PRESTOPUNDIT -- "It's a team sport, baby!"

Hyping hydrogen:

Under Tolan's pedal-to-the-metal scenario, the country could completely wean itself off imported oil by 2015 by flooding the market with fuel-cell vehicles. Most of the hydrogen needed to power the cars would come from plentiful North American natural gas piped to existing filling stations, then processed into hydrogen. Imagine: In little more than a decade, half the cars on American highways would run on clean-burning hydrogen costing 40 percent less per mile than gasoline. Yes, Tolan agrees, some unusual things would have to happen first: You'd need annual federal subsidies of $10 billion to $20 billion in the early years to make the cars affordable and to scale up production. Oil and gas companies and utilities would have to plow some $280 billion into hydrogen infrastructure in the United States alone.

Explain to be again how this could cost less than gasoline, yet still requires the heavy hand of government and confiscation of other peoples property? If it's a good idea -- i.e. if it's one that will prove itself through the price signal of PROFITS -- you shouldn't have to steal my money with a Federal agents gun in order to get it done. And why don't folks realize that this is just what they are proposing -- forceably taking other people's money in order to prove the "efficiency" of their own "I'm God" for a day scheme? It isn't moral and it nearly always creates waste, not gains to economic efficiency.

Posted by Greg Ransom