I didn't mean to imply that anyone who stands over a mash tun at A-B is getting the sweet end of this deal.

I do have to wonder though, why have we allowed companies like A-B to get so large in the first place. Companies like A-B pushed out smaller, less distinguished players out of these markets a long time ago. (In this case prohibition didn't help any either.) I certainly understand that from a corporate profit perspective that bigger is better due to economies of scale, but aren't employment rolls part of the reductions that give these efficiencies? At what point do the gains to the broader economy from greater corporate efficiency get canceled by reductions in well payed consumers to buy their goods?

Sam Adams - Brewer, Patriot. How much more American can you get than that? Beats the pants off of Busch.

I'm still kinda mad at Anheuser-Busch for buying and closing Rolling Rock's Pennsylvania brewery. It's not that I'd ever drink it, but I grew up in the general region of the brewery and there was a certain sense of "home" to the brand. With this in mind, I find it somewhat amusing that Anheuser-Bush are themselves a target of a merger/acquisition that will "destroy a local product".

I'd just like to throw this idea out there: The problems that second-wave feminists have in regards to family are mirrored by the problems that men of the same generation have. I'm thinking of careerism to the detriment to family. Most men and women don't get to be world renowned authors. Most don't get to be respected artists. Most don't get to be important scientists or politicians. Instead their careerism is channeled into selling things and business plans. I wonder what they will do when they retire.

The new third wave feminists seem to have realized that this path does not lead to happiness for most. There is a similar realization among men of the same generation. Both realize that when you die, no one will care that you were regional manager.

My 1st car was an 1982 Chevy Impala. (Only a few years younger than me, that Bat Mobile was my college car) I guess that it was a result of the 70's oil shock or something, but that car also had a "fuel efficiency" gauge -- I think in reality it was measuring RPM's or something. Just adding such a gauge really does alter the psychology of driving. Even in the mid/late 90's with ultra cheap gas and less of a global warming concern, I found myself optimizing my driving. Even with that thing having a V8 engine, I could squeeze 30 mpg out of it.

Actually I just double checked Pablo's number's. He must of miscopied from his source or something. He says that he's using data from the Greenhouse gas protocol. Their worksheet:

http://www.ghgprotocol.org/downloads/calcs/working9-5.pdf/

tells me that train travel gives you 171.9 grams CO2 per passenger mile instead of the 310 he quoted.(see numbered page 38 or 43 in the PDF's count)

Similarly, Amtrak's page on the same:

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/Satellite?c=WSArticlePage&cid=1173376444452&pagename=WhistleStop/WSArticlePage/Blank_Template

claims better carbon efficiency than cars & trains.

I'm suspicious of the Amtrak figures as well. It is certainly the case that rail freight has lower fuel usage than trucks. One only needs to look at current profits in the industries to see this. Passenger rail versus cars can't be so completely different.

Either a cap'n'trade or a carbon tax are certainly good ideas in the long run but is the cap and trade bill really the right climate change bill to pass first? I guess my question is: does US heavy industry (which has taken a beating for a long time now) have enough money to invest in carbon mitigation schemes? Are enough consumers going to be able to cope with the even higher fuel costs in the short term?

It seems like it would make a lot more sense to first introduce a bill which gives the carrot before we get the bill which gives the stick. I'm thinking low interest loans for companies which can decrease carbon or do electricity cogeneration with their existing carbon footprint. I'm also thinking of public transportation increases - in the short term, it wouldn't take that much money for the feds to buy a bunch of buses and distribute them around. We could make renewable energy tax credits stable for more than a year.

With such a bill in place for a year or two we could actually have some momentum in the right direction before a cap and trade system went online.

The problem is that right now a lot of our industry is in rural areas. This is for a lot of reasons. For instance, factories are big and city land is expensive. Bad actors find it easier to evade environmental regulation as there are less eyes to see the problems. Suffering rural areas often bend over backwards to get any kind of job. The list goes on.

The question really isn't about where we want and need to go; it's about how we get there. I can't help but think that there will be pain for a lot of people along the way.

On the other hand, places like LA just have no excuse.

Who wouldn't want to make that trade: a good job in exchange for high gas prices?

It doesn't help much if you can't afford to get to the job.