8 weeks of clean living

Along the lines of what I mentioned in the previous post is this Greenpeace video, which I find particularly annoying and unproductive.

In an earlier post, I discussed how global warming is almost certainly occurring, yet the effects are not likely to substantially impact the lives of affluent people living today. Due to this fact, I think the truly scary component of the global warming debate (for most people) is the notion that somehow their lives and habits will have to fundamentally change in order to solve the problem.

Employing a dialogue based around fear for political means tends to be somewhat frowned upon. Of course, it is generally politically expedient to do so, especially concerning topics that lend themselves to just such a dialogue. Terrorism, for example, is an issue that is perfectly suited to fear based politics.

Despite the stigma, many environmentalists have attempted to create a culture of fear surrounding global warming. The Day After Tomorrow attempted to paint an unrealistically gloomy picture of a near future where the world is more or less demolished by meteorological events. More subtly, in An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore attempts to draw a very tenuous connection between Hurricane Katrina and global warming, in order to make the threat seem more immediate and real. If one wants to get people to change, the reasoning goes, one needs to scare them into doing so.

Unfortunately global warming is actually uniquely unsuited to fear based politics. It is very difficult to get people to do something scary (changing) by motivating them with something far less scary (some abstract future event caused by global climate change). In this regard, I think most of the loud voices in the current movement to stop global warming have done their position a disservice. (In particular, I think that the shrillest voices invite a kind of fatalistic despair amongst their audience that tends to prevent small positive steps from being taken. I’ve spoken with people seemingly gripped by such despair.)

One thing that I have learned from writing this blog is that many environmentally sound actions also have economic advantages. In other words, change can be in one’s own self interest as well as in service to the environment. In fact, in a perfect economy (one that reflected the true future costs and returns of every action, as well as those in the present) one would imagine that all increases in efficiency would be economically advantageous. I think it is a government’s job to ensure that the economy operates in a manner as close to this ideal as possible.

Given these considerations, I think the tone of the global warming debate needs to shift towards the pragmatic and away from the cataclysmic. I would like to see studies on the true cost of, let’s say, eating a McDonald’s hamburger, where the likelihood of future healthcare expenditures (perhaps subsidized by the government) and emissions produced by raising cattle are calculated, among other factors. Studies like this could create a pragmatic, economical argument for changing behavior (or perhaps taxing burgers in the same way that cigarettes are taxed) right alongside an environmental one. Until the environmentalist movement moves away from useless fearmongering, it will not succeed in swaying the majority of public opinion towards its cause.

The word is slowly starting to trickle out. Unfortunately it’s a non-starter of a debate for many people, so even the committed environmental groups aren’t too enthusiastic about the prospects for change.