Partisan scoffing has inevitably greeted John McCain’s proposal for a $300-million prize for a super battery to propel cars.
It is kind of gimmicky, as Barack Obama says. The prize amount simply represents $1 per head of the American population, with no relation to the costs of research or the commercial, political, or social worth of success. Moreover, at present, there’s no lack of effort on battery research, given the bonanza that a winner will reap in the ordinary marketplace. Plenty of smart people and rich organizations have been working on the battery conundrum for years, with limited success in appealing the laws of physics.
On the other hand, history shows that prizes can fire up the creative neurons. Jim Watson was sniffing the Nobel Prize as he and Francis Crick doped out the double helix, a step ahead of Linus Pauling. In 1714, the British Longitude Act provided a prize of twenty-thousand pounds (about $1-million today) for development of an accurate seagoing clock for determining longitude. In intense competition, the winner was a carpenter turned clockmaker, and Britain was on its way to maritime supremacy.
The prize lure is highly unlikely to rouse from idleness any inventor or organization already in possession of a bright idea for creating a battery that can match the performance of today’s liquid fuels. If they knew how to do it, they’d be doing it. Assuming there are some promising ideas going unexploited, a prize at the end of the race is gratifying, but money for research is needed before the race starts. The well-heeled can handle it, but if newcomers are to get into the race, provision must be made for staking the needy. That brings us back to the present system of competitively awarded research grants and contracts from federal agencies.
The runaway rise in gasoline prices that we’re now experiencing is painful, but also instructive. With frugality now a necessity, fuel use is dropping, ridership on public transport is rising, and auto manufacturers are scrambling to produce better mileage.
McCain’s prize option can do no harm. It will delude no one into thinking that, at last, we’re confronting the energy menace. And — remote possibility — it might produce a winner.
Meanwhile, drawing a lesson from the present energy crunch, we can easily and simply produce a winner, without any prize. Raise the federal tax on gas by one dollar a year for each of the next five years, thus allowing ample warning for what’s to come. At $9 a gallon, super-efficient cars will pour off the assembly lines, public transit will flourish, traffic jams will subside, and environmental pollution will decline.
All that’s needed to attain that happy condition is political will. No prize is necessary.
(Image from Photobucket.com)
