Skip to main content

Going green is pointless

Ok, deliberately provocative title.  Let me make the point clear: I'm saying personal moves toward lower greenhouse gas emissions are not going to avert major climate change, and probably won't even reduce emissions by that much.
Dick "personal virtue" Cheney.  (Let's not forget that this guy was and is a fevered ego tainting our collective unconscious.)

How can you say that?  Do you not believe in global warming?  On the contrary, that science has been settled for twenty years and is only becoming more alarming.  I am an aggressive climate hawk.

Doesn't the US, as the world's most profligate polluter, have a moral responsibility to avoid environmental devastation that will largely fall on poor countries?  Absolutely.  Climate change will, if not stopped, be one of the greatest moral failings in human history.

Ok then, smartass, what's wrong with trying to reduce my carbon footprint?  Nothing!  If it assuages your conscience, go for it.  I'm just saying that the traditional method of dealing with such a problem—raising awareness and so forth, a method that worked great to reduce smoking prevalence—won't do much good overall in this case.  Energy is sewn into the fabric of the economy at every level, and not everyone is inclined or can afford to reduce their carbon footprint.  You personally emitting less is good, but what you're also doing is making it cheaper for other people to emit more at the margin.

So what's your brilliant strategy? I look at developed countries with much lower emissions than the US—countries like Denmark—and I see the obvious strategy for reducing carbon emissions, namely massive government action.  Tax the everloving bejesus out of carbon and spend the proceeds on public transport, renewable energy subsidies, and the other infrastructure investments necessary to phase out fossil fuel use.  It would be a tough time for some people, but the plans have already been figured out.  What's more, with such a strategy one doesn't have to continually convince a bunch of recalcitrant tea party types to drive a Prius and eat vegetarian.

As Felix Salmon said the other day:
One message I did get from the panel is that individual attempts to minimize our carbon footprint are not going to make any real difference. When I see people suffering a significant loss of utility because they’re watching their footprint and refuse to fly, for instance, it’s pretty clear that the personal cost of their decision is much greater than any global benefit. Even if they act as a role model and persuade others to follow their lead, they’re still perpetuating the idea that individual actions count. And I’m not sure there’s any evidence for that. Especially when the single most carbon-intensive thing that anybody can do — having children — is the last thing that they ever will (or should) give up for the sake of the planet.
Emphasis mine. This has to be a collective thing if it's going to have even a prayer of working. The biggest things standing in humanity's way right now are the US Senate and a bunch of deluded, anti-science denialist Republicans.

Comments

  1. http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/
    I drive my 12mpg blue exhaust spewing toyota straight to the polls to vote for the guy who'll tell me I can't do it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice article! I'll keep that one bookmarked for future posts.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actually b

Varanus albigularis albigularis

That is the Latin name for the white-throated monitor lizard , a large reptile native to southern Africa that can grow up to two meters long (see pictures of one at the Oakland Zoo here ). In Setswana, it's called a "gopane." I saw one of these in my village yesterday on the way back from my run. Some kids from school found it in the riverbed and tortured it to death, stabbing out its eyes, cutting off its tail, and gutting it which finally killed it. It seemed to be a female as there were a bunch of round white things I can only imagine were eggs amongst the guts. I only arrived after it was already dead, but they described what had happened with much hilarity and re-enactment. When I asked why they killed it, they said it was because it would eat their chickens and eggs, which is probably true, and because it sucks blood from people, which is completely ridiculous. It might bite a person, but not unless threatened. It seems roughly the same as killing wolves that

Internet Writing and the Content Vacuum

It's been a few times now I've had full weekday control of the Monthly 's headline blog, Political Animal, and I feel like I have a decent idea now what it's like being at the top level of blogging. (Not to say that I am  at the top level, of course, just that I've walked in those shoes for a few days and gotten some blisters.) Anyway, the first thing I've noticed is that it is really, really hard to do well. I've had days before when I just didn't have anything to do and ended up at home writing 4-5 posts in one day on this site, but pro blogging is an entirely different beast. The expectation is that during the day you will write 10-12 posts. This includes an intro music video, a lunch links post, and evening links and/or video. So that means 7-9 short, punchy essays on something , with maybe 1-2 of those being longer and more worked out thoughts. This ferocious demand for content is both good and bad. The iron weight of responsibiliy—the knowledge