The extent of the crisis

This does not seem like a reliable information but if true, it is unbelievable:

Europe was especially hard hit as previously placed truck orders were canceled. After Volvo cleaned out those orders from its books, the net order intake in the third quarter was a mere 115 trucks, compared to nearly 42,000 trucks in the same period last year.

If that keeps going on, we will live through some interesting times.

Back in Prague

I'm back in Prague, enjoying certain things (like parks, architecture, beer and food, rather few cars), hating others (quality of services, behavior of people to each other, reckless drivers).

I was thinking about a post evaluating my overall experience, maybe even a comparison of the cultures. I don't think I can do that. I just want to say this: You need to go there and return back to make a proper comparison.

I will note one other thing. The distances here are incredibly smaller. If you ride a car for 30 minutes outside of the city, you get somewhere. In the USA, it does not even count as a trip. Within such distance, there are literally hundreds of places worth visiting around Prague (not to mention the hundred within!). There are maybe two in San Diego, if you live in the right spot. It takes 45 minutes even to get to the San Diego Zoo.

Carbon tax and cap and trade

Some people seems to believe that there is a significant difference between carbon tax and cap-and-trade when permits are auctioned off.
The idea that

A carbon tax will never be high enough to do the job.

but

1. Carbon cap is gradually lowered 80% by 2050.

is plain silly.
Price of permits will be equal to the tax that would do the same job. So if the carbon tax will never be high enough, price of permits will have to be astronomical.
It might be possible that increasing carbon tax without limit would not work (politically). But reducing number of carbon permits so that their price is very, very high should be easy to pass?

As a side note - the idea that CO2 emissions can be lower by 80% by 2050 are plain silly. There are very likely to be significantly increasing costs of doing so - to stop emissions won't probably be that expensive, but each additional percentage of a decrease will cost significantly more than the previous. Of course, you can easily reduce humans' carbon emission by 80% - just kill enough of them. Somehow, I don't think this is what people have in mind.

Public Transportation

This is why I like public transportation.

Driving lessons

I have a driving lessons. I learned how to drive in a car from 80s (Skoda 120L, you probably never heard about it, if you are not from Czechoslovakia). I had a stick, terrible (no boost) breaks, no boost control, no ABS, nothing. It was well preserved car, so it was possible to learn to drive (it was impossible to like it, though). Then I drove my father's car. If you have the choice to do that, never ever even thing about it.
My father's car was the same type, but in much worse shape. He drives it till today despite several (small, but not pleasant) accidents I had in it. After that, I just gave up on learning to drive.
Until I came to California. There is simply NOTHING to see without car here. The public transport is sparse if any, and the distances are such that nobody walks anywhere. Some crazy guys ride a bike (like me or my my local boss ), but if you want to see something (or I better say anything), you just have to drive.
My plan was to borrow a car and learn to drive with, but it was not a great plan, because, well, you need to get out of the parking lot.
But my landlady (she had 2 sons, so she knows how to teach driving) helped me. I started on the parking lot and slowly get to the highway in the night. Slower speeds and generally more thoughtful and experienced drivers helped, too. But the biggest help was the car - Toyota Prius. It is 3-4 years old but feels like new. Smooth, smart, efficient (40Mpg easily).
Today, I passed the ultimate test. I drove to the airport alone, and back, in a pitch black night. So if you want to practice driving, just come to California.

Cars

There is always medium traffic on the road I take to (and back from) the UCSD. There is also usually heavy traffic on the I-5, 7 lane highway going in the same direction. Now what do you think that happens if they close the I-5 because of the bomb threat?
I'm faster home than people in cars...

Drive-in drop-off

In UCSD, the main library has drive-in boxes into which you can drop-off your books when you want to return them. I got use to the notion of drive-in ATM, but this really made me laugh. It is actually not a bad idea if you think about it, because there is not enough parking space on the campus, so if you drive to school just to return books, it certainly saves you 30 minutes of walking from a distant out-of-campus parking lot.