Good Reads for Executives

Unfortunately I am one of those people who can feel a racing pulse when someone agrees to play Scrabble with me. I love word games and I particularly love that in our house we make up rules including "Thou Shalt Use a Dictionary Whenever You Want." The first thing you need to know about the new Princeton Environmental Institute's "Stabilization Wedges Game" is there is no fudge room and that's because smart people are in a race to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions for the next 50 years. Basically the game calculates the projected carbon emissions increases for the next 50 years and divides it into seven wedges. You are given fifteen of today's options like fuel efficient vehicles or nuclear power to get rid of the wedges. The game comes complete with documentation of advantages and drawbacks of the various options...and it's free. You can download it from the PEI site. This first link is to a story that National Public Radio did on the game. This second link takes you to the game itself.

Please, play to win! Many plug-in hybrid enthusiasts would put a lot of their eggs in one of the PEI options that says "A wedge of emissions savings would be achieved if the fuel efficiency of the cars projected for 2055 were doubled from 30 mpg to 60 mpg." The Set America Free coalition is one of many groups that sees that kind of promise through plug-in hybrids. In fact, they believe that 500 miles per gallon is within the realm of possibility. There's a bit of a chicken and egg going on now because legions of enthusiasts are jumping on the plug-in bandwagon and the hybrid manufacturing OEMs aren't going along for the ride. OEMs cite the cost of larger battery packs and the weight which compromises fuel efficiency as big bumps in the plug-in road. The IEEE publication Spectrum seems to embrace the plug-in promise in their latest issue.

And speaking of Set America Free, Milton Copulos is a founding member and the President of the National Defense Council Foundation. One of the many interesting analyses he's done over the years is to calculate what our dependence on foreign oil really costs. In this brief (5 pages) report he offers staggering numbers of what we spend to sustain our lifestyles. For instance, in 2006 we spent $137 billion on "oil-related defense expenditures." The most dramatic way he explains it is that the total price tag for "hidden costs" related to oil was $825 billion last year. Or, he explains that if you add $8.35 to the price of a gallon of gasoline refined from Persian Gulf oil, your cost to fill a sedan would be $214 or $321 for an SUV. That's got to be cause for pause.

The Hidden Cost of Oil, Milt Copulos, Set America Free