Readers with long memories may recall the brief, inglorious UK fuel shortage of a few weeks ago, which was mostly caused by the rush to refuel for fear the pumps would run dry. Some petrol stations imposed a limit on how much you could buy — say, £25 of fuel and no more. It seems sensible enough, but a friend of mine (an economist) suggested this was the opposite of what was really needed. A maximum purchase encouraged more visits and more queues. Instead, petrol stations should’ve imposed a minimum purchase: nobody was allowed to buy fuel if their tank was more than a quarter full.
One can imagine snags and problems with implementing this rule, but the principle is delightfully elegant. Queues would disappear, as only people who actually needed fuel would be allowed to buy it. The self-fulfilling shortage would disappear. The solution is not to demand that drivers buy less fuel, but to insist they buy more.
All this set me wondering about other problems we could fix by reversing the usual logic and doing the exact opposite of what one might expect. Here’s a thought: environmentalists should fight climate change by buying coal mines. Coal is the most carbon-intensive of all mainstream fuel sources, so any response to climate change is going to involve closing coal mines. An environmentalist organisation could do this by buying them and shuttering them.