Kerry and Lieberman Unveil Their Climate Bill: Such a Deal!
I see that my colleague Sallie James has already blogged on the inherent protectionism in the Senate’s long-awaited cap-and-tax bill. A summary was leaked last night by The Hill.
Well, we now have the real “discussion draft” of “The American Power Act” [APA], sponsored by John Kerry (D-NH) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT). Lindsay Graham (R-SC) used to be on the earlier drafts, but excused himself to have a temper tantrum.
So, while Sallie talked about the trade aspects of the bill, I’d like to blather about the mechanics, costs, and climate effects. If you don’t want to read the excruciating details, stop here and note that it mandates the impossible, will not produce any meaningful reduction of planetary warming, and it will subsidize just about every form of power that is too inefficient to compete today.
Monday Links
- Seven ideas for dealing with North Korea.
- Paging the Fifth Amendment: Florida high court rules that the state can seize your private property without giving you a dime.
- How to cut the deficit by spending less. It sounds crazy, but it just might work.
- Why stop at “Cash for Clunkers”? Why not have a “Cash for Everything” program? Because it was a dumb idea to begin with, that’s why.
- Podcast: When Germany enacted their own “Cash for Clunkers” scheme, some of the old vehicles were illegally exported and sold out of the country before being destroyed. Could it happen here? Would that be so bad?
600 Billion Data Points Per Day? It’s Time to Restore the Fourth Amendment
Jeff Jonas has published an important post: “Your Movements Speak for Themselves: Space-Time Travel Data is Analytic Super-Food!”
More than you probably realize, your mobile device is a digital sensor, creating records of your whereabouts and movements:
Mobile devices in America are generating something like 600 billion geo-spatially tagged transactions per day. Every call, text message, email and data transfer handled by your mobile device creates a transaction with your space-time coordinate (to roughly 60 meters accuracy if there are three cell towers in range), whether you have GPS or not. Got a Blackberry? Every few minutes, it sends a heartbeat, creating a transaction whether you are using the phone or not. If the device is GPS-enabled and you’re using a location-based service your location is accurate to somewhere between 10 and 30 meters. Using Wi-Fi? It is accurate below 10 meters.
The process of deploying this data to markedly improve our lives is underway. A friend of Jonas’ says that space-time travel data used to reveal traffic tie-ups shaves two to four hours off his commute each week. When it is put to full use, “the world we live in will fundamentally change. Organizations and citizens alike will operate with substantially more efficiency. There will be less carbon emissions, increased longevity, and fewer deaths.”
This progress is not without cost:
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