Law – Page 45 – a sibilant intake of breath

Knives and Britain

I must admit, I find the ongoing debate about knives in the UK somewhat perplexing. The leader of the Conservative Party wants mandatory jail time for anyone caught carrying one. Editors at the BBC argue that the problem may be overblown. To me, it seems like what people are missing is the fundamental difference between knives and weapons. Obviously, a knife can be used as a weapon. So can a hammer, umbrella, or fork. While we rightly appreciate that it is illegitimate use of the latter that is problematic (and addressed through laws against assault, uttering threats, etc), it seems important to remember that use-as-a-weapon is aberrant, rather than to be expected.

At virtually all times, I have either one or two small folding knives on me: one on the SOG Crosscut on my keychain and a CRKT Kiss in my backpack. When I am travelling or going into the woods, I will often have a Swisstool X with me as well. Probably the most common uses of these are cutting food and paper, though each has been used in dozens of ways. Knives are ancient, highly versatile, and useful tools – one of the first technologies to differentiate the human species from less adaptive animals. Assuming that I am carrying either as a weapon strikes me as unfair, as well as a reversal of the presumption of innocence. The onus must be on the authorities to prove malicious intent, rather than upon the individual to prove their intentions benign.

On a side note, all of this is very different for guns, particularly handguns. The only plausible use for a handgun is as a weapon. One never goes on a picnic and regrets the lack of one. Restricting the ownership and carrying of guns is an entirely reasonable restriction, as a manifestation of their nature.

The only question on renewables is when

One of the most active debates within the environmental community is how much of our energy we should be getting from renewable sources in the near to medium-term. There are those who assert that it is too scarce or intermittent to provide more than a small share, thus making things like nuclear fission and carbon capture and storage necessary. Then, there are those who assert that with more efficiency and a better grid, we can move to a renewable-dominated grid within the next few decades.

Ultimately, it seems important to remember that the only real questions on renewables are ‘which ones’ and ‘when.’ By definition, we cannot keep using any other kind of power indefinitely. Furthermore, there is good reason to believe that renewables will soon be a more desirable option overall, even when fuel scarcity and climate change are not taken into account. Both questions have their technical sides: the relative appeal of different options depends on technology, funding issues, and physical circumstances. Both questions also raise issues of preferences and fairness.

Yes, there is a danger of moving too quickly and suffering from early adoption problems and the later emergence of superior technology. There is also, of course, a danger of falling behind and suffering from dependence upon energy sources in decline. Striking the right balance requires good engineering, good policy-making, and the vision to build a better world.

Power plant economics

This useful post on Gristmill details the economics of power plants. It explains how costs are divided into four categories (fuel costs, non-fuel operating costs, capital recovery, and profits) and how some of these vary with commodity prices and output, while others are fixed. It makes an excellent point about the marginal effects of price changes. Basically, there is an incentive to run your plant whenever the hourly revenues exceed the hourly costs. Since the hourly costs are lower than the real costs associated with an hour of production (because of capital costs, etc), this creates a disincentive to build more capacity. The existing plants that have the option of selling for less than their true cost but more than their true costs will undeprice you. Nuclear plants are a special case of this:

The U.S. power grid has long relied on this bucket (central-station coal and nuclear, specifically) to provide baseload power. You’d be a fool to build these plants if you didn’t first secure guaranteed equity returns, but that’s what our regulatory model is really good at. Note that these plants actually have very high costs, but since they are so cheap to operate on the margin, they tend to depress prices for power on the grid once they are built. The interesting point of comparison here is with renewables — specifically wind and solar — which also have comparatively high capital costs, but very low variable costs. We frequently talk about wind needing over $100/MWh to pencil, but this is a cost discussion, not a price discussion. You may need over $100/MWh to justify the investment in a wind turbine, but a grid dominated by such units will put downward pressure on the prices for power due to it’s low variable costs — just as nuclear and coal have done for decades.

Clearly, these are the kind of second-order economic impacts that regulators need to take into consideration, if they are to help encourage the emergence of an efficient and low-carbon energy system.

In addition to considering the impacts of fixed versus variable costs, it probably makes sense for regulators to encourage profits from energy conservation. If all the benefit goes to the consumer and the producer suffers from reduced revenue, the incentives for improvement are curtailed.

EU taxing aviation carbon

The European Union has agreed to start integrating air travel into its emissions trading system. This is a big step, given how the industry has often been excluded from carbon pricing schemes – especially where international travel is involved.

Arguably, the biggest piece of news is that they want to charge non-EU carriers for emission permits when they enter EU countries. This is certainly going to kick up a stink in the WTO and other multilateral trading bodies. That being said, if a global regime of carbon pricing is not to be forthcoming, the regional arrangements will need mechanisms for ensuring that imports meet their standards.

Hashing out how such standards can be applied is sure to be a difficult and extended affair.

Tomorrow’s electrical generation: distributed or concentrated?

There is an interesting debate ongoing on the Gristmill blog about whether the future of electrical generation lies primarily with big centralized power plants, like today, or with distributed systems.

Naturally, there are many factors that influence which is more attractive, many of which are regulatory rather than inherent to the physics or economics. I suspect the key dynamics will be the relative efficiency of differently sized facilities, the rate at which low-loss high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission emerges, and the rate at which financing options for small facilities proliferate. Other important considerations will be the rate of improvement in the economics of solar photovoltaic systems, as well as the development and deployment of demand management and energy storage options for the grid.

In any event, it is doubtful whether one approach or the other will ever truly dominate. In all probability, a low-carbon society will incorporate both approaches in keeping with the strengths of different technologies and the needs of different areas.

Overfishing and the EU

Long-time readers will remember the saga of the ‘fish paper’ – my research piece on the sustainability and legality of European Union fisheries policy in West Africa, eventually published in the MIT International Review.

Fisheries being an area of acute concern for me, I was gratified to see an unusually hard-hitting column in this week’s Economist about fish and the EU. It argues that EU goverments have shown “abject cowardice” in relation to their fishers for years. Meanwhile, overcapacity and unsustainable quotas have put the industry into a “suicidal spiral.” The article reports straightforwardly that: “More subsidies would reduce the already slim chance that Europe will ever have a sustainable fishing industry.”

I have argued previously that fishing should never be subsidized. There are far too many dangers of people selfishly exploiting a common good even without them. Indeed, I don’t have much hope when it comes to the long-term viability of world fisheries. That being said, if more people develop the understanding and candour displayed in this article, perhaps the madness can eventually be brought to heel.

A bad new copyright bill

Canada’s proposed new copyright act is unacceptably poor, most importantly because of its treatment of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Under the new law, circumventing any such system – no matter why – is against the law. This means that if the company that sold you a song decides to stop letting you access it, you are out of luck. Under the new law, it would be a crime to copy music from a DRM-protected CD that you bought to an iPod that you own, with an associated fine of $20,000.

The law would also mean that organizations like libraries cannot have any confidence in their future ability to use digital materials today and people with disabilities will not be able to use technology to make protected works more accessible. It would make it a crime for me to use VideoLAN player to watch DVDs I bought in Europe, just because people selling DVDs have decided to use monopolistic regional codes to boost profits. Indeed, it would criminalize the distribution of VideoLAN itself.

It must be remembered that the purpose of copyright law is to serve the public good, not copyright holders. We allow copyrights because they create a legal environment in which it is possible to profit from a good idea. As a result, copyright protections help to ensure that people are furnished with new and high quality music, books, etc. By failing to protect the legitimate needs of consumers, this bill fails to enhance the public interest. As such, it deserves to be opposed and defeated.

Cap and dividend

One intriguing form of carbon pricing that is being bandied about is the ‘tax and dividend’ approach. The idea is this: everybody pays a carbon tax on fuels and emitting activities. All the money is collected in a fund and redistributed evenly back to all taxpayers. As such, anyone who buys emits more than the mean quantity of carbon becomes a net payer and everyone who emits less actually gets back more than they pay. As mean emissions fall, so does the equivalence level of emissions – the point where you get back exactly what you paid.

For example, let’s imagine a tax that starts at a relatively modest $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). The mean Canadian produces about 23 tonnes of carbon a year, meaning they would pay $460 in carbon tax that year. That being said, the mean Canadian would also get back $460 as a dividend. A Canadian who is really trying (not flying, not eating meat, living in an efficient home, not driving, etc) might have much more modest emissions: say, 6 tonnes a year. They would pay $120 in carbon taxes and get back $460 – a nice ‘thank you’ for living a life that does less harm to others. Of course, someone who flies trans-Atlantically several times a year might end up paying significantly more in tax than they get back as a dividend.

Now say it is ten years on. The price of carbon has risen to $50 per tonne of CO2e and mean emissions per person have fallen by 25%. The break-even point is now 17.25 tonnes of carbon. As a result, someone who has not changed their lifestyle is now paying (23 – 17.25) * $50 or $287.50 a year in carbon taxes. If the 6 tonne person also managed a 25% cut, they would be earning (17.25 – 4.5) * $50 or $637.50 more in dividends than they paid in taxes.

These numbers are purely illustrative. It is possible that the per-tonne carbon taxes could be lower, and also possible that they would need to be much higher. In whatever case, the structure of the approach should be clear.

The approach has much to recommend it. For one, it is likely to enjoy the support of those already living relatively green lifestyles. For another, it has similar incentive effects to other carbon pricing schemes. It would encourage people to minimize or forego things with a heavy carbon burden, as well as make them more willing to invest in capital and technology that will reduce their carbon footprint.

American climate change impacts report

Because of a 2006 lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, a judge in Oakland California ordered the release of the Climate Change Science Programs (CCSP) assessment of climate change impacts in the United States. In total, the public release of the report was delayed for three years. The report – Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States – is now available online. It is not unlike the impacts report previously released by Natural Resources Canada.

None of the contents of the CCSP report will be surprising to those who have been paying attention to what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been releasing. Indeed, that is not surprising. The IPCC is looking at the same scientific evidence when they reach their judgments. One thing that would have been helpful would have been a more comprehensive effort to estimate the total economic damages associated with different plausible levels of climate change. It is information of that kind that seems most salient to those making hard choices about what actions to take.

‘Door prizes’ for cyclists

The ‘door prize’ is apparently the most common type of accident to injure bike riders in cities. Riding along beside a row of parked cars, someone opens a door on the driver side, leaving too little time for an approaching cyclist to stop. The cyclist thus slams into the door, quite probably injuring themselves. Sometimes, it can be lethal.

Awareness seems like the first mechanism for avoiding such accidents. While it is theoretically possible for cyclists to ride in the middle of lanes, doing so requires extremely thick skin, so as to endure the endless rage of motorists who want to go faster. Cyclists can avoid door prizes by keeping an eye on whether someone is sitting on the driver’s side of a car: as well as for clues like lights being on and engine noise. Well justified concern about the door prize risk makes me do this, though I find that it makes me less situationally aware overall. Having to check one parked car after another leaves less time and mental focus for evaluating other threats, such as cars passing you on the left or making right turns in front of you.

Drivers can be aware that cyclists may be passing them and do more to check for cyclists before opening doors. Glancing at the side-view mirror and back over their shoulder only takes a moment, and will protect the people stepping out of their cars from oncoming vehicles, as well. Doing so is sometimes an explicit legal obligation, as under section 208 of the Manitoba’s Highway Traffic Act:

No person shall,

(a) open the door of a motor vehicle upon a highway without first taking due precautions to ensure that his act will not interfere with the movement of, or endanger, any other person or vehicle; or

(b) leave a door of a motor vehicle upon a highway open on the side of the vehicle available to moving traffic for a period of time longer than is necessary to load or unload passengers

Section 203 of British Columbia’s Motor Vehicle Act is similar, as is section 165 of Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act. Drivers can also partially open doors for a little while, so as to make them more visible to anyone approaching.

Potentially, some kind of automated system could help. I don’t know how much it would cost, but it should be possible to set up a motion sensor that looks backwards on the driver’s side of a car. While it might sometimes be obstructed by vehicles close behind, one would think it would more likely be able to spot cyclists that drivers might have missed. Some kind of light could then give a warning against sudden door-openings, or even prevent doors on that side from being opened.

Arguably, the best solution is to isolate car and bike infrastructure from one another in city centres. I would personally be delighted if most downtown areas were car-free. There would be dramatically more social space, less noise and pollution, and arguably more of a neighbourhood feeling. In the absence of such a transition, perhaps we can aspire to more bike lanes physically separated from car traffic (by a barrier, not a painted line), as there are in the Netherlands and some other European states.