Electric cars (really)
So I spent a bunch of time over New Years speaking with Greg Chase, one of my best friends and the guy who gave Mike Gravel a chance in New Hampshire. Greg's current obsession is with figuring out the best way to get the United States off its oil dependency, both for economic and environmental reasons.
Greg's a good physicist, a former oil trader, a current hedge-fund manager, and the kind of person who tends to drill very deeply into issues he's interested in, reading everything in sight. So I thought you might enjoy getting a quick, bullet-pointed summary of Greg's preferred energy policy:
- Importing foreign oil is killing our economy because it contributes to a permanent trade deficit.
- We need to import oil because we've chosen to build our society around automobiles which can only use one form of energy: gasoline.
- To get us off oil, we need a massive gas tax, as high as $2-3 per gallon to reduce consumption in the near term and incent people to work on alternatives.
- We also need to make major investments in improving battery technology.
- The way to get us off oil is through plugin electric cars, because plugin cars are powered by the electrical grid, which is capable of taking power from a wide array of sources.
- Using the grid will allow us to power our cars using energy from whichever source is cheapest and least environmentally harmful (choosing from among coal, nuclear, natural gas, wind, etc.)
I'm personally persuaded. What do you think?
Greg's a good physicist, a former oil trader, a current hedge-fund manager, and the kind of person who tends to drill very deeply into issues he's interested in, reading everything in sight. So I thought you might enjoy getting a quick, bullet-pointed summary of Greg's preferred energy policy:
- Importing foreign oil is killing our economy because it contributes to a permanent trade deficit.
- We need to import oil because we've chosen to build our society around automobiles which can only use one form of energy: gasoline.
- To get us off oil, we need a massive gas tax, as high as $2-3 per gallon to reduce consumption in the near term and incent people to work on alternatives.
- We also need to make major investments in improving battery technology.
- The way to get us off oil is through plugin electric cars, because plugin cars are powered by the electrical grid, which is capable of taking power from a wide array of sources.
- Using the grid will allow us to power our cars using energy from whichever source is cheapest and least environmentally harmful (choosing from among coal, nuclear, natural gas, wind, etc.)
I'm personally persuaded. What do you think?
Labels: econom, energy, greenhouse, policy
posted by Moses Kagan at
6:57 PM
1 Comments:
i'm convinced.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home