What do you think are the most important items or areas that citizens must urge representatives and govts to address at the state level?

Thanks.

“mobilize the game-changing procurement power of the government to buy green energy and products.”

“Further, we will invest $15 billion each year to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean energy future.” (from Obama speech in earlier post)

I’m not sure how much Joe or Bill are aware of every position paper from the Center for American Progress, but I wanted to point out one item from a position paper by Neal Lane and George Abbey on space policy that I think is a spectacularly bad idea, with some implications to our energy and climate situation.

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/ issues/ 2008/ changeforamerica/ pdf/ space.pdf

“Specifically, the decision to phase out the shuttle by 2010 should be reconsidered; it should be flown until a suitable replacement becomes available.”

In case it’s not obvious, they’re talking about the Space Shuttle.
“First and foremost, the mandate to stop flying the space shuttle in 2010 meant the United States would depend on Russia for human access to space for at least four years, but more realistically a decade.”

The paper quite rightly points out that the NASA Shuttle replacement, a set of government rockets and space vehicles called Ares 1, Ares V, and Orion, has delays, cost overruns, and technical problems. These expensive government systems should never have been started, and should probably be totally reworked or replaced when Obama gets in office. However, the solution is not to keep the Space Shuttle going.

- The Shuttle is too expensive. It costs about $4B per year to maintain. NASA could do a lot with $4B/per: double its Earth Science budget, increase its planetary science budget for climate studies with different conditions from Earth’s, start a new type of Earth science observations using low-cost commercial reusable suborbital vehicles, improve power subsystems and power using subsystems on satellites with spin-offs for home/industry use, research improved airplane fuel efficiency, etc (I could but won’t continue) ….

- The Shuttle has shown that it’s dangerous, and cannot be made safe (eg: no ejection seats).

- NASA already has a modestly-funded program to encourage commercial vehicles to send cargo to and from the Space Station, in exactly the sense of the quotes at the top of the government encouraging private enterprise to solve national problems. This effort should be expanded to crew (including ISS rescue). Continuing the Shuttle would crush this innovative effort. One of the primary participants happens to spin off environmentally-useful companies like GeoEye; the other is run by Musk of Tesla Motors. Would their other efforts survive if this one was wiped out by Shuttle?

- The position paper is reluctant to depend on Russian Soyuz for ISS access, but we already do that. Shuttle does not and can not serve as an ISS emergency crew return vehicle unless we only man ISS for a week or so. Thus continuing Shuttle would actually wipe out our efforts to have a U.S. alternative to Soyuz (U.S. commercial vehicles).

The rest of the paper is fine. I don’t agree with every sentence, but many points are totally right, like increasing NASA’s science and aeronautics efforts (perhaps with a focus on energy/environment). However, continuing the Shuttle would make just about all of the rest quite difficult to fund.

It may be winter in Washington, D.C.

One of these years … maybe soon … either winter will come really late, or spring will come early, and it won’t be winter in January in Washington D.C.

Problem:
Americans want and need efficient vehicles, Ford and GM don’t make them. So Ford and GM going out of business, taking many Americans with them.

Solution premise:
GM and Ford do make fuel efficient vehicles for the EU market, but cannot import them as they met ECE rules, not our different NHTSA rules.

Two steps to implement solution:

1. New congress: new legislation. Adopt ECE rules. Accept them in lieu of NHTSA for Detroit’s own EU models of more efficient cars.

2. Use auto bailout funds to duplicate the factory supply chain that Ford and GM used there to build those fuel efficient models in Europe, and set up “mirror factories” here in Detroit, so Ford and GM can build them here.

3. Legislate a binding contract with automakers: that this funding is only for use in producing a (minimum of one) specific fuel efficient model.

(rather like the govt ordered up X many of aircraft Y for WWII)

I wonder what a complete factory machinery set-up costs? I don’t know what entire auto factory assembly-lines cost to put together. Does anyone know?

I would think you could set up here to build at least one model for $25 billion. Maybe it doesn’t take all that much money to adapt what they have here now – after all they bring out new models each year anyway.

The upstream approach is quite interesting and quite promising.

Polluting industries are likely to make a large amount of noise. This has been happening in Australia over the past year. Expect them to hire consultants to write reports predicting that the sky will fall down and businesses will close if these reforms are introduced. Progressives should get ready to debunk these reports when they come out. It is time to educate the American public about ‘rent-seeking’.

The sticking point will be cap and trade or a tax of any kind. That will need serious support and re-education of the media.

Remember, the anti-tax noise machine is ALWAYS fired up, and ready to go.

This is but one example though, and there is no shortage of examples. From democratic reform (especially electoral and lobbying reform), to competition reform, to specific policies knocking down barriers to progress of all kinds, Obama has before him a system that is sufficiently corrupt that just asserting fairness and transparency will go enormously far on a range of problems. Makes you wonder if GHG emissions might be less of a “problem” than a symptom? A physical symptom of social corruption and inequity?