Like Taking Cars Off the Road
June 17, 2009
In the debates over energy efficiency, a new metric has emerged to measure how green policies are: how many cars is it like taking off the road?
For example, Coke's new vending machines are like taking 218,000 cars off the road for two weeks. Regulating energy utilities in California is like taking 350,000 cars off the road for a year. Switching to CFL light bulbs is like removing 3.5 million cars from the road. Using biofuel is like taking 32 million cars off the road. Painting roofs white is like taking all of the world's cars off the road for 11 years! I think you get the point.
This language shows something extraordinary about how we now think. We are fully willing to admit that driving cars is bad for the environment and even that we should probably try to do what we can to stop polluting. But instead of policies that seek to actually encourage removing cars from the road, we like to think about pollution reduction policies that are "like" taking cars off the road, even if they don't.
I look forward to the day that we can talk about policies like congestion pricing or transit infrastructure and the newspapers will report that it is like installing X number of CFL bulbs, or like painting Y number of roofs white. Or we could just stick to some scientific metric, like tons of CO2, but that might be too optimistic.
For example, Coke's new vending machines are like taking 218,000 cars off the road for two weeks. Regulating energy utilities in California is like taking 350,000 cars off the road for a year. Switching to CFL light bulbs is like removing 3.5 million cars from the road. Using biofuel is like taking 32 million cars off the road. Painting roofs white is like taking all of the world's cars off the road for 11 years! I think you get the point.
This language shows something extraordinary about how we now think. We are fully willing to admit that driving cars is bad for the environment and even that we should probably try to do what we can to stop polluting. But instead of policies that seek to actually encourage removing cars from the road, we like to think about pollution reduction policies that are "like" taking cars off the road, even if they don't.
I look forward to the day that we can talk about policies like congestion pricing or transit infrastructure and the newspapers will report that it is like installing X number of CFL bulbs, or like painting Y number of roofs white. Or we could just stick to some scientific metric, like tons of CO2, but that might be too optimistic.
