I actually thought that John McCain's "X Prize" for a superior car battery was small-bore, but a decent enough idea, but upon closer inspection it's actually quite silly:
I should be able to avoid saying anything as dumb as McCain's battery-prize proposal. Not that I don't like batteries, mind you! But if someone were to invent a better one they'd already be poised to make a huge amount of money through its commercialization. Offering prizes for innovation isn't always a terrible idea — for pharmaceuticals with a limited market of potential users it can make sense due to the huge costs associated with developing and testing a new drug. But everyone in the developed world needs better energy storage technology, and they need it right now. And while it's important to make sure your new batteries are safe and robust (e.g. they don't explode too much), that's still much easier and cheaper to do than it is to conduct a set of double-blind human trials. So sweetening the pot is unnecessary. Anyone who has a good idea about how to build a better battery is already working on the problem.
It also is a pretty miniscule prize considering the billions to be made off the idea, and as I did say, putting it toward building a better BATTERY, which keeps us in a dominant car culture and on the currently high-polluting energy grid is counter-productive. Of course, most of McCain's ideas are counter-productive, and interestingly enough, he'll admit that to you.
At a town hall in Fresno, CA, McCain admitted that the offshore drilling proposal he unveiled last week would probably have mostly “psychological” benefits, NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy notes. “Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial." Uh oh.
This is not the first time that McCain has offered a "psychological benefit" to consumers struggling with high food and energy prices. It's one thing to offer a quick-fix Big Con solution to every problem, it's quite another to TELL everyone it's a con. The three-card monte practitioner doesn't usually whisper in your ear "I actually threw your card to the left when you weren't looking."
Maybe McCain knows he can't peddle this nonsense. The handpicked panelists for his own rallies are scoffing at the offshore drilling idea.
Feeney also took issue with McCain's controversial proposal to lift the moratorium on offshore oil exploration: "It makes me nervous to think about those who are proposing to drain America's offshore oil and gas reserves as quickly as possible in the hopes of driving down the price of gasoline, because I think when you look at the good sources of information, were we to open up the California coast or the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, it would be 12, 15, maybe 20 years before those resources came online and got to full productions."
Adding that some research shows that drilling in ANWR would only "reduce our dependence on foreign oil from 70% to 67%," Feeney added, "I'm not sure most Americans would think that's really worth the price of admission."