STARK RAVING MAD

The South Coast Air Quality Management District in Los Angeles has ordered large commercial bakers to install pollution controls over their ovens, because the sweet flavor of fresh baked bread contains allegedly smog-producing ethyl alcohol (that's right, one of the Clean Air Acts alternate fuels). The bakers' greenhouse-enhancing flatulence appears to remain as yet unregu- lated. "I don't think a cent more for bread is too high a price to pay," said AQMD member S. Albright. [LA Times 1/5/91.] Marxist economist S.S. Bowles of the U. of Mass. says that after the events of 1989 he insists that many of the economic ills in the West vindicate Marx's ideas. S A. Marglin of Harvard and D.K. Foley of Columbia voice similar perceptions. The newly inde- pendent East European economies will not succeed without a strong dose of "market socialism" [sic]. Events of the past decade they claim, furnish the best evidence that Marxist economists were right all along. Marglin opines that radical political economists in the West have a great deal to offer the nations of Eastern Europe, but he is not optimistic they'll take it . . . [Scientific Amer. Feb 1991.] What the Gulf war can be put down to, St. Amory implies, is that "the Reagan Administration's 1986 rollback of light-vehicle efficiency standards immediately doubled oil imports from the gulf." Yet he knows about automakers who have prototype cars in the 67-mpg to 138-mpg range [no specifics]. "California under-stands," quoth he, "how 32-mpg cars can displace 17-feet-per-gal-lon aircraft carriers." (I don't, but I am not a Californian.)

[Syndicated Column by Amory & Hunter Lovins, 1/24/91.]