herbalists are aware of its medicinal properties and gardeners love it for its beauty, low maintenance requirements and as a mid to late season nectar source for beneficial insects. For these reasons, Echinacea has a place in nearly every garden and farm.  But purchasing mature Echinacea plants from a nursery can be expensive and often some of the most interesting varieties (Rare or endangered native prairie Echinacea varieties have only been available in seed form recently.) are not available commercially. For these reasons, I started growing my own Echinacea from seed a number of years ago. In the beginning, I had mixed success. Without a period of cold stratification, the germination rate for this garden beauty can plummet to less than 30 percent. However, with stratification, it is possible to germinate nearly 100 percent of all Echinacea seeds that are started.

So I’m going to try throwing some seeds in pots in the backyard, even though it is freezing. But 30% doesn’t sound that bad to me. With a packet of 100+ seeds costing $2-4, I can afford to plant 3 seeds for every one that comes up. Still, I’m waiting a bit nervously for that first one…

cynicism

Poor Hillary. I voted against her last time, and I probably will vote against her again even though I think she would probably make an adequate President. The reason is that she is choosing the path of cynicism. When Bernie Sanders talked about how all other advanced countries provide health care, education, and child care for their citizens, citing Denmark as an example, Hilary said we aren’t Denmark, we are the USA. In other words, we can’t do it because we are the USA.

One night I tuned in to the Democrats’ presidential debate to see if they had any plans to restore the America I used to know. To my amazement, I heard the name of my peaceful mountain hideaway: Norway. Bernie Sanders was denouncing America’s crooked version of “casino capitalism” that floats the already rich ever higher and flushes the working class. He said that we ought to “look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”

He believes, he added, in “a society where all people do well. Not just a handful of billionaires.” That certainly sounds like Norway. For ages they’ve worked at producing things for the use of everyone — not the profit of a few — so I was all ears, waiting for Sanders to spell it out for Americans.

But Hillary Clinton quickly countered, “We are not Denmark.” Smiling, she said, “I love Denmark,” and then delivered a patriotic punch line: “We are the United States of America.” Well, there’s no denying that. She praised capitalism and “all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in our country for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families.” She didn’t seem to know that Danes, Swedes and Norwegians do that, too, and with much higher rates of success.

That’s not logic – if every other country can do it, we are the exception, we are dysfunctional, and it is cynical to say we can’t do it when obviously it is possible. When Bernie hit her for praising Henry Kissinger, I think we was spot on. Henry Kissinger was a “realist”, a cynic, and he has the blood of millions on his hands. I would listen to arguments about how well-functioning markets could boost retirement savings, restore rational prices to our broken health care and education systems, boost growth and innovation, from Democrats or even from Republicans, but I am not hearing those policies from anyone. Instead, I am hearing intolerance and science denial from the Republicans, which I won’t entertain for a second, and “USA, no we can’t” from Hillary. I like what I’m hearing from Bernie on campaign finance, financial regulation and climate change. So go ahead and sign me up.

Citi and Oxford on automation

Citi and Oxford have a long report called Technology at Work v2.0: The Future Is not What It Used to Be. Among the worrisome statistics and over-the-top infographics: 77% of jobs in China at risk due to automation, compared to 47% in the U.S. 77% seems like a recipe for serious unrest. 47% is still half. Still, maybe these are existing jobs and there will be new jobs created. Like robot repairman, for example. Being the guy who owns the robots seems like a very good option, if you can pull it off. Another eye opening statistic they show is the payback period for investments in robots at 1-2 years in China right now.

City Observer’s Weekly Roundup

City Observer has a nice weekly roundup with way more stuff than I could actually hope to read in a week. This example covers everything from car “demonization” to affordable housing to real estate capital gains.

I’ve been in the process of trying to form opinions on these issues for many years. On cars, I think they are demons. At least, private cars and all the waste and environmental and social hell they have unleased on the entire world. We should design cities and connections between them so we almost never need them. Then we can keep a few share cars and taxis around. On affordable housing, I don’t have the answers that have alluded everyone else forever, but in general I like focusing on the idea of supporting well-functioning markets that are able to set appropriate prices. When you distort prices with large subsidization schemes in a world of finite resources, you end up with distorted systems and unintended consequences. Better to find ways to remove hidden distortions, subsidies, and discrimination, constrain supply less, help people get around efficiently, and generally help them make an income and build assets so they can afford what housing costs. In the U.S., all the tax deductions and exceptions for homeowners and subsidization of inefficient low-density infrastructure are forms of distortion that maybe should be phased out. But please don’t take away my personal subsidies all at once, because I was counting on them when I made my last round of housing and financial decisions.

agent based modeling

Agent-based modeling is one of those things I want to play around with some day if I theoretically ever had some time.

Modelling domestic water demand: An agent based approach

The urban water system is a complex adaptive system consisting of technical, environmental and social components which interact with each other through time. As such, its investigation requires tools able to model the complete socio-technical system, complementing “infrastructure-centred” approaches. This paper presents a methodology for integrating two modelling tools, a social simulation model and an urban water management tool. An agent based model, the Urban Water Agents’ Behaviour, is developed to simulate the domestic water users’ behaviour in response to water demand management measures and is then coupled to the Urban Water Optioneering Tool to calculate the evolution of domestic water demand by simulating the use of water appliances. The proposed methodology is tested using, as a case study, a major period of drought in Athens, Greece. Results suggest that the coupling of the two models provides new functionality for water demand management scenarios assessment by water regulators and companies.

bricks and mortar Amazon

We all know that traditional retail is dying because Amazon can deliver anything to your front door. Now, in a strange irony, Amazon is opening some physical stores.

Last year, Amazon opened its first physical bookstore in the University Village shopping mall in Seattle. The store features thousands of books, a tiny sampling of those on Amazon’s website, most of them with customer ratings of four stars and above.

The books sell for the same price in the store as they do on Amazon’s site. Because book prices regularly change on the site, visitors to the store scan books using a mobile app to find out how much they cost.

Although the store is called Amazon Books, it prominently features a growing array of Amazon-made devices, including the Kindle tablet, the Fire TV set-top device and Echo, its home speaker and virtual assistant.

mosquito bites

Here’s some practical advice from NPR on how to avoid mosquito bites. DEET works, and has been more or less proven safe. So, somewhat surprisingly, does eucalyptus oil.

I am fairly careful about mosquitoes, and yet I have been bitten by them in Florida, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and less exotic places on the U.S. eastern seaboard. So far I haven’t caught West Nile, St. Louis, dengue, chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis, and had never even heard of Zika until last month although it is supposedly common in places I have been. Then again, I could have an asymptomatic infection with one or more of these, who knows. If you talk to enough people from tropical countries, the majority have had dengue at some point, usually with a full recovery. But it can cause a particularly cruel and grizzly death in a few unlucky cases.

None of this is to make light of the horrible complications we are seeing with Zika. It’s just that like anything, your best bet is to take reasonable precautions and try to be as rational about the likelihood and consequences of unfamiliar risks as a human can.