# Red isn't green
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [January 19, 2015, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316 "2015-01-19T22:02:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2015, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/61 "2015-01-29T23:19:46Z")
I think that environmentalism does require a certain degree of collectivism. The problem the problem of pollution really comes down to the tragedy of the commons and external costs, which a unregulated free market system will have difficulty accounting for. In order to for the benefits of a clean environment to be fully realized it is necessary that producers be made to recognize the needs of the larger society and not just their individual bottom line.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2015, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/62 "2015-01-29T23:57:53Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#):
>
> I think that environmentalism does require a certain degree of collectivism. The problem the problem of pollution really comes down to the tragedy of the commons and external costs, which a unregulated free market system will have difficulty accounting for. In order to for the benefits of a clean environment to be fully realized it is necessary that producers be made to recognize the needs of the larger society and not just their individual bottom line.
Well, that’s not even collectivism, it’s just taxation-and-regulation.
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### Author:  [@Lemmytheseal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemmytheseal2)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/63 "2015-01-30T04:46:39Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#):
>
> Yes there is, and David Schweickart mentioned it in as many words. The value of an additional employee for a company is presumed to be less than the value of the employee before him; after all, there’s less work for him to do. A normal, capitalistic company will keep hiring employees until the benefit of hiring another employee is exactly equal to the salary and costs (e.g HR, liability) of the employee. The amount of employees hired in this system is efficient, and the company is optimally sized, being able to deliver goods or services at the lowest price.
>
> An employee owned company, however, would not hire this last employee–he would add only a negligible amount of profit to the company, while he would mean the profits were split between another person, reducing them for everyone else. So an employee-run company would be inefficiently small, because the employees are seeking to maximize their own and not total profit.
>
> This shouldn’t be very controversial–this is basically what David Schweickart said in the quote you provided.
What’s missing from this discussion is the intense hostility that sections of power and privilege have towards this sort of thing. Additionally, capitalism in the real world entails capitalists colluding with one another and with the state, resulting in a situation where it’s extremely difficult to get these kinds of alternatives off the ground. That shouldn’t be necessary, as workers already are the ones without whose toil these various enterprises wouldn’t exist.
Despite all the messaging about how “there is no alternative” to neoliberal capitalism, you will notice that in times of crisis workers often instinctively know that their workplaces really ought to belong to them by now. Since these workers and their families and friends (or perhaps fellow workers elsewhere) are the ones who will bear (and are bearing) the brunt of environmental devastation, they will have every incentive to not destroy the environment.
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/64 "2015-01-30T05:07:26Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> Wow, so Maggie Thatcher was an environmentalist way back even before environmentalism was a thing! 😃
>
> Tell me, what would you call the economic forces that are behind the likes of the powerful and secretive lobby American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity that is pushing for expanded coal use, the economic forces that are behind the American Petroleum Institute and the oil companies that are pushing for boundless drilling and fracking while opposing emissions regulations, that are pushing for rapid expansion of the Canadian tar sands while contaminating air, land, and water with pollutants, CO2, and toxic tailings ponds, that are pushing for the Keystone XL pipeline and pipelines across the whole of Canada both east and west? What would you call the economic forces that are behind the sordid bill mill called the [American Legislative Exchange Council](http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed) through which industry lobbyists own and control politicians and which recently stepped up to a new level its efforts to [thwart any and all environmental regulations](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fossil-fuel-lobbyists-bolstered-by-gop-wins-work-to-curb-environmental-rules/2014/12/07/3ef05bc0-79b9-11e4-9a27-6fdbc612bff8_story.html) both at federal and state levels? What would you call the motivations of the Koch brothers to fund campaigns against climate science and against environmental regulation, and the propensity of Koch Industries to engage in flagrant and illegal environmental abuses and frequently get charged and fined for them? I’d call it the intrinsic motivations of capitalism. What would you call it?
None of that in any way addresses the point I made in post 51. You said that capitalism “pushes for maximum extraction of oil, gas, and coal”. This is not true. In a pure capitalist system, a profit seeking corporation would seek to extract a barrel of oil or ton of coal if it was profitable, and not if it was unprofitable. Enormous amounts of fossil fuel exist that can’t be extracted for profit. A capitalist system would leave these in the ground.
If the government is making decisions, either through direct control or subsidies or any other means, we have no guarantee that the oil and coal will stay in the ground when it’s unprofitable to remove them. The government may well decide to extract and burn them even if it loses a great deal of money by doing so. I have already given an example where this was the case.
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### Author:  [@Lemmytheseal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemmytheseal2)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/65 "2015-01-30T05:54:19Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#):
>
> None of that in any way addresses the point I made in post 51. You said that capitalism “pushes for maximum extraction of oil, gas, and coal”. This is not true. In a pure capitalist system, a profit seeking corporation would seek to extract a barrel of oil or ton of coal if it was profitable, and not if it was unprofitable. Enormous amounts of fossil fuel exist that can’t be extracted for profit. A capitalist system would leave these in the ground.
>
> If the government is making decisions, either through direct control or subsidies or any other means, we have no guarantee that the oil and coal will stay in the ground when it’s unprofitable to remove them. The government may well decide to extract and burn them even if it loses a great deal of money by doing so. I have already given an example where this was the case.
Good point, but I can think of quite a few people who would love to extract and burn fossil fuels for spite.
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/66 "2015-01-30T06:17:32Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> Then what is your point of disagreement, if any, with Naomi Klein?
There are many. The fact that I support some environmental regulation does not make me in agreement with her belief that our entire economic system needs to change.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/67 "2015-01-30T11:31:58Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#):
>
> There are many. The fact that I support some environmental regulation does not make me in agreement with her belief that our entire economic system needs to change.
Well, she’s only calling for that in very vague and general and moral terms, isn’t she? Nothing as specific as “nationalize the oil companies.”
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/68 "2015-01-30T11:44:22Z")
It won’t solve everything…but I think much of the big, long-term solution to the most pressing environmental issues require a 50-50 partnership between governments and businesses (with consumers/voters a driving force behind both).
The clearest example is carbon trading. For all its imperfections, it’s (IMHO) a good tool. And it requires governments to set and enforce caps, and to help set up the system; but then most of the action occurs through the mechanics of capitalism.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/69 "2015-01-30T12:22:34Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> These are both right on. Naomi Klein is a bright lady who’s written a very thoughtful book and the OP completely misses its point. It’s not against capitalism, it’s against unfettered capitalism, and it’s not promoting “socialism” except to the extent analogous to which progressive social programs **in capitalist societies** like the US and UK were enabled in the past by crises analogous to climate change.
Thank you, **wolfpup**. It’s good to see Naomi Klein finally get some discussion here.
I just did a search to see what mentions she’s had here at SDMB. Although she had earlier mentions, throughout all of 2012 there were _ **zero** _ mentions of Naomi Klein – none at all. In 2013 there were only **GIGObuster** and myself who ever posted on her at all. **wolfpup** joined in and, in mid-2014, **Wesley Clark** posted on Naomi Klein, as did **UY Scuti**. Such a dearth of commentary on this most influential and provocative intellectual makes one doubt that SDMB is particularly intelligent or liberal – certainly it can’t be both.
One other Doper mentions Naomi Klein frequently. For example, from the thread started by **Wesley Clark** :
> [@How can the economic crisis be used as a leninist strategy to promote progressive policies](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-economic-crisis-be-used-as-a-leninist-strategy-to-promote-progressive-policies/688484/6):
>
> … Naomi Klein tells lies constantly throughout the book. …
> Klein says that Milton Friedman was an “adviser” to Augusto Pinochet. This is an outright lie. In their entire lives Pinochet and Friedman met only once for a few minutes, and there is zero evidence that Pinochet was ever influenced by Friedman’s ideas.
One doesn’t need Klein’s book to know that the “Chicago Boys” were a major influence on Pinochet. It’s happily acknowledged by some SDMB libertarians, as well as by a libertarian website:
[QUOTE=[The Economist and the Dictator](http://reason.com/archives/2006/12/15/the-economist-and-the-dictator)]
For years, the University of Chicago had a program in partnership with the Catholic University of Chile providing scholarships to Chileans to study at Chicago. Pinochet’s economic advisers were thus University of Chicago-trained, and known as the “Chicago Boys.” But Friedman’s only direct connection was when he was invited by fellow Chicago professor Arnold Harberger–who was most closely involved with the Chilean program–to give a week of lectures and public talks in Chile in 1975.
While there, Friedman did have one meeting with Pinochet, for less than an hour. Pinochet asked Friedman to write him a letter about his judgments on what Chilean economic policy should be, which Friedman did . He advocated quick and severe cuts in government spending and inflation, as well as instituting more open international trade policies—and to “provide for the relief of any cases of real hardship and severe distress among the poorest classes.” He did not choose this as an opportunity to upbraid Pinochet for any of his repressive policies, and many of Friedman’s admirers, including me, would have felt better if he had.
[/QUOTE]
Bravo, Naomi Klein! Bravo, rational thought!
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### Author:  [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/70 "2015-01-30T13:28:08Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> Well, she’s only calling for that in very vague and general and moral terms, isn’t she? Nothing as specific as “nationalize the oil companies.”
> [@](#):
>
> But counterrevolutions are reversible. Klein devotes much of her book to propitious signs that this can happen — indeed is happening. The global climate justice movement is spreading. Since the mid-1990s, environmental protests have been growing in China at 29 percent per year. Where national leaders have faltered, local governments are forging ahead. Hundreds of German cities and towns have voted to buy back their energy grids from corporations. About two-thirds of Britons favor renationalizing energy and rail.
[Cite.](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/books/review/naomi-klein-this-changes-everything-review.html?_r=0)
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/71 "2015-01-30T14:54:49Z")
> [@Lemmytheseal2](#):
>
> as workers already are the ones without whose toil these various enterprises wouldn’t exist.
And without the enterprises, the workers wouldn’t have anything to toil at. Without opportunity, the ability and willingness to work is meaningless. Too many discussions of worker ownership seem to presume that the factories somehow sprung out of the ground like mushrooms. At bottom, the workers don’t own their jobs- the employers do, because the employers created the jobs. Rather than focusing on who owns the means of production, a better question would be who owns how the means of production are brought into existence.
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### Author:  [@Lemmytheseal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemmytheseal2)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/72 "2015-01-30T20:48:54Z")
> [@Lumpy](#):
>
> And without the enterprises, the workers wouldn’t have anything to toil at. Without opportunity, the ability and willingness to work is meaningless. Too many discussions of worker ownership seem to presume that the factories somehow sprung out of the ground like mushrooms. At bottom, the workers don’t own their jobs- the employers do, because the employers created the jobs. Rather than focusing on who owns the means of production, a better question would be who owns how the means of production are brought into existence.
No, workers have indeed started their own enterprises as well, in situations where there was quite a gap to be filled, i.e. the kibbutz movement in Palestine/Israel. That country vaulted to prosperity on the backs of such a movement, but the society changed around them, as new immigrants arrived with different values. The same thing is true in other situations wherein workers’ self-management (or even workers’ ownership) has been possible. The primary focus has been on reorganizing existing businesses (and other enterprises), but there have been efforts towards innovation and building new enterprises.
In the case of the US and many other countries, the economy is pretty much awash in capital, and remember also that infinite growth is impossible, due to the topic of this thread: the environment!
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/73 "2015-01-30T22:40:18Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#):
>
> [Cite.](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/books/review/naomi-klein-this-changes-everything-review.html?_r=0)
Hmm.
Well, **ITR?** All of that is a bad idea why?
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2015, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/74 "2015-01-30T23:51:21Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> One doesn’t need Klein’s book to know that the “Chicago Boys” were a major influence on Pinochet. It’s happily acknowledged by some SDMB libertarians, as well as by a libertarian website:
So in other words what Klein said about Friedman wasn’t true.
And in any case that was one her more minor lies.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [January 31, 2015, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/75 "2015-01-31T00:51:25Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#):
>
> So in other words what Klein said about Friedman wasn’t true.
>
> And in any case that was one her more minor lies.
What’s a bigger one?
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### Author:  [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2015, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/76 "2015-02-09T12:52:54Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#):
>
> Yes there is, and David Schweickart mentioned it in as many words. The value of an additional employee for a company is presumed to be less than the value of the employee before him; after all, there’s less work for him to do. A normal, capitalistic company will keep hiring employees until the benefit of hiring another employee is exactly equal to the salary and costs (e.g HR, liability) of the employee. The amount of employees hired in this system is efficient, and the company is optimally sized, being able to deliver goods or services at the lowest price.
>
> An employee owned company, however, would not hire this last employee–he would add only a negligible amount of profit to the company, while he would mean the profits were split between another person, reducing them for everyone else. So an employee-run company would be inefficiently small, because the employees are seeking to maximize their own and not total profit.
>
> This shouldn’t be very controversial–this is basically what David Schweickart said in the quote you provided.
It should be a little controversial, since there are employee-owned companies that do well. The [John Lewis Partnership](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership#Organisation_of_the_Partnership) in the UK is a hugely successful business that’s been growing even during the recession.
The employees benefit from bonuses based on profits, so they do benefit from employing more people if doing so increases their profits.
There’s also [The Co-Op. They consistently turn in decent profits, have expanded in recent years, and they are employee-owned.
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#):
>
> [URL=“[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/books/review/naomi-klein-this-changes-everything-review.html?\_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/books/review/naomi-klein-this-changes-everything-review.html?_r=0)”]Cite.]([The Co-operative Group - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-operative_Group#Current))
The quote in that review about renationalising energy being popular in the UK does not mean renationalising oil companies: it means renationalising the energy _suppliers_ like British Gas that were sold off in the eighties and nineties. BP was sold off at the same time but they are very much not the focus of campaigns to renationalise industries sold off under Thatcher. British Telecom was also sold off and I’ve never heard or seen anyone seriously propose that they be renationalised (I’m sure you could find a lunatic someone on some bog saying so, but that goes for everything); not all of the privatisations are, or were, treated the same.
And Thatcher did have an idealogical reason to close the mines down: it meant she could get rid of the unions who were one of the main funders of the Labour Party, her opposition. Under her administration most other union-dominated heavy industry areas, like steelworks, were also shut down. It wasn’t a fiscally wise decision as countries (like Germany) that have retained their heavy industry demonstrate. Unemployement in the former heavy industry regions in the UK is still, even now, hugely higher than elsewhere in the country and that costs money too.
Part of the supposed fiscal reasoning for the coal mine closures was based around comparisons with North Sea gas and oil, which came online in the late '70s. Coal was less profitable than them, so they made it look unprofitable overall, when in the long-term it would have been better to retain diverse sources of domestic energy supply and keep people in work. But those people voted for her competitor, so they had to be disempowered, pun coincidental.
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### Author:  [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2015, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/77 "2015-02-09T13:00:59Z")
Pretty much everything can be traced back to incentives. When private corporations pollute, or basically do anything wrong, it is an Outrage That Must Be Dealt With!, and the government passes laws(eventually) to deal with the problem. When the government itself is the polluter, it’s just government being not perfect, but doing more good than harm, and anyway, what is the alternative? Private drilling for oil? Private electricity production?
The incentive problem is that the very people who are most concerned about the environment also tend to be pro-government. When the government demonstrates incompetence or laxity towards its own operations, pro-government types are reluctant to demand action lest they undermine the government. We see the same dynamic in health care. A private insurance company denies a treatment, it’s evidence of greed and a campaign is started to punish the company and correct its evil practices. If the government denies a treatment, the outrage is far more muted, if it exists at all.
And that’s why socialist countries pollute more. Because no one is serious about holding their feet to the fire when they do.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2015, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/78 "2015-02-09T13:58:41Z")
> [@adaher](#):
>
> Pretty much everything can be traced back to incentives. When private corporations pollute, or basically do anything wrong, it is an Outrage That Must Be Dealt With!, and the government passes laws(eventually) to deal with the problem. When the government itself is the polluter, it’s just government being not perfect, but doing more good than harm, and anyway, what is the alternative?
>
> … When the government demonstrates incompetence or laxity towards its own operations, pro-government types are reluctant to demand action lest they undermine the government…
> And that’s why socialist countries pollute more. Because no one is serious about holding their feet to the fire when they do. [my underlining – sgsVII]
I underlined a sentence near the end of this post. Using CO2 emissions as proxy for “pollute more”, and sorting [the table on this Wiki page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions) by per capita, the first “socialist” country I come to is China (6.2 tons per capita), far below Russia, the EU, etc. China does emit more CO2 than France and Spain, but is hardly “socialist” paradigm – the high production derives directly from their capitalist twinge!
Unless “socialist country” refers to France or Spain, we next come to Cuba, which at 3.4 (tons per capita) pollutes much less than Chile, Thailand, etc., let alone Spain (5.8), Italy (6.9), Ireland (8.8), Australia (16.9). 😕
Therefore I’d ask Mr. Adaher to substantiate or retract the underlined sentence.
I’ve also underlined the first sentence in **adaher** ’s post, which I largely agree with. However the conclusions adaher derives are backwards.
It is _Government of the People By the People and For the People_ which has the strong incentive to look after the People’s interest! And indeed the “socialist countries” of Europe – by which Republicans surely mean France etc. since they even brand Democrat’s policies to be “socialist” – _ **are much less polluting than the U.S.** _, not more.
The big problem of course is when, instead of Government of the People By the People and For the People, we have Government by a Selfish and Greedy Elite.
All too often, practices in present-day U.S.A. increase the political power of the moneyed elite, beyond any desireable compromise. Would government, heavily influenced by big moneyed interests like Wall St. and Koch Bros et al, defy the public trust by encouraging pollution and other public losses?
Yes I’m afraid I agree with adaher here, assuming he agrees that such a political course is unwise, but the solution is try to elect progressive politicians, _**NOT to dampen regulation further and give more power (especially campaign power, see another thread) to the moneyed elite.**_ :eek:
And, again, the assumption that unfettered markets magically achieve optimalities is a gross exaggeration rejected by competent scholars. It seems to be a view more prevalant among political bloggers rather than among professional economists.
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### Author:  [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2015, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/79 "2015-02-09T14:17:17Z")
We don’t dampen regulation further if we want to protect the environment. But we wouldn’t want to put polluting industries under state control either.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2015, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-isnt-green/710316/80 "2015-02-09T14:29:19Z")
> [@adaher](#):
>
> We don’t dampen regulation further if we want to protect the environment. But we wouldn’t want to put polluting industries under state control either.
😕 Pardon me if I’m going off-topic, but many of these GD threads relate ultimately to U.S. politics and I’d like the chance to do a reality check:
[ul]
[li]Which major present-day U.S. partie(s), if any, do YOU think actively seek to dampen regulation further?[/li][li]Which major present-day U.S. partie(s), if any, do YOU think want to protect the environment?[/li][li]Which major present-day U.S. partie(s), if any, do YOU think actively seek to put industries under state control?[/li][/ul]
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