The tragedy of the commons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
How many ecologically minded small car drivers does there have to be to
make up for the excesses of the large ones?
There is a field of study called Fuzzy Logic (silly name; serious
topic). Normal boolean logic assumes that everything can be lumped into
two categories; on/off, yes/no, hot/cold, black/white, good/bad,
smart/stupid, etc. That's how all computers work, and how many people
think things in work in the "real world".
But in fact, the real world is full of shades of gray in between the two
extremes. If you force everything into black/white extremes, you are
throwing away useful information, and so make bad decisions. Many
logical paradoxes are a consequence of trying to apply yes/no logic to
imprecise real-world situations. For example, consider these yes/no rules:
1. If it's hot, open the window.
2. If it's raining, close the window.
But what if it's hot *and* it's raining? Yes/no rules put you in a
paradoxical situation, where either opening or closing the window breaks
one of the rules.
Professor Lotfi Zadeh noticed that animals (and people) don't actually
use black/white thinking for most decisions in everyday life. Instead,
we compromise. The hotter it gets, the more we open the window. The more
it rains, the more we close it. He worked out a rigorous methodology for
making decisions in the presence of uncertainty and shades of gray. He
called it "fuzzy logic".
Applied to real life, fuzzy logic means that you have graduated
responses to situations. Not "no speeding ticket for 0-10 mph over, but
a $100 fine for more than 10 mph over". A fuzzy fine is, "Each mph over
the speed limit costs you at the rate of $10 per mph over". There's a
proportional response, not a sudden cliff. So if you're clocked at 17
mph over the limit, you pay $170. Or use the square of the speed, if you
want a steeper penalty curve.
As applied to EVs, it could be a tax on the cost of the energy used. If
you buy gas, you pay a lot in taxes (on a per-gallon basis). If you use
electricity from the grid, the cost is a lot less. If you're using
solar, you didn't buy any electricity, so you pay no tax for that.
If you make people *aware* of what it's costing them for their behavior
on a proportionate basis, they are suddenly a lot more likely to
*change* their behavior (even if it goes against their political
leanings). :-)
--
"We have met the enemy, and he is us." -- Pogo
--
Lee Hart's EV projects are at http://www.sunrise-ev.com/LeesEVs.htm
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