I keep saying this, possibly to the point of tedium, but I really want to drive it home: as long as going green is viewed as an expensive and vaguely altruistic undertaking, it will never be a top priority.
Evidence is everywhere right now. After several years of ceaseless focus on climate and pop culture green-is-the-new-black hype, we're seeing it all go out the window at the first sign of dropping oil prices and economic hard times.
Over on IHT, Daniel Altman (via Brad Plumer) says that in the face of economic downturn, "going green could begin to be seen as an unaffordable luxury." Over on Time, Bryan Walsh discusses how fears of recession are sidelining green concerns. AFP reports that financial woes may derail international climate talks, and the Guardian has uncovered papers which indicate that the EU Council is preparing to bail on green commitments. With oil down to around $88/barrel, the Big Three automakers, who have been shifting to high-fuel-economy vehicles, are panicking. Oh noes! Maybe we should go back to gas guzzlers!
What's to blame for the seeming fragility of green concerns? Here are some possible answers:
- Too much climate: Despite the warnings of pleadings of bright greens, there's still been too little work done tying green measures to economic revitalization and national security. Economic rescue and stimulation are one thing. Energy independence is another. And climate is a third thing. In that taxonomy, climate will always come last. The goal should be a comprehensive vision of a clean economy that creates jobs, increases security, and reduces emissions. That way people are solving their own immediate problems along with far-off global problems.
- Green = expensive: The political and intellectual establishment for the most part thinks of green initiatives as a big money suck. So when's oil prices are low, why worry? When oil prices are high, is now the time to increase costs more? This is a failure, as I said the other day, to place efficiency at the center of the green agenda -- efficiency lowers costs and makes them more predictable, just what we need in this day and age.
- Status quo = safe: Any time we're told this or that green initiative is expensive, the question should be, "compared to what?" Oil supply isn't going to keep up with demand; coal's getting more expensive; natural gas is getting more expensive. Climate change is causing droughts, storms, displacements, and conflicts. Unless we do something to make our economies more resilient in the face of these trends, we can expect wild fluctuations and crises and general anxiety. The path we are on is only going to take us to worse and worse places. Green is the offramp.
- Too few articles like this in the mainstream press, to drive this point of view into the public's consciousness.
What's your explanation for why green is always the first to go?
Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets
Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation
Comments
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:27 am
10 Oct 2008
Part of his set of solutions, from his article -- which I suggest everyone read in any case -- is the following:a massive direct government fiscal stimulus packages that includes public works, infrastructure spending, unemployment benefits, tax rebates to lower income households and provision of grants to strapped and crunched state and local government
For "infrastructure spending" and "public works" read classic green collar jobs like retrofitting (efficiency!), as well as building train networks, installing PV, fill-in-the-blanks.
This takes the environmental issues from being a "problem", or cost, to being an "opportunity", or solution to the coming downturn.
Otherwise, to answer you're question ("I won't answer that question"), I think the main problem is that people are focused on saving the economy that we have now, warts and all, battening down the hatches, etc. -- in other words, just defending the current standard of living. We know that that standard of living is totally under threat from global warming, but that's a long-term problem. So we can hook up the long-term problem with the short-term problem by moving towards green public works.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 5:25 am
10 Oct 2008
Inasmuch as our children already understand that the real human economy is supported by the Earth in the sense that the economy and living things depend upon the Earth for existence, perhaps we can also agree that the human species depends upon the Earth for its survival, too. There cannot be a healthy economy without available natural resources and adequately functioning ecosystem services of Earth.
If there can be no such thing as a rationally functioning economy without the Earth, then more economic investment in the preservation of natural resources and the protection of adequately functioning ecosystems makes good sense. Let us invite the powerbrokers in big-business, the captains of economic globalization, politicians and high government officials to make much larger and many more direct investments that promote the overall health of the small planet we inhabit so Earth and its environs are properly maintained as a fit place for human habitation by our children and coming generations.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
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Delay And Deny Posted 7:12 am
10 Oct 2008
21 is an economy BASED on Green.
We need to get away from thinking of Green as an appendage to the smokestack industries, and think of Green as a total economy.
We need to think of Green as Wealth -- a wealthy lifestyle with clean air, clean land and healthy food.
We need to think of technology as good in and of itself...not as a crutch to prop up the Old Ways, but communications, service oriented architecture, open source, nanotechnology, hydrogen.
In short -- decouple yourselfs. Be Green and Prosper.
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Earl Killian Posted 11:35 am
10 Oct 2008
We live in a plutocracy with the dressed up as a democracy. The status quo has power, and does not relinquish willingly. It uses Madison Ave techniques to keep people voting against their own interests. Mostly that works. Green is not the status quo, and is out of power, so it is fighting against Titans. Green may yet win because the Titans are fouling things up so badly that it may become apparent to the people despite the propaganda to the contrary. The only question is when it finally is apparent to the people, will it be too late?
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:39 pm
10 Oct 2008
It appears the predominant culture in the world today and its unbridled global economy are precipitating pernicious impacts on biodiversity, the environment and Earth's body. If the leaders of this culture choose to keep relentlessly growing the gigantic world economy as they are doing now, and the family of humanity keeps getting what it is getting now, then life as we know it and the integrity of Earth could eventually become jeopardized.
The current organization of the predominant culture and its worldwide big-business expansion, one that results from the rampant economic globalization we see today, also appears to give rise to something else that is potentially ruinous.
If you will, please consider how conspicuous consumption of resources and hoarding of wealth by millions of people leave billions of people in the family of humanity hungry and in extreme poverty.
For a tiny minority of people with a lion's share of the world's riches to ravenously consume limited resources while millions of less fortunate people go without adequate food to eat, is an economic system in need of modification with all deliberate speed. Perhaps a time will come when such grotesque inequity will not be tolerated.
If the predominant culture modifies the soon to become unsustainable way the global economy grows as well as the careless way that economy distributes resources, then perhaps we will choose more reasonable and sensible ways to distribute wealth and super-abundant food harvests.
I am assuming that we can agree that the endlessly expanding scale of the world's manmade economy in a finite planetary home with the make-up and size of Earth will eventually reach a point in space-time when this artificially designed, colossal economic leviathan becomes patently unsustainable.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
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Green Granny Posted 11:01 pm
10 Oct 2008
Many people I meet, who are doing tons of environmentally positive things, would never call themselves "green" (and might be offended should someone else call them "green"). In their minds they are being wise, conservative, and careful with their finances. They've never heard of Michael Pollan but they shop at the farmer's market and "pick your self orchards" for the seasonal bargains/value/fun of it. Others are yearning for some idealistic "simpler" and less hectic life-style that has little to do with global warming concerns.
The average man on the street here perceives "green" to mean "$4 fair trade organic lattes" or $25 hemp shopping bags or baggy organic cotton clothes and "doing yoga". They think "green" is a brand, a style, a social statement that is the latest young liberal professional elite version of yuppies.
There are many shades of green and many kinds of "greens." I heartily agree that we need to equate "green" with efficiency and frugality (waste not want not with resources of all kinds). Far too many people (including many who call themselves green) see "green" as a form of consumption -- it's what you buy that makes you green (from organic vegetable protien imitation hot dogs to bamboo flooring). To others green is some kind of psuedo religion.
Perhaps we should stop calling it "green." Almost everybody thinks energy independence and lower energy costs, less pollution, economic stimulation, infra-structure improvements, savings from efficiency, clean water, etc are "good" things whether or not they believe in global warming or give two hoots about endangered species. Let's concentrate on the shared common ground. Let's show people how environmentally friendly initiatives benefit them where they feel it most -- in their pocket books and in their quality and quantity of life.
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -- Mahatma Ghandi
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Angelsnecropolis Posted 6:43 am
11 Oct 2008
I buy as much natural and organic as I can afford. My budget is restricted and I like my fruit but I can't afford 5.99 per lb for grapes when regular grapes are 1.49 per lb. This is the "expensive" that I have to deal with on a daily basis.
It's the up-front costs that people really notice and care about even if savings can be occurred over long periods of time.
So this credit crisis that is occurring is taking priority since it is hurting families now as opposed to something that will hurt families (and millions of other people) in the future ei climate change.
The problem is that climate change is the more serious of the two issues (something we all know here). But the government doesn't seem to take action until it's too late. Until there are Katrina-like catastrophes happening now and often then the environment (and ironically humanity as a whole) will take the back seat.
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racje Posted 1:40 pm
11 Oct 2008
During the Great Depression of the 1930's, Franklin D Roosevelt's administration invested in building social infrastructure. We are still using libraries, schools, roads, and (oh yes) dams built during those years, and we have murals, records of life in slavery times, songs of America's regions, and photographs of America's industrializing landscape, because the Federal government employed people to do that work.
We're about to elect a new administration that isn't totally clueless about how to build a prosperous and sustainable society from the bottom up. Soon we can start to build an environmentally responsible infrastructure: retrofitting our houses, building public transit, doing research and development on alternative energy, restoring wildlife habitat, and learning how to live in harmony with natural processes.
It's a perfect time to put people to work doing things that are worth doing, and in seventy or eighty years our descendants will thank us.
First we have to get through the next three months... without further tying up all our resources in war, Wall Street, and welfare for the wealthy. It's a challenge, but we can draw on a tradition of equality, responsibility, fairness, and community engagement. In recent years in the USA, we've slid away from our true national ideals. It's time to live them.
--
Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
--Ursula LeGuin
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