It took me days to get around to it, because it’s so damn long, but Paul Krugman’s piece in the New York Times magazine on climate change economics filled me with hope, unexpectedly.

There are many parts of the well-written article that I liked, in general it does a good job of listing the economic arguments about climate change, and ultimately wholeheartedly agreeing we need a carbon price, the real debate is how fast we should raise the price to rational levels. That in itself deserves a few cheers.

But what most lightened my mood was the passing note that the WTO recently published a missive that a carbon tariff (essential to get US industry and labor on board with a carbon pricing mechanism) would probably pass muster under WTO rules. Everything else I’ve read on the subject suggested we’d need to change WTO rules (or withdraw, which would have economic consequences vastly preferable to avoiding a carbon price, but still probably unacceptable to the average US voter).

So three cheers for the possibility, however slim, that Congress could, if it had the balls, actually pass both cap and trade and a carbon tariff some time this decade!

I’ve been doing a bunch of research lately on electric vehicles to see what might make sense for us at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage for our vehicle co-op. For 12 years we have been focusing on biodiesel and vegetable oil based fuels but things have not always been smooth. The main issues have been related to winter fuel gelling and fuel filters clogging in general. We’ve also never gotten a steady system for  collection of used oil and production going, so we have been using biodiesel made from new veggie oil which is only marginally better for the environment than petroleum.

We are now embarking on a major re-evaluation of vehicle technologies for our co-op, with a team researching things like electric vehicles, hybrids, ethanol (including home made, potentially from cellulose), bio-gas, wood-gas, human and animal powered, and any new technologies in the veggie oil world.

My interest in electric vehicles (EVs) has come out of my research into a village-wide electric power co-op with a largish wind turbine to power our whole village. With an abundant source of renewable electricity, EVs could be our most ecological option. There are ecological issues related to batteries of course, but my research shows that EVs are a net benefit over petro based vehicles and on par with other bio-fueled options currently or soon to be available (more on that in a post soon).

Of course the main issue with EVs is about range – how far you can drive on a single charge. Most all-electric vehicles (sometimes called Battery Electric Vehicles or BEVs to distinguish them from hybrids) still have ranges in the 80-100 mile range. That range is great for most folks daily commuting needs, but our rural location means many or even most of our trips are 80-150 miles.

A further complication, is that a 100 mile advertised range does not always mean you can drive 100 miles. Accessories like A/C, heat, lights, etc. can reduce your range. Higher speeds and hills also reduce range (and while we don’t have mountains we do have hills). Winter temps can also reduce battery capacity and range.  It also matters how you drive – fast acceleration and breaking are inefficient.

So what are our options?

In the All Electric Category I found the following vehicles available now or in the next 18 months.

The most appealing for us would be the Tesla Sedan because of the extended range it can provide. The price tag is pretty high though. The Nissan LEAF is definitely more affordable, but its unclear if it would really get us where we need to go (and back that is). The CODA is still limited in its availability.

For folks living in suburban or urban areas with shorter commutes I think a lot of these options would work great.

I also looked into Plug-in Hybrids such as the upcoming Chevy Volt and the 2011 Plug-in Prius as well as the various Prius Plug-in conversion kits.

The Volt is expected to have a 40 mile electric range and get 50 mpg once the gasoline (or E85) engine kicks in.  The 2011 Prius will have only a 15 mile electric range and also get around 50 mpg. With a Prius Plug in conversion you can get electric ranges of 25-50 miles before it goes back into hybrid modde and gets 46-50 mpg (depending on model year).

Its too bad the electric range on these hybrids is so short. If you could get something with an 80 mile range and a gasoline/diesel back up that would really work well for us and for a lot of people I would think. Obviously the cost and weight of having a big battery pack and a gas engine is probably the issue.

I’m expecting that once these EVs are available,  someone will come up with an aftermarket add on battery pack to increase the range, just like there are plug-in Prius kits. That could be just the ticket and demonstrate the demand for EVs with a bigger range.

It’s probably about time for me to stop being delighted that the subset of the Economist’s staff who blog at Democracy in America sound like rational environmentalists, but still I am.

In this post, they make the eminently reasonable argument that while drilling offshore probably makes sense politically, it’s ridiculous from the perspective of global atmospheric carbon. The only societies with the wherewithal to conserve are those, like ours, with a strong enough state to enforce such restrictions. If we can’t do it, we’re pretty much screwed.

I really wish The Economist would discover the religion of human-readable URLs, in addition to the religion of free-markets-are-always-better. But I’m thrilled that they’ve written such a thorough and readable explanation of the actual high level agreements and controversy on climate change, I haven’t seen better (realclimate.org came close for a while, but lately they’ve gotten more shrill and they’ve always been too technical for me, much less your average non-physics-major. Their wiki still kicks ass as the definitive source for helping rebut most climate skeptic canards, though).

And as an aside, happy progressives-actually-passed-big-progressive-legislation week! First time in my lifetime, maybe since LBJ! Did you see that David Frum of all people is saying the Republicans should strive to replace the income-tax provisions of the health care bill with other taxes perhaps a carbon tax? Who knew passing health care would get Republicans agreeing with Al Gore! I would actually support all the legislation he’s proposing, I think.