"Build soil. Turn the farm in upon itself
Until it can contain itself no more,
But sweating-full, drips wine and oil a little.
I will go to my run-out social mind
And be as unsocial with it as I can.
The thought I have, and my first impulse is
To take to market— I will turn it under.
The thought from that thought—I will turn it under
And so on to the limit of my nature."
Rather than sharing my political thoughts on social media and alienating some of my friends who hold different political views, I'll be posting here. Here's a thought experiment to get things going:
If I were suddenly to be convinced that the human contribution to climate change is negligible, I know how I, as a progressive/liberal, would respond. I'd still be concerned about the impact of various kinds of pollution on human and environmental health (e.g., even if the air pollution in China wasn't contributing to climate change, it still kills hundreds of thousands of people every year and its reduction would remain a worthy goal). I'd still want laws in place restricting pollution sources rather than relying entirely on the free market to shut them down.
But I'd be happy to rely far more on market forces to produce more energy-efficient vehicles, and I'd remain confident that sustainable sources of energy such as solar, wind, and tide would increasingly compete with fossil fuels as the technology improves simply because sunlight, wind, and tide are essentially free and renewable (at least compared to fossil fuels) and don't have the drawbacks of nuclear waste storage and potential meltdowns at nuke plants. I'd also be much readier to take into account any economic hardship caused by anti-pollution laws when considering government policies.
I've noticed that denial of the overwhelming scientific consensus regarding the human causes of accelerated climate change is largely confined to (and almost universal among) political conservatives and particularly to those with a libertarian bent. I'd like to challenge any self-identified libertarian/conservative to imagine that they've been presented with evidence and arguments that thoroughly convince them that human activity is indeed a major factor accelerating climate change. Assume that without change in human activity the consequences will be felt within the next few decades in the form of such things as sea level rise engulfing large coastal and island areas with dense human populations, temperature rises in currently fertile areas such as the Great Plains that render them unsuitable for agriculture, melting ice caps at the poles, rapid extinction of numerous species and disruption of ecosystems, and the concomitant violence and turmoil as people vie for shrinking resources and habitable areas. What would be an appropriate response in the present that, while measurably reducing or changing the human activities that contribute to climate change, remains in accord with the core principles of libertarian/conservative thought?
My hypothesis is that there are, in fact, no effective responses to human causes of climate change consistent with libertarian principles, that without organized, concerted policies and efforts by governments and international organizations, there are no market mechanisms that would reliably reduce human impact on climate change. In the absence of a believable set of conservative ideas for effectively reducing the human contribution to climate change, the obvious conclusion is that the reasons for climate change denial among conservatives are entirely based in ideology- hence the skepticism towards the scientific consensus.
The motivation for the ludicrous assertions that academic scientists and research scientists employed by non-profit organizations are somehow motivated by access to personal gain through grants and government funding, rife among conservative media and internet pundits, becomes clear. If the world is in fact in a situation that requires concerted national and international efforts to avert impending environmental disaster, the fundamental assumptions of conservative and libertarian ideology are demonstrably inadequate to the task. The increasing rigidity of "conservative" thought in the last forty years renders it incapable of grappling with complexity when the market is simplistically seen as the default solution to any complex problem. Hence, conspiracy theory and irrationality form the response, since the alternative is recognizing the limitations of the ideology.
If I were suddenly to be convinced that the human contribution to climate change is negligible, I know how I, as a progressive/liberal, would respond. I'd still be concerned about the impact of various kinds of pollution on human and environmental health (e.g., even if the air pollution in China wasn't contributing to climate change, it still kills hundreds of thousands of people every year and its reduction would remain a worthy goal). I'd still want laws in place restricting pollution sources rather than relying entirely on the free market to shut them down.
But I'd be happy to rely far more on market forces to produce more energy-efficient vehicles, and I'd remain confident that sustainable sources of energy such as solar, wind, and tide would increasingly compete with fossil fuels as the technology improves simply because sunlight, wind, and tide are essentially free and renewable (at least compared to fossil fuels) and don't have the drawbacks of nuclear waste storage and potential meltdowns at nuke plants. I'd also be much readier to take into account any economic hardship caused by anti-pollution laws when considering government policies.
I've noticed that denial of the overwhelming scientific consensus regarding the human causes of accelerated climate change is largely confined to (and almost universal among) political conservatives and particularly to those with a libertarian bent. I'd like to challenge any self-identified libertarian/conservative to imagine that they've been presented with evidence and arguments that thoroughly convince them that human activity is indeed a major factor accelerating climate change. Assume that without change in human activity the consequences will be felt within the next few decades in the form of such things as sea level rise engulfing large coastal and island areas with dense human populations, temperature rises in currently fertile areas such as the Great Plains that render them unsuitable for agriculture, melting ice caps at the poles, rapid extinction of numerous species and disruption of ecosystems, and the concomitant violence and turmoil as people vie for shrinking resources and habitable areas. What would be an appropriate response in the present that, while measurably reducing or changing the human activities that contribute to climate change, remains in accord with the core principles of libertarian/conservative thought?
My hypothesis is that there are, in fact, no effective responses to human causes of climate change consistent with libertarian principles, that without organized, concerted policies and efforts by governments and international organizations, there are no market mechanisms that would reliably reduce human impact on climate change. In the absence of a believable set of conservative ideas for effectively reducing the human contribution to climate change, the obvious conclusion is that the reasons for climate change denial among conservatives are entirely based in ideology- hence the skepticism towards the scientific consensus.
The motivation for the ludicrous assertions that academic scientists and research scientists employed by non-profit organizations are somehow motivated by access to personal gain through grants and government funding, rife among conservative media and internet pundits, becomes clear. If the world is in fact in a situation that requires concerted national and international efforts to avert impending environmental disaster, the fundamental assumptions of conservative and libertarian ideology are demonstrably inadequate to the task. The increasing rigidity of "conservative" thought in the last forty years renders it incapable of grappling with complexity when the market is simplistically seen as the default solution to any complex problem. Hence, conspiracy theory and irrationality form the response, since the alternative is recognizing the limitations of the ideology.
I will miss the liberal chat on facebook, craig, but apparently you need more characters to express your well-ordeded thoughts. This post deserves a wide audience, in fact it belongs in Salon or huffington; I hope your following snowballs.
ReplyDeleteThanks- I might post it on Daily Kos.
DeleteMost libertarians seem to believe, on principle, that market failures should not be corrected through policies and regulations, because they assume that such policies will always have unintended consequences and generate more negative than positive effects. This line of thinking originated from the free-market economist, Milton Friedman, but has now grown into an even more extreme "caricature" version of his ideology, which seems to have left reality behind. To me the evidence seems overwhelming that an unregulated free market economy only generates ideal outcomes under a limited set of specific circumstances and when only private goods are being exchanged. The incentive structures that drive unregulated free markets create huge problems when it comes to the management of public goods (like our climate) and in many other types of market failures (such as externalities, information asymmetries, and monopolies, etc.). I believe that we have to correct market failures through policies and regulations, and that this should, of course, be done with great care and caution so as to avoid unintended consequences as much as possible.
ReplyDeleteThis issue (along with many others) points up one of the central flaws in free-market theory, and that is that consumer decisionmaking in the aggregate, in the absence of any constraints, produces results that are more chaotic than ordered. There are two main reasons for that. First, few consumer decisions are made based on a single variable. Whenever we make a purchase, we are weighing considerations that can be weighted differently and even be in conflict - for example, environmental responsibility, price, convenience, preference/taste, bias/loyalty, safety, availability, durability, true cost to own, etc. Because making a consumer decision is a complex and individually variably process, there is no assurance that the thing that is "best" for the society as a whole will be prioritized in the aggregate by consumer choice. The second reason is cognitive bias. We often experience ourselves as making rational decisions based on what's "best" for any given priority. But it has been abundantly demonstrated that we don't really think this way; our choice-making is subject to a large number of biases that can cause us to make decisions that are counter to best interests or priorities. We do it all the time, in fact; most of us know we should eat differently than we do, because it will improve our health to do so, and yet we tend to keep slipping and make choices that don't improve our health. There's no problem there in that we don't *understand* the causation - the problem is that when it comes time to act, our biases can lead us in directions that produce the opposite of our intended outcomes.
ReplyDeleteFor these reasons, once we've identified social goods, we actually need to overdetermine them. This is the basis of public health thinking: make it easier, and more likely, for the desired outcome to be produced, rather than leaving it to the processes of competing short-term priorities and biases. So, in the case of environmentally responsible transportation, we need everything from individual choice and consumer options to policy change, enhanced infrastructure that's better at conserving resources, cultural influences/campaigns/trends, economic supports including incentives and disincentives, and other strategies. No one category of activity, consumer choice included, can produce perfect results - which is why we need to attack problems from multiple directions.
Ooops, meant to include a link with examples of decisionmaking biases:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Decision-making.2C_belief.2C_and_behavioral_biases
In support of what Michelle wrote, those are examples of what economists call "market failures" . A market failure is any type of situation in which the free-market economy does not (and would not be expected to) generate optimal outcomes. It is a concept I wish more people were aware of, since it is the counter argument to libertarian ideology. Cognitive biases in decision making are one example (economists call that "bounded rationality" in reference to the limits of human rationality in decision making), and another frequently mentioned example is "the tragedy of the commons" , which describes the dilemma of common pool resource management. As Michelle points out, the idea that the aggregate decisions of everyone, just acting in their own self interest, would yield optimal outcomes for society, is kind of crazy. That is not what Adam Smith argued when he founded the field of economics, it is not in agreement with current mainstream economic thought, it does not hold up under careful theoretical examination, and it is not supported by the evidence we can see around us every day.
ReplyDeleteBut getting back to the question Craig posed: "What would be an appropriate response in the present that, while measurably reducing or changing the human activities that contribute to climate change, remains in accord with the core principles of libertarian/conservative thought?" A carbon tax is the most market based idea for addressing climate change that I am aware of, since it leaves economic entities free of any absolute limitations on carbon emissions. It would simply give the pollution of our atmosphere with more carbon a price. So that seems to be the solution that market oriented people should support. It could be designed to be revenue neutral, so there is no net increase in taxes, just a redistribution of taxes. But any approach with the word "tax" in it is difficult politically, so I keep thinking maybe it needs a different name ("carbon conservation incentive"? "climate protection fee"? any ideas?).
I'm intrigued by the title "Build Soil". Building soil is the missing piece, I think, in the strategy to restore the world's health. You mention the scientific consensus on causes of climate change, and I don't disagree that, as scientists tell us, excess CO2 in the atmosphere has caused dangerous instability. There's another side to that cycle, though, which is the fact that a lot of that carbon came from depletion of soil by human activities: deforestation, desertification, and industrial agriculture. The carbon cycle can be repaired by building healthy carbon-rich resilient soil.
ReplyDeleteI'd recommend a book that came out last year for many aspects of the environmental crisis that can be helped through the soil: "Cows Save The Planet, and other improbable ways of restoring soil to heal the earth", by Judith Schwartz.