Those of us old enough to remember can recall the day when cars sold in the U.S. – even new cars — didn’t require seat belts. And the debate here was fierce; public safety advocates had their reports detailing how many lives would be saved each year, but the auto industry insisted that such legislation would ruin the industry: it would increase the cost of cars to an (more…)

Here’s an article that’s illustrates what happens when regulators get clever in creating incentives for environmental stewardship and responsibility: smart people work around them, unintended consequences result, and windfall profits occur in random places that have nothing to do with environmental benefit.

If I were doing this, I’d make the whole situation (more…)

Here’s a consumer-oriented piece from the U.S. Department of Energy: 10 Things You Didn’t Know about Electric Vehicles. Nicely done.

There are a couple of issues with EVs, however, that make this a trickier issue than the article implies:

• Even though the fuel savings versus gasoline are significant, (more…)

I just sat down over lunch with a printed publication to which I subscribe called the “Green Money Journal.” Fantastic stuff. I loved the lead article, “From Growth Capitalism to Sustainable Capitalism,” by Joe Keefe, President and CEO of Pax World Management, which manages about $2.5 billion using an approach the company calls “sustainable investing.” (more…)

In reference to my post on the lifecycle analysis (LCA) of wind turbines, a reader writes:

The LCA of fossil fuel (or nuclear) powered electricity production presumably shows a good return in terms of direct power out vs. power consumed. Until, that is, you start to quantify the externalities – pollution, climate impact, resource (more…)

There are at least two kinds of “EV deniers” (as I call them), i.e., people who doubt that electric vehicles represent an improvement for the environment over gasoline. The first concept is that for the foreseeable future, an increase in the electric load means burning more coal. I.e., coal plants that would otherwise have been tamped down during off peak (more…)

In response to my recent piece on electric vehicles, a few readers sent me John Peterson’s position on the subject. Thanks, but I’m already quite familiar with it. John’s a brilliant, honest, and levelheaded guy; in fact, I plan to visit him in Switzerland when I’m in Europe next spring. Having said this, I disagree with him here. (more…)

The fact is, governments have long provided massive subsidies for the fossil fuel and nuclear industries–and despite the fact that these industries are amongst the most profitable in the world, and continue to raise prices while inflicting tremendous damage to the environment, these subsidies continue unabated. (more…)

John Petersen is one of the most thoughtful critics of the electric vehicles industry. In a phone conversation I had with him a few weeks ago, he laid out a few reasons why he thinks the whole idea needs to be scrapped. Here, in his column on AltEnergyStocks.com, he further defends his (more…)

There are some highly respected thinkers who completely and vocally reject the idea of electric vehicles. I spoke recently with John Petersen of SeekingAlpha.com fame, whose recent article: “It’s Time To Kill The Electric Car, Drive A Stake Through Its Heart And Burn The Corpse” has stirred a great (more…)