rj3 of Thrown for a Loop:
[I]t burns up a lot of carbon when world leaders travel to climate conferences like the one in Bali that just concluded. However, if by burning some jet fuel now they can reduce carbon emissions in the future, their greenhouse gas profligacy is worthwhile. If a person living in a big house can't comment on changing incentive systems, the only people who are left to do so will be dreadlocked college burnouts who you see trolling the streets for Greenpeace donations.Is that fair?[ . . . ]
Environmentalism is a classic collective action problem in which the actions of one have negligible impact, but the benefits of everyone acting the same way reap huge rewards for everyone. Acting green on your own may make you feel better, but you do nothing in the scheme of things. Policy solutions like a gas tax or increased CAFE standards, cap and trade emissions limits, the end of farm subsidies (including, counterintuitively ethanol subsidies) and perhaps more nuclear power generation will get things moving in the right direction. Best to take the money you spend on carbon offsets and send it to whomever is running against Sen. James Inhofe (R-1950).
rj3 describes recycling and other DIY environmental initiatives as politically counterproductive. But recycling is an example of one collective action that benefits everyone. When large urban centers adopt citywide recycling programs the benefits for the environment are appreciable; when suburban and less dense areas adopt those programs that benefit margin expands. Misguided or not, civic and environmental doers good had more hand in bringing these programs to bear than the collective action of the scientific policy establishment.
The dirty hippies complaining about delegates' jet fuel consumption on the way to Bali sure sound like strawmen to me, but maybe they are out there, outraging on their livejournals. Nevertheless rj3 has hit the nail on the head when he describes the dismissive Republican attitude toward green policy—an individual or ethical program that (liberals) can choose to opt into or not. Moralizing about consumption sticks in my craw, too—this NYT article on Etsy provides some frustrating examples—but it should not be oversold as a majority belief possessed among Americans or across the world.
In fact, the conference in Bali demonstrated that it isn't. Overcoming U.S. objections and deciding on a program that establishes that the whole world (!) will begin working now on a framework that the United States can then join in 2009—under new leadership—suggests a couple of truths about the planet's position on global warming. One, that the consensus on global warming among United States citizens is much closer to the world opinion than that of the obstructionist Bush administration; the world believes this to be the case, anyway (and it is), and the world believes that this truth will out come election time. Two, as Matthew Yglesias points out, the agreement in Bali shows that this truth really does have to out come election time. If Republicans win in 2008, the world has to kick the ball down the road until 2013. And who knows by then whether you still find India or China on board or, indeed, whether the science on global climate proffers the same solutions. Read John Quiggin on Bali, too.
To be sure, rj3's frustration with individual solutions like carbon offsets dovetails perfectly with the global position on the matter. Every dollar that you might spend saving the world over the next year should be funneled directly into Democratic coffers, because that's how we're gong to save the world.
Posted by Kriston at December 17, 2007 9:07 AMI think the example of recycling is more complicated than you may be letting on. In many cases it's not actually all that environmentally useful. For pretty much every type of material except metals, you'll end up spending more energy to recycle than you will making a new whatever-it-is. Recycling becomes about saving landfill space (which, it turns out, isn't such a precious commodity after all) and making ourselves feel good. And I think there's a case to be made that it wasn't public pressure that made the movement take off -- it was the fact that municipalities could finally start making money off of it by selling the materials they collect.
I had this argument with Michael a week ago. I think it's much too difficult for consumers to determine environmentally optimal behavior. There are a few obvious things that you can do -- take fewer plane trips, commute on foot, consume less in general -- but for many other consumption choices it's much too easy to confuse superficial hardship with actually doing something for the environment. Should I buy that tomato that came from the farmer's market or the one that came on a transoceanic container ship? Should I wash my dishes by hand or in the machine? Hell, you're even better off (in terms of energy use) putting your coffee in a polystyrene cup every day instead of a ceramic one -- assuming the ceramic one lasts you less than 20 years, which seems like a safe bet.
It's all just a bit too opaque, and I have to admit that I'm beginning to have an uncomfortably Republican level of annoyance with the Treehugger readers of the world who pretend otherwise. Carbon pricing's the only way that these concerns will actually trickle down to the consumer in an unambiguous way.
Posted by: Tom at December 17, 2007 10:35 AMSure, I'd assume that some collective-action pursuits are misguided and I refrained from claiming that recycling programs, etc., are greatly beneficial. The most-treasured categories of recycling (post-consumer goods) tend to have the least benefit and I'd believe that some of these programs are of little good; however, programs like pre-consumer loss recovery of paper products (say, distributors returning and recycling unsold periodicals) come at a cost, however marginal, to a corporation, but are (to my knowledge) environmentally optimal. Corporations that participate are courting the good will of the public, who perceive paper recycling to be a very good thing for a company to do.
I think you'll find that solutions are bound to change even as the problem remains consistent, because solutions are being applied from several angles. The civic response may always lag behind scientific solutions and what's originally conceived as, say, a landfill solution may be inappropriate after the scientific community fully investigates the landfill problem. Does civic organization ever prompt scientific inquiry? It certainly prompts political inquiry and my impression is that the funding for the science then follows.
You need not describe your annoyance as Republican, though. A proper paternalist progressive is similarly annoyed by the notion that we can all work together and solve the world by reducing our ecological footprint one shoe size at a time. Not until the state tells me to!
Posted by: Kriston at December 17, 2007 10:59 AMBut Kriston, it isn't the dirty hippies who complain about flying to Bali and heating Gore's mansion. Take a look on NRO's "Planet Gore" or the Corner and you'll see the complaints coming from there, not from the greenies. That was my point.
Posted by: RJ3 at December 17, 2007 11:13 AMOkay—sure, that makes total sense, and I misread what direction you were coming from with that part.
Posted by: Kriston at December 17, 2007 3:25 PM