----- Original Message -----
From: "Muriel Strand" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2002 7:22 AM
Subject: the Big Picture & some considerations
> i've inserted comments below...
>
> IS Edit wrote:
>
> > Muriel,
> >
> > I find some of your questions interesting and as a society we should
always
> > question our strategic directions, economically, environmentally, even
> > philosophically and spiritually.
> >
> > "But...the phrase "productive" heavy vehicles begs the question of what
is
> > being produced exactly that is the goal."
> >
> > Road freight transport offers a service that is available to all takers.
Our
> > cities and broader society could not exist without efficient freight
> > transport.
>
> i take it that efficient here means the thermodynamic and mechanical
energy
> efficiency of the truck itself, rather than the efficiency with respect to
> output of necessities being situated at useful locations of spacetime and
input
> of petroleum.
>
> without the kind of freight transport now used, it's true that cities and
> society would look different. but to claim that civilization requires
trucks
> would seem to require ignoring a great deal of history.
Sure the claim that civilisation requires trucks ignores a great deal of
history, and pre-history but those are places you and I would not care to
live. If we lived there, we never would have had the chance to acquire our
knowledge, the ability to act upon our environment and the ability to live
in a manner which allowed us the luxury of this kind of exchange of ideas.
And if I lived there I would be too busy swatting sundry beasts and my
fellow man with clubs and other low tech weapons to be concerned about
transport other than walking or a short horse ride.
Cities are the driving engines of civilisation and they cannot exist with a
sufficiently high population density to work that way without efficient
mechanisms of supply. Since porters don't come cheap anymore and beasts of
burden are frowned upon in most CBDs, and because rail does not go to your
corner grocery, it's down to trucks.
When I speak of efficiency I speak of vehicles that transport items at low
cost, with minimal environmental impact, minimal noise and the maximum
practical level of safety. I'm not interested in trucks per se. I'm
interested in what they can do, I'm interested in horses for courses, I'm
interested in outputs. The whole transport industry's legitimacy is based on
the utility to society of what they carry. But I do not claim, nor would
most people here claim to be an arbiter of that utility as in, "No I'm not
going to transport that load of cigarettes because I'm against smoking" or
"no I won't carry that load of potato chips because they are riddled with
salt and cooked in palm oil and they are bad for you". It is up to our
system of education and our normal democratic institutions to try to peddle
their notions of what's right and what's wrong to the voting populace but up
to those people to buy in or not.
Transport is here to deliver a service to its customers. It is up to society
to determine the operating parameters. We are not the arbiters and people
would be starving in weeks if we started playing that sort of role.
>
> > It is up to society to decide what the acceptable costs of
> > transport are, how clean, how noisy, how long, how tall etc. After all a
> > truck is a product of legislation.
>
> 'society' is rather an abstraction, and typically society's decisions are
on the
> margin, and about small details. our political processes aren't really
> engineered to talk about the direction of society's evolutionary road, as
> opposed to not getting a flat tire or driving into a ditch. i don't
recall that
> 'society' ever had a discussion about whether 'it' wanted so many trucks
> carrying around things like potato chips and soda pop or whether 'it'
wanted
> everyone to drive everywhere. altho 'society' has been lamenting for
several
> decades now about sprawl-oriented development, no one seems to be able to
figure
> out how to get developers to stop proposing plans that cater to cars,
local
> bureaucrats to change the design standards, elected officials to stop
approving
> them unaltered, and banks to finance anything else.
The Europeans seem to be doing a much better job of intelligent land use
planning and transport options, Muriel, though perhaps it is just their very
high population in cities and in the countryside and the consequences that
has driven them to take those measures. When you look at the relatively low
population density of American, Canadian and Australian cities compared with
those in Europe, we have spread our environmental effects out sufficiently
to make them tolerable to most people. In my native San Francisco, a near
constant breeze off the Pacific Ocean deposited our pollution in the East
Bay which had little political clout. In my adopted city of Melbourne (Oz)
we have air so clean that a New Yorker or Los Angeleno would kill for it but
once again it's partly luck. The California Air Resources Board was formed
largely because LA happens to be in a bowel that entraps polluted air. It
was an appropriate response and seems to be working well and has driven a
lot of research and development to reduce emissions. But, funnily enough,
the improvements have still not got most Los Angelenos out of their cars and
14 million people in Southern California live in areas designed for motor
vehicle dependency which are hard to fix because it's all set in concrete. I
remember after the PE trains went off that 50% of the buildings in the LA
CBD were torn down to allow parking for the people that worked in the other
50% of the buildings. We San Francisco natives used to refer to LA as 40,000
towns looking for a city. But because you live in a nominal democracy you
have to convince the people that change is desirable. CARB has been
successful in doing so on a large number of issues relating to pollution but
most of those problems were glaringliy obvious to LA residents and they were
open to solutions. That is the way of democracy. Until we manage to convince
people in the marketplace of ideas of the need to reduce consumption, the
road transport industry will continue to bring them huge volumes of what
they desire, or think they desire. As for America's track record to date,
not terribly impressive. Two years ago, US passenger vehicles recorded their
lowest average fuel consumption in more than 20 years. That is due almost
entirely to profligate growth in ownershp of SUVs which, for some insane
reason, were exempted from minimum fuel consumption standards applied to
automobiles. And Americans voted with their feet for behemoths to trundle to
the local supermarket. As far as I could advocate social engineering, those
SUVs should be subject to the same fuel consumption requirements as other
people movers.
>
> > But road transport's efforts to function as efficiently as possible
within
> > the parameters laid down by society has nothing to do with social
> > engineering. We are specialists that offer a vital service. Not social
> > engineers.
>
> i submit that the discussion about dsl's included many comments about
driver
> psychology, which may overlap social engineering. also, accepting the
existing
> technology & paradigm is a passive form of social engineering.
The comments about driver psychology did not talk about trying to change
that psychology, but to understand it and cater for it to achieve safer
outcomes. That's not social engineering but a recognition of reality, the
way people are.
The comments from one of the other people in this group about experienced
drivers functioning subconsciously (in a sort of shorthand) and assessing
oncoming vehicles according to their potential threat is intriguing and
matches with my experiences as an avid bicyclist as well as bus, truck, tram
and cable car driver. The differing responses according to vehicle type by
other motorists are amazing. When you are no threat you are invisible. If
you believe that democracy is based on the concept of the reasonable man,
that could be somewhat troubling.
But angst isn't my thing and this conversation is very California.
You're approach is refreshing, Muriel. Thanks for the prod. Keeps us
thinking.
Cheers,
Bob Murphy
>
> > Regards,
> > Bob Murphy
>
> Craig Fletcher wrote:
>
> > Thanks Muriel, and to everyone contributing to the debate, it's been
really
> > enjoyable reading all the discussions and it's interesting to see the
debate
> > opening up somewhat.
> > I appreciate the Big Picture point of view that Muriel has put forward
and
> > would like to respond to several points.
> >
> > In the context of "appropriate benefits" i'd definitely like to stake
the
> > claim that saving lives (due to death or injury) is of primary
importance to
> > me on the subject of DRL. Perhaps we could start compiling a list of
> > others, and a similar one for costs from this discussion group?
>
> would a death or injury involving a truck carrying something such as
garbage
> bags (manufactured from nonrenewable fuel simply to be thrown away) be
worse
> than a death or injury involving a truck carrying rice and beans for
people to
> eat? how can the actual results of using a truck be irrelevant to the
> benefit-cost discussion?
>
> > As for the wider context of costs, this list is really about discussing
road
> > use, and in particular road freight, so the option to discuss 'not'
driving
> > isn't one we usually canvass here. That's not to say that i'm incapable
of
> > considering the issue, so please feel free to raise it, it's just novel
in
> > this forum and i'm not sure it will be given it's due consideration
here.
>
> i realize that i'm off topic, but the terms 'cost-benefit analysis' and
> 'economic efficiency' tend to bring out my soapbox. and i do appreciate
> everyone's indulgence.
>
> > You also notice that the nature of what is produced isn't given much
thought
> > on the costs/benefits side here, but i believe that productivity for a
given
> > product is encompassing enough. Details need to be considered on a case
by
> > case basis. Whether it's grain, fuel, fissile material, milk or
military
> > personnel it's only "stuff" and if an engineer can come up with a way to
> > expand the envelope so that more of it can moved in a given span of time
> > then that opens up the "production efficiency". Whether people need or
want
> > it to happen will be decided by those people, and the resulting form of
this
> > improved efficiency will be achieved by the discussion between
regulators
> > and industry (eg. Nuclear power is there to use even if we don't want
it).
> > As an engineer i won't decide a priori what should or shouldn't be
produced,
> > although i'm happy to advise a regulator on the negative/positive
aspects of
> > transporting in a particular manner a particular produce. I'm not sure
what
> > DRL has to do with productivity, perhaps someone will discuss this?
>
> the discussion between regulators and industry may have been hijacked by
> political contributions. i'm not sure drl's have a very noticeable effect
on
> productivity, however i am pretty sure that people rarely define the input
and
> output they are thinking of when they say "productivity." and i believe
that
> making sure one can explicitly define this, and considering all the
possible
> phenomena that can be defined as input or output, is a very important
aspect of
> the economic discussion.
>
> > As for the "consumption efficiency" aspects of engineering, i must take
> > exception to "no one is paying any attention." In the area of what we
can
> > control in vehicle design and structure of use we pay alot of attention
to
> > minimising consumption of resources, time, money, and energy because
that's
> > what people want usually.
>
> what i mean by consumption efficiency is consideration of the amount of
> essential consumption of food, shelter and clothing (needs not wants) that
is
> available for a given set of inputs. another way of looking at it is to
talk
> about the number of people who can physically live for a week by means of
the
> given set of inputs. the trouble is that no one makes a profit from the
kind of
> efficiency that forestalls frivolous products, except a thrifty family.
this is
> not the kind of profit wall street wants.
>
> > Some things are beyond our control and are in the
> > hands of society to decide as a whole, and i can't see the point of
> > discussing them here given that the vehicles are there now, on roads
that
> > are there now, driving produce that is there now. The question is
should
> > their lights be on or off, and the consumption aspect relates to energy
use
> > and costs are they currently exist. If conditions change due to
> > environmental or societal pressures at some point, then i would think
that
> > the discussion will have to re-emerge governed by that future scenario
(much
> > to Bob M's chagrin i'm sure:-) ).
> >
> > And lastly, i'd like to know what that "minimum wage human powered
price" is
> > exactly, and how is it used?
> >
> > Thanks all,
> > Craig
>
> a reasonably athletic person, paid about minimum wage, would charge at
least
> $500 to generate (say on a bicycle generator) the amount of energy
available
> from a gallon of gasoline. this is based on data that such a person can
sustain
> 1/10 hp and on data about the heating value of fuel. the rest is
converstion
> factors.
>
> this is my rule of thumb for sustainability. i like it because it gives
people
> a gut-level feeling for how cheap gas is and how far we are from living
within
> our ecological means.
>
> .....
> Steve Mueller
> Denver, CO, USA wrote:
>
> (except, perhaps, for muriel and others who apparently don't want us
> to drive or our economies to grow).
>
> i want driving to be a choice, not a practical necessity. what's so great
about
> driving anyway? it's only a means to an end. it's really important to
keep
> track of ultimate goals.
>
> and what's so great about economic growth? from a theoretical
perspective,
> using a monetary measure such as gnp to evaluate how well our economy is
doing
> is like looking at the speedometer to see if you are going in the right
> direction. fundamentally, prices are based on our collective values.
> discussions about price trade-offs are a way to avoid talking about our
values
> and how we want to prioritize them. i'm not saying it's a waste of time
to
> compare prices, i'm just saying we should make decisions based on
explicitly
> stated values and not hide behind monetary calculations when we are
choosing
> social expenditures.
>
> how can economic growth be sustainable? only if the physical reality in
the
> world which is represented by the monetary numbers is in ecological
> equilibrium. the trouble is that money represents both physical and
> metaphysical goods. only metaphysical growth is sustainable.
>
> muriel
>
> --
> The political-economic challenge facing California is real.
> Every Californian needs to contact their elected representatives
> to solve this problem.
>
> Any resemblance of any of the above opinions to anybody's official
position is
> completely coincidental.
> ******************************************************************
>
> The energy challenge facing California is real. Every Californian
> needs to take immediate action to reduce energy consumption. For
> a list of simple ways you can reduce demand and cut your energy
> cost, see our web site at http://www.arb.ca.gov
>
> Muriel Strand, P.E.
> Air Resources Engineer
> CA Air Resources Board
> 1001 I Street
> Sacramento, CA 95814
> 916-324-9661
> 916-327-0640 (fax)
> www.arb.ca.gov
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.385 / Virus Database: 217 - Release Date: 4/09/2002
|
