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Sands through the hourglass

Or, Hey! You got pluralism in my diversity!

Hidden in plain, if at times dour, sight, an interview with Jill Lepore in CHE. She hits a couple of critical notes, per usual:

We’re in this appalling situation where civics education has a political balance that leans right, while the discussion of the diversity of the American past has a political balance that leans left. The problem with a civics education that leans right is that its version of the American past is inevitably going to be the story of the march of progress and prosperity and freedom. And the story that leans left is the story of atrocities and ongoing systematic inequalities. Both of those accounts of America are true, but neither of them is the entire truth. No child is equipped for life in a democracy if they are asked to receive either story as canonical.

One thing that really troubles me is that it’s now politically safe to talk about pluralism, but it is not politically safe to talk about diversity. Sure, those terms have different histories, and you could disambiguate them if you really wanted to, but ultimately they are kind of the same thing. I wish that civics initiatives would embrace the word “diversity” to depoliticize what they’re doing. And I wish that DEI programs that are still standing, of which I’m sure there are still some, would embrace the words “pluralism” and “civics.” There actually is a common project there. It’s possible to hold a common purpose across those different initiatives and to refuse to allow them to be politicized and demonized by the other side. To allow such a basic matter as what children learn in the third grade about their country to be determined by who’s won a seat in the Legislature in the last midterm election is outrageous. Those people should be ashamed of themselves.

[Narr: they are not ashamed of themselves]. And later, she suggests the reason people are unable to understand any common purpose beyond the accumulation of riches – which would lead to a downfall, except for the puny heights native to such  ambitions:

I teach at a university where the preponderance of our undergraduates go into finance, consulting, and tech jobs that they are recruited for almost the moment that they arrive in Cambridge, and whose time, instead of being devoted to academics, is devoted to securing positions in those industries. The pleasing of their parents, and the pleasing of those students, is the economic engine of the college and therefore of the university, in a way that I do not think is consistent with what a university is for. There are universities now that are creating centers for open inquiry. What is a university if not a center for open inquiry? Why would we need such a center? That anyone suggests such a center should raise a lot of eyebrows.

Successful marketing smears against the liberal arts notwithstanding, the underlying timidity about culture and civilization result in the increasingly inability to differentiate the real from the fake. It’s so complicated and new that people exchanged ideas on it using stone tablets. Adherents of classical learning become defensive  in conversations about earning potential, meanwhile West Point and the other three service academies continue to require philosophy, languages, history, and literature. Can you hold those competing notions in your head?

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Killing ‘carbon-capture’ Softly

You often hear – and I often write – about the unfashionable ‘need for more government regulation.’ Whether it is exotic financial instruments or greenhouse gas emissions, there is really no other entity who can handle reigning in our excesses at the scale of their own destructive impacts. The discussion is often set up as a public vs. big business, easy-to-understand (if not swallow) debate. But what gets less attention is how much big business needs sustained government policies, too.

American Electric Power, a huge utility company providing electricity mainly in the Midwest, is postponing or killing plans to build a full-scale “carbon capture” facility at its Mountaineer plant, in West Virginia.

Then Fallows hits on the implications:

Companies can’t do this without a sustained government policy. AEP, which is by no means a pinko organization — it is running acampaign now of complaint about burdensome EPA regulations — said the reason it was calling off the plans was governmental failure to set a clean energy/climate policy. By definition, any “cleaner” form of using coal will be more expensive than the current dirty approach, at least in the short run. This is true “by definition” because if the cleaner approaches were cheaper, the utilities would already have switched to them; because the cleanup technology is still in its developmental phase; and because in many places cleaner systems mean new capital investment.

You should also read his cover story on our future with coal, but this is an important addendum to it. It’s the other side of the story of companies needing to know what the regulations will be in order to plan. And whatever they are, companies will adapt. That means even if they hate it, which they will, they will still find a way to profit. Hint to EPA, Congress and the WH: go ahead and do something.

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Feed-in Tariff

With a name like that… well it’s on the order of shrouding mammary wonders beneath a barbed-wire bikini. But I’d rather a clunky name for a program that works than another sexy title for a failure. And whoa if there are not some nourishing nipples poking through all that metal.

Why is the renewable energy market in Gainesville booming while it’s collapsing elsewhere in the country? The answer boils down to policy. In early February, the city became the first in the nation to adopt a “feed-in tariff”—a clunky and un-descriptive name for a bold incentive to foster renewable energy. Under this system, the local power company is required to buy renewable energy from independent producers, no matter how small, at rates slightly higher than the average cost of production. This means anyone with a cluster of solar cells on their roof can sell the power they produce at a profit. The costs of the program are passed on to ratepayers, who see a small rise in their electric bills (in Gainesville the annual increase is capped at 1 percent). While rate hikes are seldom popular, the community has rallied behind this policy, because unlike big power plant construction—the costs of which are also passed on to the public—everyone has the opportunity to profit, either by investing themselves or by tapping into the groundswell of economic activity the incentive creates.

Sounds a lot like making a (new) way for the Sunshine State live up to it’s name. I’ve got a friend whose family business is real estate development down in G-ville, and I haven’t heard a word from her about this. I don’t suppose they realize the opportunity this represents, but I’d like to think it won’t take long until they do.

Anyway, this is the kind of incentive that will begin the process of putting the rest of the many required tricks and non-tricks to renewable electricity into place. Emphasis mine in the above.

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Shovel-ready

NYT reports that Obama is paving the way for a major change for vehicle emissions.

President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday.

…

Mr. Obama’s presidential memorandum will order the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider the Bush administration’s past rejection of the California application. While it stops short of flatly ordering the Bush decision reversed, the agency’s regulators are now widely expected to do so after completing a formal review process.

Once they act, automobile manufacturers will quickly have to retool to begin producing and selling cars and trucks that get higher mileage than the national standard, and on a faster phase-in schedule. The auto companies have lobbied hard against the regulations and challenged them in court.

Anyone can correct me on this but, I’ve been in the market for a new car, trying to make the right decision based on a few variables discussed here at length. The trail is leading us to a very short list of extremely expensive vehicles, especially as I’m trying to buy a diesel for a family of four + dog. My understanding of the paucity of available models is that these particular kinds of cars must be 50-state compliant in a couple of environmental categories, to which most car makers simply say, “no thanks.”

This sort of opt-out posture had the effect of making California standards the de facto standards anyway, though it allowed car makers not to bother with any adjustment to their SOP. Again, the article

But the centerpiece of Monday’s anticipated announcement is Mr. Obama’s directive to the Environmental Protection Agency to begin work immediately on granting California a waiver, under the Clean Air Act, which allows the state, a longtime leader in air quality matters, to set standards for automobile emissions stricter than the national rules.

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The Bush administration denied the waiver in late 2007, saying that recently enacted federal mileage rules made the action unnecessary and that allowing California and the 13 other states the right to set their own pollution rules would result in an unenforceable patchwork of environmental law.

The auto companies had advocated a denial, saying a waiver would require them to produce two sets of vehicles, one to meet the strict California standard and another that could be sold in the remaining states.

Those last eight words are/were what the car makers (such as they still exist) were aiming for; producing that other set of cars is their last ditch effort to play hard ball with the environment (!), I’m sure. The tactic, as in trying to isolate California and its inordinately stringent regulations, is typical yet nonsensical when you think about anything being at stake other than profits and business-as-usual, though one would think that what this strategy has done to both would cause the car makers (such as they still exist) to reconsider their position.

Anyway, serious news that the new administration should and will trumpet.