(Some thoughts for the day Kyoto goes into effect. Now fortified with extra-juicy framing at the end, not to mention nifty, highly recommended links, so read on...)
"Externalities" is the term used by economists for costs that a business doesn't bear, but are instead spread over society as a whole. For instance, a mine (say, a lead mine) might have a large pile of tailings (waste) on its property, which leaches out impurities that contaminate the groundwater and surface water. Local residents now have to treat their water before they can drink it, or risk developing illness. Likewise, they cannot eat the few remaining fish in the creek, increasing the cost of living for their family. And when the wind blows, lead from the tailings is carried as dust into their homes, where a portion is eaten, or breathed into their lungs. This results in illness, which may or may not be traced back to the mine; the costs are either borne by the sick person's family, their insurance company, or the state.
How does this tie in to "Blood for oil?" Keep reading after the fold.
Now, the traditional response to this is that the victim of illness in such as case should sue the mine for damages. Even as a teenager I could see that this was an inadequate system because: 1) The victim might die before they won their case. 2) How do you put a price on good health? A child's loss of a parent's love? 3) As if some Joe Sixpack is going to be able to have adequate representation again Amalgamated Mining International? The economic system espoused by Bush and friends is not adequate to deal with these issues in an equitable manner.
So, we came up with organizations like the Public Health Service (later the CDC) and the EPA because, all things considered, it's cheaper for society as a whole to avoid these costs, not to mention the inherent unfairness of victimizing the weakest members of society, who cannot afford to move away from industrial facilities (go Google "environmental justice"). We also developed the class action lawsuit, and lawyers who'd work on contingency to represent the victims, like our dear friend John Edwards. And (supposedly, in most cases) this addressed at least the worst abuses. No one can put out more pollution into the environment than their permit allows; sometimes they have to build tall smokestacks to carry the pollution far away. Nature can handle a certain level of most impurities, after all. "The solution to pollution is dilution" was the classic phrase used to justify this mindset. Problem solved, right?
Wrong. It just delayed the day of reckoning. Now we have a host of "non-point sources" like cars and farms adding their little bits to all the other little bits coming from all the factories making all the iPods and X-Boxes all over the world, and what do we have? A planet under serious ecological stress. (I plan to inflict lots of future diaries on you with the details on the subject.) And socially, we're not in a good place to address issues like air pollution causing asthma in kids, not to mention global warming, because we're all part of the problem. No one (other than the Kosmopolitans) is going to vote for the hair-shirt that wants to put an end to the dance party on the Titanic, or at least not enough people to get the job done. Right? If I really believed that I wouldn't be here; I'd be partying like it's 1999 over with the Freepers. We are the party of optimism and hope for the future; they are full of gloom and foreboding amid their greed because deep down inside they cannot deny reality totally, as much as they try. Why do you think they're really trying to jump-start Armageddon? Because they know how f***ed-up things are and they are too chicken-shit to change it.
[Previously promised framing has started, for all you frame fans out there.]
Additionally, the causes are so intertwined that trying to address them one by one will require a large complex bureaucracy and many laws and "burdensome regulations," virtually guaranteeing the formation of groups to oppose this or that regulation as unfair, destroying jobs, "depriving people of their rights," and creating winners and losers between various industries, depending on who had the most persuasive lobbyist or the deepest campaign war chest. This is the system we created prior to 2000, and we're trying to preserve the remnants of it today against the Barbarian onslaught. Is this the best we can do? I think not.
So what are we to do? Consider a radical idea (radical in the sense of the original meaning of the word, getting to the root of the problem): No more externalities. That's what got us into trouble in the first place, and we're experimentally demonstrating every day that this is a failed model. As reality-based people we need to see that there's no way we can continue on like this. Unfortunately, this will require a major overhaul of the way our economy keeps score. Fortunately (?), right now we're so far out of power we have the chance to explore big ideas while Rome burns on the Republican's watch (until 2006, anyway!). Also, other countries are starting to implement some of these ideas, so we can sell them as just trying to "keep up with the Joneses." And we may be able to implement some of them over time. By 2008 the environment may be in such sorry shape that society is willing to look at the following ideas:
1) Trees are more than wood (as someone who sells wood, Bush might not like this): trees also produce oxygen, which life depends upon, and remove carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere. Swamps are more than muck - they provide natural water purification that prevents the creation of dead zones off our coasts. There are other examples, but the key concept here is ecosystem services. Healthy ecosystems provide environmental support services that are currently not factored into the economy when you hear the latest GDP number. As a result, the economy "does better" when the folks around the lead mine are poisoned - jobs are created in the medical/pharmaceutical industry, for environmental remediation firms, for special education teachers and police to deal with the resulting increase in mentally stunted and juvenile delinquent kids that are produced by lead poisoning, etc. Ain't America grand?
Fortunately, a surprising amount of work has been done on this topic. We just need to get our politicians on board with the 21st century. Change the rules of the game to create a just economy, not just one that maximizes production and the problem will begin to solve itself, without detailed regulations for every industry. The economy is too complicated for that approach to work anymore - the problem is that we've set up goofy ground rules and we're getting exactly what we're paying for. Make environmentally sound policies profitable and you'll get environmental and public health protection out the wazoo.
2) Here's another no-brainer for us reality-based folks: Reward what you want to have happen, and "dis-incentivize" (as Bush might say) what you don't. Want less carbon dioxide in the air? Make it cost. And funnel the money into renewable energy development. But-But-But- That's industrial policy and no one will stand for it! Fine, when our economy is left in the dust by the Europeans, the Japanese, the Canadian, the Brazilians, maybe folks will decide it's OK. Because the big profits and good-paying jobs will go to those who get on board the train before it leaves the station. And it's already in motion - Kyoto has taken effect today for those nations with reality-based governments. Or our economy will fail as surely as the Soviet Union's did. Adapt or die.
The tax can start out surprisingly small (would you believe ONE CENT per gallon of gasoline!) since we use such as huge amount of carbon-based fuels. This can be packaged and sold as energy independence, requiring national sacrifice, so our citizens killed on 9/11 won't have died in vain, and so we won't have to fill our cars with our children's blood. The framing is there for those with the brains and the guts to tell the truth to the American people.
[And you thought I had forgotten about the previously-advertised blood part]
3) But what about emission caps? I thought those were the way to go. Isn't that what's mandated under Kyoto? Emission caps are mandated under Kyoto, but the problem is that the only caps that are politically acceptable are probably going to be ineffective in getting us to where we need to be. Thus the need for a more broad-scale approach to the problem, like the ideas above.
I'm sure there are more ideas, and I'm sure Al Gore will express all this better than me in his speech in LA today, but these two ideas are a good start for the discussion. They by themselves will get us to a far better place than we're headed right now: The global hothouse, where our children die for oil; a cross between Soylent Green and Mad Max, with a dash of Waterworld for those of you near the coast. Do you want your children to live in the first world or the third? The time to choose is now. We are, in fact, choosing every hour of every day. May we have the wisdom to choose wisely.
We now return control of your computer monitor to you, until next week at the same time, when the Control Voice will take you to... another Environmentally-Related Diary