Illya Somin, over at The Volokh Conspiracy brings up a fascinating question: Is it ethical to benefit from policies you oppose?

Which of these cases are defensible and which are not? There is no easy answer, but let me suggest a helpful way of thinking about the problem.

Some policies are wrong in an absolute sense: every individual instance of the practice they promote is an evil. Even if no one else owned slaves, Thomas Jefferson’s owning some was a grave evil. In cases of this kind, it is indeed wrong to take advantage of practices that you oppose. Even if Jefferson lacked the political leverage necessary to get slavery abolished throughout the country, his failure to free his own slaves was a serious injustice in and of itself.

Some actions, however, are only wrong because of their aggregate effects. An individual instance of deducting state income taxes or burning oil does little if any harm. It is only the aggregate impact of these practices that does damage. Thus, no good would be achieved by my deciding to forego my income tax deduction. Only an across-the-board policy change would do any real good. The same goes for Al Gore and his contributions to the greenhouse effect. OK, maybe this is my way to get myself off the moral hook (even at the cost of doing the same for Al Gore). But I think that the argument is sound, even if self-serving.

Due to popular demand, I am going to post my entire sustainable transportation paper here on gimme-five for download.  It’s pretty long, but I feel that it’s a quick read and relatively easy to understand.  The purpose of this paper was to identify problems in the current transportation system in the United States and to offer some policy proposals for solving these problems.

The three problems I identified were:

1. Resource Depletion: transportation heavily relies on oil, a finite resource that is being depleted rapidly.
2. Congestion: congestion wastes time, fuel, and drives people crazy.
3. Environmental Degradation: roads, fuel, and other aspects of the current transportation system are harmful to the environment.

After identifying and explaining the problems, I went on to offer solutions.  Please read the paper and let me know what you think.

Download: Sustainable Transportation

Read an article today in the Guardian that asserts humans will not overcome the challenge of climate change.  Why?

Behind our thinking about global warming lies an unspoken assumption: that, in the end, science and technology will rescue us. Perhaps we shall launch giant reflectors into space to protect us from the sun’s rays. Or discover new ways of growing food so it won’t matter if half the world’s agricultural land turns into desert. More plausibly, we may find a new source of low-cost, low-emission energy. As Bush reiterated yesterday, America has most faith in technical fixes, and at least he is honest about it. But it is the biggest illusion of all. Science and technology haven’t delivered on half the promises of the past 50 years. We don’t have a cure for cancer. We don’t have robots to do the cleaning. We can’t take holidays on the moon. And we still haven’t found a way to harness high-temperature superconductivity which, we were told 20 years ago, would cut energy waste by half…