Ignorance Of America

On the specific questions asked, would you like to make a wager about what the results would if conducted in the US?

Unfortunately, it would probably be similar. That's why John Kerry almost won, and Barack Obama has so much unjustified support.

So where *does* a person find good data on carbon emissions reduction? There's a lot of misinformation out there, but not much accurate and authoritative data.

Here you go, Dan. This is probably the most useful list, as it lists countries by the ratio of GDP to CO2 emissions. Since the only reason for CO2 emissions is the generation of economic wealth, the best figure of merit is how much economic wealth you squeeze out of each ton of CO2 emitted.

Among the large First World countries on the list, the winners are Sweden (6.6 k$/ton) and France (5.4 k$/ton). The United States is about halfway down at 1.9 k$/ton. The Chinese come in at 0.5 k$/ton and the Russians at 0.4 k$/ton.

By perusing this list, what you'll notice is that among the wealthier nations those at the top of the list (Switzerland, Sweden, France, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands) are the most densely populated, while those at the bottom (Australia, the US, Canada) have their population spread out, which suggests that the biggest issue is transportation. No big surprise there, huh? The only realistic way to power large-scale transportation is by combustion. There is simply no way at present to carry lots of energy compactly in a vehicle except by carrying a chemical fuel and using the (very convenient!) surrounding atmosphere to supply the oxidizer.

The world is so waiting for a truly superior battery, which is why McCain's battery prize is such a great idea.

Although, actually, if you're really thinking that CO2 emissions is the ne plus ultra problem of the century, life is very good. CO2 pollution is, first of all, totally nontoxic, so it's not like it kills things or causes cancer or even makes it hard to breathe. Secondly, it's the easiest stuff in the world to get rid of: plant trees. Or grow algae. Weeds. Any kind of plant, amazingly enough, will hoover the stuff up in giant quantities. Then you just bury the plants, and you're done. Problem solved! It's a mystery to me why folks think the best solution to the problem is super-complicated weird technology to eliminate CO2 production when a dirt-cheap (ha ha), super low-tech solution like paying farmers in Gabon a subsidy to plant and plow under a million extra acres of weeds every year would do the trick by increasing global sequestration of CO2.

Now, "peak oil" is maybe another problem, but I'm far from convinced it's a serious one. It's not like getting plants to produce hydrocarbons to burn is really difficult. It can already be done economically with unmodified plants (cf. Brazil, which powers most of its transporation from sugar-cane based ethanol). Give it a few years, let the bio guys figure out how to, say, genetically engineer algae to produce methane for pennies per ton from sunlight and CO2, and the problem is solved.

Unless, of course, the wacko let's all live in grass huts and hunt field mice for dinner crowd gets into power, and utterly cripples us with some kind of draconian version of the 55 MPH limit for every sector of the economy. History teaches us that innovation and invention come from excess wealth. (How much technical innovation has ever come from poor countries? Approximately zip.) A country that is barely scraping by in some hair-shirt way is not going to have the capital available for discovery and invention.

Since the only reason for CO2 emissions is the generation of economic wealth, the best figure of merit is how much economic wealth you squeeze out of each ton of CO2 emitted.

Generation of economic wealth is all well and good but it's hardly the only reason for CO2 emissions, IMO. What percentage of CO2 emissions goes to activities that don't generate a lot of economic wealth, such as recreation? My preferred form of recreation (flying private planes) does involve economic activity but it's mostly money out of my pocket going to pay for gas, insurance, and maintenance. An airplane is a hole in the sky that you fill with money.

Among the large First World countries on the list, the winners are Sweden (6.6 k$/ton) and France (5.4 k$/ton). The United States is about halfway down at 1.9 k$/ton. The Chinese come in at 0.5 k$/ton and the Russians at 0.4 k$/ton.

If you look at that list of nations, it'd be useful to determine where they get their energy. For example, France gets a high percentage of its electrical power from nuclear energy (good for them!), a source that doesn't emit CO2. Some other nations benefit from other clean energy sources such as hydro power. In contrast, the US and China get a lot of our electricity from burning coal.

By perusing this list, what you'll notice is that among the wealthier nations those at the top of the list (Switzerland, Sweden, France, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands) are the most densely populated, while those at the bottom (Australia, the US, Canada) have their population spread out, which suggests that the biggest issue is transportation.

Transportation definitely is a significant factor in CO2 emissions but it's also complicated. Densely populated countries make it easier to implement effective mass transit systems. If those systems are powered by clean electrical power, then they'll be even cleaner. By contrast, much of the US is too sparsely populated for cost or energy effective mass transit so we depend on less efficient individual cars and trucks.

Unless, of course, the wacko let's all live in grass huts and hunt field mice for dinner crowd gets into power, and utterly cripples us with some kind of draconian version of the 55 MPH limit for every sector of the economy. History teaches us that innovation and invention come from excess wealth. (How much technical innovation has ever come from poor countries? Approximately zip.) A country that is barely scraping by in some hair-shirt way is not going to have the capital available for discovery and invention.

Quite true. There's a cliche that says "necessity is the mother of invention." By that standard, you'd think the poorist regions would be the most innovative. However, for a variety of reasons, it doesn't seem to apply to the world as we know it.

My wife is from a "developing nation" where people are far more concerned with day-to-day survival than in environmentalism. This is all too common in much of the world. By and large, it's the wealthy nations that develop a concern for cleaning up the environment and are willing/able to spend the resources to do so.

Larry, a good comment, but in your first para I think you fall prey a little bit to the economic Puritanism as widespread and vicious as kudzu in our media environment. What do you mean, "leisure" activity, hmm? What defines an activity as "leisure" or "productive"?

From your individual point of view, the answer is clear: it's "leisure" if you spend money, it's "productive" if you earn money.

But from the macroeconomic, society-wide point of view, this difference is specious. Every time you spend money, someone else earns some, and every time you earn money, by necessity it means someone else is spending some. You spend money to fly your plane -- that means someone else is earning money designing and building airplanes, refining and transporting jet fuel, working as an ATC, building radar sets, and so forth. If you did not fly the plane, all those folks would have a tiny fraction less "productive" work to do. You are the demand for their supply.

Conversely, every time you work "productively" and earn money, someone else is spending it, is acquiring some material possession or enjoying some service -- i.e., pursuing some "leisure" activity.

This is why "leisure" activities are just as important to the national economy -- are just as important wealth-generating activities -- as steel-making: they provide jobs, in just the same way.

I suppose one could start digging deeper, start trying to figure out which activities most strongly stimulate future economic growth, the multiplication of future high-paying interesting jobs, the increase in efficiency that lets a smaller amount of labor produce a greater amount of goods, and label those activities as "productive," and label as "nonproductive" those activities that do not stimulate future economic growth as much.

But, you know, if you did, I suspect the answers might contradict some of those Puritan impulses that typically substitute for such a sophisticated analysis. I don't think farming, for example, would qualify. Farming is pretty static. It doesn't really stimulate much in the way of demand for skilled labor. If I decide to plant 100 acres of organic soybeans, I stimulate demand for...what? Diesel fuel and farm machinery, I guess, but that's it. And those are pretty established technologies.

On the other hand, if I decide I want to learn how to fly an ultralight aircraft, or buy a sport boat that can turn into a submarine, or fly suborbital, or be able to text-message from Indonesia to Great Britain -- then I stimulate demand for all kinds of technological progress and invention. Even if we restrict ourselves to what seem like inarguably "productive" activities, a similar pattern emerges: which do you think generates more demand for innovation and invention in the field of medicine, the demand among young Africans for vaccines and a clean water supply, or the demand from wealthy 85-year-old coots in America with failing hearts for squeezing out just one more year of (retired) life?

Arguably, it is "leisure" activities that do the most to stimulate new technologies, because new technologies are pretty much by definition inefficient and expensive -- and only someone for whom the primary goal is not cheap efficiency but some personal esthetic satisfaction -- someone for whom "money is no object" -- is going to invest in them. This is arguably why the production of CD players was stimulated by audiophile maniacs, why the development of commercial aircraft was stimulated by the wealthy wanting to get places ridiculously faster than the hoi polloi in their trains and busses, why broadband Internet is stimulated less by the requirements of online banking and more by folks wanting to stream porn to their desktop, and so forth.

In other words, let's not knock "leisure" spending, it may well be the real engine of technological progress.

Carl, here's the best way to sequester carbon: subscribe to a newspaper! Just make sure you throw it in the trash when you're done. A modern landfill purposely keeps water and oxygen from the trash buried in it, which means that something like newsprint will last for centuries. The only other thing that's needed is to make sure they reforest the land they harvest the trees from, which is common practice already in this country.

Bill, I might add that Carl should also place the newspaper in a birdcage first so that it might at least serve some useful purpose before being sequestered in landfill. The bird might also be amused by the written drivel before giving his editorial response.

@mpthompson

Are you suggesting that Carl can't read??!! Or is this the NY Times you're thinking of? :-)

While this is a sterling example of why you don't let people in another country make decisions for you, I really don't feel alarmed by this. No doubt there may be some things I don't know about those quaint yet mysterious Englishmen with their funny accents, stone cottages, sheep, powdered wigs, and hatpins. I feel if I can live in blissful ignorance of the Englishman, then it is only fair that they can do the same.

A modern landfill purposely keeps water and oxygen from the trash buried in it, which means that something like newsprint will last for centuries.

Ha ha, yes. And I remember when this fact was considered a bug, not a feature.

"By contrast, much of the US is too sparsely populated for cost or energy effective mass transit so we depend on less efficient individual cars and trucks."

Quite right. Of course, that doesn't explain why said cars (don't know about the trucks) are so much less efficient than the typical European (or Far Eastern) model. Your argument would logically lead to the opposite.

It also doesn't explain why long-distance freight is carried by truck rather than rail, either. A lot of freight doesn't care much about delays. I have read studies indicating that electrification of the US rail system would make moving bulk goods a LOT cheaper. Of course, that idea is fighting against the oil industry lobby.

Another possible contributory factor to the greater energy use in the USA is that in a fairly large part of your country air conditioning is a necessity rather than a luxury in buildings as well as vehicles; this is not the case in Northern Europe, including Britain.

Mr. Hallowell; well, those quaint stone cottages (a lot of them, anyway) are older than your country. (shrug) As for funny accents; well, the language is called English...

Polygamy legal in all 50 states? No wonder I can't get a date.

"By contrast, much of the US is too sparsely populated for cost or energy effective mass transit so we depend on less efficient individual cars and trucks."

Quite right. Of course, that doesn't explain why said cars (don't know about the trucks) are so much less efficient than the typical European (or Far Eastern) model. Your argument would logically lead to the opposite.

Having lived for 2 years in Germany, I got to see quite a few of their cars. Most weren't really much more efficient energy wise compared to their American counterparts, especially when you account for US standards of emissions and crashworthiness. When I was there in 78-80, European cars were still burning leaded gasoline and had few emissions controls. Many of their cars were essentially the same as American cars in design and efficiency, while the smallest of their cars would be unsuitable for most Americans.

As a group, Europeans tend to have smaller families than Americans. Smaller families can get by with smaller cars. Most people can't afford to have "sunshine cars" for when the weather is good and bad weather cars for other times. Likewise, they'll tend to buy cars that can carry their whole family even when they drive alone most of the time. They have to buy the vehicles that best meet all of their needs, even if it may be bigger and more fuel hungry than they need most of the time.

Being densely populated, European mass transit is efficient for long distance travel so many of the cars I saw there were designed more for urban use and would be largely unsuitable for less urban American use. Those BMWs and Mercedes cars travelling at high speed on the Autobahn were hardly fuel misers, but then few cars are at 150+ MPH. Those small Vespa type scooters are both practical and efficient in town but unsuited for highway use.

I have read studies indicating that electrification of the US rail system would make moving bulk goods a LOT cheaper. Of course, that idea is fighting against the oil industry lobby.

Fletcher, I don't remember reading anything about anyone proposing this, and I don't remember reading anything about the oil industry opposing it. People tend to demonize the oil industry, attributing to it all manner of nefarious plans to thwart alternative energies and so on. Is there actually any evidence of this? Can you site any specific examples, or is this just another green fairy tale?

> I have read studies indicating that electrification of the US rail system would make moving bulk goods a LOT cheaper.

It must be nice to live in a world where one can ignore capital costs.

I like trains. I like electric trains. However, they require significant fixed infrastructure to achieve their marginal cost benefits. If they're not used enough, the fixed costs dominate and they're more expensive than alternatives that have higher marginal costs.

Which reminds me - barges are even more energy efficient. Yet, I don't see the Euros levelling things and digging canals.

I would wager that Euro cars are smaller more so out of necessity then want. Roads in and around a larger European city were likely designed for horse and buggy not for a car. The majority of the infrastructure in the U.S. was designed for cars from the get go.

I think that is why shows like Top Gear are so popular in the U.K. because it gives Euro's the opportunity to vicariously live through Clarkson's and Hammond's experiences. The average Euro most possibly secretly dreams of having a Dodge Charger or a Honda Accord with a V6. However, the reality of owning of a car that most likely wouldn't even fit across a bridge just wouldn't make much sense.

Most Euro's definitely want to drive and like to drive because they will often go out and get a driver's license despite that they will not actually do all that much driving. Many will even go all the way to the U.S. to get their license. When I took drivers ed there were several guys from Germany in my class. It was cheaper for them to fly over here to take the test and go back home. I hung out with a couple of German exchange students in high school. One said he was here to do 3 things: buy Levis, drink Jack Daniels, and get his drivers license.

Of course, that doesn't explain why said cars (don't know about the trucks) are so much less efficient than the typical European (or Far Eastern) model.

Yes it does, Fletch. What is the first and most effective way to make a car more gas-efficient? No, it's not hybrid drive or some other clever tech that only the luxury car buyers can afford. It's simply making cars smaller. European cars are smaller than American.

But why are Europeans willing to drive smaller cars? Because they don't drive as far. It's one thing to drive 5 km to the supermarche in the Geo Metro, or deliver goods 500 km in a Renault truck, quite another -- and much less comfortable -- thing to drive 150 miles to work daily, or deliver refrigerated goods 2500 miles.

The mistake you're making is in not realizing that the length of the average distance you need to drive has a strong influence on the type of car you buy, and most definitely pushes you to a bigger, less fuel-efficient car, for reasons of comfort, safety, and even performance (Europe doesn't have hills like the Western US, e.g. Vail Pass on I-70 across the Rockies, which tops out at 11,000 feet).

It also doesn't explain why long-distance freight is carried by truck rather than rail, either.

Um, yes it does. Think it through. To transport goods by rail, you need to lay tracks, while to transport by truck, you only need roads. Roads are on average (not Interstates) much cheaper than tracks. You can much more easily afford to network a sparsely-populated large country in asphalt two-lanes than you can electrified tracks. Furthermore, as conditions change, as the population and economic activity shifts about, roads and trucks are more flexible than rails and trains.

Huge amounts of American goods are transported by rail, but mostly from one major distribution center to another, and from the final distribution center to the final sale point the journey is almost always by truck. Nothing else is feasable in, say, Los Angeles, a region with 20 million people spread out over 10,000 square miles.

You can certainly argue American cities, particularly in the West, are not efficiently designed from the point of view of transportation, and everyone who lives in Los Angeles will fervently agree with you -- but that's a different story. The point is that the big differences between American and European cities do quite a lot to explain why the American economy sucks up a lot more transportation energy by necessity.

Look at it this way: do you think the hypothetical economy of a political entity based entirely in orbit (space stations, L5 stations, yadda yadda) would suck up lots more fuel in transportation? Of course. Now realize similar considerations apply down on Earth, albeit not as strongly.

I suspect your underlying problem is that you begin with strange assumptions about human nature, e.g. that generally similar people (Europeans and Americans) will find solutions to their quotidian problems (how do I live most efficiently?) according to their politics or philosophy instead of very practical concerns (what's easiest on my wallet? uses up the least of my precious time? keeps my family safe?). So when you find different solutions to similar problems, you (wrongly) attribute that to different political cultures, instead of simply to different underlying conditions. That's foolish and myopic. Europeans are the way they are because it works best for the local conditions in Europe. Americans are the way they are because it works best for the local conditions in America, which are not the same. Any other conclusion, e.g. that local conditions are really quite similar, and Europeans are different from Americans because...uh...they are all much more philosophically enlightened than Americans, who absorb more stupid rays through the TV from Karl Rove Mind Control Central, is at best naive and egoistical.

Andy, you don't see Euros digging canals because we did it starting three hundred years ago. Incidentally, one particular canal, the Erie Canal, was the major key to the opening up of the West, I believe. I also happen to think that fixing up and using some of the canals we already have would be a very good idea, in Europe at least.

As for rail freight in the US; well, it could be and has been argued that the road freight industry in the USA is heavily subsidised from general taxation, in the form of highway construction and maintenance (a heavy truck does hundreds of times as much damage to the roadbed and such structures as bridges as does a car) and also the preferential treatment and tax breaks for the oil industry (which makes automotive fuels cheaper). It is less certain, but probable, that a large fraction of US defense spending ought to be charged to the oil industry as well for obvious reasons.

I would be very interested to see how the economic comparison between road and rail freight looks, if one plugs in fuel prices more like European than US ones. Such a measure would reduce the immense US balance of payments deficit as well; also making less money available to people who want to kill or enslave us.

Lastly, how much badly neglected rail is there in the USA, that would take much less money to repair and modernise (and to electrify) than the huge budget for new roads? Of course, American romanticism about the trucking industry is a huge stumbling block to any and all of this.

I also think that all these arguments apply with equal or greater force to Europe and in particular the UK, with one more argument over here - trains take up much less room, too.

Wha...? Fletch, do you live in the US? If so, where? Geez, you have some odd ideas about trucks and trains in the United States by my experience.

First, truck traffic isn't subsidized by taxes so far as I know, and trains are. The money to build roads comes from gasoline taxes, which are, duh, paid by the people who use the roads. It's about the most direct connection between who's using the utility and who's paying for it you can imagine, short of actually having consortia of trucking companies build and maintain the roads (which is a bit silly and inefficient even for the most devoted libertarian).

I suppose you could argue trucks don't pay their fair share, but I suspect you'd be wrong, for the obvious reason that trucks get far worse gas mileage than cars, so that they obviously pay far more per mile of travel in gas taxes.

As for "preferential treatment of the oil industry" -- er, such as what, dude? Give me an example of such, please. I can't think of one. If anything, the oil industry is the one of those whipping boys that periodically gets whacked with preferentially harsh treatment, e.g. "windfall profits" taxes, which you'll never see imposed on, say, Microsoft, or realtors, or mortgage brokers, or trial lawyers, all similar folks who in periods of huge demand rake in amazing profits.

I would be very interested to see how the economic comparison between road and rail freight looks, if one plugs in fuel prices more like European than US ones

What the heck does the price of fuel have to do with it? Are you operating under the strange assumption that rail transport is much more efficient, energy-wise, than truck transport, and that Americans use trucks simply because oil is cheap? Whatever gives you that idea? If we just consider the transport itself, it's reasonable to think a freight train going a steady 80 is more energy efficient than the equivalent number of trucks doing the same; at those speeds the bulk of the energy goes to wind resistance and ground friction, and the train by virtue of its compact shape has a lot less than of the former, and by virtue of its rails less of the latter. So, no doubt trains win on the pure transport aspect, although not, I suspect, by a whole heck of a lot. I can see them being maybe 50% more energy efficient -- but not four or five times more efficient.

But then you have to add in the terminal distribution cost. Trains do not pull into your local supermarket and let the two minimum-wage stockboys unload the 100 lbs of cabbage the store will sell this week. Trains pull into huge central depots where very expensive unionized longshoremen-types unload 80 tons of cabbage, which then needs to be distributed somehow. This is not even to consider the incredibly complicated (and expensive) command and control system you need, to coordinate the needs of thousands of businesses and millions of consumers, because you can only ship cabbages 80 tons at a time, and you need to coordinate those cabbages with shoes, coal, steel, cars, air conditioners, and enough other crap to make up one of your energy-efficient 100-car 8000-ton trains. Do you know about Wal-Mart and Costco and other giant warehouse stores where you can (only!) buy laundry soap in huge 50 lb boxes, and bread in sacks of five loaves at a time? Imagine if you could only shop there, if it was impossible for you to buy anything except in quantities sufficient for five families. That's the equivalent of forcing freight traffic onto trains from trucks.

You could deal with it, but imagine the complexity of arrangements you'd have to make with your neighbors to make it all work out, to not waste food. Would it be cheaper, in the end? Would the cheapness of the Wal-Mart superdupersize portions compensate for the expense of the multi-family distribution and coordination arrangements (ok, everybody is making macaroni and cheese for dinner this Monday) you'd need to make? That's not clear.

Sheesh, if trucks had never been invented, some genius would be saying how it would be a really efficient and clever idea to "decentralize" train transport, allow a small engine to be hooked up to each train car, so that trains could break apart and each car could go to a different destination, sort of a MIRV approach, lending the whole scheme greatly increased flexibility and decreasing operating costs by eliminating the bottlenecks of distribution yards and the expense of moving goods from one distribution system to another.

As for the American "love affair" with trucks, are you listening to golden oldies on the radio or what? Most people I know loathe trucks. Driving the 710 towards the Port of Long Beach is a fucking nightmare of dodging huge convoys of trucks driven by homicidal maniacs who believe as long as you clear an obstacle (e.g. my car) by more than a centimeter per 10 MPH of speed, that's all right.

A much more honest observation is of the strange nostalgic love affair everyone -- including Americans -- has with the train, which seriously hampers our ability to evaluate the economic efficiency of various modes of transport with a cold, logical eye. We're as misty-eyed romantically foolish about trains as we are about "the family farm."

For most of human history, water routes have been the most efficient means of commercial transport. One of the reasons Western Europe became so powerful is that it is chock full of rivers, coastline (more than Africa) and natural ports. Canals were a logical exploit of river resources, serving to connect these vital arteries in key locations.

Water was still the main highway of commerce when the Erie Canal was built (1817-1825) - rail and steamship were in infancy then. In 1918 it was replaced by the New York State Barge Canal, which overlapped much of the original canal, and whose commercial transport these days is a mere trickle. It cannot compete with the speed of rail and highway, or the Saint Lawrence Seaway's capacity to bring ocean-going transport into the Great Lakes. The canal is now dominated by pleasure craft.

Carl: One point is that if the railway system is electrified, one doesn't need any specific fuel to create the electricity. Even if one doesn't care about CO2 output, that still means it's possible to avoid running trains on oil products imported from places inhabited by all manner of undesirables; one, after all, can always use coal of which the USA, I believe, has a goodly supply.

As for truck damage to roads being paid for by higher fuel taxes; sorry, but it isn't. I Googled "truck damage to roads" and the second hit gave me the info. Apparently, one 80 thousand pound (40 ton) truck does the damage of 9600 cars - and I seriously doubt that it uses the fuel of that many cars. Using a typical 30mpg, that would mean that the truck used 320 gallons per mile. Yes, I know that a 40-tonner is at the extreme end of the spectrum but the function of damage versus vehicle weight is NOT linear. Therefore, heavy trucks are subsidised by other road users, at the very least - because the trucking industry doesn't pay for the damage it causes to the roads. In the USA or anywhere else. Hence, the trucking industry is subsidised - heavily - by the taxpayer, probably more so than the rail industry.

Mr. Henderson: I am aware that canals are not particularly important in commerce in most of the USA right now. They were, however, arguably vital for the expansion of the USA westwards, if only as the transport for the first stage. Canals are indeed enormously efficient, if slow, transport where the watercourses are available. And for many goods, speed doesn't matter much. Does it really matter whether 50,000 tons of coal for a power station takes a week (or even a month) to get there - provided that you know that in advance? Of course, someone would have to pay for the goods in transit one way or another; but it isn't immediately obvious whether that would be more of a problem than the cost of transport by truck.

To take a similar, and rather extreme, example; if speed is so vital, why are there still cargo ships? After all, aircraft can do most of that work.

> Incidentally, one particular canal, the Erie Canal, was the major key to the opening up of the West, I believe.

"The West"? The Erie canal goes across New York state. It gets things to the Great Lakes, which do span a considerable distance across the northern US, but that's not "the West".

> I would be very interested to see how the economic comparison between road and rail freight looks, if one plugs in fuel prices more like European than US ones.

Since Europe's fuel prices are intended to distort the market even more than US ones, it's unclear why we should do that. (Europe uses gas taxes to subsidize social programs and discourage non-elites.)

> Such a measure would reduce the immense US balance of payments deficit as well; also making less money available to people who want to kill or enslave us.

While the UK is arguably pulling its weight (although they did bungle Basra and the bill for Londonistan has yet to be paid) wrt "people who want to kill or enslave us", Europe doesn't. Fix that (which surely is affordable if Europe is as rich as claimed, so failure to do so is a choice), and then we'll talk.

Only 15% of US oil comes from the Middle East. What is Europe's share?

Andy: Doesn't the Erie Canal go across some pretty tough country, thus making transport easier? Perhaps I should have been clearer; the people of the time probably thought of what is now the Mid-West as being "the West" and without some way of getting through he country the canal crosses, the USA would have developed differently at the very least (perhaps spreading east from California?).

As for the destination of Arab oil; tha answer is very simple indeed. Oil is fungible; if the USA's use of it was lower the price would be lower, no matter where the ME oil goes. And hence the neck-choppers would have less money.

Lastly, about European military budgets; well, to some extent I agree. However, personally speaking I have very little influence over British military budgets, never mind French and German ones. Two more points; Germany, I believe, has the minor stumbling block of a constitutional prohibition against exporting combat troops. Probably insisted upon by the WWII Allies. And do you really want to see a bigger German military budget?

> Lastly, about European military budgets; well, to some extent I agree. However, personally speaking I have very little influence over British military budgets, never mind French and German ones.

The same can be said of our influence on US affairs, yet FC is happy to lecture us on those points.

I always assumed that he meant Americans in general and my comment was in that vein.

> Two more points; Germany, I believe, has the minor stumbling block of a constitutional prohibition against exporting combat troops. Probably insisted upon by the WWII Allies. And do you really want to see a bigger German military budget?

Oh no - the dreaded Hun.

Sorry to break this to you, but Americans are starting to not care whether Germany dominates Europe. Instead, we're starting to notice that Europe is freeloading, at best. (We remember the Pershing missle protests.)

If you're rich enough to lecture us, you're rich enough to pay your own way.

> I Googled "truck damage to roads" and the second hit gave me the info.

Never confuse statements from advocacy groups with the truth.

Moreover, the cost of the highway system is not dominated by road construction/repair costs.

More to the point, eliminating trucks wouldn't significantly reduce the cost of the highway system.

I note that FC still hasn't shown any awareness of the actual total costs and benefits of different modes of transportation. He doesn't understand that capital costs have to be recovered. He doesn't understand that trucks are typically used for things that one simply can't do with trains. (Was his furniture delivered to his home by train? Was it delivered to the store via train?)

Thus, it isn't surprising that FC is remarkably ignorant about, well, pretty much everything American, even for a European. I'm beginning to understand why some Americans pander when overseas - it's tiring dealing with such mind-boggling ignorance.

Of course capital costs have to be recovered. How many hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars, pounds, francs, deutchsmarks, lire, euros, rubles... have been spent on various countries' highway systems, and how much of that has been recovered? Not much - it's the poor old taxpayer that pays, as usual. Not the users of the roads - or at least those who cause most of the costs.

The factor of 9600 has been confirmed in several places and comes from a US government study. OK, maybe you don't trust your own government and I don't blame you.

On the subject of transporting goods by train, and its limits; one word more or less suffices - transshipment. Of course, individual cases may differ, but in how many cases is using a train for most of the distance not even an option because the line has been allowed to fall apart? (Or even ripped up.)

I thought that the costs and benefits of various types of transportation were pretty obvious, and I'm not a schoolboy or college student and I'm not inclined to write an essay and you wouldn't be inclined to read it if I did.

One point really is obvious; The capital cost of railways is met by the operator, who is usually the same as the operator of the vehicles on it (not, currently, in the UK, and that's causing utter chaos) whereas the capital cost of road transport - or a very large part of that cost, the highways themselves and their support infrastructure - is met by the taxpayer, and a very small part of that tax is paid by those who cause most of the maintenance and repair costs at least. Of course, there are also external costs, difficult to quantify; such as road noise, pollution and so on.

I have been unable to find a highway costs breakdown. I suppose that maintenance of the roadbed and any bridges is the only segment of such costs that depends on traffic density and composition at all, the other two obvious parts of the costs being amortisation of building costs and maintenance costs of the lighting and signage. However, there may be an indirect increase in the latter two caused by heavy road transport; the damage caused by heavy trucks, and the sheer room they take up, makes more investment in new (and stronger) roads necessary - thus increasing the two "fixed" costs as well.

Any and all of the above applies anywhere. The costs of building roads in the UK, most of which is pretty crowded, will be much higher per mile than in most of the USA, because the land has to be bought; but of course highways in the USA have to be much longer, so it might balance out. Continental Europe is probably somewhere in between.

Andy, two more things; I am somewhat irritated that the UK is routinely lumped in with such places as Italy and Denmark when discussing the contribution, or lack of it, of Europe to the defense of the West. The UK just about always sticks by the USA - including at least one instance when we shouldn't have.

And you might not have noticed that the (admittedly rather small) French contingent in Afghanistan suffered quite a lot of casualties yesterday. The Danish have been fighting pretty hard, too, the few that are there. The real point is, perhaps, that the fighting men of both countries should not be insulted because of things their governments did or didn't do. The real problem is caused by the creeping disease of EU federalism and bureaucracy, aided (in the case of the UK) by both main parties.

When I was there in 78-80...

Yeah, wow, 'cos nothing has changed in Europe in the last 30 years...

heavily unionized workers

That's a problem that has nothing to do with Rail being more sensible as a means of moving goods.

To be honest the real problem with the US rail network, apart from it's creaking infrastructure (like the roads, especially around here [Seattle]) is the fact that goods are prioritised over people and that the main Seattle goods routes run through fecking downtown.

The US needs an enormous investment in public infrastructure; roads, bridges, rail - regardless of whether or not that has anything to do with Green House Gases.

I dunno, Fletch, you seem to be flailing around a bit debating ethical issues (do trucks pay their fair share?) when you've missed the main point, which is that the evidence that truck transport is substantially less efficient (economically or even energetically) than rail transport just isn't there.

But, anyway...it's absurdly unrealistic to imagine electrifying US rural railroad lines. As far as I know, only Eastern seaboard lines are electrified. Everything West of the Mississippi runs on diesel in my experience, even commuter rail in urbanized areas. Indeed, the major north-south commuter rail line in the LA area passes mere meters from my backyard; 55 trains a day go by (alas), and every one pulled by a diesel locomotive. Electrifying the megamiles of rural rail track in the Western US is utterly unrealistic, both because of the enormous capital cost of all that high-tension wire, plus the huge distances over which you must transmit the juice. In Europe you're never far from a major urban center with a power plant, but that's not true here.

Your figure of one truck equalling the upkeep cost of 9600 cars from your second link comes from a 1962 study by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, which is not the government. It may be accurate, albeit seriously dated, but I'm not sure how this is relevant except in the how many angels can dance on a pin? sense of determining some theoretical ethically "fair" split of road costs between fees paid by trucks versus passenger cars. (You should also bear in mind that direct taxes on trucks -- as opposed to taxes on gasoline -- account for about 13% of the Highway Trust Fund's income.)

The point is that your initial assertion -- that highways were "subsidized" by "taxpayers," i.e. through the general income tax, is wrong. Interstates in the US are paid for by their users. There's no subsidy by the general public.

However, something like 10% of the Highway Trust Fund money goes to public transport, e.g. commuter rail, subway and other stuff, so road transport definitely subsidizes rail transport, in addition to the direct $multibillion Amtrak subsidy.

You wondered about the breakdown of expenses for highways. It's here.
Roughly 53% is spent on upkeep, 32% on expansion of existing routes, and 15% on entirely new routes.

I thought that the costs and benefits of various types of transportation were pretty obvious,

Right there's your problem. They're not, and it's foolishly naive to think they are. Secondarily, to the extent anyone is fully conversant with those costs and benefits, it is the people engaged in the business, which is to say the suits from Wal-Mart, Albertson's, US Steel, Exxon/Mobil, et cetera and so forth who have to decide how to ship their products. And they have chosen the transportation modes we see: rail in Europe, truck in the US.

That is, to the extent there are any experts in this business, the experts are telling us -- through their actions -- that truck transport is more economically efficient in the US. The job of the interested onlooking amateur -- you and I -- is not to assert in the face of all reasonableness that they're wrong, but to figure out why they're right, and figure out if there is some structural distortion in the economy that makes truck transport artificially cheap.

If you think there's such a distortion, point to it, and we'll discuss. The funding of highway construction in the US sure as heck isn't it, though.

> The factor of 9600 has been confirmed in several places and comes from a US government study.

The problem isn't so much the exact number as it's meaning.

The standard model says that damage grows with the fourth power of weight. Under that model, a vehicle that weighs twice as much causes 16x as much damage.

Consider the Golden Gate Bridge. Does FC really believe that it would have cost 1/16th as much if they'd halved the max vehicle weight? (The cost wouldn't have even gone down 50%.) Note that bridges are the best case for his argument. Standard road construction cost varies far less with max vehicle weight than it does for bridges. Land cost is a huge fraction of total road cost. It's not at all dependent on weight, but on length and width and the "congestion contribution" of trucks is way less than that of cars. Police protection is basically independent of weight.

> Of course capital costs have to be recovered.

And we've yet to see any discussion from FC on the recovery period for electrification. FC thinks that fuel cost dominates, but when we look at an actual electrification project, that fuel savings doesn't even get a mention. http://caltrain.org/pdf/Electrification/Chapter_1.pdf

I'm sure that CalTRain will save a large amount of fuel money, but it isn't enough to justify the fixed cost of electrification on a line that is pretty much the best case for electrification. (It's a heavily travelled line that is dominated by stop/start, which is horrible for diesel electric and great for straight electric because of recovery.)

Very few US rail lines would see anywhere near the fuel savings from electrification that CalTrain will see, and they don't think that it rates a mention.

> On the subject of transporting goods by train, and its limits; one word more or less suffices - transshipment.

I wonder why FC thinks that the US doesn't do transshipment? (Hint: we do, a lot.)

At this point, it's fair to point out that every "fact" cited by FC in favor of his position has been shown false or it doesn't actually support his conclusion.

> OK, maybe you don't trust your own government and I don't blame you.

FC's faith in his own govt speaks volumes.

> And you might not have noticed that the (admittedly rather small) French contingent in Afghanistan suffered quite a lot of casualties yesterday. The Danish have been fighting pretty hard, too, the few that are there. The real point is, perhaps, that the fighting men of both countries should not be insulted because of things their governments did or didn't do.

That's nice, but irrelevant because no one has said anything about the capabilities and honor of the individual troops, let alone insulted them.

Their countries aren't pulling their weight.

> As for the destination of Arab oil; tha answer is very simple indeed. Oil is fungible

Actually, oil is fungible only by the grace of the US.

The US could decide to dedicate enough Saudi oil to cover "our" 15% and forbid oil exports from the Western hemisphere. We'd probably make an allowance for the UK, but what could the rest of Europe do about it?

If the US did that, I suspect that we'd find that the French and Germans haven't forgotten how to run a brutal occupation. (Yes, they are better than the US at some things. However, their expertise wrt brutal occupations doesn't imply that they know how to do a rebuilding one.)

> Andy, two more things; I am somewhat irritated that the UK is routinely lumped in with such places as Italy and Denmark when discussing the contribution, or lack of it, of Europe to the defense of the West.

Good for FC, but I explicitly said that the UK was arguably pulling its weight.

FC seems to believe that he can assume whatever "fact" that he believes would support his intended conclusion. He's wrong.

Andy, I was explicitly talking about the maintenance costs incurred, not about initial building costs.

> Andy, I was explicitly talking about the maintenance costs incurred, not about initial building costs.

Not so fast. FC was arguing that roads for trucks were necessarily far more expensive than roads for cars. His sole support for that proposition is the fact that trucks cause more damage than cars.

However, maintenance isn't the only cost. Heck, it isn't even the only marginal cost. When we consider other cost components, we find that FC's conclusion is false.

Note that even his supporting fact doesn't support his conclusion.

(1) Vehicle damage isn't even the only kind of damage - weather damage doesn't depend on what kind of vehicles use the road.

(2) On a per-vehicle basis, trucks may cause more damage, but there are a lot more cars.

(3) We're not talking about the repair cost of trucks on roads designed for cars, we're talking about the repair cost on roads designed for trucks. The cost of the latter is likely to be smaller. Yes, it's larger than the cost of the repair cost for cars on car roads, but not nearly as much as FC's argument requires AND we can't have car roads anyway because we have to accomodate buses. (No, buses are not as heavy as trucks, but they are significantly heavier than cars, so the road has to be built stronger.)

As I wrote previously, FC's "facts" turn out to be either false or don't support his conclusions.

And, we're still waiting to hear where he gets his fantasies about the US.

Mr. Freeman:

Your points:

(1) is just plain wrong. Weather damage (frost damage, corrosion of reinforcing bars in the concrete of bridges, washing away of the roadbed) is much more likely and will be much worse on an already damaged road. (For example, if there aren't any potholes water won't settle in them.)

(2) is just plain irrelevant. The point was about costs per vehicle.

(3) is interesting. By your own argument; most roads, or at least those that cause most expense, are built to accommodate trucks. So what is the maintenance cost load likely to be, of a car travelling on a road massively over-designed for it?

Further to (3): Human nature is human nature wherever the human is. I honetly don't know about corresponding figures for anywhere in the USA, but repeated studies - largely involving random stops - in the UK have shown that a large proportion, perhaps 30% or more, of trucks on the road are deficient in some way; overloaded, badly loaded, or with suspension, brakes and/or running gear in dangerous condition. Why does this matter? Simply because such a vehicle will rip up the road even worse. And I doubt very much that trucks in the US are any better run and maintained than here.

Railways have much less of this problem, as a whole.

By the way, what fantasies? In any case, most arguments for and against against trucks for long-distance deliveries apply in any country. With varying force because of differing conditions, naturally.

Not that silly population density argument again. The USA has a higher population density than Norway and Sweden. Try googling "usa population density" and "sweden population density".

Europe has more mass transit because of governmental funding rather than any other reason. Vehicles are also often taxed regarding motor fuel displacement, which leads to smaller cars.

> (1) is just plain wrong. Weather damage (frost damage, corrosion of reinforcing bars in the concrete of bridges, washing away of the roadbed) is much more likely and will be much worse on an already damaged road.

The point is that weather damage is independent of how the road was damaged, and cars do cause damage.

> (2) is just plain irrelevant. The point was about costs per vehicle.

It's quite relevant. FC claims that reducing the number of trucks would significantly reduce road damage. If, as is actually the case, provisions for cars dominate the costs, that can't be true.

Of course, costs aren't one of FC's strong points. He still hasn't figured out that electrification's fixed costs matter.

> By the way, what fantasies?

There's the bit about highways being subsidized by the general fund. There's the various rantings about lobbies. There's his ignorance about transshipment. (I didn't mention that the container ship/rail/truck idea was a US invention. It's almost like we think seriously about multi-mode transport....)

Pretty much every fact about the US that FC has raised has turned out to be wrong or doesn't support his argument.

Godzilla: The fact that automotive fuels are quite a lot more expensive in Europe might also be something to do with it. If something is expensive one tends to try to use less of it - and certainly not waste it, unless one has money to burn.

Andy, one more time: A given 40-ton truck (to take the extreme case) does something like 9000 times as much damage to the roads as a typical car. Assuming that road upkeep is around 50% of total road costs (your figure, not mine) and everything else is the same once the road is built, that means that the truck has roughly 4500 times the impact on highway costs as does that average car. You tell me that highway costs are met from fuel taxes. Fine. That truck might use 45 times as much fuel as the average car - unlikely it's that high, but let's use that figure. Which means that the truck operator is paying out 45 times as much for road upkeep, and costing the system 4500 times as much. In other words, he is paying a hundredth (at most) of his fair share of the costs of road upkeep, and all other road users are subsidising him.

Of course, the fact that trucks of that size are common means that a significant fraction of roads and bridges have to be built stronger than they otherwise might; which increases the bill for new roads (and the amortisation cost of the funds for them) as well.

Re lobbies; if you are telling me that the lobbyists do not have a significant, and possibly dominant, influence on US government then I conclude that you are either extremely naive or lying. People, and especially politicians, are not that much different in your country and mine, and politicians are noted everywhere for being more interested in keeping their noses in the trough than anything else at all.

Transshipment; well, the real point is where is it done? I suspect that if more of the costs of running a truck were met by its operator, then the transfer would be made nearer destination and the vehicles would be smaller.