 |
|
Sacrifice is for suckers (an occasional series)
Dr. Carbon Cap says: this will only hurt a little.I see the pundits are still lobbing up chinstrokers about how addressing climate change is going to require huge, painful sacrifice from all Americans. This all sounds very serious, and the only quibble I have is that it’s probably not true. “Going green” in a carbon-constrained economy won’t feel like sacrifice to most people. It will feel like shopping. Meaning, it will feel like all the consumption decisions we make every day, but tilted imperceptibly by the price ramifications of a carbon cap. Studies just keep piling up suggesting that the overall economic effect of climate change legislation will be fairly small. The most recent one was from the environmental radicals at the IMF. So why all the sacrifice talk? Maybe because it’s just plain hard to imagine what a decades-long economic transformation will look like. We tend to extrapolate crudely from where we are now. If you want to cut your individual carbon footprint 80% today, you might have to sell your car, give up flying, move into a smaller house, and start foraging for food. But that’s not how this will go down. Fully decarbonizing will take decades at least. The process will be unpredictable, creating winners, losers, opportunities, and benefits. Come with me now to Strained Analogy Land. Imagine going back in time to meet your hippie forebear… Future you: I need you to do me a favor. Retro you: Lay it on me. FY: I need you to build a worldwide network of devices that subsumes what you presently think of as the postal service, the telephone network, television, and a large chunk of the U.S. retail economy. I’m envisioning a gadget-y thing that will, for example, let you listen to any song ever recorded, search the text of any book or newspaper, talk to anyone in the world, file your taxes, buy stuff, look up recipes, what have you. RY: Sounds complicated. FY: You’ll have a few decades. RY: The book thing alone will take that long. FY: You’d be surprised. RY: Ask NASA to do it. They just put a man on the moon! FY: The government will lend a hand with R&D and a congenial policy environment. More importantly, you can count on assistance from several billion technologically clueless consumers and a large number of rapacious, profit-minded corporations. RY: We’re doomed. Even if this were technically possible, which it’s not, it sounds insanely expensive. FY: We’ll all chip in. I did some rough math. Counting all the computers and bandwidth I’ve ever consumed, I’d guess I’ve personally contributed about $25,000 over the years to developing the infrastructure of the “new economy.” RY: That covers a lot of cookbooks! This gadget is for the super-rich! FY: Hardly. I don’t even own a Mac. My employers paid most of the 25 grand. Actually, wait, I think I left out a few things. I bought a ton of stuff on Amazon. And I’ve got a data plan for my cell phone. Does that count? I’m not sure. It’s hard to disentangle exactly what should be apportioned to the “new economy.” RY: You keep using that term. Forget it. The old economy suits me fine. FY: No problem. You can opt out. I should warn you, though. I’m going to tax your time. RY: You’re going to what? FY: Tax your time. Every year, I’m going to remove three minutes from your day. RY: Take five. I’m not busy. FY: You’ll see. Right now you don’t even know what a spreadsheet is. In a few years, you’ll go nuts if a web page takes ten seconds to load. You’ll be bereft if your cell phone hits a dead spot. You’ll feverishly refresh your favorite environmental blogs. RY: I don’t want any part of this. FY: Wait ‘til you see the iPhone. It’s awesome! Really, though, you can opt out. You just won’t want to. Your time is valuable to you, and it will become ever more so. To maximize its value, you’ll start making choices. And bit by bit, the Electromofied Librariphone will be built. The point is that fairly dramatic infrastructural changes don’t feel very bad to most people while they’re happening. While the changes can confer lumpy costs and benefits to society, the notion that we’re all going to suffer just totally misunderstands how this sort of thing goes down. Obviously my dumb little parable is oversimplified and glib, but certainly not any more so than calls for “wartime sacrifice.” Tags: Climate change legislation, Sacrifice
Further reading
Like this article? Get weekly updates by email!
Comments
Jim — The James Hansen piece is excellent. In it, he lays out four steps for combating climate change: 1. Phasing out coal plants over the next few decades; None of these entail lots of pain for individuals. I agree that bold steps are needed. That’s different than saying we’re all going to suffer as a result. 3.
Comment by richard schumacher
@ Apr 30, 2008 5 AM
 It doesn’t have to be very painful. Tell your legislators to end subsidies for agribusiness and fossil fuel production and apply the savings to incentives for renewable energy and mass transit. If you buy a car, buy a hybrid. Call your electric utility and tell them you want to switch to 100% wind power. I’ve done all of these. It was easy.
Of course they are. If you read through this site, you’ll see all sorts of viewpoints, and many that disagree with us quite heatedly. The problem with your comments are two-fold: 1. They’re obnoxious. Personally insulting to other commenters, sneering, etc. My tolerance for this sort of thing varies. Today it is quite low. 2. They’re kind of dumb. That stuff about global cooling? We’ve actually heard it before. It’s not a “fact,” and, perhaps more importantly, it’s not an interesting point. We get it: environmentalists are stupid, Al Gore sucks, etc. It’s boring. These are, admittedly, subjective criteria. So it goes. 5.
Comment by Phil
@ Apr 30, 2008 7 AM
Adam, 6.
Comment by Brian
@ Apr 30, 2008 8 AM
cute idea for an article, but i disagree. whether you call it “change” or “enlightenment” or “sacrafice” we can’t have it all. just how do you see charging up those billions of “iPhones” referred to as the crowning achievement of mankind’s future? until our obcession with gadgets shifts to a compassion to people and quality of life, we are stuck resisting “sacrafice” good luck.
Brian — your question is easy. I see us charging them with renewable energy. Please do bear in mind that I am very much in favor of conservation. Phil — your question is harder. There are plenty of good articles out there laying out possible pathways to a full conversion to clean energy. Check out Scientific American’s Solar Grand Plan, for example. Needless to say, no one knows exactly how this will play out in the real world, but there are lots of good ideas out there. The key is to get the right legislation in place to start turning the ship. And I should also mention that demand management will likely play a big role. This means greater energy efficiency — not “sacrifice” — and it could be a huge source of near-term savings. 8.
Comment by Phil
@ Apr 30, 2008 9 AM
I am a huge proponent of solar as well. I agree with the need for huge government investment. Government can accept longer rates of return on investment than business can. I think solar thermal plants have a better chance of creating baseload capacity than PV panels, which is what this country needs right now. (if we can’t reduce demand fast enough) How much savings do you see coming from conservation? I see the most conservation savings in building dense walkable communities, not in individual equipment efficiency. Maryland has initiated a plan of reducing electricity demand by 15% by 2015. However, no one knows how to implement this yet. I hope their plan works and other states emulate it ASAP. What are your favorite conservation techniques that TerraPass invests in? I am pretty nervous about some of these changes. My family and I are barely scraping by as it is (I get 27 mpg, my wife gets 30),we can’t afford newer, more efficient vehicles, and we only drive when we have to, so its not like we’re wasting fuel. I’m planting a large organic heirloom garden this summer, which should help. My point is that I’m not some crazy, anti-environmentalist that wants to drive a huge SUV for $.79/gallon, but we’re already feeling the pain from high gas prices and higher food costs, etc. I’m all for reducing our impact on climate change, but people have to live. And right now its tough. I just feel that has to be some sort of balance, at least for now. If I could afford it, we’d be off the grid completely. (PS we don’t have cable, or satellite TV, or a big-screen, or anything like that, so please don’t talk to me about “luxuries”). After giving it some more thought, I think that if I am honest with myself that some of my nervousness stems not from an actual threat to my family’s wellbeing but from a reluctance to give up the sort of lifestyle that I am used to and see around me. Whether its laziness, inertia, or simply resistance to change, I think this accounts for part of my discomfort. What things can I change? How can we use less energy? So, I think there will be some economic challenges for us as a family, but that there is still a lot that we can do to offset that. Just thought I should add these thoughts, thanks! Thank you for the compliment, Educator, but I’m certainly not trying to say that global warming is in anyway false. I was saying in my first post that I am already feeling the strain, and in my second post that I have realized I could be doing other things to offset that strain and lessen my impact on the environment. Nor do I think that more drilling in Alaska or anywhere else is the solution. I am not advocating more fossil fuel use; I was merely saying that the higher prices were starting to hurt. Ah, I think you’ve hit the heart of the issue, at least for me. I certainly want to do everything I can to move toward a sustainable lifestyle, but I still have to eat. And that Catch 22 is, indeed, the kicker. 13.
Comment by Karen Theisen
@ Apr 30, 2008 3 PM
Can we really have our cake and eat it too? Americans use something like six times more energy than the global average. Is that okay? What’s wrong with sacrifice anyway? Maybe try calling it by a different name. For instance, is biking instead of driving really a sacrifice? Oftentimes, its just a change in mindset — doing something differently than we normally do. Biking has the added benefits of getting exercise, enjoying the outdoors, slowing down, etc. So when seen differently, biking isn’t a sacrifice, it actually improves our quality of life. Same goes for so many behavior modifications. I started growing some of my own food recently. I absolutely love walking out my front door and plucking my salad from the garden. Sure it requires work (and sacrifice) to tend to the garden but the benefits are enormous. Having a veggie garden was something I had never considered in my wildest dreams before. Now, with a different mindset, it’s something I am getting immense satisfaction from. What I’m saying is do we really “need” all of the toys, gadgets, and material goods that are part of our carbon heavy lifestyles to enjoy our lives? Let’s use our creativity and a different mindset to envision alternatives that have their own set of benefits that we can’t even imagine right now. 14.
Comment by Janice Wells
@ Apr 30, 2008 3 PM
My family of four and I have switched to reusable bags for grocery shopping. I spent $5 at Trader Joes for 5 resuable bags—but any kind of bag will work. For our small investment, we have saved about 520 bags a year (I figure we used to use five double plastic bags per trip) from ending up in the landfill. Was it a sacrifice? No. The hardest part is remembering to take the bags into the store—but even that’s not hard because now it’s a habit. There are so many “little” things that people can do right now—that could have a huge impact on the environment. Big changes… small changes… together they add up to a healthy planet. 15.
Comment by Aaron A.
@ Apr 30, 2008 5 PM
Karen Theisen says: I think Todd (posts 12-13 above) provides some insight into this question. In short, people resist change. You and I perceive bicycling as a fun workout, cheap transportation, or a way to simplify our lives; to the average middle-class American, a bicycle is a toy, transportation for kids who don’t have their license yet. The only people who’d want to bike to work are those crazy hardcore cyclist guys with the $2,000 bikes and the stoopid aerodynamic helmets. Besides, you’d get all sweaty and muddy, and there’s all those cars trying to run you off the road, and twelve miles is pretty far when you have to pedal yourself there… I may have gotten a little too deep into character, but you see where I’m headed there? For the average consumer, somebody whose lifestyle was built around $1.099 gasoline, the costs (longer commute time, disturbing the comfort of their daily routine) and risks (crazy drivers, flat tires) are obvious, but the benefits are distant, unclear, and often hard to quantify. If recent local traffic patterns are any indication, more people are choosing to commute by bike, perhaps because the immediate economic benefits ($3.749 right now) are more obvious than they were before. — A. 16.
Comment by Sublime
@ Apr 30, 2008 8 PM
Carbon foot print? Look at the make up of the actual atmoshere… Nitrogen 78.0842% Carbon Dioxide is only about 1/3 of 1 percent of it’s make up. Even hardcore Global Warming Conspiracy Hypothosizers say man made CO2 is only 1% of the 1/3 of 1%, so this means that by man increasing the plant food gas that we all expell naturally anyway of .00038 of the total of all atmospheric gases, causes this major phenomenon? That’s just stupid. This Global Warming hypothesis is roughly 10 years old (20 years ago it was global cooling), the earth has been going through major climate swings for many reasons for billions of years. Is it possible, maybe just a little, that we may actually still be coming out of an ice age? I mean there were glaciers all the way into New Jersey that don’t appear to be there anymore. This means there has been melting going on. Could it be that the glaciers farther north that benefited from a cooler climate are still melting and we just happen to be around to witness some of it? 17.
Comment by Tracy
@ Apr 30, 2008 8 PM
Wow. Sublime would you please pick up a book and do some actual research on the topic? Do you actually believe that you have stumbled upon some unknown relationship that the AAAS, IPCC, and the NAS have missed? I look forward to your publication.
Um, yeah, what Tracy said. For the record, the theory of global warming is over a hundred years old. Victorian scientists would be surprised to learn that carbon dioxide has no effect on the temperature of the earth… I think that Adam has a good point that a lot of these impending changes/remedies are going to be largely invisible to the average person. The changes with the largest impact seem more likely to affect big corporations. However, I don’t think this means that individuals can shirk responsibility for their own decisions. The lifestyle that many of us have chosen out of a desire to have MORE (space, trees, toys) has in turn put us in the position of requiring more to sustain it. If you buy a house in the exurbs (because you want your kids to grow up in a nice place), then you end up having an 80 mile round trip commute to work. The desire to have more has left you needing to consume more. It’s a trap. I think that honestly assessing what we need and choosing to limit our excesses needn’t be described as sacrifice. In fact, if people made a habit out of purchasing the right sized house, car, whatever, they might find they have a lot more money laying around for other things. It makes good economic sense and reduces your carbon footprint. And millions of individuals really do make a difference. Instead of choosing the biggest you can afford today, choose to buy the right size. Jason, that’s exactly what I was talking about in my second post! Because of the lifestyle I have desired, I’ve made choices that put me in a position where making changes for the good of the environment are painful. So, if I make changes in my lifestyle, then the green changes shouldn’t hurt. So much of the issue is based on our perceptions! @Todd, Thanks, your comments were what inspired mine. I’ve been pondering these issues on my blog quite a bit, trying to figure out how people who don’t have a lot of money can have an impact. It’s easy for someone with money to ditch their ‘95 Suburban and buy a new Prius. Not so easy for someone with limited funds. The inability to make these kinds of capital investments, leads to a situation in which you end up spending more on monthly expenses (like gasoline or electricity) which in turn prevents you from saving the money you need to make the change. A conundrum…
Educator, Please stop with the global cooling stuff. Science never “predicted” this. Even in the ’70s, far more climate scientists were concerned about global warming than about the possibility of global cooling. Moreover, the small amount of data pointing to a cooling trend is now known to have been related to sulfate aerosols, not long-term climate trends. If you want to learn more about this, this article (written by actual scientists) is a good start: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/03/the-global-cooling-mole/ Regarding Bill Gray — I don’t know how to put this delicately, but the man is a crank. Read Storm World if you’re interested in the question of hurricanes and global warming. Bill Gray is a prominent figure in the book — a sad, clownish figure, but a prominent one. 23.
Comment by Brian
@ May 1, 2008 9 AM
this string of comments is getting away from the point, i’m afraid. we use way too many gadgets and take way too much for granted. it’s literally “correct” to say we can charge iPhone with, say, solar power; fine. but until we stop the craziness of commuting, shipping food half-way around the world, and working for pointless companies, we are on a downhill slide. if you want to drag your foot to slow down, good for you. but until we level the slide, we are still going to fall to a post-power crunch. and THSAT is the ultimate sacrifice. by the way, congratulations to karen on her garden. 24.
Comment by Aaron A.
@ May 1, 2008 10 AM
Brian said: Reading this post, I envision Dogbert waving his paw dismissively and saying “Bah.” While I agree that people put too much value into trinkets like the iPhone, I wonder what you’d suggest as alternatives to commuting, international trade, and employment. Classifying these behaviors as crazy suggests that there’s no rational reason for their existence, when they serve to meet important human needs. We commute because humans enjoy having their own personal space. Go to a near-empty library sometime, and sit right next to a stranger. You’ll see how nervous people can be when their personal space is invaded. We like our space, and until recently, single-occupant driving has been pretty cheap, so cities built out instead of up. In some cities (DC and NYC come to mind), housing in or near a business district is completely out of reach for working families. High population density means high demand, which means high prices. Shipping food halfway around the world allows for cheap, year-round food production. There appears to be a correlation between cheaper produce and lower obesity rates[1], so trying to solve one problem might aggravate another. Bear in mind also that domestic farmers rely on international markets to sell their produce; the U.S. [2, 3] is a major (often the largest) grower and exporter of corn and wheat. I would suggest that there are no “pointless companies.” Businesses exist because they provide some good or service that people want. If a company were “pointless,” by which I assume you mean that they produce nothing of value, they would quickly shrivel and disappear. I can appreciate the sentiment behind your post, but I think you’re trying to tell people to “snap out of it,” when there’s are good reasons for behaving the way we do. As I said earlier about bike commuting, the costs of a environmentally friendly lifestyle are easy to see, but the benefits are rather vague. A few people may be swayed by the idea of nobly sacrificing for the common good, but in general, the tipping point for each household will come when they decide that making a given change (biking to work, installing solar panels, growing their own produce) will benefit them. — A. 25.
Comment by Aaron A.
@ May 1, 2008 11 AM
Educator, I have to ask: is there some central repository of these same tired criticisms? Somewhere skeptics can go for a copy-n-paste response that has nothing to do with the issue at hand? From what I’ve seen on other forums, PeTA certainly seems to have something like that. It seems like everything you say has been discussed before, and is obviously false (global cooling was widely accepted), relies on reading the headline but not the document (the British judge used quote marks around the word “errors” because they’re areas for further interpretation, not the lies that you claim them to be), or is just irrelevant (energy used by Mr. Gore’s home/office; he’s not as influential as one might think. I for one have been involved with conservation projects since 1994.) As for your one serious question, climate change isn’t a campaign issue because expensive healthcare, $4.00 gasoline, and an almost-trillion-dollar federal deficit are more urgent issues to Mr. and Mrs. Swing Voter. The candidates have all discussed the issue, but their positions aren’t that different, so there’s not much to debate. — A. 26.
Comment by Aaron A.
@ May 1, 2008 11 AM
Oops, I said: I meant to say it’s closing in on TEN trillion dollars. We’ve put on a trillion since the 2006 elections. — A. 27.
Comment by Jae
@ May 1, 2008 11 AM
Adam and Todd both have a great point. Sacrifice is giving up something major, an arm or a leg in a war or a job that you love to take care of a loved one who is sick. We tend to dramatize small changes and call them sacrifices, but they are really just adjustments. Will high gas prices make it harder for met to get to work? (I have MS and it’s hard even to walk - biking just isn’t going to happen) Sure it is. The bus takes an hour, driving takes 15 minutes. But it’s not really a sacrifice. And over time, alternative energies will heat my home and provide my electricity so that I’ll spend less on those things. Eventually the bus service may improve or I may be able to afford an electric car (powered by alternatives) for city driving. The point is that most of us won’t end up making huge changes overnight. We’ll end up making lots of little changes over years and we’ll see different, but commensurate, benefits over that time as well.
Thank you, Aaron, for hitting the nail on the head. I’m not really sure what a pointless company is either. And apologies for not dealing more effectively with Educator. I’ve got a can of Troll-Be-Gone around here somewhere…ah yes, here it is…fixed! 29.
Comment by Karen Theisen
@ May 1, 2008 2 PM
I can understand where you’re coming from, Adam, (I just read your addendum about Conservation vs. Sacrifice) and why you argue against the need for sacrifice. However, just because some of those who advocate for sacrifice may be the ones who don’t believe in climate change, does not mean that those who do believe in climate change should stop advocating for the need to sacrifice/conserve. It’s important to speak our truth and I believe, the truth will prevail. On another note, why post such a controversial article with a title like “Sacrifice is for Suckers” if such a fine line exists between sacrifice and conservation? On first reading, I didn’t get that you were supportive of conservation. Seems like the title was chosen to shock and garner attention. However, you represent a very well-respected and popular green site, and I think what goes along with that is a sense of responsibility to your readers. So, I would suggest, stay away from sensational titles, and come up with something that’s maybe not so eye-catching but speaks the truth more accurately. Back to sacrifice. So we shouldn’t have to resort to war time-like sacrifice, huh? Well, do you know what happened during World War II? The government instituted a major marketing and educational effort to get Americans to conserve resources during the war. People changed their behavior and changed it quickly because of this campaign. Resources were conserved like gas, metals, paper, glass and even sugar, and kitchen fat (because of the glycerin, go figure) and people started growing their own food in their yards! This happened all across America. It was hugely successful. And do you know what else happened? People started to develop a newfound sense of community because they were outside growing things and talking more with their neighbors, and because they had a common goal to work towards. That kind of sacrifice doesn’t sound too bad to me. Especially in this day and age when people feel so alienated from each other. Anyway, I really don’t think we’re going to technology our way out of the climate crisis. Everyone, like it or not, will need to make sacrifices, err, I mean conserve. 30.
Comment by RAS
@ May 1, 2008 6 PM
I know, I know that the density will be different. For some of you calculating people 5 height of car 22,000 average miles per year
4.26113E+13 Cars per year to fill space in Arkansas with co2 106,528 Years to fill the area with Co2 3,790,000 US Square miles Assumtion for coal
31.
Comment by Brian
@ May 1, 2008 10 PM
well aaron, i appreciate the length of your comment, and you certainly have a knack with this blog. but i have difficulty reducing the “sentiment” of my posting to a dog cartoon. i suppose that works well for demeaning a post, though. What I�d suggest as alternatives to commuting may or may not pass muster. but it is clear that what we have going now does not work sustainably, can we agree on that? “We commute because humans enjoy having their own personal space.” i’d answer simply that people can have their own personal space at home. telecommuting is an option - that is, if all the technology we so love is worth its “salt”. “cities built out instead of up. In some cities (DC and NYC come to mind), housing in or near a business district is completely out of reach for working families. High population density means high demand, which means high prices.” not sure where you are going with this. i think we all know how things ARE. i thought the idea of this posting was to imagine things as they might be DIFFERENT. “Shipping food halfway around the world allows for cheap, year-round food production.” this line sounds like the stuff you have to swallow in econ 101. perhaps it is time to assess how you define “cheap”. again, this goes back to sustainability. the world ag system we have costs us more than you can imagine - petro fertilizers, diminishing biodiversity, and of course fuel costs now on everybody’s mind. “I would suggest that there are no pointless companies” this is perhaps beyond the realm of this discussion. drop it? but i was truly bothered when you wrote: “the tipping point for each household will come when they decide that making a given change (biking to work, installing solar panels, growing their own produce) will benefit them.” isn’t the concept behind global climate change —and global economy, for that matter — that what we each do effects everybody else? otherwise our behavior, however comfortable, however familiar, is self-centered only. perhaps i am more of the edward abbey school trhan are you. i’ll let you dominate this posting, but i respectfully submit there is so much more to do than change a few light bulbs. Convenient or not. And the tipping point may not be our emotive whining, but the planet’s systems going out of whack before asking our permission. B
Brian, I don’t think we disagree on outcomes. We disagree on process. No shopper demands that their produce be grown in Africa. It’s grown there because that’s where it’s cheapest. If there’s a price on carbon, that may no longer be true, the supply chain will shift and shoppers will get their produce elsewhere — without thinking about it, and without suffering. I could run down your list and make the same point for every example. Obviously decarbonizing will involve major structural changes to the economy. What it won’t mean is lots of pain on the part of individuals. That’s the whole point of the dumb parable. Post a comment |
|
Sacrifice is necessary. Every barrel of oil we burn, every cubic foot of natural gas we burn, and every ton of coal we burn releases sequestered CO2. And CO2 is a very long-lived greenhouse gas. So we can’t slowly, painlessly, make a transition to a fossil fuel free future. Taking this course is simply resigning to accepting a really bad global warming future while hoping it isn’t a horrendous future. Bold steps must be taken now.
For more background on the urgency of this issue, check out James Hanson’s latest piece in “2008-2009 State of the Wild”:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/StateOfWild_20080428.pdf