Reduce and reuse before you offset

Roll on the carbon tax. Let the polluters pay and pass the dissavings on to us, the customers.

I’ve decided to fart less.

I figure a fifty percent reduction in emissions should help global warming no end (no pun intended). If it achieves little else, it will at least make me feel smug – smugger?

I believe there are a lot of people who would welcome a rise in teleconferencing and a reduction in business travel. Far from being a pleasure and adventure, business travel in the US is often a dreary round of Applebee’s and mid-priced hotels near airports. Whee. I bet there are lots of us who don’t even need the environmentalist excuse to welcome a less travel-intensive business culture. Many people would rather spend that time with their families (or pets, or outside interests).

Far harder (not even really do-able, IMO) is persuading people with far-flung families and loved ones that they should’t travel to visit them. It’s one thing to cut back on business travel, it’s quite another to say you shouldn’t take the kids to visit their grandparents, or your homesick spouse his or her homeland. And chances are, your family isn’t going to take “I’m sorry, I can’t visit you, it’s bad for the planet” very well.

Certain kinds of travel are far more easy to cut back on than others. We live in such a global society (cliche, but true) that I doubt it would be feasible to eliminate travel, or go back to the 14th century and all of us live, marry and die within our villages.

When I lived in New York in 2004, I was invited to give a talk in Cambridge Mass, and asked whether I wanted to travel by train or rather fly. I was utterly shocked – it’s only a few hours by train… as long as flying on such a short distance is considered sane, some people’s mindsets do need to be rebooted.

I like the idea of pro-actively trying to cluster different talks and visits together.

I think it is really stupid that Australia hasn’t long ago accepted the benefits of videoconferencing, telecommuting etc. People fly huge distances from one capital city to another to discuss the problem of dying rural communities and the answer is right there – move the responsible government department into the country and find a way to make teleconferencing and distributed decision-making work. If ever a nation needed to get that right, it’s Australia.

I don’t eat meat and haven’t since I was 18, nor do I drive a car. I figure that gives me a lot of carbon offsets I can burn how I like. John, if you really care about how your personal consumption habits affect this issue, eat a quarter as much meat. But my personal preference is to make air travel cost more, and find ways to get businesses to do it less. Why should we forgo our holidays because some stupid business is making Ingrid fly on a perfectly reasonable bus trip?

Ingrid, I had the same experience as you with an overnight trip to canberra. My work insisted I fly, even though it was a 3 hour bus trip. It cost them more, but the wierd thing is they had no problem with me crashing on my friend’s floor and pocketing the per diem. Their reasoning was clearly stated – only plebs catch the bus.

Since nobody else has pointed it out…

Immanuel Kant, who is responsible for, among other things, this site’s name, managed to have a brilliant international career without ever leaving Königsberg. And all without videoconferencing.

“Roll on the carbon tax.”

Indeed, although it might not change things quite as much as some think.

Stern told us the social cost of CO2 was $85 per tonne. Thus the tax should be that much. That’s 11 p on a litre of petrol: and UK fuel duty is already north of 50 p per litre. And it’s been raised by 23p per litre since 1993 specifically (as part of the fuel duty escalator) to pay for said emissions.
Or Air Passenger Duty. On a pure emissions basis (ie, not using the still slightly controversial 3 times multiplier for CO2 emissions at altitude) this is roughly correct on the Stern CO2 numbers (£20 on the half tonne my short haul flight next week will emit).

If we accept the basic logic of Pigou Taxes, that as long as people are indeed paying the full costs (including externalities and social costs) of their actions no further action need be taken it would appear that the UK’s transport sector has already solved the problem.

Dave, more like he’s being Tim Worstall.

Ingrid: “When I lived in New York in 2004, I was invited to give a talk in Cambridge Mass, and asked whether I wanted to travel by train or rather fly. I was utterly shocked – it’s only a few hours by train… as long as flying on such a short distance is considered sane, some people’s mindsets do need to be rebooted.”

Considering the h*ll that so many airports are, and the additional h*ll of getting to and from the airport, I can’t see flying for a 3-hour train trip.

Far from being a pleasure and adventure, business travel in the US is often a dreary round of Applebee’s and mid-priced hotels near airports.

Don’t forget the TSA, which I’ve become convinced has been taken over by a bunch of environmentalists intent on stopping global warming by sabotaging air travel.

Because the point of such taxation isn’t to raise funds to develop new technologies, nor is it in fact to stop climate change. It’s to ensure that we get the socially optimal amount of it.

Which means the same thing, for amounts falling within the estimated tolerable range. Basically, the rest is merely pompous flabble disguising the point that, come what may, whatever the arguments, whatever the facts, Tim will still line up with the deniers, because that’s the political identity he chooses to maintain.

Not being completely stupid, he has permitted the flat earthers to drift further to his right, and he’s now even tracking relatively to the left of the Lomborgian psuedo-middle way, but he’s still in the party of no.

Leaving would require a metric shitload of cognitive dissonance, and anyway would queer his gig with TCS.

‘But my personal preference is to make air travel cost more, and find ways to get businesses to do it less’.

Taxation is not the answer and it’s strange to see people on a liberal blog advocate flat VAT style taxes, which are inevitably regressive. The answer is to work out some points system, and then use that in some form of income tax style way, such that rich people who travel a lot (or better still, rich companies who insist that their employees travel a lot) pick up the bill.

The other way to do it, and this is not an either/or is simply to legally limit the amount of flights (or air miles) people can take each year. Indeed if global warming really takes hold, I would imagine that by 2050 or so flat bans on non-essential flights for everybody will be a necessity.

@22: Yes, definitely, if there is going to be a limit placed on flyer miles/travel that will have to be directed especially at companies. I could see allotting companies X number of miles per year that their employees could take for business travel.

Otherwise, if there are legal limits on travel miles directed solely at individuals – I could see a situation where a person would be forced to use his or her travel allottment all on business travel, leaving nothing left over for family or pleasure use. “You flew to Podunk twice, and East Jesus Nowhere three times for business? Why no, you cannot fly to see your father who is dying of cancer! Tough noogies – you’ve reached your limit!” Poorly thought-out and enforced travel rationing could end up this way, and would go over like the proverbial lead balloon.

I made the decision not to get on planes for holidays a few years ago – this is tough my family live part time in India, my brother in Thailand and until very recently my sister in Sri Lanka. Trying to make this commitment without coming across as being overly sanctimonius or judgemental, in a family that loves to travel, is very tough. Even harder is trying to convince yourself that a trip to Hadrian’s Wall in November is as relaxing as two weeks in Southern India. Ho hum.

I’d give up flying for work before I’d give up flying to see family. Besides, if you not flying to see them just means they’re going to fly to see you, there’s no net savings, and maybe even a net loss if there are more of them flying your way than there would be the other way around.

In a stunning investigation, NOVA reports on the discovery that the amount of sunlight reaching Earth is dropping–a big surprise given international concern over global warming. Less sunlight might hardly seem to matter when our planet is stewing in greenhouse gases, but the discovery of global dimming has led some scientists to claim that the earth’s climate is heating up much faster than most previous predictions.

Scientists have long known that increasing air pollution endangers our respiratory health. But they had not fully considered the impact of pollution on the amount of sunlight reaching Earth. Some scientists now believe that global dimming may disturb rainfall patterns and contribute to severe droughts and famines.

The good news is that, in some regions, pollution controls have slowed and possibly even halted global dimming during the last decade. The bad news–and the ironic twist in this story–is that without pollution, we will no longer have the cooling effects of global dimming. Instead, we may be confronted with the true power of global warming, which we may have seriously underestimated due to the dimming sun.

http://shop.wgbh.org/product/show/8561

True, it is a few hours by train, but these are not Euro-train-hours… rarely have I taken Amtrak (or gone to a train station to pick up someone taking Amtrak) that the train was not fabulously lately.

The real solution for Boston-NYC is Feng Wah and its epigones, of course.

Try again. I ride Amtrak often between NYC and Boston, and find it very good about keeping to schedule. I’ve never been significantly late, and am generally right on time.

Fung Wah is fine if you don’t mind the bus catching fire sometimes. Still, there are competitive bus services springing up at only somewhat higher fares.

Shorter Timmeh: Climate change won’t cost anything, and if it will the market will price it in, and despite this the government report I poured hate and scorn at the time accurately estimates it, not that that this means doing anything, so let’s do nothing, QED!

Shorter me: Fuck you.

Far harder (not even really do-able, IMO) is persuading people with far-flung families and loved ones that they should’t travel to visit them. […] And chances are, your family isn’t going to take “I’m sorry, I can’t visit you, it’s bad for the planet” very well.

Tough. I live 12,000 km from my parents, and we see each other every weekend via video link (iChatAV). Works fine; they get to see the kids, we get to chat about the latest (which generally isn’t all that much), and we see each other more than we ever did when we were living in the same city.

People need to grow up. It wasn’t that long ago that mom & dad would gather up the kids, get on a boat, and head off for a new life in a new land, and the folks behind would never hear from them again. Or, at best get a letter once in a blue moon, if the winds and tides were favourable.

Telecommunications technology now keeps us in constant, almost excessive contact; there’s no longer an excuse for physically travelling back to the homestead more than once every few years, at best.

You may, like me and I suspect many others, detest the pointless shit that is ‘western consumer culture’, but without it, a significant percentage of all of us would be unemployed and penniless.

I don’t think so — I don’t think you really detest it. Look around your room. What do you see? How much of it consists of products of ‘western consumer culture’? If you’re like me, nearly all of it. How much is ‘pointless shit’? I’m having a hard time seeing any pointless shit. Around me I see:

* a few hundred books
* a couple computers and related gear (printer, scanner, cable-modem, wireless router, etc).
* an MP3 player, headphones
* a cell phone, a regular phone.
* a digital camera
* a guitar
* an electric razor, sunglasses, a bottle of sunscreen
* pens, pencils, a swiss army knife, a stapler
* a desk, an office chair, a sofa
* a briefcase, a backpack
* a coffee mug
* lamps, speakers, a rug, a waste-basket

So as I sit here, I am surrounded by mass-produced products of western consumer culture (and so, probably, are you). Which things do you think are ‘pointless shit’? Because if I stop to think about it, I’m amazed. What a fantastic collection of artifacts of human ingenuity and creativity there is in my little office here. Seriously.

And the same for travel — I’ve loved the places and people around the world I’ve visited. Let’s not pretend we’re giving up nothing of value when we contemplate the end of that. Life was NOT better when relatives who moved away were never heard from again and most people spent their entire lives in a 50 mile radius.

Umm, pointless shit like buying a new 60″ HDTV because the 42″ one you bought last year isn’t exciting enough; pointless shit like replacing that phone and MP3 player as often as you can be persuaded to do so with new, marginally different but indisputably more shiny models; pointless shit like that, and like any of those other profligate, self-indulgent habits which a multi-billion advertising industry is dedicated to getting us to continue?

I mean, duh. And since my point was that we’d ALL be up shit creek, economically, if the general population did in fact stop wasting its money, and that’s the system we’re in whether we like it or not, I find your reply simple-minded in the extreme.

Nobody [barring a few, statistically insignificant, domestic accidents] NEEDS a new TV in the next 12 months, but can you imagine the economic impact if no one BOUGHT a new TV for a year? Or a new car, on the same premise? When an economy cannot function without encouraging people to put themselves into debt in order to own things they don’t need [one trillion pounds of personal debt in the UK]; that’s pointless shit.

I think you could live quite comfortably with the one computer and without the mp3 player, the cell phone, and the electric razor, for starters.

But mere comfort is a pretty low standard–even though, of course, for most of human history even that was rare. That it is widely available now (in the developed world, anyway) is, itself, an outcome of consumer culture and mass-production.

But why (other than your own aesthetics) do single out the cell phone but not the land-line phone as unnecessary? Or, come to that, why pick on the cell-phone and not the internet connection? And why the MP3 player and not other forms of recorded music? And my understanding is that electric razors have a smaller energy footprint (when you account for the years hot water and shaving cream used during the life of an electric).

But in any case, ‘unnecessary for comfort’ isn’t the same at all as ‘pointless shit’, is it?

No doubt. The question is, at what price do we continue to manufacture billions of these amusing little trinkets? In the absence of unlimited energy and resources, I submit that a culture that values cool toys over fundamental requirements has a skewed sense of priorities.

Well, at least you’ve upgraded your estimation from ‘pointless shit’ to ‘amusing little trinkets’ to ‘cool toys’, so that’s a lot of progress in a short time. But even there — it’s a big stretch to call anything my list a ‘toy’ or ‘trinket’ except maybe the iPod*.

I just don’t understand the advantage of sneering.

But whether you sneer or not, the answer is the same — price the resource usage into the products and let people decide on their priorities (and let the manufacturers figure out how to minimize the resource usage to keep the prices down).

——————
*What the hell is it about lefties and iPods? They all have ’em and use them all the time, but they seem to love to trash them. But when you compare my tiny little 2 oz iPod with the receiver, turn-table, tape deck, speakers, and hundred pounds of vinyl I used to have (or even the huge stack of CDs), obviously the iPod represents a vast reduction in resource usage. Not even taking into account the fact you don’t have to physically ship recordings around the world and schlep them home from the store. No need for the factories, or distribution centers, or fleets of trucks, or record stores. Isn’t the MP3 player the perfect example of how we can keep (or even improve) the function while drastically reducing the footprint?

Mike @ 34 et seq.:

“Once you’ve tasted turkey, you ain’t gonna settle for tripe.” –Jed Clampett, “The Beverly Hillbillies”

Aren’t you just reformulating the broken windows fallacy here?

Eh?

I was recalling, amongst other things, the near-legendary exhortation of GWB to the American consumer after 9/11 to keep shopping….

It remains the case, and I fail to see what bearing any of slocum’s remarks have on that case, that the pointless extravagance of the consumer marketplace is what keeps the global economy functioning at its enormously high level of activity, and that any trend of large numbers of individuals towards a more considered, long-term approach to their own needs and desires, especially in relation to any, entirely laudable, aspirations to consume less at an absolute level, could and would be disastrous.

If, say, the replacement cycle for new cars dropped from whatever it is now to, say, twice as long – when cars do, after all, have a very long lifespan after their first user passes them on – what impact would that have on the auto manufacturing sector? Or, ceteris paribus, if only half as many people this year as last replaced their washing machines, or their fridges? And if that effect was duplicated across all the other consumer-durable sectors, while people also spent half as much on long-haul holidays, etc etc…

After all, isn’t that spread of prudence and caution exactly what the US financial system is desperately hoping won’t happen, and probably already has, re. housing?

Will someone explain how I’m wrong, and how the global economy will keep going just fine if extravagant consumer habits end? I’m not pleased about this, y’know, but it does seem to be the reality of the situation. I’d be, in fact, quite glad if it wasn’t.

p.s. I’m Dave, the other guy was Mike, you’re confusing us – both four letters, tough I know.

any trend of large numbers of individuals towards a more considered, long-term approach to their own needs and desires, especially in relation to any, entirely laudable, aspirations to consume less at an absolute level, could and would be disastrous.

Economic growth does not require ever increasing tons of pig iron and cement. Economic growth is perfectly compatible with lighter, smarter, more efficient, better (and also tastier, prettier, and safer).

Except for houses and cars, virtually every manufactured product one buys now requires less in raw materials than the equivalent product did 25 years ago. And houses and cars have certainly shrunk before (while still continuing to improve).

If, say, the replacement cycle for new cars dropped from whatever it is now to, say, twice as long – when cars do, after all, have a very long lifespan after their first user passes them on – what impact would that have on the auto manufacturing sector?

But the replacement cycle for new cars has steadily lengthened as cars have become more reliable:

http://www.wheels.ca/article/191892

And it really doesn’t matter how long the original purchaser keeps the vehicle, what matters is the overall service life. (On the other hand, how long do you really want the current low MPG fleet to last)?

Right. Substituting skilled labor for raw materials is a gain from just about every perspective.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, in 50 or 75 years, the US employs several times more people in agriculturee than currently, with much higher per-acre yields and much lower inputs of fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers.

Yes, I’d agree…sort of. I’d expect the skilled labor in R&D rather than in farming itself. I’d expect to see higher per-acre yields and lower inputs of fossil fuels, chemical fertlizer, and farm-workers — but higher inputs of ag engineers, plant geneticists, entomologists, etc. I’d not be at all surprised to see autonomous farm equipment, for example (a much easier problem to solve than the Pentagon’s effort to create autonomous road vehicles). Hell, make that solar-powered autonomous farm equipment.

I’d expect the skilled labor in R&D rather than in farming itself.

I would say “in addition to,” not “rather than,” but for the purpsoes of this discussion the poit is the same.

Of course, silly me, I was forgetting. Technology and free markets will save us. Thanks for clearing that up.