Four Letter Words

In his article in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman argues that China is far ahead of the United States in the climate change race, turning the faltering climate into thousands of J-O-B-S while many American politicians just turn it into one big J-O-K-E. I think that this article brings to mind a couple other four letter words that need to be addressed:

R-A-C-E

Throughout the article, Friedman discusses climate innovation as a race. China is in the lead, with more innovation, better legislation, and more jobs. The US is falling behind, as politicians continue to fail to make a climate change bill and most of our green innovations are being used more in China than here.

But I'm not so sure a race is the best way to think about action on climate change. First of all, the competition involved in a race typically drives people to do better in order to win. It pushes people to achieve their best. Clearly, that's not working in this case. Although Americans are not missing out entirely on the green jobs frontier, we are certainly not reaching the standard we could (and should) be, especially when it comes to legislation. It appears that in the case of this "race" we are more inclined to free ride on the backs of those already ahead of us, letting them do the leg work while we sit back and enjoy the benefits.

Therein lies the other issue with calling this a race: the nature of the benefits. In a race, there is one winner who gets all of the prize. That mindset doesn't work so well when it comes to climate change. Whatever country becomes the most green first will not get to live on in perfect harmony while the rest of the world falls to ruin around them. This is one world, and we are all connected. So no matter how far ahead any one country may get when it comes to green innovation, they will continue to feel the negative effects of environmental harm unless the other countries catch up. Unless everyone is winning, we're all losing.

M-A-K-E

So is the answer for every country to throw all their energies into green energy, technology, and jobs? Maybe, but only if it's done thoughtfully. Green technology is still technology and therefore has the potential to have unintended negative side effects. Also growth, green or not, is still growth, and according to Bill McKibben in his book Eaarth is something we need to stop striving for if we are ever going to save ourselves in this environmental crisis.

P-A-C-E

I have to wonder if the pace of China's growth in environmental technologies is too fast. Are they creating green technologies and spreading them virally across the country before they fully research the effects of these technologies? With the size of their population, if just one technology turns out to be more environmentally harmful than they thought, it could be devastating. While I certainly think the United States should be looking more into green technologies, perhaps aiming for the same pace as China is not the best option.

K-N-O-W

So we may want to think twice before sprinting to catch up with China on the green technology front. There is still, however, plenty to be learned from China's policies. One thing that stuck out to me most in Friedman's article is how no-nonsense China is about climate change. As generally more scientifically minded people than Americans, they don't question climate change or think of it as a global problem. They know it is happening, and it is happening now. Before we worry about upping our investments in green technologies, before we increase our green jobs, we need to get more Americans to adopt this mindset. Before we start working towards combating climate change, we need to stop questioning it.

Teaching America to Walk

Ask any American on the street what they can do to help reduce environmental harm, they will probably ramble on to you about recycling more, shortening their showers, or actually remembering to bring to the store the hoards of reusable bags they have collected. It's unlikely anyone will talk to you about switching to alternative energy or reducing their consumerism. Most Americans will point to the simple solutions, the everyday little changes that anyone can make. And these are the same types of answers that even some top environmental leaders are selling to us. The argument that little things are all we need to do to make a difference is certainly compelling. We like the idea of all the small individual things adding up to a meaningful whole. We also like the idea of not having to do too much individually. Words like "simple," "easy," and even--god help us--"lazy" are permeating the environmental movement from all sides.

But this isn't a simple issue. And the solution will by no means be easy. So, as Michael Maniates argues in his article in the Washington Post, Americans need to stop being so lazy and take some real steps towards reducing our environmental harm. Furthermore, environmental leaders should expect us to be capable and willing to do what is necessary to reduce our environmental harm enough to stop climate change, not just slow it down. On this point, I certainly agree. Baby steps are not going to get us where we need to be on time. We need leaps and bounds.

I do not, however, think it's as simple as environmental leaders changing their message and asking more of the public. Maniates brings up several historical examples of when Americans were able to band together behind a strong leader to really change an issue: the Revolution, World War II, and the Civil Rights movement. Although these moments definitely show that Americans have the power to rally behind a cause, I'm not sure they can be applied to environmental issues.

The first reason for this is the nature of the environmental problem. In all of the examples above the issues were very tangible. Revolutionaries were feeling the oppression (and taxation) of England. Events like Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust were obviously harmful. African Americans had to deal with discrimination every day of their lives. Moreover, the results of taking action against these things was relatively immediate and obvious. In other words Americans are great at banding together towards resolving a problem when it is something that that is obviously hurting them and when they will be able to see results from taking action.

At this point in environmental degradation, neither of these facts hold true. Most people aren't feeling obvious negative effects in their everyday lives. Except for maybe a little change in weather (or a freak snowstorm), life goes on as normal. And the effects of making a big change in our lives wouldn't be evident to us--they would first occur up in some mysterious, far off atmosphere and then eventually trickle down to causing changes on earth.

The second reason I'm not sure that the comparisons work is that we live in a different age now. A high speed, multi-tasking, constant stimulation kind of age. Arguably, we have less focus in this digital age than we used to. We like the solution to environmental problems in 140 characters or less. We want to do our part quickly, and then move on to the next thing.

So although I agree that everybody needs to put more effort towards stopping environmental change, the tricky part is going to be convincing the American public of how much this really matters to their lives (and getting them to listen long enough to do so).

The Issue of Indifference

I think that the most pressing challenge facing the global environment is indifference. There are plenty of venues out there for working towards alleviating environmental problems, if enough people cared enough to seek them out. The keyword here is enough. There are certainly some people out there who care a lot about the environment, and are working tirelessly towards making it a better place. But there is also the other extreme of people who can’t directly see the effects of environmental degradation, and therefore don’t believe it affects them. If more of these people cared, then we would have more fighters for the environmental movement. And there are the people who do care, but have so many other things to do or think about than helping the environment. If these people cared more, maybe their other obligations suddenly wouldn’t seem as important.

Although there are certainly many other huge issues facing the environmental movement, having fewer indifferent people would help us move towards overcoming these problems as well. More environmental stewards could help spread information to people who just don’t know the magnitude of this problem. Politicians would have an incentive to actually take action against environmental degradation if enough of the public cared for it to be politically beneficial. Also, more people would care enough to make even small changes in their lifestyle, potentially leading to a huge decrease in our harmful effects on the environment.

Stanley Fish is a god example of somebody who doesn’t care. As he says in his article, he believes that our actions are harming the environment, he just doesn’t care enough to do anything about it. Although his wife is trying to get him to make small changes in his lifestyle, he won’t be convinced. The environment is an inconvenience in his mind. It’s people like this who will be our biggest problem to tackle in the environmental movement.

Race to the Bottom

Thomas Friedman repeats a common theme in his NYT's op-ed article titled Arn't We Clever. We are losing the green-tech /manufacturing race to competitors in China and Europe thanks to inaction by our government. This will mean both an increasingly dire climate change situation and serious troubled down the road for the US economy.

These warnings resonate with many, environmentalists fear for the future of our world, while those in the pro-business camp worry about American's ability to compete in the 21^st century. There are compelling arguments behind both these positions, but they are grounded in false beliefs over what is needed to confront climate change and how it needs to be done.

The first major misconception is that we are in a race to “beat”the Chinese and Europeans in creating a clean-tech future. This view is often based off of a comparison of the challenges we face today to the space race we entered against Russia at the height of the Cold War.

Supporters of this idea point to our gargantuan effort to beat the Russians to the moon as a perfect example of government supported R&D and manufacturing coming together to literally send a man where no man had gone before. This is all fine and dandy, except that the scale at which our economy must be transformed is beyond anything the space race ever tackled; an effort that had a rather narrow, albeit impressive, goal

Additionally, the space race was a competition of political wills and technological prowess between the Soviet Union and the United States. As the two world powers of the day, each side was attempting to gain an advantage in missile technology and credit with non-aligned nations.

The geopolitical situation in the world today is much different. We live in a uni-polar world, although that is quickly changing, and the world has globalism. This means changes and instability somewhere in the world can send shock waves throughout the globe. Inaction in the US, the worlds largest market, will effect development and production of green-tech everywhere. If we try to compete on these issues we will end up in a race to the bottom as each nation on Earth undermines the other while our small window at curtailing the worst effects of climate change is still open.

So we shouldn't be racing anyone in the development of a 21^st century green economy. But should we really be focusing as much effort as we are on technology? The cornucopians would tell you that rapidly re-developing our economy is the only way out of our current situation. But this development will also carry it's own footprint.

What is instead needed is a change in lifestyles, a step back from our breakneck advancement which is sapping the Earth of it's carrying capacity. For this to work all the countries of the world must work together, collectively face up to our challenges and embrace a future of austerity and restraint. This is the only truly sustainable path we can take.

Change is Never Easy

In Going Green? Easy Doesn't Do It Michael Maniates criticizes elites in the environmental movement and the government for "selling us short" on solutions to the critical environmental issues facing us today. He argues that the challenges we face today are a zero sum game, and sugar coating the outcome with feel-good, easy solutions to our problems can do more harm then good if it creates complacency within the public.

The main issue that Maniates brings up is the widespread dissemination of tips to people through books, television, and even government websites. Each list of "Earth friendly" tips is remarkably similar and usual includes recycling, taking shorter showers and installing efficiency measures in the home such as CFB's and weatherized windows.

As important as these practices are, they will only stem the ecological damage occurring to our planet. Maniates does not argue that we should stop recycling and aiming for efficiency; he sees these practices as essential to forming a civic environmentalism within the public psyche.

The real culprit according to the article is green washed products. Essentially unnecessary consumer items that claim to have low or no impact on the environment but which still require energy and resources to create. We should ignore these minor changes to lifestyle and habit and instead focus our effort collectively on revolutionizing our agricultural, transportation and energy sectors, by far the largest contributors to our ecological footprint.

The greatest changes in society have occurred around broad social movements, sacrifices are often made but the end goal is reached. Maniates points to the sacrifices made during other great moments in our history, the revolution, the civil right movement. The leaders of these movements did not ask us to shop wisely or be more efficient, they asked to change, which is what we need to do to make sure our planet continues to support us. The challenges we face will be difficult, but together we will be able to overcome them.

Reaction to "I Am Therefore I Pollute"

Stanley Fish's New York Times Op-ed piece, I Am Therefore I Pollute, is multi-faceted and leads me to draw different opinions on his varying conclusions, his intended message especially seems to change in the different sections piece.

Fish laments the struggle of being a “good environmentalist”, which he does through a number of angels. His main argument (his dissatisfaction with environmentally friendly alternatives) I find the least compelling. It is interesting that he shows a generational gap in his adoption of “green stuff”, but his reasons for doing so seem petty. He laments that the lights are too dim, the meat taste too leans, and his friend’s wife makes him unplug appliances.

In each case the opposition is based purely in the material. Yet he has no issue with turning off the lights, or using traditional recycling methods; behavior he grew up with and has ingrained subconsciously. The small amount of effort required to adapt these behaviors is just not a burden I can sympathize with.

However I do not disagree with him on all his points, I find his first point to be quite salient. In reference to a call to action by Greenpeace to boycott Kimberley-Clarke over it use of virgin wood pulp Fish responded by looking back,

“But we had already done that once before when it turned out that the manufacturer of the paper products we used to buy — Procter and Gamble — engaged in research on animals. That’s when we found Kimberly-Clark”.

Kimberley-Clarke was suppose to replace the unjust company, but ended up practicing equally undesirable policies. All too often a company has green washed itself, making its customers feel good about what they are doing while hiding the true costs.

This leads to the more general question of what is means to live in an “environmentally friendly way” in a modern US city. This is a question I tackle on a daily basis. I profess to be a environmentalist. I turn off the lights, conservatively heat and cool my apartment, recycle, use mass transit or walk; you name it. But the overall effect of these small actions, the ones Fish found so hard to adapt too, can become ineffective if you are being fooled by a company into believing their products are sustainable, or if the real energy saving methods are ignored.

Being a true environmentalist means understanding all of the impacts of your choices and knowing how to mitigate those effects as much as possible. Buying carbon offsets for electricity, dropping meat from the menu and consuming less in general are all essential actions people will probably need to take if we are to leave as small an ecological footprint behind as possible in our day to day actions. It is accepting what might feel uncomfortable, the actions Fish finds so hard, that are most essential for this next generation to succeed where previous ones have failed.

Introductions

Welcome to Earth First, a new blog brought to you by some of the students of Professor Nicholson's Fall 2010 International Environmental Politics course. My name is Keith, your humble moderator and one of the resident bloggers.

The topic of Earth First will be general environmentalism, but look out for some side posting I'll be doing on biomass heating and my internship with the Alliance for Green Heat. Anyways, I hope y'all enjoy what you find and feel free to add your two cents if the mood strikes.