The Cult of Driverless Cars

SUBHEAD:  Will magic, solar-powered autonomous cars allow us to continue plundering the Earth?

By Andy Singer on 7 September 2018 for Streets.mn -
(https://streets.mn/2018/09/07/driverless-cars-and-the-cult-of-technology/)


Image above: Andy Singer cartoon of a driverless car. From original article.

We constantly hear that driverless cars are just around the corner. We’re told they will revolutionize transportation and enable us to continue using our car-based transport and land-use system. If they’re made by Tesla, they’ll be powered by magic, solar-powered, super efficient batteries and we’ll all be able to keep living our hyper-mobile, hyper-consumptive lifestyles without any damage to the environment.

The only problem is we’ve been hearing about all this for the last five to ten years and there’s no evidence that it’s anything but the same old technological, capitalist utopian dreck that we’ve been hearing since General Motors debuted “Futurama” at the 1939 World’s Fair.

Technological utopianism fueled by science fiction is nothing new. If you’ve never seen it, watch Disney’s short animated film “Magic Highway” from 1958. It’s remarkably similar to this recent promotional film for an Elon Musk tubular underground transportation system in Los Angeles.

They’re both fantasies that maintain our inefficient, car-oriented transportation and land-use systems and help the Automobile Industrial Complex retain its stranglehold on our imaginations. They’re also fantasies that dovetail with corporate capitalism’s fantasy of automating the entire workforce and using technology to eliminate jobs and reduce costs.

In many ways, driverless cars have all the makings of a massive cult–the Cult of Technology. This is the idea that technology will somehow solve the problems of human greed, over-population and over-consumption of planetary resources, and therefore will also solve the related problems of climate change, waste, pollution, and species extinction. It’s an old fantasy but one we still buy into.

It preys on our laziness and gullibility and it distracts and deludes us so much that we can’t see basic realities staring us in the face.

Witness all the absurdly hyped stories about driverless cars in the media. This NBC news story is typical, gushing that “Self-driving cars will turn intersections into high-speed ballet.” Their “evidence” for this is just an animated simulation video. They’ve even got city and state governments devoting staff time and resources to “Planning for our driverless future.”

Non-profit “transit” advocacy groups like MoveMN have held seminars on it as if it’s an impending reality. Cheerleaders for driverless cars claim they will reduce traffic deaths, increase the efficiency and carrying capacity of roadways, reduce costs and revolutionize transportation.

Lots of money has poured into research and development of driverless vehicles–Waymo (Google), Volvo, Tesla, Mercedes, Uber and other companies have made and/or operated test vehicles and some sell commercially available cars with driverless features like parallel parking and glorified cruise control, or what they call “autopilot.”

Even companies like Intel are making bets on chip technology for driverless cars. With all this money and hype, you’d think that driverless vehicles will be taking over our roads in the next ten or twenty years.

But many folks, including the owner of the driverless shuttle company EasyMile and scientists at MIT and other institutions who are actually working on the technology say widespread use or deployment of driverless vehicles is a long way off and may never happen at all:

“Google often leaves the impression that, as a Google executive once wrote, the cars can ‘drive anywhere a car can legally drive.’ However, that’s true only if intricate preparations have been made beforehand, with the car’s exact route, including driveways, extensively mapped. Data from multiple passes by a special sensor vehicle must later be pored over, meter by meter, by both computers and humans. It’s vastly more effort than what’s needed for Google Maps.

…Pedestrians are detected simply as moving, column-shaped blurs of pixels—meaning …that the car wouldn’t be able to spot a police officer at the side of the road frantically waving for traffic to stop. …The car’s sensors can’t tell if a road obstacle is a rock or a crumpled piece of paper, so the car will try to drive around either. (Chris) Urmson (former director of the Google Car team) also says the car can’t detect potholes or spot an uncovered manhole if it isn’t coned off.

“There are major, unsolved, difficult issues here. We have to be careful that we don’t overhype how well it works. …I do not expect there to be taxis in Manhattan with no drivers in my lifetime.” (John Leonard, MIT Professor working on robotics navigation).

Uber’s autonomous test vehicles in Pittsburgh all have backup human operators and, in over 20,000 miles of operation, those operators have had to intervene every 0.8 miles. Then there are the crashes:

• A fatal crash of a Tesla in autopilot mode in Heibei China in January 2016
• A fatal crash of a Tesla in autopilot mode in Florida in May 2016
• A pedestrian killed in Arizona by an Uber (Volvo) in December 2017
• Another fatal crash of an auto-piloted Tesla on March 23 of this year in Mountain View, California
• Teslas in semi-autonomous mode hitting parked fire trucks in January (Los Angeles) and May of this year (in Salt Lake City)
• And, in California, the only state that requires reports on autonomous vehicle crashes, there’ve been 95 crashes as of August 31 of this year.

When you think about how few driverless cars are actually in service and that this is just one state’s statistics, that’s a lot of crashes. An early study in 2015, found self-driving cars were involved in twice as many crashes per mile as human-driven cars. You can say, “most of these were the fault of human drivers in other vehicles!”

But part of the technological challenge of driverless cars is that they have to share the road with humans.

We debate the ethics of driverless cars taking away our jobs, or debate whether people will accept them, as if they are an inevitable reality. But this debate obscures the fact that the technology itself is insanely complicated and expensive and many decades if not a lifetime away from widespread usage.

It’s one thing to make some test cars work consistently in ideal situations and another to get tens of thousands of them operating in concert with non-driverless cars, pedestrians, weather and all sorts of other variables.

A simple, fixed-guideway computerized transit system like Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), with just five lines and a maximum of 54 trains, on set schedules to set destinations, hasn’t been able to go fully driverless and, at its best, experiences failures of on-time performance of around 10%.

Magnify this error rate by thousands for tens of thousands of autonomous cars driving in a metro area with pedestrians, cyclists, animals, potholes, unexpected road work and all sorts of other variables, and you start to get a sense of how complex the engineering problem becomes when you scale it up from just a few test vehicles. I can’t always get decent cell phone reception or a transit ticket vending machine that works correctly.

Yet I’m supposed to believe techno-utopian cultists who tell me that, in twenty years, we’ll all be getting around in driverless cars? They sound like Disney’s “Magic Highway” or like they’ve been watching too many Star Wars movies.


Image above: Andy Singer cartoon of a addicts of drugs and addicts of technology. From original article.

Let’s look at some of the folks hyping this technology. No one is more prominent than Elon Musk–a guy whose companies, Tesla and SpaceX, have never been profitable.

Yet at one point, Tesla was valued at more than major motor vehicle companies like Nissan or Ford, based entirely on hype and stock speculation.

His Hyperloop company hasn’t built an actual system anywhere in the world and is more of a concept and test track than an actually viable transportation system.

His battery and solar companies are also more hype than actual profitable product.

His solar business amounts to his acquisition of the company “SolarCity” from which he laid off 20% of the workforce.

This is a guy who wants to save humanity by colonizing Mars and who sent one of his cars to orbit Mars as a publicity stunt (but missed it).

His net worth is the product of pure stock market speculation, largely based on his cult of personality. To this point, Tesla has mostly made luxury electric automobiles that resemble fancy wrist watches or smartphones–status objects for the wealthy.

If his Model 3 isn’t successful, speculators could lose a lot of money, and Tesla recently had to lay off over 500 people and plans to lay off 2,500 more or about 9% of its workforce.

Indeed some financial analysts have finally started questioning his claims and the value of his companies. While some of his companies could be successful, they also have all the makings of a classic Ponzi scheme or failed start-ups on a massive scale.

Musk companies like Hyperloop remind me of the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) scheme–a concept that hung around for almost 40 years before being abandoned or relegated to airport people-movers.

This included Taxi 2000, a failed Minnesota company whose investors sued each other to try to recoup some of millions of dollars they foolishly invested. Indeed many PRT simulation videos resemble the ones linked to at the beginning of this post.

Ironically, the PRT concept has died out in part because it has been eclipsed by the driverless car concept.

So when someone like Elon Musk makes wild claims about driverless cars, I’m skeptical. Google spun off its driverless car project (within Alphabet) to Waymo and is just focusing on development not manufacture.

Uber has gotten out of the driverless truck business, perhaps because the backup driver intervention rate was as bad as for its cars (almost once per mile).

A driverless car is still a car. It still needs energy, at least some of it from petroleum, to be manufactured, moved and disposed of. Anywhere from 23-46% of the energy a car consumes in its lifetime is an inherent part of its manufacture and disposal.

The steel, aluminum and plastics in its body and tires, the lithium (or lead/acid) in its batteries, and the asphalt and concrete for its roadways all require fossil fuels, mining, rare-earth metals, and/or huge amounts of energy to manufacture.

Driverless cars fail to address any of this and they fail to fully address another core problem of automobiles–inefficient land use.

Proponents claim that cities of driverless cars will reduce the need for parking and more efficiently use existing roadways but this is assuming the technology is able to decrease vehicle following distances, an even tougher engineering problem.

It’s futile to argue with a fantasy but, even if driverless cars could become widespread, why would I want more technology when all I need is denser, car-free, walkable cities where jobs, goods and services are closer together?

It’s a much surer, cheaper, less resource-intensive path to environmental sustainability.

Five years ago, several people bet me cases of beer that “in ten years at least 20% of cars on the road would be driverless.” I can tell you right now, there’s gonna be an amazing party in my back yard in 2022. You’re all invited.

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Insidious Screenism

SUBHEAD: The young are actually sold helplessness and hopelessness under the guise of independence and mastery.

By Jan Lumberg on 25 January 2015 for Culture Change -
(http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/933/1/)


Image above: How a group of boys play outside has changed dramatically in the last few generations. From original article.

"Screenism" -- it is pervasive except among the very, very young, the very old, and the nature-dwelling primitive. It began with television over one half century ago, for those who had time for hours of passive entertainment. It was also for the electronically babysat, and still is.

Except, now hand-held mobile telephones, "tablets," laptop and desktop computers are "essential," and billions of the most active people on the planet depend on them as well as upon digital technology in general.

Everyone but a Rip van Winkle knows that far more kinds of imagery than TV, along with maximized communicating and information manipulation, have taken over society and lifestyles.

Meanwhile, scientific warnings against children's using screens have gone largely unheeded. The objections center on child development and health, although concerns over radiation emitted are addressed separately by different kinds of scientists and advocates for children (and adults).

Before covering these issues, let us tell the story of intrusive, invasive technology mostly embraced by an unquestioning, consuming public not protected by government agencies or mainstream education.

Other kinds of technology were intruding on modern life when television became ubiquitous: cars, nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, and perhaps the most lasting: plastics.

Consumerism's role as the reason for modern economics (i.e., profiting) was cemented, and only abates minimally through recessions. It does not abate nor is threatened by alternative philosophies or lifestyles.

Yet, the critique of consumerism, television and the "Plastic Society" commenced and flowered in the 1960s not long after imposing technologies that pacified and minimized human-to-human interaction took hold.


In October, we discussed "globalization for an unprecedented number of technologically dependent humans"¹

The role of high-tech disempowerment in health and sustainability I have increasingly sensed that mass consumption of high-tech communication devices mostly disempowers people, especially the young. This is because they have no memory of what was simply and easily used by previous generations rather sustainably. The young consumers of high-tech are actually sold helplessness and hopelessness under the guise of independence and mastery. The glamour of the advertising and corporate social pressure offers the false and unobtainable: a life without nature and its light and darkness, its warmth and cold, life and death, decay and rebirth.

"Hyper-connection equals isolation after all." - Roger Cohen, New York Times op-ed columnist writing "A Climate of Fear" on Oct. 27, 2014.

Let us now examine the "unintended consequences" of runaway technology. Or perhaps not: if you're not already living next to a cellphone tower, go ahead and do that if you believe that whatever today's generation of humans is doing is just fine and dandy -- even if our grandparents and all our ancestors led more natural, untainted lives.

Were they deprived, or is it us? Today's consumers seem to fail, by definition, to engage in self-reflection to the point of questioning out loud what is being promoted and foisted. Do we not have masters, if we can agree that most of us "lucky" to have jobs are slaving our lives away largely to be able to buy things? Is not the perfect slave the one who has unwittingly given over his or her mind?

Science as a tool of mega-corporations, as more and more of us know, is proving to be an incalculable disservice to humanity and nature.

 So is the innovative advent of most modern technological systems, as we see as evidence mounts. Mistakes, well-meaning or not, are always part of being human, but writ large and relentlessly perpetuated they cannot be ignored or excused indefinitely.

Examples are greenhouse gas emissions, the plastic plague, depletion of aquifers for agribusiness, paving paradise, ad nauseam.

I predict that Facebooks' founders, Henry Ford, Dupont's plastics inventors, and others will not go down in post-consumer history as heroes or geniuses but rather as overall misfortunes to everyone and everything.

The aftermath of technological "progress" is the growing need to reverse technological dehumanization.
Facebook and the like as an exclusion of direct human communication is not a positive development for humanity or for the natural world, when we absolutely depend on the natural world increasingly raped and receding. It does little good to state this on "Fakebook."

The medium is the message, and so the sound-bite message and simplistic graphic sloganeering for the short attention span must be vacuous or unreal. Similarly, attempting to spread truth and expose society's lies and scams via total reliance on the Internet is a distracting substitute for better organizing.

Many observers have pointed out the paradox of massive dependence on electricity-demanding gadgets and using jet fuel, to fight both the effect of those innovations and the system that places them above human value. Yet practices do not change, as we feel the need to graduate to better, faster technology.

Efficiency has increased almost exponentially in terms of the amount of information processed and the speed of processing it.

Big users benefit the most, such as the Pentagon and transnational corporations. Waste has increased similarly in terms of toxic junk for landfills and elsewhere, partly due to planned obsolescence in the cellphone and computer industries. The electric power demand for gadgets, equipment and appliances is massive and largely unquestioned.

What to do about our historic wasteful, toxic, and radioactive dilemma seems off-limits or unfathomable even to people who acknowledge the general dangers. But if we can begin to minimize dehumanization by technology by maximizing direct human communication, by strengthening family, community, and connection to pristine nature, we are on a path to reverse lethal trends such as climate destruction.

 In so doing we may also more successfully end and avert war, as well as reverse reckless "development," i.e., big-business assault on people and the environment for private profit and power.
Specifics for a safe path include radical conservation, permaculture, bicycle culture, sail transport, removing roads and other asphalt, resurrecting traditional skills, engaging in resistance to the corporate state's oppression, and fostering freedom of expression and creativity.

These are well-documented and nurtured, for a small minority so far. They are suppressed but irrepressible factors for sustainability, and they enjoy some popularity, exploration, and furtherance by many talented, devoted practitioners.

During this time of life-and-death struggle for a sustainable future, it is vital to question the basis of Western Civilization and "progress" based on growth and mass control.

 Without frank discussion of overpopulation, the realities of energy and petroleum, the demise of the consumer economy, questioning inequitable social relations, and grappling immediately with rapid climate change, it is possible that many activist efforts to ameliorate our situation and plight will remain too isolated -- despite electronic connectivity.

Unity beyond clicking, Tweeting and gazing must also be based on principles of seeing wealth not as money or property, and embracing what nature offers without over-manipulation.

This may make the difference for a mass movement to successfully strive for an evolved world consciousness.

To move forward, we will have to let go of certain conveniences that recently latched onto people's lives.

As we discover that agribusiness via petrochemical and mechanical intervention for short-term advantage is poisoning and weakening us, and as we learn that antibacterial soap, for example, is a negative for daily use, and as we learn that the medical industry and insurance are not the main key to individual healing and public health, we find we have really not deprived ourselves, nor romanticized the more natural or primitive past. Rather, we instead liberate ourselves and take more control over our lives.

The idea of a break with entrenched conventions and today's dehumanized system can be most daunting, as socioeconomic collapse invokes for many a fear of complete chaos, repression, strife and loss. But as society has almost consistently evaded reasonable planning and simple changes for general welfare and stability of the biosphere, TUC -- time of useful consciousness, the high-altitude pilots' concern whenever Murphy's Law appears -- is dwindling fast.

Yet, there are signs that questioning the force of popular technology is gaining ground. A New York Times op-ed recently posed a question in its headline: "Can Students Have Too Much Tech?" Writer Susan Pinker posits that the wired classroom may actually widen the learning gap.

In another example of a possible turning tide, a celebrity regularly "fasts" to break from computers and artificial connection one day each week.

Tiffany Shlain insists that her family, for one day each week, ditches their smartphones and tablets to indulge in a simpler life... to unplug, relax and reconnect with her humanity. In her mind, technology's enormous power for good is great, but it's also dangerous -- shortening our attention spans and sending our amygdalae into overdrive. She believes that it won't be long before people swing back the other way and fall back in love with wooden gadgets like her new ukulele.

It should be self-evident that the computerization of society, including the internet and cell phones, are mostly about profit and mass control. These global-warming pollution-boxes' usefulness for communicating radical or dissident ideas is secondary, and do not undo the damage done by computerization and constant "connectivity" on a global scale.

On balance, the information-access and communication enabled by computers and their infrastructure often help environmental campaigns, for example, but overall the polluters' ability to manage data and communications outweighs the ability to fight the polluters' destruction.

And how did computers and the internet ever ensure privacy, other than some activists' and whistleblowers' attempts to thwart encroachment on privacy? They have not. But a skilled techie responded to a draft for this essay with these points:

• Why do you avoid talking about the great things Internet communications have done for the people and environment?
• How about a realistic discussion of leveling the playing field with democratic Internet media?
• Replacing the corporatist media.
• Ad-free reader-supported media.
• Public media (KQED, NPR, etc.) that is sponsored by Koch polluters, automobile corporations, etc.
• Real-time coverage and global response to corporate and government crimes.
• "Don’t watch the media, BE the media”
• I say keep incessantly hitting the comment boards and social media accounts of corporate media and polluter corporations with alternative news links and calling them out on their corrupt activities.
• This from a Tweeter with 17K tweets; the things you can do if one doesn’t waste time drinking and playing music. [editor's note: ironically, this respondent is also a fine musician with acoustic instruments and makes fabulous paintings and drawings.]

Good points, but it seems that at best we fight fire with fire when fully engaging in high tech and various machines made of toxic materials that burn electricity. To begin with, it would have been nice if the "unintended consequences" of technologies' proliferation and market-driven ethics had been throughly debated and subject to everyone's approval.

 Now we are left to wonder exactly how harmful cellphones, cellphone towers and wifi really are. The attempt to apply the precautionary principle and to inform consumers is met with industry clout to suppress any questioning or resistance.

Evidence pops up but is soon forgotten in the rush to sell, buy and use questionable technology: a widely reported story in 2007 was that "People should avoid using Wi-Fi wherever possible because of the risks it may pose to health, the German government has said." (Germany Warns Citizens to Avoid Using Wi-Fi, in Truthout.org on Sept. 28, 2007)

A few years ago the telecom industry pulled its lucrative convention from the City of San Francisco because of the rather mild local labeling law for any cellphones sold, because they emit heat or radiation (Specific Absorption Rates, or SARs). One might have passed this off as some mistaken paranoia on the part of excessive liberal politics.

But many governments, including Finland, Israel, Russia, China, France, Sweden and India recommend that children simply not use cellphones. Brain tumors and lowered sperm counts are high costs to pay for always being able to connect with a screen/pollution device.

Two medical science websites reported late last year that cellphone use presents a risk of brain tumors. The headlines:

"Brain Tumors And Cell Phone Use Found To Be Linked (Again)" from medicaldaily.com: "A study has found that cell phone usage may be linked to a higher risk of developing glioma, a type of brain tumor that is often deadly." (12 Nov. 2014).

And,
"Long-term Cell Phone Use Linked to Brain Tumor Risk" from Medscape: "Long-term use of both mobile and cordless phones is associated with an increased risk for glioma, the most common type of brain tumor, the latest research on the subject concludes. The analysis included 1498 cases of malignant brain tumors; the mean age was 52 years. Most patients (92%) had a diagnosis of glioma, and just over half of the gliomas (50.3%) were the most malignant variety — astrocytoma grade IV (glioblastoma multiforme). (13 Nov. 2014)

Studies that show cellphones and cellphone towers to be virtually harmless usually have industry backing. Cellphone towers are claimed to be safe compared to cellphones, but it cannot be denied that the towers spread the cellphone use. In 2012, Asian News International (ANI) reported via Yahoo News,

Doubts cast over "no cancer risk for kids using cell phones" (04/06/2012): "Scientists have raised doubts over a study published last year that did not succeed in finding a link between mobile phone use and brain tumours in children and teens. They have asserted that the study actually indicates that cell phone use more than doubles the risk of brain tumours in children and adolescents. The concerns come from the Environmental Health Trust, a group whose stated mission is to promote awareness of environmental issues they think can lead to cancer."

Perhaps more far-reaching than preventing consumer warnings, was that during the Clinton Administration, the construction of all cellphone towers was protected by a law that made any opposition by a community be based only on aesthetic objections, and never matters of health or environmental impact. Why was there such concern about what was being done by those doing it -- was it a kind of admission of suspected danger and damage?

Privacy objections are mounting, from the standpoint of how much watching is being done by powerful corporations. The New York Times ran the story "F.T.C. Says Internet-Connected Devices Pose Big Risks," by Natasha Singer who reported that "The agency said the devices, which make up the so-called Internet of Things, also raise serious security and privacy risks that could undermine consumers' confidence." This concern reveals that the main priority is for consumers to keep spending, not necessarily to protect health or encourage people to "plug in" with real human interaction.

Thanks to Edward Snowden and others, countless people now have an idea of how much surveillance is carried out by governments and contractors, whether legal, illegal, known or secret. But for the technologies and laws involved to be made more secure for the user, in terms of freedoms upheld, must the downsides of computerization and radiation-emitting connectivity, along with dehumanizing machine-linking via screens, remain unaddressed and ever more out of control?

"Good evidence suggests that screen viewing before age 2 has lasting negative effects on children’s language development, reading skills, and short term memory. Researchers at Princeton University reported that exposure to television during the first few years of life may be associated with poorer cognitive development... Use of technology under the age of 12 years is detrimental to child development and learning (Rowan 2010)" 

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Petrolify - Are you on it?

SOURCE: Katherine Muzik (kmuzik@gmail.com)
SUBHEAD: Warning: This miracle drug comes with some deadly side effects, and an expiration date.

By Asher Miller on 3 September 2014 for the Post Carbon Institiute -
(http://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/2350950-introducing-petrolify-r-the-power-of-petroleum)


Image above: Stillf frame from advertisement below. From (http://www.petrolify.com/).

Imagine there was a pill you could take every day that would provide you with wealth, freedom, and luxuries beyond the imagination of even the wealthiest kings of yesteryear. Taking this pill would give you the equivalent of hundreds of slaves, working for you 24/7, to grow your food, cool and heat your home, entertain you, carry you however far you wanted to travel, fill your bath with hot water, you name it… That’d be amazing!

Well, guess what? You’re already taking it. And it’s called Petrolify®.

You’re ingesting Petrolify® with nearly every breath and every footstep you take. Most of us don’t realize that Petrolify® is being pumped into our water and injected into our food. But we reap its magical benefits regardless. Did you sleep indoors last night? You can thank Petrolify®. Did you eat breakfast today? Again, that was thanks to Petrolify®. Are you reading this message on your mobile phone or computer? The miracle of Petrolify® never ends!

Except that miracle comes with some deadly side effects, and an expiration date.


Video above: A satirical advertisement for the medication "Petrolify®. From (http://youtu.be/RhgBeT_gkJU).

That is why we created the above parody commercial, to remind as many people as possible that the dream we’re living—a dream fueled by a one-time, finite fossil fuel bonanza—is far darker than they might suspect.

When we open our eyes to the hidden costs of Petrolify®, it’s easy to blame the ‘corporate bad guys’—the manufacturers, the drug reps, the doctors—who are pushing their product on an unwilling populace. But we’re not quite so unwilling, are we? No, we want what they’re selling. And, there is no “they”. They are us.

Thankfully, our wellbeing doesn’t have to depend on Petrolify®. We can choose for our energy needs to be met with renewable, and more ecological and socially just, sources. More important, we can learn to live well with less. Conservation doesn’t have to be the “c” word.

The first step is recognizing our pill-popping addiction for what it is. Please help spread the word that Petrolify® may not be right for us at (http://www.petrolify.com/).


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Gasaholic Cure

SUBHEAD: For global gasaholics, the ending of national fuel subsidies are the first step to a cure.

By Editorial staff on 10 January 2012 for Bloomberg News -  
(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-10/for-global-gasaholics-ending-subsidies-is-the-first-step-to-a-cure-view.html)


|Image above: 32 gallon tank Hummer. From (http://phytophactor.fieldofscience.com/2011/04/cost-of-gasoline-petrol.html).

Fuel subsidies are the crack cocaine of global economic development: easy to get hooked on, hard to give up. And as every addict knows, there are good and bad ways to try to kick the habit.

Consider Nigeria and Iran. In Nigeria, the government’s recent decision to remove fuel subsidies and more than double the price of gasoline (3AGSREG) has led to riots and now a nationwide strike. Two years ago in Iran, an initiative to cut subsidies and almost quadruple the price of gas (as well as boost the price of food and water) provoked little unrest, lowered oil consumption and bolstered the economy and the government.

The differences between the two efforts offer valuable lessons about the best ways to eliminate fossil-fuel subsidies - - a staggering global misallocation of resources that does little to help the poor, distorts markets and pumps more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.

In 2010, the value of all fossil-fuel subsidies, for both production and consumption, was roughly $500 billion. On the consumption side, 37 countries spent $409 billion underwriting their citizens’ fuel purchases, according to the International Energy Agency. Venezuelans, for example, enjoy the world’s cheapest gasoline: You can fill up a 32-gallon Hummer for about $3. In pre-reform Iran, the price of gasoline was 40 cents a gallon; in Nigeria, it was about $1.50.

Support Skews Development
There’s not much good to say about fuel-consumption subsidies. For starters, they encourage waste -- Venezuela has the dubious honor of having Latin America’s highest per-capita energy consumption. They also skew economic development because investment decisions are made on the basis of false market signals. And because consumption subsidies reward high-energy users, they help the middle class and the rich over the poor, who rely heavily on dung or wood and aren’t connected to the power grid.

The IEA, an independent body formed after the oil shocks of the 1970s, estimates that only 8 percent of that $409 billion went to the bottom-income quintile. Moreover, such government funding sucks up money that could be used to help the poor in other ways: Venezuela devotes at least 6 percent of its gross domestic product to fuel subsidies, about double its education budget; in Indonesia that amount is around 4 percent; the $6 billion that Nigeria has been spending to keep fuel prices low is three times its health budget.

In addition to freeing up hundreds of billions of dollars for more productive uses, unwinding all consumption subsidies by 2020 would reduce demand for energy by 4.1 percent and carbon- dioxide emissions by 4.7 percent, according to the IEA.

Here’s where Iran comes in. Whatever the conduct of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government in other realms, its fuel-subsidy reforms in late 2010 make it something of a role model. Legislative debate began almost two years before the changes went into effect; officials, academics and community leaders led an extensive public-awareness campaign that included sending households mock bills showing the true cost of their electricity. More important, the reforms included a clear benefit to Iranians: direct cash payments to more than 80 percent of the population, paid out before the changes took effect. In the case of the poorest of the poor, the sums amounted to more than half their monthly cash income, which helped to insulate the program from political criticism.

The administration of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan took a different path. It released its proposal a mere two months before it was to go into effect. Cash payments are to be directed only to small subsets of the poor (mainly pregnant women). Others will receive menial jobs, with pay low enough to “ensure the self-selection of only the poor.” The government says the cost savings will be recycled to the poor through building roads, railways, and irrigation projects. That doesn’t seem likely in one of the world’s most corrupt countries. No wonder Nigerians have taken to the streets.

Spurring Wasteful Consumption
The problem is hardly limited to the developing world. In 2009, the Group of 20, whose members encompass big oil exporters and importers, pledged to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption.” One way to ensure that this goal is met -- and not largely at the expense of the poor -- would be for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to team up with the United Nations Development Program to compile best practices from Iran and other countries, as well as from the work being done by an alphabet soup of other groups (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the IEA, the World Bank and its regional cousins).

The OECD has already pulled together a 350-page inventory of more than 250 ways in which 24 of its member countries subsidize the production and consumption of gasoline, diesel and other fossil fuels. But this transparency exercise looks only at budgetary support and tax breaks; it has yet to tackle the harder-to-estimate subsidies provided through things like loan guarantees. In order to speed up the process, how about turning the database into a public wiki, enabling the hive mind to exert its collective powers?

One benefit of this approach would be to highlight the contradictions indulged in by even relatively green countries, such as Norway and New Zealand, which tax fuel consumption heavily while still supporting their fossil-fuel production industries. The G-20 has so far deferred defining “inefficient” subsidies and “wasteful consumption.” We put forth a candidate: the tens of billions of dollars a year in forgone fuel taxes associated with diesel for agriculture, fisheries and other “off-road” uses, mostly as a result of exempting them from excise levies. Farmers and fishing fleets would have more reason to be energy-efficient, and we would have cleaner air and water in the bargain..