I can see clearly now, and it blew my doors off
Much like Eric Richard (EDC Blogger Extraordinaire) , I have become obsessed with reducing my energy consumption, or as my teen-aged kids call me “A Global Warming Naziâ€. I have been on a never ending quest, often to the dismay of my wife and kids, to reduce our carbon footprint, and to maybe save some money along the way.
A few months back I got it into my head that replacing our early seventies windows would make our home a more efficient, warmer place, and I was right, sort of… Our windows are double-hung single-pane windows with separate storms, and I though were obvious candidates for replacement with new state-of-the-art triple-pane vinyl windows. We had had an NSTAR energy audit three years ago, that lead us to adding about 6 more inches of blown-in insulation to our attic. They had told us at that time that our windows weren’t bad, but I went ahead and started getting quotes for windows anyway. The quotes came in between $10,000 and $15,000 to have them all done. A big price, but I figured our planet was worth it. Then in my window confusion, I contacted some people at one EDC’s affiliate groups “Green Decade†in Newton, to ask if anyone knew anything about replacement windows, and the response was “well, what’s your energy consumption? Maybe you don’t even need window replacements?†So after some email dialog it was clear that my consumption was high for the size of my home, and it was recommended that I have Blower-Door and Infrared tests done on my home. So that is what I did.
A blower-door test is exactly as it’s named. The whole house is closed up and a large fan apparatus is put in your doorway to suck air out of your house. This makes it easy to walk around the house finding air leaks. It also allows the measurement of the total volume of air flow so it can be compared to other similar sized houses. Mine had an above average air flow. That’s not a good thing have, but a good thing to discover. As we walked through the house, Bruce Torrey, of http://buildingdiagnosticshelp.com , used his infrared (heat sensing) scope to see what was going on in the walls and windows. What he found was that my windows are not so bad, and replacing them would help, but not a necessity, and that there were other things that needed to be done first. He found that my home was poorly insulated and sealed and should probably have been addressed by the original energy audit. He said that what they had done in the attic was a good first step, but that the job was incomplete. There are areas in a bedroom that has a vaulted ceiling where there is no attic over the ceiling and the insulation is so poor that it’s like a giant window. There were insulated crawl-space closets in the same room that had unsealed insulation that was leaking huge amounts of air, like having a window open all winter. There was very poor air sealing around the chimney in the attic that allowed air to flow down the full height of the house, again similar to having another window open all winter. He found that insulation in the walls was poor (only half filling the cavity) and possibly non-existent in some places, and recommended having more blown in. He said that if I had these things fixed, it would be much less than the windows, and also most likely be eligible for an NSTAR rebate.
At this point I have not had the work done, but I plan to, and will let you know how it affects our heating bill, and comfort level after it’s done.
on April 25th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
I’m sorry to have caused such consternation (comments 4 and 5) with the link to Sheryl Crow. I thought that it was fairly obviously a joke. In cyberspace, I guess, no one can hear your sarcasm.
I do admit, though, that I did offer it in more than just fun – it was a bit of what Liz in that comment section called reductio ad absurdum. I wanted to push a little bit harder on the connection between individual behaviors and environmental problems. I think it’s complicated and, in the end, not a very satisfactory way forward. Sorry to be a downer.
What results come from making the kinds of changes that Liz and Carl and Dean suggest – checking on the energy use of appliances, changing landscaping practices? Obviously, they help to save money. A good thing. They also make us feel better about ourselves and help contribute to our sense of who we are. Also good things.
But I don’t think that they do anything about the problem at hand, global warming.
Everyone on your street could recycle every bit of garbage they produce, and it wouldn’t matter spit against the amount of industrial waste produced everyday. Your home could be perfectly xeriscaped, and also be more than completely offset by the ginormous golf course down the road. Your house could use no kilowatt hours of energy and still global warming would proceed apace. That could be true of a million homes, even two millions. I’m sure that EDC would feel that it had really accomplished something if it convinced two million people to xeriscape, recycle, and use no energy, but there are three hundred million people in the country, and six billion on the planet. Two million is nothing.
Again, I don’t mean to disparage these ideas. These changes have their uses. But I don’t think that they really do anything to reduce global warming. This is a public policy problem, and the solution will come not through individual action, but public policy.
Having said that, there is one positive suggestion that I can make. Vote democrat. And get everyone that you know to vote democrat.
I’m not a particularly large fan of most of the current crop of democrats. The party is still too far to the right for my tastes. But we live in a two-party system, and that means the choice is either democrats or republicans. The republicans have repeatedly made clear that they have no interest in addressing this problem. Democrats have said that they would. Some suggestions are better than others. But the only way for the laws to get passed, get signed, and – importantly — be enforced is by having democrats in control of congress and the White House.
on April 25th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Well, I guess I’m hoping it will save me a buck or two while increasing awareness. I do realize I’m not going to save the world, but I sure hope my kids grow up caring more about this planet than our generation did or does. Getting a republican to vote democratic would be harder than saving the world, so what we have left is the democrats and undecideds. Somehow we have to make the left the right place to be…
on April 26th, 2007 at 1:41 am
Dean,
Saving money’s a good thing. I’m all for it. Polls suggest that about a third of the population is rock-ribbed republican; other evidence that 27% of the population — at least in Illinois — cannot be persuaded to progressive politics. That still leaves a lot of people to vote democrat. And don’t underestimate how much damage republicans have done to their own cause this past decade. In the November 2006 election, democrats received 32,100,000 votes, republicans 24,500,000. It was a wipeout, obscured only because there were so many races. So, talk to your friends and family, there’s a good case to be made.
on April 26th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Josh, while I may agree with your macro point that this is ultimately a policy issue and will be solved (or not solved) at that level, I think there is a somewhat circuitious link between everything we are discussing here and your point. More importantly, because of this link, I think your comments actually hurt your own cause.
If you believe that ultimately this is a public policy issue, then one of the most important things to do to affect that public policy is to affect the elected officials. And one of the best ways to do that is by getting a large set of vocal people who care about this issue and who make it clear that they will cast their votes based on this issue.
My assertion would be that people who feel a sense of personal responsibility about the environment and who are actively engaged in taking control of their own carbon footprint are far more likely to be politically involved than those who are not.
Or, put differently, getting people to feel a sense of personal ownership over this issue is likely to result in them also becoming more politically active around this issue.
Therefore, if you want to change the public policy, then one of the best ways to do this is to empower more people to be a part of the solution. Give them a way to participate and help and get engaged.
Sure. We could tell people, “The problem is too big for any individual to solve. Just write your Senator and tell them to do something.” Or we could tell people, “You are just one six-billionth of the population. What you do doesn’t matter.” But neither of these is likely to result in a very engaged population.
Quite to the contrary, that’s likely to leave those who care dejected and less likely to participate.
It makes the mountain seem so high that there is no point in even trying to climb it.
In contrast, if you can find things that people have complete control over where they can affect their own success or failure, they are far more likely to be engaged. If people see this as something where they can “do their part”, then it becomes an issue of personal responsibility. But, if people feel like the issue is “bigger than an individual”, then there can be no sense of personal responsibility.
Here’s a for instance. What have I done to help to fight the terrorists? Absolutely nothing. Why? Because, short of joining the military and killing some people, it isn’t clear to me that there is a darn thing I can do.
But what have I done on climate change? I don’t think a day goes by where I am not thinking about how every little action I take affects my energy usage and consumption.
In one of these cases, I have a very deep sense of an ability to do *something* and thus a personal responsibility whereas in the other case, there is no point in feeling personal responsibility because there is nothing I can do.
Thus, the more we can get people who are looking at this as an issue of personal responsibility who are eeking out every last improvement that they can, those people are going to feel ownership over this issue and are going to be darn sure that their elected officials know that this is an important issue. More importantly, those are exactly the people who are going to bring in 5, 10, 20, or 100 more people into the fold.
If you look at each of those people who are fighting to reduce their energy usage by another 1 or 2%, the real question to ask is how many other people are they dragging along with them? How many people are they influencing along the way? How many of their friends, family members, co-workers, etc. have those people talked to and convinced that this is important enough to take seriously and important enough to get involved?
With all of this in mind, I think the most critical thing to do is to get people involved and engaged — regardless of what it is that motivates them to make a change.
If they are doing this because it is a religious issue to protect God’s creation, great.
If they are doing this because they see this as a national defense issue, great.
If they are doing this because they are hippie tree-huggers and want to protect the spotted owl, great.
The critical thing to me is to build the movement and keep them motivated.
I think this brings me to the most critical place where I disagree w/ your comments.
You said that you don’t believe that the various energy reduction techniques talked about here “really do anything to reduce global warming.”
I think this may come down to semantics, but I think it is an incredibly important piece of semantics.
I think that the difference in viewpoint here is the difference between zero and something infinitesimally small, but greater than zero. Something that in math or electrical engineering they might have referred to as “zero plus” or in other disciplines as “episilon”.
To say that these efforts don’t do anything to affect global warming is to say that they have zero effect. I have two problems with this.
First off, I don’t think that is true from a very practical perspective. You can calculate the carbon emissions reduced by every one of these actions and none of them are zero. When we are trying to eliminate 7 billion tons of CO2 and an individual is talking about cutting 450 lbs by replacing a lightbulb is the impact really, really, really close to 0%? Yes. But, it isn’t zero.
But, more importantly, I think this message tremendously undercuts your overall goal. If you believe in what I said above you should *want* a motivated base of people who are willing to put their time and energy into this cause. And to tell them that their efforts are worth “nothing” (not your words, but definitely the implication) can potentially be very demotivating.
While from a mathematical perspective, there may not be a big difference between 0 and epsilon, from a motivation perspective, this difference is huge.
In some sense, the message in telling people that their efforts have *no* impact is to tell them that no matter how hard they work, it won’t matter — everything will result in their own failure.
My belief is that the end result of this attitude is that you will have lots of people who want to get involved, but feel so insignificant that they do nothing.
I believe that, in contrast, the right thing to do is to encourage people to make every difference that they can — to try to get folks as deeply committed to this issue as possible by finding whatever successes they can. If it reduces one pound of CO2, it is more than having done nothing.
And if you can build up a base of people who all are feeling their little successes, you can start to motivate these folks toward real change.
on April 26th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
If you believe in what I said above you should *want* a motivated base of people who are willing to put their time and energy into this cause. And to tell them that their efforts are worth “nothing†(not your words, but definitely the implication) can potentially be very demotivating.
Dude, I call debate foul. You need to re-read my comment. I said — twice! — that I thought that people were doing good things. I explicitlyreiterated the point in my response to Dean.
So for you to then, put words into my mouth — and admit it! — gets you at least one T, if not two and tossed out of the game.
My argument is that you have to know both the strengths and the limits of choices. There has been a lot of talk about the strengths, not so much the limits. So I added that.
Also, I think that you elide over a key issue in your response and offer a deracinated, naive political analysis.
First, the elision:
First off, I don’t think that is true from a very practical perspective. You can calculate the carbon emissions reduced by every one of these actions and none of them are zero. When we are trying to eliminate 7 billion tons of CO2 and an individual is talking about cutting 450 lbs by replacing a lightbulb is the impact really, really, really close to 0%? Yes. But, it isn’t zero.
Again, I have o ask if you actually read what I wrote, or responded to some image of me in your head. I put my argument in context. You — Eric — may reduce your carbon footprint. Right now, we have a public policy structured to encourage most people to increase theirs. Hence, you become the red queen, running to keep up. You can be negative, and given the structure of the economy, it’s not going to make an overall difference. That’s a question of public policy.
If you want to sling analogies, let’s sling: You’re Eisenhower. The country just got out of war. One hang up to getting the economy really rollicking is transportation. Railroads charge discriminatory rates. Airline travel hasn’t taken off (no pun intended) yet. The waterways don’t connect. You know what would be cool? An interstate system. So, you
(a) say, “My fellow Americans, pick up a shovel!”
(b) authorize construction of an interstate system.
Now, the political analysis:
Eric, you’re writing as if there’s no such thing as other environmental groups. There are a huge number, many of which deal with problems individuals cannot hope to solve. You know one of the biggest? Deforestation of the rain forest. By your reasoning, I shouldn’t because I can’t go to Brazil and help. But you know what? Thousands and thousands of people care. And they evidence that caring by becoming involved with the political process and by donating money to groups that can do something about that problem. Indeed, donating money is the way that most Americans show their political commitment.
When you take up the cause of global warming, what you are doing, for the most part, is talking to people who are environmentally engaged. Getting people to reduce their carbon footprint, I would submit, almost always involves tapping people who are already part of the process and looking for ways to involve themselves. I know that global warming was your moment on the road to the environmental Damascus, but that’s not true for everyone. Lots of people are already involved, and already focused on changing public policy — even if they can’t or don’t reduce their carbon footprint to zero.
And not everybody should or could, exactly because the structure of the economy encourages otherwise. It’s perfectly rational, given the way things are, to drive SUVs. The most serious costs are external to the buyer.
Also, there are serious dangers that come with personalizing the issue. Yes, you create committed groups. But, you also reduce their impact, and you create their opposite. These are not reasons to notvegan and get a smaller house.”
Similar arguments are going to be thrown at others who personalize this issue. Great, you reduce your carbon use in your suburban home. But one of the best things you could do is leave your suburban house and live in a city. Suburbs are horrible for carbon use. They are not dense enough to support public transportation on a reasonable scale; they require cars; for tax purposes, they each want to lure businesses there — the same businesses that are everywhere; it uses much more fuel to then ship the same items to bunches of different places; they destroy farmlands.
But of course, Americans like their suburbs. And they will continue to flock to them because the structure of public policy encourages it.
on April 26th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
If only we could harness energy in all that hot air
I hate it when people try to pretend to be concerned about the environment, and then follow up a good statement with 20 reasons why it just doesn’t matter, or how everyone is doing the wrong thing.
BTW, I think a better home comparison would be the Gore House and the White House. The Crawford home is like a second (vacation) home for Bush.
on April 26th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
I hate it when people try to pretend to be concerned about the environment,
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this point, Dean, and assume you are just being unclear, because my concern for the environment is not pretense, nor do I think that “it just doesn’t matter” and “everyone is doing the wrong thing.”
As everyone, I have ideas about how things should be done. You do, too, apparently, since you don’t like the comparison between Gore’s house and the Crawford house. Cool. And you make your argument. Also cool. Similarly, I made my argument about what I think the best way to attack the problem of global warming is.
Perhaps I misunderstood Eric’s original call. He asked for discussion on the topic. I am trying to discuss the matter and make an argument for a particular vision of environmental activism which I believe is powerful for reasons I enumerated. We’re on the same team. I just tried to move the conversation in one particular direction.
on April 26th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I’m sure Josh doesn’t need me to come to his aid, but I’ll do it anyway.
I agree that public policy is the only way to truly tackle climate change. To sling yet another analogy, Title IX has probably done more to advance the women’s movement than any other single piece of legislation since the Nineteenth Amendment. If your sister, daughter, or best friend from high school attended medical school or law school after 1972, she was fortunate enough to compete for that spot on a level playing field, as opposed to vying for a couple of token spots that may have been reserved for women. I am proud to be an alumna of one of the few engineering schools that admitted women before 1972, but the point is that it was one of the few. Now, change could have been effected by going to each medical school and saying, “Please admit women.” Or you can have a law passed that says if you want federal funds, you cannot discriminate on the basis of gender. Which strategy do you think works faster? Let’s just say, I’m glad I didn’t have to wait around while every university had to be convinced of the merits of admitting women.
The fastest way to get sweeping change in this country is to convince Washington to act. We can all tell Detroit we want more fuel efficient cars, but they will most likely continue to drag their feet until CAFE standards are raised. We can all call our utility company and ask for green energy, but they will move a lot faster if Washington tells them they either need to buy a carbon credit or build a wind farm.
With that said, I do disagree with Josh on how effective individual change can be. When municipalities force people to curb their water use during droughts or cut back on their electricity use during brown outs, those incremental changes add up to an appreciable effect. For a lot of people, this is low hanging fruit. Why not encourage them to take it?
Also, in the case of Al Gore, why open yourself up to the criticism? Is his single house the difference in whether or not the polar ice caps melt? No. But, it sure would be nice if he hadn’t given the Rush Limbaugh’s of the world ammunition to use against him.
on April 26th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Gah! Eric, you need a preview or edit post mechanism so I can fix my spelling and grammar mistakes.
on April 27th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Josh,
I get the impression that you’re advocating for one solution to this problem and one solution only — What I’m gleaning from your comments is that the “little” solutions are good because they save money, but they are otherwise useless. Public policy is good because it actually solves the problem. This is at least the way your argument is coming across to me, even if it is not what you intended to say.
However, I’m one of those people who feel that there is usually more than one right solution to any given problem. Further, I believe that complex problems require many complex solutions — that it takes many minds and many approaches *in concert* to make progress on hard problems.
Personally, having been raised in a political environment, I’m not all that interested in fighting those battles. I’m exhausted before I start. I may not be interested in engaging myself politically, but I’m delighted when other people actually go out and do something in that area.
However, as Eric points out, I do have control over my own life. I like living comfortably, but I’m willing to make small changes, or make large changes a little bit at a time. I’m curious about how others have made small but effective changes in their life. As a counter example, I have great admiration for my brother-in-law who moved himself and all his earthly possessions from LA to Oregon on a bicycle, and who lived for years on a mountainside in a yurt (and that was an upgrade). But sorry, that’s not me either. I can admire from a distance, but I’ll never be that.
I agree that if I’m the only person to make small changes, so what? But what if we found easy ways for many many people to make small changes? It really does add up.
As an example, years ago, my small town made it really easy to recycle at the curbside. I’d been recycling what I could for years, but my oh my, it was painful. Now, I just put out papers, cardboard, most kinds of plastic, glass, foil, and a few other things in a bucket and it gets taken away for me.
SO WHAT? Well, because lots of people in town did it too, we made a significant dent in what we were sending to the landfill. And then they upped the ante and started charging for garbage bags. So now we have to pay to throw out trash and we don’t have to pay to recycle.
And yes, some people cheat by dumping garbage illegally, BUT our little town has significantly reduced its impact on the landfills. There was some public encouragement and policy involved (some of which, unbelievably, was helped along by a visionary second grader), but in each household, it’s been a matter of choice, a matter of cooperation. And from the small gestures in each household, there’s been a large impact.
I believe that a similar effect can be gained even when there is no policy to support it. I believe that many many tiny gestures can be significant. And that’s why I’ve started writing “A Single Step”. By contrast, you most likely will not see me writing to my representatives, protesting, making signs, or organizing political actions. But you probably will continue to see me writing — that is my contribution.
on April 27th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Josh,
I went back and re-read your original post and my comments several times and I think my point still remains and that I did not misrepresent your comments. Specifically, I think crux of the question comes down to this:
Do you believe that individuals who are trying to reduce their carbon footprint helps (in any manner, large or small) to prevent global warming?
I’m not asking whether doing these things is good to save money or to make us feel better.
I’m asking very specifically about whether these actions do anything to solve the problem of global warming.
My interpretation of your original post is that your answer is “No. Individual actions, other than those that help affect public policy, do not do anything to solve the problem of global warming.”
If I am misinterpreting your position, I apologize, but that is certainly what I get from your post.
If I am not misinterpreting your position then I think my post is still valid and no debate foul has been made. =)
Let me make this very clear. I am not doing all of the things I am doing because it saves money. Saving money is icing on the cake. For example, I am evaluating when I want to spend ~$20,000 to install solar panels. The ROI on this is something like 17 years. In fact, when the installer came out to look at the house, his first sentence was, “You know, that this doesn’t make sense from an economic perspective?” and my answer was, “I know. But this isn’t about economics.”
So, if I am not doing this for economic reasons, why I am doing this?
I am doing these things because I feel like I can’t just sit back and do nothing. I have to do *something* to make a difference. So, I have spent the last year or so trying to figure out what it is that I can do to make a difference.
Part of the difference is lobbying my local town government because it is a place where I feel like I, as an individual, can have a very direct effect.
Part of the difference is educating others to help bring new people into the movement.
Part of the difference is reducing my own carbon footprint.
But, the root of all of these things is that I do every single one of these things because it is the only way that I know how to make a difference to help prevent global warming.
And I think a really critical point is that there are lots of people, like me, who feel like they need to *personally* get off their butts, be part of the solution, and do *something* to make a difference.
At least for me, voting or contributing money is not enough. Those are very passive things to do. On the voting side, I live in a state that is so Blue that any vote outside of local government is pretty pointless. So, to me, I have very little ability to impact public policy outside of my Town. The good news is that I also live in a Town with a Town Meeting style of government, so my ability to impact public policy at the Town-level is almost unlimited — if I can convince enough people to go along with me, I can literally write the laws that get passed.
If I read through everything you are saying, maybe your answer to these people would be, “The best way for you to make a difference is to get politically involved. If you want to spend time and energy on something, then do it by becoming a political activist.”
And I wouldn’t disagree w/ that. In fact, many of the lists of “what can you do” involve things like “contact your legislators”. And you could easily argue that the “marketing campaigns” of things like letters to the editor and columns in the paper are all about raising awareness to get people to vote the right way.
But, I think the crux of my point was this.
You have people who are coming into this movement and they all share a very particular sentiment — they need to feel like they are personally making a difference. And so they go and find books called “51 Ways you Can Help Prevent Global Warming” they find lists of “101 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint” and they start marching down that list.
Why? Because its their way of making a difference.
Now, maybe this whole debate is about whether folks are delusional or not. Maybe you would argue that they are doing it because “it makes them feel better” not because it *actually* makes a difference. Maybe you would compare it to the “duck and cover” model in the 50’s to make us all feel like we could do something to save ourselves from the impeding doom even if it was a complete joke.
And I guess my point is this… Even if you believe in your heart that these activities have absolutely zero impact on the overall problem of global warming, I think it is counterproductive to your own goals to tell these people this.
These people (myself included) have to believe that we are doing our part. Maybe I am delusional. Maybe all of my efforts are for naught. But, in my head and in my heart, I believe I am making a difference, and I am going to keep on pushing as hard as I can until I feel otherwise.
So, let’s say you convince me that all of this is silliness — that I’m not doing an ounce of good at solving global warming.
Basically, this invalidates everything that I have been working at. And is going to likely turn me from an activist who is trying to make a difference into a cynic who moves from the “we can do something about this” camp to the “we’re screwed” camp.
My whole point of my post was that if you believe that public policy is the best way to make a difference, you should try to encourage these people that this is the best way to do so but *not* by telling them that their current activities have no value in solving the problem.
I guess one last point here and I’ll be done.
I think your analogy to the highway system misses a very fundamental point here. As far as I know (and maybe I am just mistaken), people didn’t see building of the highways as a moral imperative and that failure to do so would lead to unthinkable results. As far as I know, parents didn’t wake up thinking, “If we don’t build the highway system, my child or my grandchild’s life is going to be profoundly affected in ways that I cannot accept.”
Because of this, I don’t think that people had a *need* to be personally involved in the solution.
But, in the context of the current situation, this is an incredibly personal thing for many people. They feel, for whatever reason, that they *have* to be engaged in the solution. They can’t just sit back and let someone else solve the problem.
I think a closer analogy here might be people who joined the military after 9/11 because they felt like this was a very personal issue and they had to find their way of making a difference. This wasn’t an issue that *I* personally cared about that much, but there are plenty of people who did. And they could see no better way to solve what they saw as a moral issue than to get involved.
I believe we are dealing with a similar situation here — we have people who are desperate to find ways to be part of the solution and the message that your comments are sending (intentional or not) are that the work that they are doing does nothing to help solve the problem they are trying to solve.
on April 28th, 2007 at 12:51 am
In college, I lived with a guy who left on lights when he wasn’t in the room, let the TV play to empty sofas. In the summer, he set the thermostat to fifty degrees; in the winter, the needle went straight to ninety. As a confirmed environmentalist, I was horrified. It’s one of those strange things about college, having to share close quarters with people who lived according to such different values.
Except that he claimed he was an environmentalist, too. His energy use was a kind of guerilla activism.
By making the problem worse, he said, by overusing energy, causing increased pollution, draining the system, he would force the powers-that-be to really act, and fast!
I found – and find – his explanation asinine. I suspect others do, too. So while, as Liz says, we need lots of ways to address the problem, there are simply some that are unacceptable. Sheryl Crowe’s joke provoked a similar reaction from Liz and Vicki, and I don’t think anyone here is going to take Gerard from Australia seriously. That doesn’t mean that I only think there’s one way to approach the problem, Liz, but that some are better than others, and that each has their limits and their potential pitfalls.
I want to press on the limits and potential pitfalls of the solutions so far offered. That doesn’t mean that there might be some value to them, but we need to look skeptically, critically at them.
Why? Because right now they are relatively easy things. I’m being kind of a jerk here, I know, but there’s a reason, and I will get to it, but because I have been so misunderstood to this point I want to take my time. I’ll put my answer in a couple of different comment boxes.
Doesn’t it seem too easy that the way to save the planet is to go Home Depot and buy some lights? And tinker around in our backyard? And play around with switches in our home? Especially when these are things that we like to do anyway? It’s like my college roommate, the solutions fit so well with our lifestyles that there should be some kind of red flag. Global warming is an incredibly complicated problem, rooted in the way sour manufacturing sector have been organized for the last two hundred and fifty years.
Easy answers should make us . . . suspicious.
They do me, anyway.
There are two reasons.
The first reason is an answer your question Eric:
Do you believe that individuals who are trying to reduce their carbon footprint helps (in any manner, large or small) to prevent global warming?.
No.
Sorry, but no.
on April 28th, 2007 at 12:52 am
California is a big state, almost 40 million people – about 1 in 8 of every Americans live here. Depending on the year, it’s the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world (see-sawing with France.) The state’s fairly progressive; even it Republican governor is taking global warming seriously, and so the state has implemented a number of laws to seriously cut back on carbon emissions. By 2020, the carbon dioxide emissions will be cut by 174 million metric tons each year.
And yet, by 2020, world carbon emissions are projected to be about 10 billion metric tons, up from 7.3 billion tons in 2005.
Now, you might object that the number for 2020 would be even higher if not for California’s laws.
Fair enough.
But the trend line is still going in the wrong direction. And the goal is not to slow the trend line, but to get it going in the opposite direction: not to slow the rate of increase in carbon emissions, but to decrease them. All California’s laws have succeeded in doing, then, is slowing by a few years the melting of the ice caps.
They will still melt though.
Ok, ok, but California is setting an example for other sates. Yes, yes, true.
But my point is that almost forty million people working together, living according to new laws, will not reverse the trend toward increasing the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere.
Thus, I can’t see how individual action will solve the problem. Sorry. Does not compute.
It’s a question of scale. I agree with Vicki that water rationing during droughts and energy rationing during brown outs are good policy (but note: policy!). Droughts and brown outs, though, are usually local problems that admit local solutions. Same thing with municipal recycling programs.
However, you would have looked foolish during the Dust Bowl telling people just use less water and it’ll all turn out fine. It strikes me that the equivalent here is telling people to switch out their incandescent bulbs and you’ll combat global warming.
on April 28th, 2007 at 12:52 am
I am also skeptical of exhortations to individual action on this matter because there is a hidden pitfall here, one that has made environmentalism less potent over the past two-ish decades, and one that has done the same to other progressive causes as well, notably feminism.
Ironically, while you say it is a way to get more people involved in the issue, I think it does just the opposite and neutralizes the matter. Turning the political into the personal is a way of depoliticizing it and making change more difficult.
I’ve said many times already on this blog that I think making global warming about individual choices reduces it to a lifestyle choice, environmentalism to a species of consumerism, and feeds the politics of resentment. I guess I haven’t been clear about what that means, so let me try to explain by reference to your diatribe against Hummers.
You start by saying, Warning: If you are a Hummer owner who has self-esteem issues and you use your Hummer to compensate, I recommend that you stop reading now. If you proceed, don’t say you weren’t warned.
The trouble I have here is that there are very rational reasons that people buy Hummers. One reason is that many of the costs associated with them are spread out among the public. Yes, they’re dangerous, but they kill other people. Yes, because they are oversized they increase traffic and make parking worse, but those problems are disproportionately borne by others. Yes, they increase pollution, including carbon dioxide, but, also, others. Yes, they tear up the road, but, again, taxes are paid by everyone.
There are also real benefits. Americans express their identity through the things that they own. You mock Hummer owners for doing it, but then admit you do the same in your above response to me: Let me make this very clear. I am not doing all of the things I am doing because it saves money. Saving money is icing on the cake. For example, I am evaluating when I want to spend ~$20,000 to install solar panels. The ROI on this is something like 17 years. In fact, when the installer came out to look at the house, his first sentence was, “You know, that this doesn’t make sense from an economic perspective?†and my answer was, “I know. But this isn’t about economics.â€
I suspect that’s the reason that my original comment was so poorly received. I made the exact same argument earlier, and received no criticisms. This time, though, I seemed to call out explicit things that people had done, and those environmental things that they had purchased were enmeshed with their sense of individuality, their identity, so it seemed an attack on them.
So then, in their way, environmentalists, like Hummer owners, are buying things to express their own individuality, their own sense of identity. And so when the question is reduced to individual actions, attacks on Hummers aren’t seen as attacks on Global Warming, but attacks on other individuals. And this leads to resentment. You, as Prius owner, feel lie your on the side of angels. So do Hummer owners. Indeed, I strongly suspect that just as you buy a Prius to express your innermost feelings, that Hummer owners have in many cases bought their car exactly to spite environmentalists.
The problem is washed away, co-opted by a consumer culture that is wiling to sell both products. You buy yours, they buy theirs. Everybody’s happy.
But global warming hasn’t been stopped.
on April 28th, 2007 at 1:49 am
ya know, Josh, I’m just going to quote you —
“I’m being kind of a jerk here, I know, but there’s a reason, and I will get to it, but because I have been so misunderstood to this point I want to take my time. I’ll put my answer in a couple of different comment boxes.”
Do you really think that after you’ve been so dismissive, so disrespectful, that anyone’s going to take the time to continue reading what you have to say, especially because you can’t even say it succinctly? And that you have apparently tripped over your words so successfully that at least two relatively smart people can’t figure out what you intended to say?
I have to admit that I gave up reading your many many comments before I got to the part where you explained why you’ve been “kind of a jerk”, to use your words.
I believe that my efforts and your efforts and everyone else’s efforts *combined* are what it takes to effect change. You apparently believe that it’s your way or the highway, that only your techniques are going to effect change. (And you haven’t actually told us, or I haven’t noticed, what your efforts have been in the political arena — *that* would be helpful to read about.) That’s fine, I can live with it.
But since I’m not really interested in fighting, how about if you refrain from commenting on my postings and I’ll at least scan but not reply to yours? It seems silly to be fighting over this anyways, given that allegedly we’re all working toward the same goal.
I’m even willing to contact you outside of this forum (I believe I have your email address) if you feel that we have more to say to each other.
Whattaya say?
– liz
on April 28th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Fine. Bye.