Within the disciplines of design and engineering it’s rare one feels the hand of fate pushing a project one way or another. Today I was working on a requirements document for the next version of my human powered vehicle (this one intended to operate under “expedition” conditions over long periods of time) when I decided I’d solicit some help from David Gordon Wilson the author of “Bicycling Science“. A couple of brief web searches brought me to his web site snooping for his contact information. It has been a while since I visited his site so I was surprised to read his “innovative policy” proposal which is a rational approach to managing consumptive habits and their associated external costs.

King Canute and rollbacks

Where the free market operates, as it does to a great extent for motor-vehicle fuel and some interstate electricity sales (where there has been substantial deregulation in many areas) prices have increased considerably, although not in general to the levels of much of the rest of the world. US legislators at every level have been calling for caps on prices. They have not heard of the early Danish-English King Canute, whose sycophantic courtiers proclaimed that he was so powerful that he could order the tides to roll back. Canute was happy to prove them wrong. US legislators have also called for the fuel consumption of vehicles to be set by regulation at extraordinarily low levels, in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics and of the law of supply and demand. They have even required that a proportion of cars sold shall be “zero emission” vehicles, but have excluded bicycles and other human-powered vehicles, which come closest to this worthy but misguided goal.

The US Administration’s policy towards addressing the problem of energy shortages is to find more sources of energy in the few remaining wild areas of the world, and to spend tax money to pay technologists to develop more-efficient vehicles, power plants, nuclear energy, and so forth. US citizens are told that they can have it all! They deserve it!

This policy is not an engineering solution to a problem. It is what engineers pejoratively term a “Mickey Mouse” approach. Engineers are trained to look at all possible solutions to problems, including the ridiculous extremes, and to pick an optimum somewhere along the spectrum.

Highly recommended reading if you have a moment and probably something you should consider forwarding to your congressional membership for consideration.

Think about investing, in a large scale, on highway transportation infrastructure for instance. I can’t imagine too many new jobs will be created as a result of a stimulus package with this intent as there are already many, many companies contracted nationally which provide both re-building and maintenance work in this market already. Stimulus of this nature will simply service what’s largely already in place; it will maintain the status quo and the underlying infrastructure in place.

Now imagine a massive stimulus package aimed at “reinventing” our power generation, distribution and storage infrastructure. Where the former economic stimulation package doesn’t build anything new (no new roads for instance) fabrication of a new power infrastructure does. This means a need for massive numbers of trained professionals to manage design, building, and sustain efforts for the new infrastructure. These new jobs, this new infrastructure *is* economic growth which could be sustained.

New jobs become possible on this massive scale only if there is available training and funding for this kind of activity. We should be talking about reinventing something on a enormous scale!

Even climate change’s worst detractors like money, they prefer regular economic growth to bear markets, and they have an equal opportunity to be part of all this.

Bold! Keynote speech by Greg Kolodziejzyk from Greg Kolodziejzyk on Vimea.

Very interesting speach given by Greg Kolodziejzyk. His accomplishments are a great example of the extremes that can be achieved with elegant design and muscle power alone. Very inspired guy who understands what the human body is capable of achieving as well as how to push the limits of experience. Maybe someday I’ll get to meet him.