Bacon's Rebellion

  • DONKEY SNARLS

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    James A. Bacon

    Do not expect much help on Mobility and Access from the presumptive Donkey Clan presidential nominee based on today’s action.

    Eric M. Weiss has the story in WaPo today: “Road Plus Rally Equals Snarls” Obama Event at (Nissan) Pavilion Promises Epic Back-Ups.”

    You would not expect Sen Obama himself to understand the self-inflicted Mobility and Access disaster caused by approval of Nissan Pavilion over a decade ago – but his handlers, staff and the host / promoters from the Commonwealth?

    The settlement pattern solution? Do not hold any event in the Pavilion.

    The Autonomobile industry image solution? Get out of the naming “rights.”

    The political image and turn a red state blue strategy? Do not hold this event in the Pavilion.

    EMR

  • Arcane Issues, Big Stakes

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    James A. Bacon

    The fracas over Virginia Commonwealth University’s contracts with Philip Morris USA isn’t going away. Anti-tobacco activists who track Philip Morris’ every move won’t let it. Blogs around the country have picked up on the front-page New York Times article that highlighted controversial restrictions on academic freedom contained in the agreements. Like it or not, VCU is in the national spotlight.

    The issues can sound arcane to outsiders, and it’s easy to blow off the entire controversy as an academic tempest in a teacup. But the questions raised by the New York Times and by follow-up reporting locally (See “VCU and the Evil Weed“) cannot be ignored. The business community in particular has a stake in understanding just exactly what is going on.

    VCU is one of Richmond’s most important institutions. It is an economic engine: not just for the thousands of local residents it educates, not just for the urban re-development that it has generated on all around its campus, but for the research it conducts, the intellectual property it creates and the Knowledge-Economy businesses that spin out of the university directly or the Virginia Biotechnology Research Park located nearby.

    VCU is Richmond’s gateway into the burgeoning life sciences industry. In 2006, according to the National Science Foundation VCU accounted for $149 million in Research & Development expenditures in 2006 – most of it in life sciences — ranking it 104th among the 640 institutions of higher education tracked. That’s up from $80 million in 1999. In a highly competitive environment VCU has gained a modest amount of ground compared to peer institutions. While R&D spending nationally increased 73.5 percent over that seven-year span nationally, VCU bolstered R&D expenditures by 87.1 percent.

    As important as the R&D expenditures, which are largely restricted to university labs, is the potential to convert the science into business opportunity. That’s the role of the biotech park, which has built a cluster of life science tenants, including 44 private companies, four VCU research institutes, four state labs and five not-for-profit organizations. At long last, the 13-year-old biotech park is achieving national name recognition and critical mass. The park has incubated 63 companies (19 from VCU), of which 31 have graduated from the park. With the park on the radar of start-up financiers and venture capitalists, tenants have raised tens of millions of dollars in early phase financing in recent years. Three companies have gone public. Now, the park is assembling new capabilities to take technology created at VCU or in the park and commercialize it locally.

    Richmond is on the verge of breaking through from a third-tier center of life science entrepreneurship into a respectable second-tier city. But the goal of evolving the Richmond life sciences community to the next level hinges upon the credibility of VCU as a research institution.

    In that regard, the university’s close association with Philip Morris USA is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Philip Morris aims to recruit world-class researchers to its $350 million research facility at the biotech park, and it is broadening its scope of R&D into areas that could potentially increase the understanding of health processes, particularly at the biochemical level, and lead to beneficial new products. On the other hand, Philip Morris bears the legacy as one of the most reviled corporations in America, with a reputation not only as a company that manufactures a product that kills people, but as a company that perverted science to evil ends.

    An argument can be made that the current leadership at Philip Morris is genuinely trying to put its tainted past behind it and conduct the company as a responsible corporate citizen. (See “Prospering in Adversity.”) That proposition is, to put it mildly, controversial. For legions of skeptics around the country, Philip Morris can no more escape its past than the German people could escape collective guilt for the Holocaust until the country had thoroughly and convincingly repudiated the Nazi era.

    That’s why any academic institution, such as VCU, must approach research relationships with Philip Morris very, very carefully. It’s entirely possible that the tobacco giant has turned a new leaf, so to speak. I personally see no reason why VCU should not engage with the “new” Philip Morris. But the VCU administration cannot be naïve. To borrow a phrase from Ronald Reagan, it is essential to “trust but verify.”

    Unfortunately, it turns out that VCU signed contracts with Philip Morris that restrict academic freedom to some degree. Because Philip Morris has not fully regained its credibility in the scientific marketplace, such breeches are understandably perceived in the academic community and the R&D world with suspicion, and in some quarters interpreted in the worst possible light.

    Building R&D programs at American universities is all about the human capital. It’s all about recruiting big-name scientists with established reputations who have locked onto big-dollar funding sources from the corporate world or federal government. If the Philip Morris brouhaha gets any bigger, and if VCU gains a reputation as a company that sacrifices academic standards, the university could find its ability to compete for top scientific talent to be severely compromised.

    The impact would be visible only to a few Richmonders. Instead of landing Scientist A, VCU may find that it can only recruit Scientist B, who isn’t quite as renowned and can’t pull in quite as many research dollars. But the effect would be real nonetheless.

    Additionally, any stain on VCU could spread to the Biotech Park at the very moment that the park has become increasingly successful in recruiting promising new tenants, like the eight Israeli life science companies that have announced in the past year an intention to set up U.S. operations there. If the Biotech Park suffers recruiting fall-out, the Richmond economy loses one of its greatest potential contributors to economic growth and prosperity.

    So, those are the stakes. It’s easy for the controversy to get caught up in a tug-of-war between those who hate VCU President Eugene Trani and those who love him, or between those who loath Philip Morris and those who feel compelled to defend it. What we, as Richmonders, need is a dispassionate analysis of the facts. How restrictive are the Philip Morris research contracts, and are those restrictions tolerable or benign? The findings don’t affect only VCU and Philip Morris. They affect us.

    The task force recently set up by Trani to “review the guidelines and policies regarding corporate sponsorship of research at VCU” is the logical place for such an appraisal to take place. It is absolutely critical for the credibility of VCU – and critical for those elements of the Richmond business community who want to see VCU and the life sciences sector prosper – that this task force be beyond reproach. The Richmond region cannot afford for the task force to issue a report on Oct. 1 that is assailed by critics as flawed from the inception. The time to ensure the future credibility of the task force is now.

    Trani has ordered that the task force be comprised of six representatives: two nominated by Frank Macrina, vice president of research, two by the vice president of health sciences, and two by the president of the Faculty Senate. The entire process – who gets appointed, the setting of an agenda, the compiling of documents, the testimony of witnesses – needs to be entirely transparent to the public. We cannot afford to have the impartiality of this inquiry impeached in any way. VCU and Richmond have too much riding on it.

    (Cross-posted with R’Biz.)

  • 300 MPG. Could This Be the Coolest Car Ever?

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    James A. Bacon


    Let me say up front that the Aptera totally rocks. The super fuel-efficient vehicle is so awesomely cool — the hybrid gas-electric vehicle gets up to 300 miles per gallon — that it makes me proud to be an American. (Detroit, watch out, the company that designed the vehicle is based… where else… in Carlsbad, Calif.)

    The designers are pricing the all-electric vehicle at $26,900 and the plug-in hybrid at $29,000. That’s more expensive than a Prius, but with gasoline selling at $4 a gallon, you can save some serious coin with this bad boy. I would be amazed if this vehicle doesn’t make big inroads into the marketplace.

    I first saw the vehicle profiled last night on NBC News. Then this morning the blogger “Not Ed Risse” posted a comment linking to the Aptera website, along with a triumphal note aimed at the real Ed Risse: “300 miles to the gallon! Autonomobility is here to stay. Deal with it.”

    On the philosophical spectrum, I reside somewhere between Not Ed Risse and the real Ed Risse. I have confidence in America’s creative genius. Now that energy prices have risen to a new, higher plateau, we will find ways to both conserve and produce energy in ways that were unimaginable a few years ago. While I do perceive a risk of civilizational collapse due to the unsustainable consumption of energy, I’m pretty confident that our market-based economy will be able to muddle through.

    But it’s premature to high-five each other over the end of the automobility crisis. Permit me to touch upon a couple of issues:

    • The Aptera doesn’t touch the problem of traffic congestion. Take ten million SUVs off the road and replace them with Apteras, and you still have ten millions vehicles on the road, jockeying for scarce roadway capacity and requiring parking spaces.

    • Widespread adoption of the Aptera and comparable vehicles will accelerate the collapse of our highway funding system based on the gasoline tax. Let’s estimate the impact on tax revenues… 300 miles to the gallon vs. 15 miles to the gallon. You do the math. If we don’t pay for roads with a gasoline tax, how will we pay for them?

    • Dysfunctional human settlement patterns are not rendered miraculously functional by low fuel costs. The Aptera will cut down the gasoline bill and reduce pollution — two very good things — but it won’t reduce time spent commuting or reduce the cost of providing public services to inefficient patterns of development.

    So, let us salute the creators of the Aptera and praise American ingenuity. Let us hope that Aptera goes mainstream, inspires imitators and weens millions of Americans from their big cars. But let’s not forget the many other costs — few of them so easily addressed — associated with automobility.

  • Prison Space Arbitrage

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia’s Department of Corrections has dreamed up a clever way to solve its financial problems: Take in 300 prisoners from Wyoming, charging roughly $85 per prisoner per day, while keeping state prisoners housed in local jail and paying only $14 per day. Pocket the profit of $71 per prisoner per day.

    Three hundred prisoners adds up to real money — about $21,000 per day, or more than $7.6 million a year!

    Virginia Beach Sheriff Paul J. Lanteigne doesn’t think it’s such a good deal. He’s on the receiving end, collecting only $14 per day for 67 inmates who are required by state law, he contends, to be housed in a state prison. Meanwhile, the jail’s population is 1,479, but the jail is rated for only 889 inmates, reports Frank Green with the Times-Dispatch. “The jail is severely overcrowded,” Lanteigne said in papers filed yesterday.

    All told, there are 1,799 such “out-of-compliance” inmates in local and regional jails across the state, according to DOC. The Department hopes to import as many as 1,000 more inmates to offset more than $40 million in budget cuts over the next two years.

    Tough call. I admire the ingenuity of the DOC for engaging what amounts to prisoner arbitrage. I’m wondering if someone could create a market that evens out the variations in supply, capacity and price between prison systems. I’ve got 200 New York prisoners here, costing $120 per day per head. South Carolina, your cost is $50 a head. I’ll pay you $90, New York saves $20 and I pocket $10. I’ll tell you what, for that price, I’ll throw in free prisoner transport!

    On the other hand, there is the problem of prison overcrowding in Virginia Beach and other municipalities. While I don’t normally get all worked up over the living conditions of the criminal class, some local jails are atrocious. On this particular issue, call me conflicted.

    (Image: Butch Cassidy, one of Wyoming’s more celebrated prison inmates.)

  • Dominion to Test Conservation Technology

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    James A. Bacon

    At last! Dominion Virginia Power is moving ahead with a pilot program for one of the potentially most effective electricity-conservation strategies available. The power company will test demand-response technology in 2,000 homes in Richmond, Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia this summer, deploying small, programmable communicating thermostats (PCTs) and intelligent load-control switches in approximately 2,000 homes.

    In theory, the demand-response solution will allow utilities to respond to rising peak loads by reducing energy usage at critical times. The load management system will send a communication signal to the demand-response devices installed at the home to cycle air conditioners. Additionally, the program allows participating residents to program and control the temperature setting of their home thermostats using the Internet.

    Dominion hasn’t released details of the initiative, but Comverge, Inc., developer of the technology, has. (Read the Comverge press release.) You, the readers of the Bacon’s Rebellion blog, find out first because your editor is all seeing, all knowing!

    By curtailing peak power demands, the demand-response system potentially could save Dominion Virginia Power hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars, in avoided costs. The key to making it work is making it worth the while of electric consumers to endure reductions to their power supply when they need it most. Will DVP offer them a rate cut? Details to come.

  • Personalities and Prosperity

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    James A. Bacon

    In one of the coolest parts of his new book, “Who’s Your City?”, creative-class guru Richard Florida argues that regions, like people, can have personalities. He identifies five standard personality types — openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion (sociability), agreeableness and neuroticism — and, based upon 600,000 survey responses from individuals around the country, plots the responses geographically.

    In a nutshell, it’s possible to construct a personality profile of a region. The obvious question then arises. What is Virginia’s personality profile? And, following the line of reasoning that Florida lays out in his book, what are the implications for building more prosperous, livable and sustainable regions?
    The good news is, Virginia is not a hot-spot of “neurotic” personalities — that distinction is reserved for New York and environs, and parts of the Midwest. The bad news, the “open to experience” personality type also eludes Virginia. Florida associates this category with creativity, innovation and economic growth. You’ll find it most prevalently on the West Coast and the Northeast, although there are pockets in Colorado, Texas and Florida.

    Virginia is relatively devoid of the “extrovert” personality type — that’s found mostly in the Midwest and large swaths of the South. But that’s no big deal because the category is economically neutral.

    The two personality types that most define Virginia are “agreeable” and “conscientious.” Combine the two together, and you get what Florida refers to as a “conventional” or “dutiful” personality cluster. On the positive side, people tend to be more pleasant and more trustful. They get along. But they don’t challenge authority, don’t rock the boat, and they’re not terribly innovative. And innovation, remember, is one of the keys to prosperity in a globally competitive economy.

    If Virginians aren’t temperamentally suited to be cutting-edge innovators, what path is there to prosperity? Well, I have always emphasized two paths to prosperity: innovation and productivity. If we aren’t especially well suited to be innovators, we are suited to excel at productivity. As Florida himself notes, “agreeable” personalities more easily form bonds of trust, and they tend to work together in teams and collaborative situations — a prerequisite for high-performance business organizations today. Similarly, Florida notes that conscientious types “work hard and have a great deal of self discipline. They are responsible, detail-oriented, and strive for achievement. They tend to be better-than-average workers on almost any job.”

    Virginia has two broad alternatives: Try to compete for more “open-to-experience” personality types, a daunting task given the fact that the “opens” tend to migrate to regions where others like themselves reside. Or, we can make the best of what we’ve got and build productivity-enhancing institutions that play upon our strengths.

    Such speculation is so far beyond the level of most thinking about economic development in Virginia today that it will fall on deaf ears initially. But I sense that Florida is on the right track. (Read my column, “Personalities and Prosperity” for a fuller treatment.) If Virginians take to his latest theories as enthusastically as they greeted his earlier discussion of the “creative class,” we may be having that conversation sooner than later.

  • VCU and the Evil Weed

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    James A. Bacon

    VCU and its President Eugene Trani are coming off very badly in a public relations disaster that is largely to their making. In a recent front page article, The New York Times asked reasonable questions about taking money from Philip Morris USA under provisions that appear to violate even VCU’s rules in terms of research disclosure and academic freedom. But Trani – and the Richmond establishment – obfuscated, giving the school and the region a national black eye.

    VCU spokespeople confirm that the language in the so-called “research services agreements” from Philip Morris USA forbade anyone from even talking about the contract. In a creepy stipulation, if the news media even asked questions, they were to be reported right away to the tobacco firm. Even VCU admits that its other “research service agreements” do not claim such stringent language.

    Trani says the Times misunderstood and that all is on the up and up. The American Association of University Professors does not agree. Some 15 elite universities have banned tobacco funding altogether. And even when the nation’s No 12 researcher, Duke University, accepted a $30 million grant from Philip Morris to get people to stop smoking, it insisted on tough language that gave it complete freedom over research and the scientific inquiries, unlike VCU.

    The research from the VCU contracts will be published after a review for proprietary information from Philip Morris. There may not be a massive erosion of academic freedom in the VCU case. It seems more that a less prestigious school anxious for corporate funding agreed to contract language that a more prestigious school might have refused on principle.

    Philip Morris is what it is – a rich, secretive company that makes deadly products and is not afraid to throw its weight around. VCU is what it is, a third tier school. Trani and VCU have some soul-searching and some answering to do, especially since they hope to boost the school’s R&D at the Virginia Biotechnology Research Park, heavily funded by Philip Morris. Sleazy and secretive just isn’t the way to go. Read the column in Bacon’s Rebellion.

  • Tremble, Mortals, the Rebellion Is Unleashed

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    James A. Bacon

    The June 2, 2008, edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine is now available for viewing. You can read it in all of its original splendiferous glory here, and you can sign up for a free subscription here. Or, you can simply read the current sampling of column here:

    Personalities and Prosperity
    Ever wonder why New York is full of neurotics and L.A. full of surfer dudes? In his latest book, Richard Florida suggests that regions, like people, have personalities — with big implications for prosperity.
    by James A. Bacon

    Riding the Tiger
    Many citizens, abetted by the MainStream Media, are clinging to oil and autonomobile dependency to the bitter end. A dismal reality of ever-climbing energy awaits them.
    by EM Risse

    Time for Systemic Reform
    Crafted for the industrial, post-World War II era, Virginia’s government institutions are failing. More money won’t work. Tinkering won’t work. We need systemic reform.
    by Chris Braunlich

    Give Charters a Chance
    The Richmond school board has just approved the state’s fourth charter school — a rare victory over political forces that sacrifice children’s welfare at the altar of left-wing ideology.
    by Norman Leahy

    VCU and the Evil Weed
    VCU President Eugene Trani blew Richmond ’s reputation by going along with a noxious Philip Morris research contract.
    by Peter Galuszka

    Nice & Curious Question
    Big Government in Virginia: Does Size Really Matter?
    by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

  • POLITICAL WISDOM AND CONVENTION NOTICE

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    James A. Bacon

    Sen. John C,. Watkins (R-Chesterfield) said a mouthful when he stated re the upcoming special session on transport:

    “I don’t think anyone has put something out there that solves the problem.”

    John, my friend – and all politicians are my friends – no one can put something out there if you are looking for facility or finance “solutions.”

    Wilfred Owen said it almost sixty years ago, restated it in every book he wrote and repeated it every time we talked during the last decade of his life:

    “There are no transport facility (or we would add, transport facility finance schemes) that will solve transport problem – there are only land use (human settlement pattern) solutions.”

    THIS JUST IN:

    The regular Friday “See My Pigs Fly Higher” convention of Tiger Riders United and the Association of It’s Government’s Fault Conspiracy Theorists has been relocated the Millennium Dome. It is the only venue that was not already booked and is large enough to hold everyone who has RSVPeed via Blogs due to the invitation extended to the League of 12 ½ Percenters. Tip of the Hat to Larry Gross for forwarding this information.

    EMR

  • Prudent Precautions Against Rising Sea Levels

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    James A. Bacon

    As a follow up to my recent post, “Insurance, Risk and Climate Change,” I would offer into testimony a column appearing in the Times-Dispatch today, written by Skip Stiles, executive director of Wetlands Watch, a Hampton Roads environmental group.

    The Virginia Department of Emergency Management has updated its storm surge projections, which had been using 1923 levels, to project that 100,000 residents of Hampton Roads would have to flee the region the next the region is directly hit by a hurricane, Stiles writes. That puts more people than ever on the roads, at the very time that the transportation infrastructure is threatened by sea-level rise.

    A 2007 study for the U.S. Department of Transportation predicted that a 19-inch rise (less than the two feet projected by the Commission) would flood or put at risk 436 miles of Interstate highway and arterials in the region before any hurricane hits.

    Of course, the impact of such a hurricane may not be as bad as it sounds. Rising sea levels threaten to inundate 760 square miles over the next 100 years and displace 48,000 to 150,000 Virginians by 2108, Stiles writes. Presumably the coastal dwellers would have enough sense not to move to new locations that placed them in harm’s way of a hurricane. But, then, you never know. You can rarely go wrong overestimating human stupidity.

    The dollars at stake are immense. Last year, a European economic analysis valued Hampton Roads shoreline assets at risk as the 10th highest for any city in the world. No wonder, writes Stiles, that Allstate, Nationwide and State Farm, which account for 55 percent of the Mid-Atlantic’s insurance market, have stopped writing new policies in much of Tidewater.

    To head off disaster, it is critical to allow insurance markets to function freely, sending out signals to developers and home buyers who might not otherwise get the message that coastal development is fraught with risk. Additionally,Stiles suggests some other ideas.

    Begin with the mapping, research, and information gathering needed to test results from those large-scale studies and focus them down to street-level accuracy. Next: limit my grandchildren’s financial exposure by keeping buildings, facilities and infrastructure out of those areas where they will become flooded or unusable without significant public investment.

    I know there are a lot of Global Warming skeptics among my readers. Indeed, I am one of those who distrusts the manner in which advocacy groups and the media have cherry picked the science to peddle alarmist scenarios to the public. But if there’s enough evidence to persuade the insurance industry that the risk of rising sea levels is real, we would be fools to ignore that risk out of ideological petulance. In contrast to the cap-and-trade legislation being discussed in Congress, Stiles’ proposals strike me as entirely prudent and appropriate for state government.

  • Let’s Not Forget Tysons Roads

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    James A. Bacon

    Among the more persuasive objections I’ve heard to the Rail-to-Dulles project has come from our blogger friend Too Many Taxes. He has argued that the looping of the heavy rail line through Tysons Corner would be accompanied by such a large increase in development density around the rail stations that, notwithstanding the additional transportation capacity created by the rail line, more commuters would drive into the congested business district than do now, making traffic gridlock even more unbearable.

    In support of this proposition, TMT has passed along a document that updates construction cost numbers for road and interchange improvements contemplated in the 1994 Comprehensive Plan for Tysons Corner. Anticipating a density increase around three (now four) Metro stops in Tysons, the plan calculated the road/interchange improvements that would be needed to accommodate the increased density, and without which the rail plan would be counterproductive.

    Needless to say, the cost estimates of those improvements are worthless today. Accordingly, explains TMT, at the request of Del. Margaret Vanderhye, D-Fairfax, Virginia Department of Transportation engineers prepared a detailed accounting (click here for details). Some of the projects have been completed, and have been marked as such. Estimates for others — including virtually all of the interchange projects — are impossible to make, due to uncertainties regarding specifics of the project.

    Of those projects for which VDOT can make cost estimates, the total cost approaches $580 million. States TMT: “It’s believed the most of this sum is not yet funded, but that could be wrong.”

    Where will that money come from? Tax Increment Financing? Impact fees? Higher regional taxes? How much, TMT asks, will come out of the Fairfax County general fund, how much of that would be borrowed, and what would the impact be on the county’s AAA bond rating? These are all valid questions. While a VDOT Land Use Task Force is looking into the TIF option, according to TMT, no one has answers yet for the other questions.

    Bacon’s spin: Spending an estimated $5 billion cost of extending Metro rail to Dulles and increasing density around the Tysons Metro stops without providing for anticipated increases in traffic would seem to be an act of monumental stupidity. But finding $1 billion or so for road improvements (depending upon how big those “uncertainties” are) does not strike me as an insurmountable task — as long as the financing mechanism is based on the logic of user-pays. I would wager that the sum could be raised easily through a congestion toll in the Tysons area.

    Whatever the ultimate source of financing, we can count on one thing: It will take years to develop a political consensus and gain all necessary approvals. What if the train literally and figuratively leaves the station before these matters are settled?

    As long as the Kaine administration is determined to push Rail-to-Dulles forward, it should be fast-laning the road improvements as well. Otherwise, heavy rail could wind up making Tysons even more dysfunctional than it is now.

  • I’ll Take Some Solar, Please. Put It on my Tab.

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    James A. Bacon

    Shrewd, very shrewd.

    Dominion is asking the State Corporation Commission for permission to offer customers two options for purchasing renewable energy, be it solar, hydro, wind, biomass, wave, tide or geothermal. Under one option, customers would be billed for what it costs Dominion to acquire the “green” energy from independent green power producers. Under the other, customers could specify a fixed dollar amount to apply to the purchase of renewable energy; the amount purchased would vary with market conditions.

    If I read the press release correctly, these green energy purchases from independent producers would be over and above the renewable energy that Dominion would be committed to achieve under Virginia’s voluntary goal of generating 12 percent of its own electricity from renewable sources by 2022.

    Astute move. The options suggest a responsiveness to the consumer — and they take some of the political heat off legislators who resist raising the state’s renewable energy goals higher than 12 percent. If someone feels really, really strongly about renewable energy, he can put his money where their mouth is.

    Now, what can we do to encourage conservation?

  • Just Call Me Bigfoot

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia metropolitan regions are among the biggest contributors to global warming, asserts a new Brookings Institution study, “Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Urban America.” According to the study…

    Washington: The average resident in metropolitan Washington emitted 3.115 tons of carbon from highway transportation and residential energy in 2005 — ranking it 89th out of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States in energy efficiency. Another way of putting it, Metro Washington residents had the 12 largest carbon footprint per capita. What’s more transportation and residential energy use increased 7.2 percent between 2000 and 2005.

    That compared to 2.24 tons of carbon emitted by the average 100-metro resident and 2.60 tons of carbon emitted by the average American from transportation and residential energy.

    Hampton Roads: The average resident in Hampton Roads emitted 2.340 tons of carbon from highway transportation and residential energy in 2005. That made it the most energy-efficient of Virginia‘s three major metros, with the 36th smallest carbon footprint in the country. What’s more, the region has been trending positive: Energy use declined 0.86 percent between 2000 and 2005.

    Richmond: The average resident in metropolitan Richmond emitted 3.039 tons of carbon from highway transportation and residential energy in 2005, giving it the 15th largest carbon footprint per capita of the top 100 metros. Richmonders can take some consolation, however, that transportation and energy use decreased 2.68 percent between 2000 and 2005.

    Commenting upon the Brookings study, Trip Pollard with the Southern Environmental Law Center said:

    Virginia has lagged far behind other states in funding energy efficiency, but has taken some initial steps to promote a more balanced transportation program. Governor Kaine has recognized the importance of global warming and the threat it poses to Virginia, including creating the Governor’s Commission on Climate Change.

    We must be particularly careful, though, when reviewing new transportation funding, not to advance more oversized, expensive highway projects that would lock us into decades of sprawl, driving, and pollution by subsidizing fossil fuel-dependent development patterns and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

    Here are strategies that Brookings recommends for metro regions to pursue:

    • Promote more transportation choices to expand transit and compact development options
    • Introduce more energy-efficient freight operations with regional freight planning
    • Require home energy cost disclosure when selling and “on-bill” financing to stimulate and scale up energy-efficient retrofitting of residential housing
    • Use federal housing policy to create incentives for energy- and location-efficient decisions
    • Issue a metropolitan challenge to develop innovative solutions that integrate multiple policy areas

  • Sowell on Economics: A Book Report

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    James A. Bacon

    Memo to: James Atticus Bowden
    From: Peter Galuszka

    Re: Reading Assignment

    Okay, I got my copy of Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics,” have skimmed through it and am ready to make some points. I know your views are generally the polar opposite of mine, but I think I deserve at least a Gentleman’s C” for my efforts.

    Sowell has written a very good, clear primer on economics. I wish I had this book when I took Economics 101 back in 1971. Those were the days when every college intro econ. course had you get the umpteenth printing of Paul Samuelson’s classic textbook. I went to a liberal, northeastern school for which I make no apologies, but I will admit that the mindset was very Keynesian and all the teaching assistants who drilled us on Samuelson really liked government spending. It didn’t matter if the government didn’t have the money, we were told.

    Milton Friedman and the Chicago School existed but hadn’t penetrated the Northeastern elites yet. Free market principles, such as those of the Chicago School or at the Hoover Institution which is Sowell’s home, wouldn’t become really fashionable until Margaret Thatcher took power, and of course, Ronald Reagan gained the White House even though he turned out to be the biggest Keynesian of all.

    Sowell’s approach favors a free market view, which does have its merits. He is right about issues such as productivity, letting the market make choices and limiting government regulation and interference. Sowell gives the standard Ricardo line that “all boats rise” with free trade and that we are a lot better off with deals like NAFTA than not. Rule of law is critical for unleashing the laws of economics. Communism doesn’t work (like Duh) and he even quotes some Soviet economists and critics such as Nikolai Smelev whom I interviewed as a Business Week correspondent in Moscow back in the late 1980s. Good choice on Sowell’s part.

    My criticisms of Sowell’s work are ones of ideology and omissions.

    On ideology, he’s very anti-labor and though he’s right that unions are greatly diminished and now represent mostly government workers. However, they still play a needed role especially since corporate loyalty is a thing of the past and management is becoming more bloodless and ruthless. A counterweight is needed and unions can help provide it.

    Sowell’s arguments against “rent control” are over the top. He says that rent control in New York and San Francisco has kept apartment prices artificially high. I know about San Francisco but I have lived in New York City and rent controlled-apartments started to become rare about 20 years ago. The reason rents are high is that real estate in specific areas is very desirable and lots of rich executives and creative elites compete for it. This really doesn’t have much to do with rent control.

    Sowell doesn’t really tell us much about how executive compensation got way out of whack over the past 15 years or so and has led to plenty of CEO arrogance, hubris, stupidity and criminality. The pay given to CEOs if many times greater than it is for average workers than it was before. Are the today’s CEOs suddenly worth that much more than yesterday’s?

    Sowell skimps on the impacts of free trade. Sure it tends to be an overall win-win but try telling that the textile workers in Danville or in Kannapolis, N.C. where 6,000 lost their jobs in one afternoon.

    Sowell doesn’t even the topic of dysfunctional living patterns or mass overconsumption that are dear to the hearts of some Baconauts.

    On foreign ownership and investment, Sowell rightly points out that this is nothing new. Foreigners held significant shares in U.S. railroads at the end if the 1800s, for example. But what you are seeing is the emergence of “stateless” corporations that are new-fangled entities answerable to no specific country. Major U.S. construction firms linked to the Bush Administration end up headquartered in Dubai. How can you hold these firms accountable to shareholders, the true owners? Global securities regulation is only starting to take hold. Sowell doesn’t talk much about it. Yet decisions made by these companies can kill or create thousands of jobs overnight in Virginia or elsewhere.

    I really don’t see any specific application to Virginia any more than to anywhere else. Still, a good book.

  • The Latest Monkey Business in the Transportation Debates

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Round and round the transportation debate goes. Where it will end up, nobody knows.

    Gov. Timothy M. Kaine advanced a novel argument in favor of his $1 billion-a-year package of tax increases at a transportation conference in Goochland County yesterday. Increases in statewide revenue sources are needed, he argued, to address the intensifying inadequacy of gasoline tax revenues, which are being increasingly consumed by maintenance and repairs. He rejected Republican proposals to revivify regional transportation authorities and taxes, contending, as the Times-Dispatch writes, that statewide lawmakers can’t “put it on the shoulders of the poor schlubs in local government to pass taxes” that the General Assembly should have the political courage to enact itself.

    That’s an interesting turn-around for a governor who campaigned — and governed, initially — on the premise that transportation and land use decisions needed to be made in concert. The Republican proposals for creating regional transportation authorities are loaded with flaws. But they do have one advantage: They put transportation decision-making closer to the level of government where land use decisions are made. Gov. Kaine appears to find it preferable for state lawmakers, who are distant from land use decisions, to show courage, over municipal leaders, who make the land use decisions that directly affect the need for transportation improvements, doing so. Hmmm…

    Meanwhile, Republicans are fumbling toward a response to Kaine’s challenge that they need to be “problem solvers” rather than “problem avoiders.” Later yesterday, in the General Assembly building, leaders of the Elephant Clan spotlighted public-private arrangements during a hearing heavily attended by lobbyists for transportation and construction firms as well as industries affected by Kaine’s proposed taxes, including automobile dealers.

    A fix for transportation should include a bigger role for private business, the R’s argued, including multibillion-dollar lease-and-maintenance deals for highways, bridges and tunnels. States such as Indiana, Texas and Pennsylvania have enacted or are considering such plans, noted Jim Noland and Jeff Schapiro with the T-D.

    Here’s what the Republicans haven’t thought through: Privatization can be a useful tool in particular situations, but it’s not a cure-all. As applied in Pennsylvania (See “Pennsylvania Goes Over to the Dark Side in Transportation Deal,”) privatization can become a tool for engineering massive transfers of wealth, not for nudging the system towards “user pays” financing.

    Privatizing (or long-term leasing) roads makes sense when it enables a financially strapped state to make needed transportation improvements that would not get made otherwise. Building HOT lanes on Interstate 495 is a good example. However, privatizing roads is a tragedy in the case of Pennsylvania, where it looks like a mechanism for the inter-regional transfer of money from drivers on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to transportation projects across the state.

    Taxpayers are rightfully distrustful of both Kaine and the Republicans at this stage of the debate. With neither set of proposals would taxpayers be protected from politicians dispensing with the largesst to the benefit of favored special interests. At least with Kaine’s schema, the Transportation Trust Fund has a formula that allocates revenues between regions with a modicum of fairness. There are no such assurances if the General Assembly succeeded in privatizing major highways a la Pennsylvania Turnpike. The money would end up wherever the most powerful members of the General Assembly agreed to spend it.

    On the other hand, Kaine has pretty well painted himself into a corner. He cannot easily change his position. The Republicans, by contrast, have an opportunity to clarify their ideas — indicating specific highway assets they would propose privatizing and spelling out exactly how they would spend the money. If they are guided by user-pays principles, voters will see the fairness in what they propose. If they simply devise schemes for enriching investment bankers and institutional investors, they will end up hanging themselves.

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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