This is your fault, trash-sorters.
Yesterday evening, some friends and I were sitting around the apartment when the subject of Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize came up. The resulting discussion on environmentalism was instructive on what's wrong with the movement.
The first point was an obvious one: as city-dwellers, our environmental footprint is tiny compared with that of our suburban counterparts. I was the only person there who even owned a car, although I usually don't use it for my daily commute. We take the bus, don't have lawns to water or giant McMansions to heat. All told, if all Americans lived like us, we'd be in a lot better shape in terms of climate change, water waste, habitat destruction and a host of other environmental problems.
But what of those things that we should do but very often don't? I don't sort my trash for recycling (like most of Chicago) and I don't buy carbon offsets for my portion of the jet fuel burned on the flights I take. Sometimes, I leave lights on when I leave the room. I never turn the tap off when I brush my teeth.
Go ahead and belittle me for my un-green ways, but there's a method to my wasteful madness. I will not participate in non-mandatory pro-environment actions that are not in my clear financial interest because those actions turn environmental problems into personal statements and undermine the public policies that will create actual change.
In 2001, when speaking about energy policy, Dick Cheney said energy conservation was a matter of "personal virtue." Conservatives consistently lambaste Gore and others for flying to environmental conferences and living in large houses that consume a commensurately large amount of energy. The damaging corollary to the "personal virtue" espoused by trash-sorters and anti-enviros alike is that it makes it impossible for public figures to speak about the environment or try to change it without being luddite hermits.
Yes, it 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 the dreadlocked college burnouts you see trolling the streets for Greenpeace donations.
And that's exactly what the anti-environment and climate change denialist movements want.
Public policy questions should be about public policy alone. 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).
That's why the personal virtue of environmentalism destroys the public policy of environmentalism. Imagine if anyone who ever ate in a segregated diner was considered a hypocrite if they voted for the Civil Rights Act. Imagine if any small businessman who bought supplies from Carnegie's steel trust was considered a hypocrite for supporting the Sherman Act. This is a tactic to silence voices, and "personal virtue" environmentalism can only feed into this destructive narrative.
Go get yourself some free carbon offsets here:
http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com
Thats an interesting though - and I like the idea, but people are just going to say you should be doing both, that you should be trying to live correctly while supporting positive public policy. I guess you could in addition support specific politicians support specific positive legislation as well. I've done some work with the AAM and I'm glad they're behind the new CAFE standards and I support that positive change (even if every light bulb I own isn't energy saving yet...).
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