Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Towards Liberal Environmentalism

Some weeks ago I wrote this post in response to an article by John Dixon asking whether environmental challenges demand a massive illiberal state intervention in people's lives.

I argued that this was not the case because the solutions to the problems we face exist, but we are failing to face up to a moderate increase in costs. I am a little unsatisfied with that answer, because there are two more critical arguments that can be made against John's original "the environment demands socialism" case:

1. Safeguarding the environment is not in fact a single objective that can be pursued 'at all costs' with a war communism kind of mentality. For one, it is many objectives; global warming is not the only problem we face, and the factors contributing to it are diverse. For two, the challenge might be better stated as sustaining ourselves without damaging the environment. Sustaining ourselves is as diverse a goal as it ever was, whatever constraints are applied or not. It is impossible to do well by central planning.

Whether war communism is the best way to fight a war is also worth asking, but as Hayek let it past, so will I for now.

2. What does this suggestion mean:
"It’s going to require radical structural changes in the way our economy and society function. People won’t do this on their own. Government must force the change, whether structurally or by actively moderating our behaviour."?
It's short on specifics, as usual. I was probably too charitable in thinking it referred principally to blunt and illiberal but reasonably effective measures such as rationing. But it could be worse. What if all the things we were told we ought to do - switching things off, modes of transport, consumer choices, and so on - what if the "correct" choice in each case became compulsory? Is this what we are talking about here? That would be active moderation of behaviour and it would be tyranny. And it wouldn't do much good. Why?
  • There's a rule that says "don't leave the TV on standby". There isn't a rule saying don't watch TV. My current TV uses 200W when on and 2W on standby. I can (and would) obey the rule by turning the TV on when I sit down, rather than 5 minutes later when the programme starts. (Using one sixtieth of a unit of electricity instead of one six thousandth of a unit. Big deal.)
  • There's a rule that says "recycle". There isn't a rule that says "don't use stuff at all". Recycling usually has some benefits compared to other means of disposal, but never has any compared to not using stuff in the first place.
  • ...etc. All this advice, don't fly, don't do this or that, probably does good overall, but there will be some unintended consequences. Make the advice compulsory and you will have unintended consequences in spades.

I hope to expand on both of these points in due course. Tristan has reawakened me from my blogging slumber with this post. Work has been heavy lately but I haven't forgotten you.

Tristan correctly identifies that much environmental advocacy seems to presume a collectivist philosophy. It is important to be careful here. I have no doubt that some 'collective' action will be necessary - some government spending is justified. But only in pursuit of a situation in which we are still free to pursue our own goals - to sustain ourselves according to our own desires and values. We won't get there by having the state micromanage us, or by turning well-meaning back-of-an-envelope environmental advice into hard law.

1 comment:

a radical writes said...

Although I've already made a short reply to your earlier post I don't think it would hurt to expand on the subject. What I was arguing was not that greening the economy would require illiberal intervention in people's personal lives but that government would have to act quite heavily in order to prevent climate change that the general population may well not be willing to sign up to and as such we will not be able to deal with climate change. After all as Jon Stewart says it is difficult to nationally mobilize an affluent population at peace time (so war communism is probably off the cards) an example being George Bush telling the American people that the fight in Iraq is the most important battle of their generation and yet being tottally unwilling to nationally mobilize the American people to fight it, (possibly because if he did that they may well start paying attention to George Bush's actions).
I am still concerned however that a government is very likely to have to take unpopular and very radical firm decisions in order to prevent climate change . For example if our government was truly committed to preventing global warming it would have stepped in already to stop the expansion of Heathrow Airport at a bare minimum. Large investments in public transport greener energy (whether nuclear or renewable) and rather heavy handed regulation on pollution is likely to be costly to the tax payer (although some of the effects can be reduced through a 'green tax switch' I admit). Will people be happy not being able to afford yearly holidays for Majorca? Will they not resent having to pay tolls on every single road they come across unless they drive a smaller slower green vehicle? Sure, public transport might become better and capacity increased but more votes will be lost from the taxes required to fund those improvements than the improvements themselves. Parties proposing weaker environemntal controls are likely to be more popular (hence Labour still in power) and as such the drive to be green may well fail as politicians choose popularity over costly decisions like greening the housing market or forcing regulation reducing the number of air miles food has travelled before it reaches super markets (causing inflation).
I am therefore still relatively sceptical as to whether we will be able to meet our targets to stop global warming as the effects of government legislation on greening the economy (whether directly or indirectly) will affect peoples personal lives in a relatively negative way (although certainly not half as much as the affects of global warming will).
However I have been amazed at the change in public opinion over the past couple of years, I remeber picking up a Sun paper a year or two ago and reading words 'green loonies' referring to friends of the Earth, you don't find anything like that now. So maybe there is hope. Also you may be interested in these articles by John Kay. http://www.johnkay.com/regulation/501
http://www.johnkay.com/regulation/499
I feel they are vaguely related