Synthetic Fuels Program

I have no expertise as to the technical aspects of hydrogen power. But let's assume it can be successful. Then it will have huge positive externalities - reducing pollution, reducing the political clout of some very unpleasant governments. Doesn't that justify some government subsidy?

You should read something I wrote called Oil Econ 101: http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-012003A

But the short answer is that if you want to reduce pollution, you should tax pollution and then let the market figure out the right mix of conservation, alternative fuels, and pollution controls. If you want the Saudis to stop funding terrorism, you have to tell them to stop funding terrorism. Trying to make a statement in the oil market is futile.

Anyone who has fooled with hydrogen piping knows that hydrogen leaks from pipes and fittings that will hold gas or air pressure. Gonna be a whole lot of garages blow up when the hydrogen car arrives.

Well, taxing pollution is all very nice, but we're not going to do it, in part because the "free-market" champions wouldn't allow it. You can almost hear the sneering at the notion of making people pay "social costs."

Can you even imagine that the current administration would do this? What do you think would be the reaction of Fox, WSJ, Rush and the dittoheads to this idea? Didn't someone (Carter?) propose a stiff increase in the gasoline tax at one point? The reaction was not favorable, as I recall.

As far as getting the Saudis to stop funding terrorism, I do rather suspect that asking them politely, or even a little rudely, has been tried, without conspicuous success.

Finally, I understand that we can't just declare ourselves "independent" of Saudi oil, or Iraqi, etc. But reducing our demand for oil reduces both the price of oil and the quantity sold, reducing revenue flowing to the Middle East and constraining the power of those countries. Your article attacks a straw man by claiming that we cannot completely stop buying oil from the Saudis. Of course not, but we can cut into their revenues, and that will have effects.

Christopher Caldwell had a nice article on the politics of this at http://www.nypress.com/16/6/news&columns/beans.cfm
From which...
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The most important item in President Bush’s State of the Union speech last week (aside, of course, from his de facto declaration of war on Iraq) may have been his announcement of a $1.2 billion pilot research program for developing hydrogen-powered cars.

That is because it makes no sense. Either it’s nothing -– what Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to call "boob-bait" for environmentalists -– or it is an initiative of epoch-making importance. If all cars are going to be hydrogen-powered two decades from now (and that is the timetable Bush hinted at), then the country that develops them will be the world’s transportation powerhouse.

You have to ask why China hasn’t decided to do the same thing. In fact, if the price tag for leadership in the Car Market of Tomorrow is a mere $1.2 billion, then Greece and Uruguay could enter the competition as well...