A. Specifics
1. Global warming. The "greenhouse effect" is due primarily to increases in CO2 in the earth's atmosphere. Atmospheric CO2 levels have increased 25% in the past 150 years over the level that existed relatively constantly since the last ice age, 5000-9000 years ago. Methane and CFCs are also significant greenhouse gases. If CO2 levels continue to build at their present rate (or even somewhat more slowly than at present) in the next 50-70 years, that level is forecasted to double over what is was prior to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Even before then, we will begin to see significant increases in average global temperature--indeed some scientists believe we are already beginning to see them. How much? Most models make a prediction of approximately 5 degree C. (9 degrees F.) increase in average global temperature.
Is that a lot? At the end of the Ice Age 18,000 years ago, when mile-thick ice sheets covered much of Michigan, the average global temperature was 5.4 to 9 degrees F. cooler than it is today. A rise of 9 degrees would be catastrophic.
The increase in carbon in the atmosphere is due to combustion: cars -- each gallon of gasoline burned produces 5.6 pounds of carbon in form of CO2: 1.4 tons/yr. for a 20 mpg car driven 10,000 miles/yr. Industrial pollution. Also methane from fermentation: termites, increased due to increases in dead trees; and produced by cows and rice paddies.
At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, all major nations of the world--over 100 of them--signed an agreement to reduce CO2 levels by the year 2000 to their 1990 levels--except the US. But since the US with 6% of the world population produces nearly one-quarter of the world's CO2, US agreement is essential if even this modest step will succeed. The Clinton Administration has said it would commit the US to the Rio Accord, but later Administrations could reverse that. In 1987, US emitted 5 tons of carbon per person from burning fossil fuels, the highest per capita rate in the world; compares with 2.1 tons per person for Japan, 3.0 for W. Germany, 1.7 for France.
2. Ozone depletion. 1987 Montreal Protocol to reduce CFC use by 50% by 1998. Was expanded by a 1990 agreement by 93 nations to stop CFC production by the end of the nineties. Ozone depletion has already altered living patterns in Chile, New Zealand, Australia.
3. Depletion of arable land, topsoil loss. The loss in the last 20 years is equal to the entire cropland of India. From the time humans first began practicing agriculture until 1981, the total amount of land devoted to crops increased steadily. Since 1981, total cropland has declined. Per person food consumption in Africa and Latin America is declining.
4. Deforestation. Although deforestation in industrialized countries has slowed and even reversed itself recently, deforestation in the rest of the world accelerates. In the last 20 years, the earth has lost forests equal in size to the entire US east of Mississippi River. That has many effects: a quarter of the CO2 build-up in the atmosphere is a result of deforestation -- both in terms of releasing stored carbon and in reducing the carbon sink that forests provide. Contributes to soil erosion. Threatens biodiversity: rain forests cover 7% of the earth yet contain half the world's species.
5. Population. It took from the time when humans first appeared on earth until 1960 to reach a world population of 3 billion people. It will take less than 40 years--from 1960 until the late 1990s--to go from 3 billion to 6 billion. Latest models suggest that population will begin to level off at around 10.5 billion late in the next century.
6. Species extinction; reductions in biological diversity. 1,096 mammals, nearly one-fourth of all mammal species, are threatened, including one-third of all primates. 169 are critically endangered (dropped by 80% or more) and face imminent extinction. Also, 1,108 species of birds -- 11%. 253 reptiles. 124 amphibians, 734 fish species all at risk of extinction.
Countries with the largest numbers of threatened species are Indonesia (128), China (75) and India (75).
Less glamorous, but perhaps more critical, are losses of plant, insect, and even microbe life. Upsets planet's ecosystem, affects biodiversity of food system, source of medicines -- leaving aside the deeper ethical considerations.
B. Are the problems getting worse?
Some problems, in some places, absolutely. Other problems in other places, no. What's special about many environmental problems is that their impacts don't respect the borders of countries. Many are truly global in scope.
C. Deeper issues
1. Environmental problems and the prisoner's dilemma.
The Prisoners' Dilemma demonstrates that it is simply not the case that the aggregation of individually rational decisions must always yield a desirable collective outcome for the individuals playing the game. But whether or not you consider the outcome of the Prisoner's Dilemma bad or good depends on whether you are the prisoner or the policeman. The outcome is undesirable for the prisoners, but desirable for the police. This point is closely related to Adam Smith's conception of the free market. The "invisible hand" of Adam Smith's free market is simply the Prisoner's Dilemma "from the outside looking in."
The problem with environmental issues, like pollution or deforestation or even population growth, is that nobody is "outside of" the prisoner's dilemma. The "invisible hand" of the market becomes the "invisible foot" of the Prisoner's Dilemma, as "rational" self-interested micro-decisions are aggregated in collectively undesirable macro-decisions. Indeed, if individuals are driven solely by the pursuit of rational self-interest, the market virtually guarantees that collective goods--like clean air or public parks or national defense--will not be provided, or only minimally provided in certain special cases.
Environmental problems -- particularly global ones, but even ones as simple as local recycling--are intrinsically difficult to solve because they are among the purest examples of the problems of achieving collective goods. If the benefits of a good, or the costs of a bad, cannot be allocated to individuals according to their contribution, then there is no incentive to contribute to the good or mitigate the bad--even if everyone were in agreement that they would be better off if the good were provided or the bad were reduced. It is no coincidence that the original statement of the collective goods problem -- the Tragedy of the Commons -- was about an ecological problem.
Environmental pollution is one example. We would all be better off with clean air rather than dirty air, yet it is in the economic interest of each factory not to bear the costs of its waste disposal but rather to externalize those costs--i.e., throw them into the public air, the public water, the public land. Similarly, no rational consumer would voluntarily pay more for a car equipped with pollution control devices, even if the air would be noticeably less polluted if all cars had such devices.
So long as the air and water and land resources are very large relative to the amount of waste, the costs of pollution are relatively small. Indeed, if resources were limitless, the Tragedy of the Commons would not occur: when one Commons was used up, you'd simply move to another one. And for 450 years--since the opening up of two seemingly limitless continents to exploitation--the Tragedy could be largely avoided without much difficulty.
Now, however, we find ourselves bumping up against limits. We are running out of places to put our waste, running out of "free" clean air and clean water, confronting the fact that we are so many in number and so extensive in our use of resources that in time spans measured in decades we induce changes in the global environment that used to require millions of years.
We are faced with a collection of ecological problems of literally global proportions that will require enormous resources, effort, and most of all, changes in ways of thinking for most of us if we are to stand any chance of solving them. And there are even some scientists who believe that we may have already done too much damage ever to make it right again. Also, please be clear that "the environment" is not a "middle-class" issue: both in the U.S. and around the world, those with the least resources and the least power are now and will be in the future the ones who will feel the impact of environmental degradation most immediately and severely. Land, air, and water pollution, toxic waste, their associated health problems--all hit the poorest and the least powerful most.
There are relatively few ways out of Prisoner's Dilemmas, and the only general solution is some form of coercion--you pass laws to force people to do the right thing for their own good. Thus politics and ecology are intimately tied together. The laws are not arbitrary; they are imposed by the people themselves--or at least by their elected representatives. "Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon." In other words, one function of government "is to make it safe for people to be reasonable, and not just rational." But even laws will not be passed unless there is sufficient public support, which will require a change in thinking.
Some environmentalists (such as Amory Lovins, author of Soft Energy Paths) advance the position that technology is not necessarily the enemy of the environment. Energy-saving technologies can make life more comfortable with less energy consumption. Technological advances in personal and mass transportation offer convenience and less environmental impact. Energy-saving appliances work better than their energy-hogging predecessors. Technological advances have made many kinds of materials recycling commercially feasible that were infeasible even five or ten years ago. Technologies for breaking down hazardous waste into harmless components are already in use at clean-up sites around the world. All of this is useful. Few champions of technology for environmental solutions believe that technology alone is a "magic bullet," however.
One example is a flexible environmental assurance bonding system designed to incorporate environmental criteria and uncertainty into the market system, and to induce positive environmental technological innovation. A company would be required to post an assurance bond equal to the current best estimate of the largest potential future environmental damages; the money would be kept in interest-bearing escrow accounts. The bond (plus a portion of the interest) would be returned if the firm could show that the suspected damages had not occurred or would not occur. Alternatively, the bond would be used to mitigate environmental damages and compensate injured parties. Thus, the burden of proof would be shifted from the public to the resource user, and a strong economic incentive would be provided to research the true costs of environmentally innovative activities and to develop cost-effective pollution control technologies.
Another example are "air pollution futures," which are traded exactly like commodities on an exchange. Their price fluctuates with the cost of pollution relative to producing energy with less pollution. Since their is a limited number of futures available for purchase, this places a ceiling on total pollution. Some environmental groups have purchased futures themselves and then kept them, unused.
Pricing externalities into the cost of goods and services can be an efficient way to limit environmental damage, but the market won't do this voluntarily. It requires government action. Is it reasonable to expect the public and their elected officials to agree to raise prices, when they have already shown themselves unable to raise taxes sufficient to prevent runaway national debt? Where is the incentive for legislators to pass such laws? How realistic is it to think that corporations will permit costs they've externalized to be internalized? (Bottle return, let alone car return.) How reasonable is it to believe that consumers will permit themselves to buy what they used to get for free? (defeat of "Big Green" in California) How willing are we even to face what the costs are that must be internalized (e.g., Trans-Alaska pipeline)? And what happens if the laws are largely unenforceable--if the public simply refuses to go along, as in the case of the 55mph speed limit?
To internalize the costs of externalities means that we must be willing to take into account the interests of future generations and not just our own short-term interests. But markets are not designed to do that. Markets are intrinsically short-sighted because of the discount on future values. When an action will bring both benefits and costs over time, acceptable business practice is to appraise the net present value and to discount the future implications in determining whether an action is profitable--and hence whether it should be taken.
For instance, if one assumes 6% interest rates (for purposes of an example), then a rational decision-maker must prefer $55,000 now to $1 million 50 years from now. The present value of $1 million 100 years from now is less than $3,000. Consequently, something that would be of tremendous value even a few generations hence must on economic grounds be sacrificed today if it will yield an immediate gain of even a few thousand dollars (Hardin, p.73). The market is driven by consumption, not by prudence. The roots of the problem are in the market itself.
As Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, wrote in his other book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (in Schwartz, p. 260):
All members of human society stand in need of each others' assistance ... where the necessary assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy. All the different members of it are bound together by love and affection.... Society, however, can not subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another.
Probably all of possible paths to solution will have to be utilized simultaneously--technological fixes, changes in laws, internalizing environmental costs into the market prices of products. Most of all, however, many ecologists conclude that what is required is a change in culture--a change in the bias towards growth and consumption, and a change from the radical individualism of our prevailing liberal culture toward one that is more balanced and prudent.
Although environmental activism is typically associated with liberals and Democrats in the US, ecological thinking actually shares much in common with conservatism and small-"r" republican thought, such as an appreciation for the value of moderation, the importance of thinking and acting for the long term and not just for the moment, and the importance of grounding government action in moral values.
Ecological thinking differs in some fundamental ways from both liberal and conservative thought, however, in that the latter two both accept growth as the fundamental goal of society and differ only in terms of how that growth is best attained and how the fruits of growth should be distributed. Ecological thinking offers the alternative view that limitless growth is neither possible nor desirable.
The central question is: How much is enough? Neo-classical economics replies that "there's never enough." Such a theory is doomed to fail in a finite world. The only question is when. To be indefinitely sustainable, an economy must operate within the limits of the earth's carrying capacity.
To be indefinitely sustainable, an economy must operate within the limits of the earth's carrying capacity. "The basic rule of a sustainable society, ... the ecological equivalent of the Golden Rule, is simple: each generation should meet its needs without jeopardizing the prospects of future generations to meet their own needs" (State of the World '91, p. 165).
The ecological crisis has technological aspects, as well as political, economic, and social ones. But ultimately, solving ecological crises will require a change in cultural values and emphases--or a rediscovery of old values. In an article entitled "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," J. M Keynes wrote in 1930 about how he looked forward to a time when we could ...
once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. But beware! The time for all this is nor yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.
Fritz Schumacher (Small is Beautiful) argued that such a philosophy is doomed to failure on both ecological grounds and on moral ones. If human vices are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is a society increasingly incapable of solving everyday problems of collective existence. Contrast his view with Keynes's:
We must do what we conceive to be the right thing and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we're going to be successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we'll be doing the wrong thing, and we'll be part of the disease and not part of the cure.
Schumacher called his theory "Buddhist economics" because he saw parallels between Buddhism's ideal of "right livelihood" and his own stress on moderation, appropriate scale, and the importance of having satisfying work to do. But he pointed out that all the religious and spiritual traditions of mankind contain similar teachings (pp. 316-317). For example, in the Christian tradition, "there is perhaps no body of teaching which is more relevant and appropriate to the modern predicament than the ... doctrines of the Four Cardinal Virtues -- prudentia [carefulness], justitia [justice, fairness], fortitudo [courage, moral integrity], and temperentia [self-restraint; knowing when enough is enough]."
A call for a sustainable world is not a call "back" to anything. It is not a demand that we "freeze in the dark." To the contrary, life in a sustainable world need not be an impoverished or uncomfortable one by any means.
In Los Angeles, two-thirds of the entire urban area is paved and devoted to automobile use. Human life is relegated to the remaining one-third. Does this make sense? The average speed on L.A. freeways today is about 20 mph -- or roughly equal to the speed of a reasonably fit bicyclist pedaling along a level grade. Are the motorists sitting in continuous traffic jams in Los Angeles or Houston, exasperated to the point of shooting at one another, happier now than are the majority of commuters in, say, Stockholm or Copenhagen who travel quickly and comfortably by trolleys and bicycles each day? (The recent post-earthquake experiences of Southern Californians with alternatives to single occupant private auto transportation indicates that alternatives enhance, not diminish, quality of life.)
A sustainable economy will require producing energy efficient appliances, developing new methods of reducing carbon emissions, and devising ways of reducing and recycling waste -- all activities that can be net employment creators. Energy efficient light bulbs, appliances, heaters and coolers that can be purchased today perform at least as well as their less efficient counterparts. European and Japanese families generate half as much garbage per person as American families do, with at least as high a living standard as our own. Many cuisines of the world are at least as tasty as, and much healthier than, the environmentally damaging meat-heavy US diet.
Research indicates that the entire world could live at the standards of Western Europeans and still maintain sustainable levels of energy consumption: that means small but comfortable homes, energy-efficient appliances, and ready access to high quality public transportation. The studies show that the earth could not support the world population at levels of U.S. energy consumption, however.
It is not only what Pat Buchanan referred to as the "sandals and beads crowd" that advocates policies and ways of daily life that are less oriented toward "more and more of more and more" and more mindful of appropriate scale and environmental impact. As the words themselves suggest, there is hardly anything incompatible between conservatism and conserving.
Can we move nations and people in the direction of sustainability? .... This consciousness will not be attained simply because the arguments for change are good or because the alternatives are unpleasant. Nor will exhortation suffice. The central lesson of realistic policy-making is that most individuals and organizations change when it is in their interest to change, either because they derive some benefit from changing or because they incur sanctions when they do not.... To change interests, three things are required. First, a clear set of values consistent with the consciousness of sustainability must be articulated by leaders in both the public and the private sector. Next, motivations need to be established that will support the values. Finally, institutions must be developed that will effectively apply the motivations. The first is relatively easy, the second much harder, and the third perhaps hardest of all.
We should develop new measures of how well off we are -- measures that reflect sustainability rather than sheer resource consumption as the primary measure of economic progress.
The measure most widely used today is growth in gross national product, or its close relative gross domestic product. GNP, a statistic developed a half-century ago, is the total market value of all the goods and services produced by a country minus depreciation of capital assets, such as machinery and buildings. GNP does not, however, take into account the depreciation of natural resources. For example, a standing forest provides real economic services for people: by conserving soil, cleaning air and water, providing habitat for wildlife, and supporting recreational activities. But as GNP is currently figured, only the value of harvested timber is calculated in the total.
Consequently, a country that overcuts its forests at an unsustainable rate and sells off the wood will show a higher GNP than a country that manages its forests on a sustained-yield basis. Similarly, the faster a country pumps its oil out of the ground and burns it up, the faster its rate of GNP growth. Increases in costs of health care due to pollution are added to the GNP on the positive side of the ledger, rather than subtracted out as liabilities.
The billions of dollars that Exxon spent on the Valdez cleanup -- and the billions spent by Exxon and others on the more than 100 other oil spills in the last several years -- all actually improved our apparent economic performance. Why? Because cleaning up oil spills consumes labor and resources, all of which add to GNP. GNP adds up all production without differentiating between costs and benefits, and is therefore not a very good measure of economic health.
This is nuts. No business that profited in the short run by using up and selling off all its assets would be regarded as a successful venture. As economist Herman Daly put it, "there is something fundamentally wrong in treating the earth as if it were a business in liquidation."
Daly and Cobb (
Other evidence confirms this. Surveys in the US show that despite a doubling in real per capita consumption expenditures since 1957, Americans are no more happy now than they were then -- approximately one-third describe themselves as "very happy" (SOW'91: 156). Certainly increases in material goods and consumption increases happiness up to a point. Beyond some limit, however, there is no evidence that higher levels of consumption lead to more happiness.
The Worldwatch Institute report concludes that "The one billion meat eaters and private automobile drivers are responsible for the lion's share of damage caused to global resources" (p. 156). This suggests two recommendations:
1) Eat food grown close to home: the average bite of food travels 1200 miles to get from field to mouth in the US. Canned corn takes 10 times the energy of fresh corn to reach the dinner plate. Eat less meat. It takes 2500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. In the US, 70% of all grain produced in this country is fed to livestock.
2) Reduce energy consumption. Use energy efficient lighting, heating. Drive less. Ride a bike or walk.
In addition:
3) Reduce, reuse, recycle. Especially, reduce.
4) Don't worry about not being perfect. Don't let the best become the enemy of the good. Do something; move in the right direction. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
5) Lastly, personal changes are important, but not sufficient. Environmental problems are ones that demand political solutions, not just individual ones. The flight from public life over the past two decades has led to a meaner, narrower kind of politics, one that has focused too much on "what's in it for me" and not enough on "what's in it for us." Insist that government and political "leaders" act responsibly.