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Bill Clinton on the Future of Energy (video)
Becky Quick, CNBC via Yahoo!Finance
Former President Bill Clinton discusses what the government should do to help Americans follow standards of energy efficiency, with CNBC's Becky Quick.
(2? February 2009)
It sounds as if former President Clinton has been studying up on energy. He has been spotted with a copy of a Heinberg book and mentioned peak oil in some of his talks. More on the conference at Washington Times.

Whether the economy will recover is a whole different story, of course.

Legalizing cannabis: is the ground shifting?
Mark Kleiman, The Reality-Based Community
A new Rasmussen poll shows a plurality of the country still opposed to legalizing marijuana, but by a relatively narrow margin, 40% for, 46% against. Legalization is supported by Democrats and independents, by men, and by voters under 40. Rasmussen doesn't give the wording, and the accompanying article is written largely from a pro-legalization viewpoint (Rasmussen tends to lean libertarian).

Under the circumstances, I'd be skeptical, but the CBS/NYT poll in January got comparable results: in response to "Do you think that the use of marijuana should be made legal or not?" 41% said "legal" and 52% said "not legal." Current support for legalization is at what seems to be an all-time high, but the numbers are consistent with the long-term trend in Gallup polling.

... Obviously, this isn't something the Obama Administration is going to jump on, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a big move late in a second Obama term or sometime in the term of his successor (assuming the Democrats keep winning elections). If I had to quote odds, I'd say about even money on legalization within fifteen years. As with the repeal of alcohol prohibition and the creeping legalization of gambling, I'd expect it to be presented at least in part as a revenue-raising measure.

Substantively, I'm not a big fan of legalization on the alcohol model; a legal pot industry, like the legal booze and gambling industries, would depend for the bulk of its sales on excessive use, which would provide a strong incentive for the marketing effort to aim at creating and maintaining addiction. (Cannabis abuse is somewhat less common, and tends to be somewhat less long-lasting, than alcohol abuse, and the physiological and behavioral effects tend to be less dramatic, but about 11% of those who smoke a fifth lifetime joint go on to a period of heavy daily use measured in months.) So I'd expect outright legalization to lead to a substantial increase in the prevalence of cannabis-related drug abuse disorder: I'd regard an increase of only 50% as a pleasant surprise, and if I had to guess I'd guess at something like a doubling.

So I continue to favor a "grow your own" policy, under which it would be legal to grow, possess, and use cannabis and to give it away, but illegal to sell it. Of course there would be sales, and law enforcement agencies would properly mostly ignore those sales. But there wouldn't be billboards.

That beautifully-crafted policy has only two major defects that I'm aware of: it wouldn't create tax revenue, and no one but me* supports it. On the drug-warrior side of the argument, even those who can read the handwriting on the wall won't dare to deviate from the orthodoxy. As we did with alcohol, the country will lurch from one bad policy (prohibition) to another (commercial legalization). I just hope the sellers are required to measure the cannabinoid profiles of their products and put those measurements on the label.
(22 February 2009)
The local television news had a segment last night on the tax advantages of legalizing pot. A few years ago, some peak oilers were predicting relaxation of the drug laws as energy became expensive and governments were under $ pressure. Maybe we'll find out sooner rather than later, that harsh drug laws are a luxury we can no longer afford. The big savings would come from reduced police work and fewer people in prisions.

U.S. Housing Starts Fell to Record Low in January
Courtney Schlisserman, Bloomberg
U.S. builders broke ground in January on the fewest houses on record as a lack of credit and plunging sales exacerbated the worst real-estate slump since the Great Depression.

Housing starts plunged 17 percent last month to an annual rate of 466,000, lower than projected, according to figures from the Commerce Department today in Washington. A report from the Federal Reserve showed industrial output sank in January for the sixth time in seven months.

Builders are struggling as record foreclosures swell the glut of homes on the market, undermining efforts to revive demand and lighten inventory by cutting prices.
(18 February 2009)