I’m returning home after a long absence later tonight. Briefly, I wanted to point you to my latest column, which makes the case for “green deregulation“:

On Friday, the president rejected a proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency to tighten ozone standards, a move that would have forced hundreds of local governments and businesses to invest heavily in pollution control. The weak economy was probably the most important factor in the decision, as was a desire to blunt attacks from Republicans fiercely critical of the EPA. Fortunately, there is a better way forward that both increases economic freedom and gives us cleaner air.

To many environmentalists, the president’s decision was a cowardly one, and part of a long-running morality play in which virtuous regulators are foiled by corporate lobbyists. But there is another part of the ozone story. One big source of ground-level ozone is ethanol, the corn-based fuel that has attracted billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. The EPA has acknowledged on a number of occasions that a heavier reliance on ethanol will increase emissions of nitrogen oxide, which in turn spurs the formation of ground-level ozone. Another way of putting this is that while the federal government is trying to curb ozone levels on the one hand, on the other hand it is actively boosting them by mandating the use of ethanol.

In June, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, led an effort to axe $6 billion in federal ethanol subsidies. He lost by a vote of 59 to 40. Coburn’s anti-ethanol crusade is entirely about his fiscal conservatism. The Oklahoma senator is not beloved by environmentalists, and one gets the impression that the feeling is mutual. It just so happens that killing ethanol would also represent a huge boon for air quality, and one that would actually save taxpayers money.

Another huge driver of ground level ozone is coal-fired power plants, which are rightly loathed by environmentalists for their carbon emissions and their negative impact on human health. Natural gas plants, in contrast, release half as much carbon as coal and it give off only small amounts of the pollutants that contribute to ground-level ozone. But as Robert Bryce recounts in his brilliant book Power Hungry, the federal government didn’t tip the scales in favor of natural gas. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Congress deliberately crippled natural gas by banning its use for power generation in 1978. Though this insane regulation was reversed in 1987, the damage was done: coal use soared during the intervening years. As Bryce observes, it is very easy to imagine that the U.S. would have much cleaner air and a less carbon-intensive economy if the federal government hadn’t stacked the deck against the natural gas industry.

I can’t recommend Bryce’s book enough. It is consistently surprising, and it challenges the political gut instincts of liberals and conservatives. One thing I should specify, which I didn’t address in the column: I actually do think that some energy subsidies are appropriate, e.g., loan guarantees for nuclear power projects, in part because the government has created a great deal of regulatory uncertainty around nuclear power. 

I also wanted to highlight the work of Gregg Bernstein, a civic-minded graphic designer who has tackled the maddeningly complex iTunes Terms of Service agreement and has more recently taken on the even more daunting task of redesigning IRS Form 1040:

In Brief: The standard individual income tax form, the IRS 1040, is indicative of the lack of user-centered design forced upon the public. Used by every conceivable demographic in the United States, the form seems to have been designed in an effort to promote mistakes and confusion. Because of its broad circulation and poor design, I centered my usability redesign class project on the Form 1040.

The form violates many principles of usability: it has no discernible starting point, no clear path toward completion, a lack of hierarchy, a plethora of alignments and inputs, and a dearth of plain language.

The redesign is a trade-off of sorts: instead of squeezing an incomprehensible design onto one sheet of paper, the revision opts for aesthetics across multiple pages. The printing costs, however, are mitigated by the potential reduction in audits, revisions, refilings, and mistake-induced restarts.

We need more Gregg Bernsteins. We also need a tax code overhaul, but we can bracket that for now.