This New York Times editorial says a bunch of stuff that I agree with, in a way that doesn't seem helpful at all:
The overriding environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. The Democratic hopefuls in the 2008 campaign are fully engaged, calling for large -- if still unquantified -- national sacrifices and for a transformation in the way the country produces and uses energy.
The term "sacrifice" gets bandied about a lot, mostly as a way to lend moral seriousness to arguments about climate change. Are you merely paying lip service to the issue, or are you willing to lay down the hard truths?
Of course, no one really knows how much sacrifice will be required. Economic projections of the cost of dealing with climate change put the value somewhere around "not terribly much." But who knows? It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future.
The bigger problem is that the term "sacrifice" misrepresents the process. Decarbonizing involves millions of consumers and businesses making billions of small consumption decisions in response to price signals, just as they do every day.
Sacrifice implies giving up a bunch of stuff that you enjoy now and probably like a lot. Imagine lining up your 10 favorite toys and then picking three that you have to throw away. Isn't that sad? In the real world, though, we make such choices all the time. Only we don't call them sacrifices. Last night, for example, I opted to consume pizza rather than sushi, in part because pizza was cheaper. Yes, I nobly sacrificed my desire for yuppie food treats on the altar of caloric efficiency. Don't call me a hero. I'm just a regular guy in extraordinary circumstances.
I'm not trying to be glib. Sushi is a luxury item, and energy is not. Increases in the price of energy are highly regressive. And, frankly, I am a little bit poorer in the technical sense for having to restrict my dinner options.
But let's not exaggerate the situation. Reducing carbon emissions isn't like living in wartime London. Every day we make consumption choices, based on the relative price of goods. Bike or drive? Steak or chicken? Insulate the attic or repave the driveway? If we put a price on carbon, millions of these decisions will start to break a different way. Consumers will look for substitute goods that provide similar benefits at lower costs. Producers will rush to meet this shift in demand by wringing carbon out of their supply chains.
Why cast this process in the worst rhetorical light possible? I guess you could call it sacrifice, but to paraphrase some deep environmental thinkers, I call it life.
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Growing up green: How to shop for a green baby
No Impact Man, Elizabeth Kolbert, and the civic sphere
Comments
View as Flat
Sean Casten Posted 8:33 am
02 Jan 2008
Why is protecting against global warming optional, while protecting against highway safety/20 year olds with unfettered access to alcohol/insert your own law here mandatory?
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Adam Stein Posted 9:06 am
02 Jan 2008
www.terrapass.com/blog
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Werdna Posted 10:16 am
02 Jan 2008
Interestingly, another New York Times Op-ed was written by Jared Diamond and addresses consumption and there is clearly a sacrifice:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02diamond.html
The main argument is that if we are to let the developing world develop (and it is our moral obligation to do so), we need to cut down on our own consumption. Some of this can be achieved through technology and greater efficiency, but we will likely need to sacrifice some aspects of our lives to allow developing countries to westernize.
I think this argument encompasses what we need to do to address global warming, but talks about a bigger issue.
Andrew Eisenberg
The gateway project is wrong---http://www.livableregion.ca
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Adam Stein Posted 10:33 am
02 Jan 2008
Real sacrifice wouldn't be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates.
So, while I found the article puzzling in places, Diamond does seem to end in roughly the same place I do: we do not need to "sacrifice" some aspect of our lives for either our own benefit or for the benefit of the developing world. Rather, we just need to consume a slightly different basket of goods.
www.terrapass.com/blog
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trock Posted 10:34 am
02 Jan 2008
For most of us, it's all mostly energy use theory, but if you owned a coal mine, it's generations of family wealth gone.
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Adam Stein Posted 10:55 am
02 Jan 2008
And as long as we're being honest here, I can say that I honestly don't care if owners of coal seams don't make out all that well in 2050.
www.terrapass.com/blog
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Pangolin Posted 12:01 pm
02 Jan 2008
Once you've purchased an electric bike, some solar panels and a geoexchange heating and cooling system you've pretty much shut out the markets hold on much of your income. If you, god forbid, keep a vegetable garden and some chickens in your backyard it becomes really hard to put the squeeze on you.
If need be, most of us could survive without cell phones and internet service but heating and cooling aren't very negotiable if you expect to show up at work in the same condition as your peers. We have to eat something but if a greater percentage of your food budget goes to the farmers market that puts a pinch on your local supermarket.
Traveling on a train for more than the run to the store is MUCH more comfortable than long distance travel by car or aircraft but it also is much more efficient. After all a billboard is not going to convince you to pull over at the next exit and homeland security isn't harrasing everybody gettiing on the Long Island Railroad.
So when you track the dollar flows from the various mitigation programs for climate change it's all up-front costs. Once the money is spent for solar panels it's all gravy from there. With gasoline, electric bills and food costs the seller has the option of raising his price down the road and you have to buy at least until another source for your service is found.
A plug-in Prius doesn't provide much joy for Exxon OR Toyota as electric drives are now provern to be more reliable. The farmers market doesn't do much for the Megalo-mart and organic farmer get to thumb their noses at ADM.
So the great wad of climate change deniers are funded by people who are like drug pushers at risk of losing all their junkies. If we take effective action they lose their source of ready cash even if it IS better for the rest of us. The rich are just going to have to make sacrifices.
I would suggest learnig to knit though; clothes may just get REAL expensive.
Put the Carbon Back
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Adam Stein Posted 12:16 pm
02 Jan 2008
But...that's still not the same thing as sacrifice, at least as the term seems to be commonly used. I anticipate that, even if we cut emissions by 80% over the next several decades, we will all still be materially more comfortable than we are now. iPods will be 10,000 times more awesome than they are today, our homes will be warm and well-lit, etc., etc. You won't be able to point to much of anything about Future Joe's existence that would represent a real sacrifice.
Or do you disagree?
www.terrapass.com/blog
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ce1907 Posted 12:23 pm
02 Jan 2008
so one of his minions calls the Times and spins the editorial writer
"be serious; emphasize the costs of addressing the climate problem"
no quicker way to get to the ego of the Times than to urge them to "be serious"
unlike the unwashed, of course
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Tasermons Partner Posted 4:12 pm
02 Jan 2008
We'll still have energy for everything, we'll just get it from different sources than before and the things that use it will use less of it to get the same effect.
The only thing that needs to be sacrificed is unhealthy or absurd excess. (In other words, don't leave things on when ya don't need 'em, don't drive a huge SUV for just a status symbol when a good car would do just as well, etc.)
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bookerly Posted 4:16 pm
02 Jan 2008
Sacrifice may or may not be called for. But the Times is doing it's best to continue to frame the debate about Global Warming as something that must be addressed primarily by individuals.
In terms of individuals, we also need to be clear that all individuals are not created equally. Policies that reward moderate life styles and tax (punish) extravagance will move us nicely along the correct path.
We make a mistake when we look at per capita emissions (more useful than national totals) and stop. We need to measure corporate and other organizational emissions (the pentagon, for example, but also universities, churches, unions, NGO's, local governments, as examples).
How much of that 80% can be squeezed out of industrial and organizational practices we won't know until we try.
Needless to say, organizations (primarily, but not exclusively the corporations) want us to spend all of our time thinking that this is about individual choices, decisions and lifestyles.
Some of it is, but a lot of it isn't. We need a clear cut and separate focus on institutional accountability and responsibility.
patrick in Beijing
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lamarguerite Posted 2:23 am
03 Jan 2008
If one takes the time, like Kyle did, to look at the facts, what you will see is that a tremendous amount of carbon can be saved, without hardly any changes in one's lifestyle.
Rather than sacrifice, how about minor life changes?
marguerite
http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com
'It's All About Green Psychology'
marguerite manteau-rao
http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com
'It's All About Green Psychology'
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gmobus Posted 2:25 am
03 Jan 2008
Today we are far more constrained in our choices. The rate of change is what counts and we are dealing with two very slow to respond systems - the earth and human institutions. I would suggest that we now no longer have the luxury of making trade off decisions. And I do think we are looking at significant sacrifices.
Technology may be wonderful but it isn't magic. Just because we have found some technical solutions to some problems in the past doesn't automatically mean there ARE technological solutions that will allow life as usual in the future. Don't think Moore's Law is going to apply to energy production the way it has to digital technology. Moving atoms doesn't follow the same laws that moving bits does.
Question the conventional wisdom:
http://www.questioneverything.typepad.com/
George
George Mobus,
Associate Professor, Institute of Technology,
University of Washington Tacoma,
and Professional Student for Life
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:52 am
03 Jan 2008
So is a shift from private wealth accumulation to public wealth accumulation a sacrifice? It certainly would be in terms of private ownership of goods -- instead of owning an SUV, many people would be able to ride efficient light rail, for instance.
Much of the post-WWII growth in the US, in fact, was a shift from public to private wealth, as the cities were allowed to go to hell while the suburbs where being built up.
I think that per-capita, a sustainable society that poured much more of its wealth into the public sphere would probably be equal to the current one, if not better; but it would entail a large shift in people's definition of wealth.
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Kristina & Jason Makansi Posted 7:46 am
03 Jan 2008
Did any one read Robert Samuelson's article in Newsweek on how the increased size of the American home inflated the housing crisis? It seems clear that the choice American's have made to live in bigger houses has inflated our energy problems as well. It's the incremental decisions we make every day that determine our level of consumption--and for some the idea that a family of four doesn't need to live in a 5,000 sq. foot might make sense, but it will certainly sound like a sacrifice to plenty of others.
I was just going through old copies of Common Sense on Energy and Our Environment, a monthly newsletter we put out in the early 1990s, and I found articles about global warming, conservation, smart homes, distributed energy and microgrids, solar and wind energy, etc. The point is that many of us have been talking (and writing)about this stuff for a long time, but for the general public it is easy to keep making the same old choices when energy is cheap and nothing that "impacts me right now" seems to be on the line.
Things are clearly different today, but many of us are making the same old choices. And some of us, American's in particular, believe that it is our God-given right to live how we want, drive what we want, consume what we want. If we don't confront the fact that choices matter, whether you call them sacrifices or not, those choices aren't going to change.
And of course it's not just the little choices that matter. The choices we made 40-50 years ago regarding our electricity generation, transmission and distribution system constrain the choices we are able to make today. Similarly, the choices we made today will further constrain the choices we are able to make in the future.
Sorry for the ramble, I know I'm preaching (mostly) to the choir, but...sometimes it seems that semantics seems to get in the way of what's really at stake.The bottom line is that choice matters. Consumption matters. And each of us must be responsible for the way we live. If we want to change our carbon footprint on the outside, we have to change our consumption/choice imprint on the inside.
Pearl Street::Jason and Kristina Makansi
Read Lights Out reviews
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DaveGreenAndRed Posted 8:05 am
03 Jan 2008
The global warming deniers are pushing the "sacrifice" frame for a reason - it works. So don't use it.
We need to point out that there can and will be continued economic growth even if we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Don't deny the assertion of sacrifice; just point out that we will still have growth - lots of it.
And then point out that there is going to be a HUGE cost, to your average person, from climate change if we don't fix it.
And as for the coal company owners, I'm not at all convinced that they will have lower incomes in the future. What will actually happen, as climate policy gets closer to what it needs to do, is: (1) the markets will start to send signals discounting the value of coal firm shares in line with future profitability calculations; (2) rational coal firm share owners will sell their shares; (3) the cost of coal firm shares will go down in accordance with market discounting; (4) some will buy the shares at the lower prices, and thus will not require as high returns; (5) everyone else who used to be coal firm shareholders will end up owning other investments that will benefit from the overall economic shift away from rewarding carbon output. I repeat, today's rational coal firm shareholders will in future own shares in carbon non-intensive firms, which in general will do absolutely better. Their incomes will not be lower.
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mwildfire Posted 2:31 am
08 Jan 2008
Realistically, cutting back sufficiently to avert the worst affects of climate change WOULD involve sacrifice, although less than the much likelier alternative of doing too little, too late. In that scenario, eventually, after the ugly period of conflict, starvation, disease, etc, has passed, when population has restabilized at a much lower level and the survivors are able to set up a society likely to resemble 19th century living in many ways, I think they will live fuller, healthier lives than we do. There will be less frantic rush, less information overload, more time for family and community and the things that actually matter. But only a small minority are making the transition now--most imagine that they really want the twenty-first century lifestyle, and will look upon the changes needed for an adequate response to the threat of climate change as a major sacrifice indeed.
The above is my best guess, although some make fairly credible claims that we could have decentralized PV or windmills powering our homes, electric cars, relocalized organic farms, high-speed light rail between cities, and it would all provide a helpful stimulus to the economy. All that blocks this from happening is that those who are raking in the big bucks from the status quo (eg coal mine owners) are politically powerful enough to keep blocking the policy changes we need. I wish i knew who's right...
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