Green Greed is Good

Today being Earth Day, I had the pleasure (and/or annoyance) of having pretty much every e-mail in my inbox reference Earth Day in the subject line. Most of them were boring and standard ("Happy Earth Day," "Earth Day Resolutions," "Call Your Senator/Representative This Earth Day," or "It's Earth Day: Give Us Money!"), but one of them really stood out, and it was from one of my favorite daily newsletter senders: Urban Dictionary. Their tagline: "Green Greed."

Urban Dictionary defines Green Greed as "companies and people who don't care about the environment at all, except when it will make them money."

So that got me thinking: is green greed really that big of a problem? Sure, I won't pretend I'm not irked to see GM hopping on the green bandwagon (and making crazy money on it) after they spent 20 years convincing people to buy giant, unnecessary gas guzzling SUV's and after literally killing the electric car. But that fact of the matter is that with the help of GM, people will have more access to green transportation over the next few years then they would have if GM hadn't gotten on the bandwagon. At the end of the day, that's all that really matters right?

As I've said before, I do enjoy some things that aren't good for the environment, and it seems to me that the best way to make sure those things get greener, and the best way to make sure those greener versions get into the hands of ordinary 'Mericans, is to applaud green greed. That doesn't mean we need to forgive GM their sins, that we shouldn't take them to task for the problems they still have, or even that we need to be their #1 cheerleader. But as far as I am concerned, why companies go green is not nearly as important as that they do go green.

You know what -- I think that is my Earth Day resolution. To paraphrase the immortal Gordon Gekko: green greed is good -- just don't forget who you're dealing with.

The Story of Stuff Gets NYT Shout Out

The Story of Stuff is an extremely well made, concise video from Annie Leonard and the good people over at Free Range Studios (also of Meatrix Fame), exposing the pitfalls of our uber-consumer society. This video has been around for some time, but I felt it deserved it's own blog post today since the NYT felt it deserved a full article in their lovely publication. The article is about how schools are using The Story of Stuff to encourage conversations in classrooms around the nation about rampant consumerism and its relation to environmental and social ills. Amazingly, most texbooks still make no mention of this fact, and at least one modern civics textbook mentioned in the article has only 3 paragraphs on global warming. In other words, this video is sorely needed, and I am glad it is getting the viewership it deserves. If you haven't seen it yet, please check it out for yourself:



I have said it before and I'll say it again: I have no inherent problem with "stuff." I don't necessarily share some environmentalists view that all stuff is bad. I happen to own several things (ie. "stuff") including but not limited to my bike, my computer, my comfortable bed and my snowboard, that I very much enjoy. In fact, while I am slightly more embarrassed about this, I even have a large TV that I have no immediate plans of giving up and that makes me very happy (especially when the Lakers are winning in HD).

That being said, buying stuff for the sake of having stuff, letting old stuff go by the wayside and throwing it in the trash so you can have new stuff, or just in general buying more stuff than you can possibly ever use is NOT GOOD. It is not good for society, it is not good for the planet, and it is not good for our wallets. "Stuff," like everything else, needs to be consumed in moderation.

Government Incentives Can Be A Good Thing

This post is a little more political than I usually like to get (at least on this blog) but I just finished reading a great article on energy efficiency and why some direct government involvement is necessary to make that happen, and I thought the article deserved a shout out. You can read the full article and it's in-depth awesomeness here (Energy Efficiency), but the main points are that:

• Resource intelligence (aka energy efficiency) is profitable. Study after study (after study) shows that homes and businesses have available a range of investments, technologies, and practices that cut energy use and pay handsome returns. (For example, this three-year study of efficiency in buildings.)

• Resource intelligence isn’t happening on its own. Despite the aforementioned studies, people aren’t taking advantage of the opportunities at anything close to the available scale. The low-hanging fruit stubbornly remains unplucked. (Maybe because the people looking at that fruit aren't doing enough synergizing and social media research)
  

• Resource intelligence is central to the climate/energy challenge. The International Energy Agency describes a scenario for achieving 450 ppm (the widely shared though likely inadequate target for atmospheric concentrations of CO2). Of the emission reductions they project, energy efficiency is responsible for 54%.

• There’s need for public-private partnerships to restructure markets or create new ones. Market economics leads to a somewhat passive view of public life, wherein our collective welfare is entrusted to markets, to millions of allegedly rational individuals. But here we have a problem—the deterioration of the atmosphere—that presents us with great urgency, and a solution—resource intelligence—that requires our active intervention.

Basically, we have a situation where a 100% rational person would be investing in energy efficiency, but they aren't for any number of reasons, some good and some completely ridiculous. In order to get these people to make the decisions which are good for their health, their wallets and the environment as a whole, we need to educate them and/or give them some more incentives. Sounds good to you? Me too.

China Wants Importers to Cover Emission Costs

Chinese officials, speaking about the current negotiations on a worldwide climate change treaty, said Monday that anyone importing Chinese goods should be held responsible for the carbon dioxide emitted by the factories that make them:

"About 15 percent to 25 percent of China's emissions come from the products which we make for the world, which should not be taken by us," said Gao Li, director of China's Department of Climate Change.

Oh-oh. Looks like our cheap Chinese labor – and the amazing gadgets and toys it produces – are about to get a whole lot more expensive.

Gao added that "this share of emission should be taken by the consumers, not the producers" and called the demand a "very important item to make (for a) fair agreement."

This is a very interesting proposal which reflects an equally inconvenient truth – a large portion of China’s carbon emissions come from manufacturing, and a large portion of that manufacturing is for products which are not consumed in China. However, this deal has a few ways of working, none of which work nearly as well as a straight carbon tax. My flow charts:

Carbon tax > More expensive for companies to operate > Higher costs passed on to the consumer > Chinese government get more money. Grade = A

Or

China makes no changes at all > Importers have to pay a carbon tax > Higher costs passed on to the consumer > Someone gets this money, but it is not necessarily the Chinese government. Grade = B

Or

China makes no changes at all > Importers make no changes at all > Importing countries are required to offset the emissions > Importing countries do nothing as they are already struggling to meet their own carbon reduction goals > The world gets hotter until we all die. Grade C-

Once again, it is very important to understand that China is getting a really bad deal no matter what happens. While we (we being the West, and America in particular) were industrializing, we spewed tons of carbon into the air, basically causing the situation we are in now. Now that China is industrializing, we are trying to stick them with the same responsibilities we have in cleaning up this mess, even though they caused a significantly smaller part of it. Even though we are spewing roughly the same amount of carbon today, the lifetime carbon footprint of our respective countries is still skewed way in favor of American output. Additionally, on a per capita basis, America still spews 3x as much CO2 into the atmosphere as China does.

While I think China is essentially trying to get off the hook by proposing what I am almost certain is the #3 scenario above, we all need to recognize that Western countries have a much bigger responsibility here than the Chinese. Getting them involved in the process is very important, but it is no excuse to stop taking action on our own right away.

Image provided by Rennett Stowe

BoyScouts Log Their Land

Wow -- this is just so sad to see. What we have here is probably the pre-eminent conservation group selling of the lands given to them for educational purposes to make a quick buck. A great example of when an organization can't be trusted to do what is best for the environment:

Scout Council Defends Logging

Image provided by World Resources Institute Staff