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April 11, 2007
from punchline to teddy roosevelt in four years?
To paraphrase the great P.J. O'Rourke: the only thing more distressing than Americans' continually electing action figures as governors is that the action figures don't do a noticeably worse job than other governors.
Are you watching what's happening in California with fossil fuels? Governor Arnold (you look up how to spell his last name) is taking a dastardly Republican, free-market approach to changing the energy infrastructure of the state. You can keep your SUVs, says Arnie. Just make them run on hydrogen. And he's providing business incentives for both both supply and demand for hydrogen cars.
Will it work? I don't know. I'm sure parts of the program will fail, and I'm equally sure that its opponents will latch on to those as disproof of concept. The creation of hydrogen fuel costs more energy than the fuel itself contains, and that means burning fossil fuels or nuclear power during its synthesis—options that won't thrill everyone. But I love the approach. I love the assumption that people are basically selfish and won't give up their great big SUVs, for this is what I too believe. If giving up SUVs is critical path, change is not going to happen anytime soon. Instead, Arnold's practicing realpolitik that acknowledges the truth of human nature—as opposed to the bitter pill that the green movement usually serves up to the general public: the only possible solution is for everyone to be just like me.
And most of all, I love that Arnie's got a vision beyond 1) Priuses or 2) science cooked to deny the problem. Kudos to the great experiment. Anything that pisses off both Republicans and greenies just feels...right.
posted by john at 6:58 AM • permalink