Archive for November 22nd, 2007

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

Giving Thanks for the 9th Circuit

Among the thanks I give today to my family, my friends and my health, I wanted to return to a big opinion of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals from last week, which rejected the unimpressive emissions requirements for light trucks. The three-judge panel said the government did not adequately value the cost of carbon emissions from these vehicles in its cost-benefit analysis.

The CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards have been different since they were enacted in 1975, with light trucks and SUVs having to maintain only a 22.5 mpg rating (vs. 27.5 for passenger cars). Heavier vehicles weighing between 8,500 and 10,000 lbs., such as Hummer H2, are exempt from fuel economy standards completely.

Sued by a coalition of environmental groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council and states from California to New Mexico to Massachusetts, the Department of Transportation will now have to revisit the CAFE standards and both prove why such variation is appropriate and include the environmental costs of emissions in their calculations.

Such an idea is not new; plenty of companies and organizations already compute these costs. TerraPass tells me my 2006 Honda Civic will produce 8,000 lbs. of CO² in the next year and that offsetting that would cost me just under 40 bucks. Travelocity tells me it takes $10 to offset my cross-country trip for Thanksgiving. Yet for some reason, NHTSA estimates my tailpipe emissions cause $0 in damage to the environment.

It seems simple. I’m thankful that the 9th Circuit thought so too and hope that someday soon we’ll all be able to give thanks for cleaner skies.

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Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

Speaking to an Empty Room

“Three little cows, one big world, a whole lot to say.” That’s the best I could come up with when WordPress asked me for a tagline for this blog. I’ve been down this road a few times before, usually attempting to leverage my old standby domain, treycsar.net, into something others might want to read. I’ve failed… repeatedly.

There’s nothing like a little perseverance, however, so here we go again. The key differentiator this time? A name. (More on that later.) In the meantime, I’m going to try to dedicate about 30 minutes an evening to posting something about my day, my work or my take on topics I care a whole lot about like education, technology, or politics.

It’s an ambitious effort, but I feel like most blogs updated less than a few times a week quickly feel stale and uninteresting, and I hope to avoid the same fate here.

Will I succeed? I have no idea, though I’ve thoroughly washed myself of the expectations for thousands of dedicated readers, awaiting my every word, making success is a definite maybe. I just hope to find a place to express my thoughts and effectively contribute intelligent commentary to the random Google user who stumbles upon a post amid the cacophony of the Web.

So, mystery reader, welcome to Tres Vacas. I hope you find something worthwhile in my little piece of the Web frontier and that you graciously overlook this insipid introduction in favor of the things yet to come.

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