out of one bad subsidy than any professional writer should be able to. This isn’t a slam at Gregg Easterbrook, one of my favorite environmental policy writers, it is a slam at politicians who keep reinvinting the square wheel and claiming it will now work.
First, he does a good job describing the barriers to a hydrogen economy well. My argument is that one should start a competition to develop hydrogen sources economically and energy efficiently over time. It is a technical problem, a big one for sure, but it is a solvable technical problem.
Second, he ups his mileage on pointing out how the President’s plan is a stupid, as he pointed out previously about the Supercar Program under Clinton. For a more detailed version see the Chicago Tribune seriesDemonstrating that no bad idea can die, Dubya decided to reinvent the program so that it won’t produce a fuel cell car just as the first didn’t produce a Supercar. However, it does stop pressure on CAFE standards–or pressure for the better solution as I linked to Dynamist earlier–gas taxes.