Hey, What Exit? Seen this article about Walmart and solar power? Thought you would be interested:
I’m not sure that you and I mean the same thing by “hands-off”. My understanding is that the oil lobby, for example, is very powerful, and succeeds in obtaining special favor in the form of monetary subsidy and regulatory leverage. Am I mistaken?
Just tossing this out there… How about a statutory solution? What if it were a crime to pollute?
Thank you Una, I had seen a small blurb on it, but this was a much more complete article.
It is promising when huge corporations begin to buy in. They can spend the kind of money that can cause manufacturing to ramp up and result in lower costs. Of course I am always an optimist on these things.
Interesting that the 2 most commonly considered Evil Corporations {Wal-Mart & Microsoft} are both buying into Solar. Is this good or bad PR for Solar Panels?
Jim
Interesting idea, but how to enforce? The EPA often looks like the most toothless Government organization. If it were Federal Law would the FBI be the enforcement arm?
I can just see it “The New FBI, Green Division”, 9pm on Wednesday nights.
Personally I am open to any idea that would actually work. I even like Lemur866’s but I doubt we could start there.
Jim
Well, you could make the emission of greenhouse gases a finable offense-- said fine being payable in the form of… a tax.
Clearly, from an environmental standpoint unbridled development by China and India would be unsustainable. The problem is political, and these two countries will inevitably point westwards and say “Look what you have achieved” rather than “The way you achieved it was wrong”.
Point taken.
I’m curious to know how these mistakes or crimes can be disallowed. What leverage can be applied to discourage them?
As you are aware, compromise involves quid pro quos. What can be offered to India and China in return for their compliance?
In principle I am fully behind your view but again I am curious to know how such penalties can be enforced.
Reviewing this post I might just as well have agreed with you, which I basically do, but I’m interested to know how the political interests of China and India can be reconciled with environmental issues.
CG, who is by no means an eloquent diplomat (or any other kind of diplomat) and who wishes to be educated in political awareness.
Well, trimming some government fat would help a lot, but yes, I would think it would be a law enforcement issue. The EPA would be unnecessary. (Not that a toothless agency is necessary anyway, but still…)
The main incentives I could think of could include such things as:
- Relaxed or zero duties on pollution-control equipment.
- Relaxation of duties on goods produced by factories which can demonstrate and prove a certain level of efficiency.
- Open technology transfer for renewables research (this is mostly open now, but every country holds some of the top of the line stuff close to its breast, like advanced PV cells, bioengineering advances of some biofuels, and some of the cellulosic ethanol processes are heavily patented and protected IIRC).
- Reduced prices for goods which are purchased by the country from countries which have higher energy efficiency in production.
I dunno. That’s what I can think of off the cuff. It sure doesn’t sound like much at first glance.
Una, you’re obviously extremely knowledgable on this topic. I’m curious what you think of the idea What Exit and I are discussing. What about a statutory solution? Simply make pollution a crime. Hold corporate officers responsible for it. Put them in prison when they pollute. And then just let entrepreneurs work independently in competition to find ways to make energy without polluting. That way, solutions can be found for people in rural areas and for people in urban areas without the pitfalls of a central plan trying to cover all.
I don’t know. In theory it’s a good idea. In practice, the effectiveness is limited by the fact that with emissions and pollution legislation, the devil is often in the details. Many non-criminal cases I’ve been involved with where the EPA was pursuing a facility often came down to a misinterpretation of a very Byzantine and sometimes almost incomprehensible law or regulation - sometimes where clients had written documentation from the EPA which clearly contradicted itself (“this chemical is hazardous waste”, “this chemical is not considered hazardous waste”, etc.). Offenses must be very clearly spelled out, in great detail, and pretty unambiguous for fair and effective enforcement to work. Search a bit on how people try to argue over what’s a “hazardous waste” - it’s mind-boggling.
I guess, however, I’m a little confused about the wanting a statutory solution, because there already is one. Many environmental-related regulations do involve substantial legal penalties.
Lying about lead hazards was one I recently was following: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/b1ab9f485b098972852562e7004dc686/a806c9fc8eff77bc852570d60070fc30!OpenDocument
Summaries of Prosecutions: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/reports/endofyear/eoy2005/2005criminalhighlights.html (2005; other years linked from that page)
Also, I’m a bit uneasy about corporate officers being held criminally responsible unless they directly were involved in the violation. I could violate several laws a day and my VP would never know about it. Is that his fault? No, because it’s not possible for him to review in detail thousands of e-mails a day, hundreds of phone calls a day, and tens of thousands of pages of reports per month. No person could possibly do that. That’s why I’m the PE, I have the State license, and my Stamp has the backing of law - I’m responsible - not my VP.
So I don’t know that anything is necessarily lacking except for more investigation personnel and tighter restrictions.
A libertarian approach, maybe? That’s a very lengthy topic, and I cannot discuss it given my work constraints now to do it justice. In general, however, I support strong central regulation of pollution, and to a smaller extent the State regulation framework (even though it can result in a possible Balkanization of such useful tools like emissions allowance markets, possibly leading to less than optimal pollution cleanup).
I’m going to take a slightly different position here. While I do agree that we can and should switch to a carbon negative (Yes, I said “negative.” If we magically stopped all carbon emissions today, we’d still have problems with increasing CO[sub]2[/sub] levels for some time.) society, however a domestic carbon tax is not the way to do it. Period. Paragraph.
Why? Governments are notoriously bad at managing their money (and so are corporations, so free-marketers don’t get smug) and no matter what people say they’ll do with the money, sooner or later, it’ll get diverted from going from developing mass transit, affordable housing, nuclear research, etc., etc., etc. because of this or that “fiscal emergency” and then, when that tax money dries up (since everyone’s migrated away from carbon based fuels), the government won’t simply say, “Eh, whatever.” Nope. They’ll jack up some other tax (or create a new one) in order make up for the lost revenue.
Ah, you say, so what? Wages will adjust and people will be just fine. Not necessarily. The assumption is that any additional costs borne out by converting to greener technology will benefit not only the environment, but the economy as a whole. The question is: Who’s economy? Already companies are shipping jobs off-shore en masse to Third World nations to escape high labor costs and environmental regulations. Make it more expensive for them to operate here, and they’ll pack up and move even faster. Even if we manage to retrain all the newly unemployed folks and get them better paying jobs than they currently have, that does very little to improve the environment. It just shifts the pollution from one country to another (and probably increases it), so no gain for our environment, but certainly a big boost for a Third World economy. Those folks will naturally use their money to buy goods produced by whom? Probably not us.
So, if we’ve got more efficient devices, any enviromental gains can be overridden if the total number of devices in use increases high enough, which it could very well do, if a significant portion of the world’s population which can’t presently afford them is suddenly able to do so. This doesn’t sound very promising to me.
[Ron Popeil] But wait! There’s more! [/RP] What presently happens to all the old, inefficient devices we throw out because they’re broken or obsolete? They either wind up in a landfill (bad for the environment in the case of electronics) or shipped off to Third World nations to be recycled (still bad for the environment since they don’t have stringent environmental regulations). I’m not seeing much, if any, of a gain here at all.
I’ll skip the absolute “gloom and doom” forecast and throw out my ideas for how we can correct the problem without screwing the economy, the environment, or the poor. First and foremost, slap a carbon tax on all goods imported from nations that don’t have air quality regulations at least as stringent as the US. The more lax the regulations, the higher the tax. This will encourage developing nations to adopt stricter regulations, since they’re not going to want to lose the jobs they’ve gained thanks to globalization.
Next, ban incandescent lights. Compact flourescents and white LEDs use less energy and have a much longer life.
Third, require all new building construction to use energy saving materials and double or triple the amount of insulation required.
Fourth, mandate increasing fuel economy on all new vehicles sold.
Fifth, require all new electricity using devices to use energy savings measures (such as completely turning off when not in use, rather than being a “phantom drain”). Sixth, encourage people to grow their own food. During WWI and WWII people were encouraged to grow “Victory Gardens.” This made more farm grown food available for soldiers as well as reduced fuel consumption. It would not only allow for fuel savings, but more plants would absorb more carbon from the atmosphere.
Sixth, mandate that industries replace all electric motors in their equipment every ten years. One of the reasons that Japan was able to gain a market advantage during the 80s is that they started swapping out their old equipment during the oil shocks of the 70s with newer equipment that used less electricity. I’ve worked for a number of companies that were using equipment that dated from the 1970s or before. (My present employer has machines that date from the 1920s! Even if the electric motors on them date from the 1970s, they’re still energy hogs compared to newer motors.)
Seventh, remove all taxes from low carbon fuels.
Eigth, shoot the nuttiest of the environmentalists so no one will bitch when we start building nuclear power plants.
Ninth, require all new buildings to have solar panels on the roof.
Tenth, lower property taxes on housing designs that use things like passive solar, geothermal heating, and other enviromentally friendly measures. (This would include any retrofitting done to existing buildings.)
There’s more, but it’s late, and I’ve got to get to bed.
Sure, but that’s what normative jurisprudence is all about, isn’t it? Determining who should be punished for what and why? It seems to me that a model much like the one here at Straight Dope might have a chance of working better. Our “don’t be a jerk” rule allows our governors (moderators) maximum leverage in interpretation, whereas god knows how many laws and regulations from a wide variety of sources might tend to overlap and even contradict, as you point out. Taking your example, maybe a broader statute, even a solitary one, would give courts the chance to settle whether a waste is hazardous on a case by case basis. Asbestos dumped in a schoolyard in the Bronx, it seems to me, is a whole different animal than asbestos buried by a rancher in Wyoming on his own 4,000 acre estate.
One or thousands? It seems to me that the more complex the statutory labyrinth, the more expensive it is to bring to trial, the more time it takes to sort everything out, the more potential there is for mistakes and injustice, and the more potential there is for unscrupulous but wealthy people who can afford the time and expense to find loopholes and exceptions.
Those were interesting, and it was good to see people punished for aggressing their neighbors.
However, they were only “highlights”, not even a dozen. In a nation of some 300 million people with an economy in the trillions of dollars and with all the environmental problems facing us that we’re discussing here, I had expected to see thousands of prosecutions. Conspicuously absent from the highlights were companies with billions of dollars in assets and large Washington lobbies — like Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and DuPont. Those punished were people like Tyler Pipe Company and Kerrville Painting.
Also noticeably absent were government agents themselves who work for what Sen. Robert W. Kasten Jr. of Wisconsin says is the biggest polluter of all — the federal government. And as I understand it (correct me if I’m wrong), the government shields itself from exposure to this sort of prosecution.
Finally, the link to 2006 took me to a page where the EPA boasted about how much it had reduced these dangers. It did not reveal its methodology, but apparently it bases its self-congratulation on numbers sounding big. It looks like from their charts that it costs them about $5 per pound of pollution (roughly averaging air and water) reduced. But what we can’t tell is how much of the total their numbers represent. Is it substantial or is it a drop in the bucket? Who knows.
Sure. By “holding them responsible” I did not mean to convey “blame them automatically”. I’m a veep myself, and I can’t keep up with everything my coders are doing.
I heartily support both of those, but within the context I explained above of consolidation, deobfuscation, and decentralization.
Well, a decentralized approach, again taking into account the vast differences in needs and practicalities of places and people in a country of this gargantuan size and bewildering variety.
Great posts Tuckerfan & Liberal.
Tuckerfan, I can tell you that despite the very big threat of Global warming, that selling nuclear fission power plants to environmentalist is a very hard sell.
Sierra Club and Green Peace are still against Nuke. The group I am active in has no policy of pro or con, but the individuals runs mostly anti-nuke. I believe I am in a small minority of greens that believes Nuclear Fission is part of the solution.
Jim
Uh, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it already a crime?
It is. But see the discussions between Una and me for context.
Balls, typical! Trust this place to come back with backslaps and an informed and respectful exchange of views when I really wanted to annoy people. (Did I inadvertently include a new tongue-cheeked smiley or something?)
Anyway, Lib, truly a pleasure to bump into you again my friend. I’m afraid that this is just a flying visit from me over the holiday period, but I’ll try and find time in future to return here if an interesting Great Debate turns up, especially if it features your good self. (There seems to be some ugly Them & Us-ing going on in the philosophy threads here, especially on the part of Absence-Believers, and I seem to remember your fondness for a quote from my favourite living philosopher Dan Dennett about there being nothing worse than seeing your own position argued badly.)
Anyway, I won’t immerse myself in this particular debate about whether state action will actually succeed in ameliorating the future effects of emissions to date or of preventing further emissions in future. All I will point out is firstly that this is, truly, a Problem of the Commons to beat all such Problems, so removed are the consequences to other people from one’s own actions - asking people to voluntarily turn the A/C off for the sake of someone halfway round the world is like asking them not to claim “property” in the first place. And secondly, the poor are precisely the people who will be fucked most utterly and completely by climate change, be they in the lower ninth ward of a major US city or the lower half of Bangladesh.
We can’t know how much Anthropogenic Climate Change contributed to Katrina. All that climatologists are saying is that tragedies like it will happen more often in future, and much more often without action on emissions. Yes, we must continually ask people, especially the poor, “How are you coping with the new measures?” and seek ways of helping them out. But always remember that it is all so that we don’t end up asking them:
Which uninsured house was yours?
Not sure about the Great Debates thing, Sentient. I was warned there (cautioned, bitch-slapped, whatever it is to be labelled) just a few days after I returned for supplying a link to a Pit thread. I’m a bit gun-shy at this point about posting there lest I run afoul of some other apparently ad hoc rule or guideline. So I’m mostly here and in Cafe. I do miss discussions with you, though.
I’m delighted to hear that you like Dennet. I wouldn’t say that he’s my favorite, but he’s probably the best writer among the current lot of philosophers. See you around.
(FYI, the quote is, “There’s nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.”)
The problem with a “don’t be a jerk” rule for pollution is that there’s no way to opt out. The Straight Dope is a private message board. They can have any sort of rules they like, and if we don’t like it we’re free to go to some other message board. A restaurant or message board with arbitrary rules isn’t a problem, because we can go to another one, and places that don’t serve their customers will eventually close up shop.
But governments don’t work that way. If the Straight Dope moderators had the power to take away your freedom or your property, suddenly arbitrary power isn’t so nice. The historical record on the use of arbitrary power by goverment officials isn’t enouraging.
A point well taken. Of course, I would recognize the natural freedom of man to give or withhold his consent to be governed as he pleases. However, I realize that my views on that would be tagged “impractical” or some such here, so I won’t push it for fear of a derailing. Instead, I’ll deal with the notion of “arbitrary”.
I submit that what I’m recommending is no more arbitrary than what is in place. Even though judicial interpretion can be more arbitrary with a broad rule than many narrow ones, the advocacy of the narrow rules can itself be arbitrary, as can the legislation of them. In other words, a high-powered expensive attorney might be more likely find a loophole or technicality to benefit his client than a public defender or prosecutor. And so it becomes arbitrary which rule buried among many others is to be applicable. Likewise, those who write the rules may choose to write rules that benefit their benefactors. If a court is required to apply a statute — even one commonly known — then bias and arbitration can be built into the rule itself.
On the other hand, if interpretation is broad, then it becomes not a matter of which lawyer is slicker than which, but of which interpretations the governed find most palatable, so long as the governed are in charge of who does the interpreting. Given that popular election of arbiters (judges) is not to be, then it falls to the people to impress upon their legislators the importance of the judicial appointment confirmation process.
Also, decentralization of the legislative and judicial processes would go far toward ameliorating your concern. If the pollution laws of rural Idaho do not suit you, then you may go to another state, or even to Boise, just as you may go to another restaurant. Not an ideal solution, certainly, since you may have longstanding ties and property improvements that you will have to abandon. But if you are to be governed without your consent, then that is the best you’re going to get.