Planned obsolescence and unplanned responsibility

In this NYT commentary, the author wants us to ask three questions before we buy the shiny new electronic gadget introduced in the marketplace:

“How long will this last?,” “How will I get it fixed when it breaks?” and “How will I recycle this when I need a new device?”

When I read that, I had two immediate thoughts. 

First, how many NYT readers will care enough to think about those questions and act on them, and how does this number compare to the billions of humans who don't read the NYT?

Second, I have routinely posed these questions in my classes; consider the following paragraph from my blog post in June 2015:

I routinely force students to think about where their old smartphones end up when they upgrade to the latest gadget.  I have assigned essays, like this one, which then provide the context for them to pause for a few minutes and think about the resource consumption.  I practice--at least try to--what I teach.  Thus, I have a difficult time getting rid of my old smartphone even when it serves all my purposes. Last December, when I was taking photographs of the high school classmates who had come to the niece's wedding, one friend laughingly said "ever since the first time I reconnected with Sriram, he has been using the same camera."  Yes, it has been the same camera too for a few years now.  Just because it is old I should dump it?  I don't operate that way.

Maybe if I had been asking other kinds of questions, and teaching sexy subjects, I would not have been laid off, eh!

The NYT commentary notes:

This year, the French government began requiring tech manufacturers to list an “indice de réparabilité,” a repairability score, on product pages for items like the iPhone and MacBook. If a device can be repaired, then its life can be extended, saving consumers money and the planet the burden of so many trashed gadgets.

As much as I like the idea, I think the reality is that this is not going to make much of a difference when gadgets are sold by the billions every year.  Sure, a few customers might tinker with their smartphones, or a few businesses might spring up in countries like India.  But, for most people, the cost of fixing the cranky smartphone might outweigh the benefits of a shiny new one.

I wish the writer had at least mentioned one important phrase: Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR.)  Hold producers and other entities involved in the product chain,  responsibile for end-of-life product management instead of trying to work the the general public  I checked my own blog to see when I first mentioned EPR in my writing.  It was in February 2012.

Some day, sooner than later, we will hold producers like Apple responsible.  Soon, I hope.

What's common to shampoo and ice cream?

 No, this is not that kind of a take on shampoo.

What is an ingredient that is likely to be found in shampoo and ice cream?  "You may not see it but you are eating it and washing your hair with it."

Name that ingredient.

It is palm oil.

You’d have to look far and wide to find a major company that doesn’t have palm oil on its hands. They include Walmart, Colgate-Palmolive, Kellogg’s, Nestle, McDonalds, Ikea, Target, and Whole Foods. Palm oil is mixed into animal feed and biofuels.

This ingredient "is a Shiva of the modern consumer economy, a great creator and a great destroyer. A startling amount of human happiness and wellbeing depends on our relationship with this one plant."

I love that phrasing--"a Shiva of the modern consumer economy, a great creator and a great destroyer."

Why this dual nature?

Palm oil production is phenomenally important to local peoples and international economies. But it is also tremendously destructive to natural ecosystems and to the global climate.

So ... can this Shiva be morphed into more of a creator and less of a destroyer?

Genetics might be a way out:

What’s most needed is way to reboot our relationship with the oil palm—to find a way to produce more oil on less land. Here is where plant scientists must step in. And they have. They have crafted a novel genetic technique to induce each palm oil tree to produce more fruit, containing more of the precious oil. It’s a way to keep the ice-cream makers happy while saving the rainforest, and it can be scaled up now.

Can't we reduce the consumption first?  Do we really need all that shampoo, and eat that much ice cream?

Consumption is practically what the modern economy is all about, once we got beyond basic survival.  Oddly enough, even those concerned and worried about the natural environment--including me--love to get salary increases so that we can consume more, even when we know fully well that additional consumption will have negative implications for the natural environment.  How twisted are we!

It is a strange world in which we live.  Ask yourself what exactly are we working for, and what exactly is it that we want to get out of the incomes that we earn?  Go ahead.  Do that first and then resume reading this post. 

Yep, we earn in order to consume.  

Our highly productive lives--as in economic productivity--are not about working fewer hours and creating leisure time that we can enjoy, but are about consumption. 

It is almost as if we set aside the golden years for leisure.  When we can no longer do anything "productive."  What a wasteful approach to life!

This consumption lifestyle made possible by, among other things, palm oil.

The orangutans weep!

Less is an enabling agent of more?

I got a hefty increase in my salary.

What will I do with the additional income? Consume it in many new and expanded ways.

Consumption is practically what the modern economy is all about, once we got beyond basic survival.  And, oddly enough, even those concerned and worried about the natural environment--including me--love to get salary increases so that we can consume more, even though this additional consumption will have negative implications for the natural environment.  How twisted are we!

Such a worry about consumption and economic growth is not new.  In graduate school, I learnt about the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth.  This report came out when I had barely started elementary school!  Almost 50 years later, we continue to worry about the consequences of growth and consumption.

Could it be different this time?

Now the focus has turned from scarcity to excess—specifically, of carbon dioxide in the air. In the past 50 years the burning of fossil fuels has more than doubled its concentration, accelerating global warming with its potentially calamitous consequences.

Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere 50 years ago versus now should truly worry all of us.  The industry, increasingly because of consumer feedback, and despite the maniacal and wrong-headed tRump and his toadies, is actively reducing its environmental impacts.

Fearing a backlash from eco-conscious consumers, firms are striving to lower their carbon intensity. So long as this brings down costs, CEOs happily oblige and society reaps the benefits of higher efficiency and better resource allocation. But if that leads to higher sales, companies’ overall environmental impact may rise.

What can be done then?

They should not be shamed—or required to urge customers to buy less of their wares, as some activists who glued themselves to corporate headquarters in London seem to demand. Governments can make citizens want less by making consumption pricier, with carbon taxes or other regulations. Until they do, firms will try to sell more stuff—because most people want more of it.

Yep, even most of us environmentalists want more stuff--we are addicted to stuff.  Getting rid of this addiction is impossible.  Well, an individual could, but most of us cannot.  Reducing consumption is, therefore, not in the mix of actions that we would like.  Which means, are we looking at an impossible task of squaring the proverbial circle?

Don't go chasing waterfalls

When the context comes up--and it always comes up in any class that I teach--I remind students that they can go to a Walmart and buy whatever they can afford to, or shop online for whatever that they can afford to ... but, no retailer sells at any price something that we often talk about--happiness.

I know that my point won't register on 99.9999 percent of young people.  I am pretty darn confident that a 20-year old me would have internally chuckled at such a comment from an old, bald, and bearded man.  But, every once in a while I make such comments in class because, well, it is my responsibility.

Ok, ok, the 20-year old me was really concerned about such issues.

By then, I had read a few works of literature in order to understand life and happiness.  I was blown away with the simple and powerful opener that Leo Tolstoy had in Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."  Charles Dickens and Somerset Maugham provided me with plenty to think about.  And so did Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  When helping my parents clean out their old place, I came across my old friend:

All those, in addition to the Tamil literature, and the little bit of Hindu philosophy that I had picked up, gave me insights into life.  And I now distill all those when I make those remarks to students.  Too bad if they don't want to pay attention to this bald old man!

These are also why I have always been puzzled by the American idea of the pursuit of happiness.  How can one pursue happiness?  "To constantly pursue something you can never catch is a form of madness."  I know for certain that I don't pursue it.

In practice, our strategies for finding happiness are usually self-defeating. There’s plenty of empirical evidence to suggest that much of what we do to gain happiness doesn’t pay off. It seems that aiming at happiness is always a misconceived project; happiness comes, as John Stuart Mill insisted, as the unintended outcome of aiming at something else. “The right to the pursuit of happiness,” wrote Aldous Huxley, “is nothing else than the right to disillusionment phrased in another way.”

Yet, we fool ourselves into the pursuit of happiness, and "the pursuit of happiness gave birth to the consumer society."

Thomas Jefferson lived in a world of slavery and pervasive inequality; he knew perfectly well that the world was not as it ought to be. But he believed, rightly, that a world in which people were free to pursue happiness would be one in which liberty would slowly spread, until all could benefit from it. ... But there is an important difference between us and the founding fathers. They saw life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the alternative to despotism and intolerance. We now can see that a society devoted to self-gratification may, in the end, destroy the conditions of its own existence.

It has been a short descent from the idea of "the pursuit of happiness" to Instagram.

Climate change and American consumerism

In a commentary that was published back in 2007, I wrote about a strange way of life here in the US, which I referred to as "an American solution to an American problem."  I wrote then:

Well, a few weeks after I came to this country for graduate studies, it was nearing Thanksgiving and the television ad for Alka-Seltzer that I watched then is what I refer to as American solutions to American problems. In this ad, the audio commentary and the pictures presented all the wonderful foods that the viewer would end up eating at Thanksgiving, which then resulted in stomach aches and heartburn. And, presto, Alka-Seltzer to the rescue! My reflexive thought was simple: if the problems came from overeating, then why not simply advise the viewer to eat less? Of course, as I have come to realize, to consume less is not American. (Yes, I, too, am an American!) Instead, the American way is to consume more, and then when problems develop savvy entrepreneurs provide solutions to facilitate further consumption.

It doesn't take any smarts to figure out that we consume a lot in the US.  I mean a LOT.  And I don't mean just about food. Anything. Everything.

This consumption is a problem. A big problem.  It is our consumption that is the cause of climate change.

Think about it for a minute.  And you will soon arrive at this framework:

Transportation (cars, buses, trucks, and planes) leads in greenhouse gas emissions, while electricity (coal and natural-gas power plants) is a close second. Industrial goods and services are third; buildings, fourth; and agriculture, fifth.
This way of measuring blame, however, misses something crucial: people. These industries are spouting carbon because customers demand their products: travel, electronics, entertainment, food, all sorts of stuff.

We like to travel. We like the latest smartphone. We like air conditioning. We like Netflix. We like stuff. A lot. We consume. A lot.

We demand, and the market delivers.

So, why are we always pointing at Exxon and Walmart and China as villains?  Maybe because it lets us off the hook?

There will be little incentive for businesses and governments to make these changes, however, if the people who support them—with dollars and votes, respectively—aren’t also making change a priority.
“Individual consumers cannot change the way the global economy operates on their own, but many of the interventions proposed in this report rely on individual action,” the report reads. “It is ultimately up to individuals to decide what type of food to eat and how to manage their shopping to avoid household food waste. It is also largely up to individuals to decide how many new items of clothing to buy, whether they should own and drive a private car, and how many personal flights to take.”

“It is ultimately up to individuals to decide."

I have joked forever that I am yet to meet an environmentalist who refuses a pay-raise.  Environmentalists also want the pay raises in order to travel. To get the latest smartphone. For air conditioning. To stream Netflix. For stuff.

In order to fight the Nazis, Americans sacrificed. With blood, sweat, and tears. Through rations. Fighting climate change will require different kinds of sacrifices.

We will have to fly less, drive less, Uber less. We will have to eat less red meat, drink less dairy, waste less food, and generally buy less crap that we don’t need.
A lot of Americans won’t want to do this!

We won't. But, we will, however, talk about climate change. A lot.

The United States of Hoarders!

A few days after my new neighbors moved in a couple of years ago, I was sweeping my garage with the door open, of course.  My neighbors saw me, and in that very American way jokingly said the vast empty space, maybe they could store some of their stuff in my garage.

Ha ha, we laughed.

Whether we live in apartments or mansions, apparently we Americans collect a whole lot of worthless crap.  A few years ago, I wrote about in Planetizen.  I wrote there:

Of course, as many of us have observed, but for which data don't exist, most homeowners seem to fill their garages with refrigerators, freezers, bicycles, treadmills, etc., and then park their cars on the driveways or by the curb. When things have to be put away, households find that they have more stuff for which they need additional space, which is where the self-storage business comes in.

No, don't worry, this post is not about the self-storage industry.

It is about how this American "virtue" of accumulating crap has been made easy by Amazon and the malls-on-wheels revolution. 

Now, to become a hoarder is as easy as simply barking your shopping list at one of those "smart" boxes!

Thanks to a perfect storm of factors, Americans are amassing a lot of stuff. Before the advent of the internet, we had to set aside time to go browse the aisles of a physical store, which was only open a certain number of hours a day. Now, we can shop from anywhere, anytime—while we’re at work, or exercising, or even sleeping.

Ah yes, those old days when the malls were open only for a certain number of hours, and one had to physically get to the stores in order to buy the crap that we did not need.  Now, the stores are available to us 24x7, and we can shop for underwear while in our underwear!

All told, “we are all accumulating mountains of things,” said Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He sometimes asks his students to count the number of things they have on them in class, and once they start counting up gadgets and cords and accessories, they end up near 50. “Americans have become a society of hoarders,” Cohen said.

I should start worrying that my non-hoarding behavior will be viewed as being un-American and that the FBI will soon come knocking!

Back in June, as students were vacating their apartments and dorm rooms, we noticed piles of stuff lying near the waste bins.  A mattress had also been discarded, and it looked to be in much better condition than the one on which I plomp down every night.  The ease of buying things also means the ease of dumping things.

 In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, Americans put 16 million tons of textiles in the municipal waste stream, a 68 percent increase from 2000. We tossed 34.5 million tons of plastics, a 35 percent increase from 2000, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Over that same time period, the population grew just 14 percent.

Keep that in mind the next time some crazy person says that population growth is the greatest problem ever!

Maybe I should think about renting out my garage space!

Leisure Suit Sriram

Even the retired folks these days don't seem to have leisure time.  How can that be?

The more I think about my own short life thus far, the clearer it seems that the dream was about a technological future that would launch us into an age of prosperity in which we would do very little work and enjoy a great deal of leisure time.  It would be a denial of gigantic proportions if we were to argue that we not incredibly prosperous now and, yet, leisure has become scarce?

To economists, this is no surprise.  Because, to them, leisure in prosperity means that there is much higher opportunity cost in terms of income that is not earned by doing nothing.  The more the income, the more the opportunity cost of sitting around.  So, people work themselves to death?

It is a strange world in which we live.  Ask yourself what exactly are we working for, and what exactly is it that we want to get out of the incomes that we earn?  Go ahead.  Do that first and then resume reading this post.

Yep, we earn in order to consume.  Our highly productive lives--as in economic productivity--are not about working fewer hours and creating leisure time that we can enjoy, but are about consumption.

It is almost as if we set aside the golden years for leisure.  When we can no longer do anything "productive."  What a wasteful approach to life!

There is one other problem, a nasty one:

Most people haven’t been taught to find fulfillment in their free time. To the contrary, rather than learning how to cultivate lifelong interests, students—both in primary and secondary schooling—are increasingly being educated to meet specific labor-market demands, demands that may also disappear or be automated away. Meanwhile, “It just is assumed that everyone knows how to handle their free time,” Henderson laments. “Not true!”

Yesterday, during a conversation with a student, I yet again heard the familiar: "I pack a whole lot of classes and activities because I am at a loss if I don't have things to do."

 Oh, do not for a second think of people spending time on the likes of Facebook as those enjoying leisure.  Nope. As I have blogged in plenty, people are "raw materials" in those activities, with the businesses making money out of them.  And, these businesses work on making addicts out of their users.

Over the past decade, more people have been spending more time on Facebook, whose business model is not all that different than the tobacco industry—it addicts its users, denies its own harmful effects, and expands its user base by targeting children and developing countries.
Commercial leisure and entertainment industries are undergoing a technological transformation that will be just as profound as the changes in work. But if the prevailing market incentive is to manufacture addiction, then the future of leisure could be bleak indeed. It remains to be seen if those designing social-media platforms, video games, virtual- and augmented-reality applications, and other technologies will feel pressured to do so responsibility.

So, where do we go from here?

Nowhere. We are screwed.

Not me though. Ask my neighbors--they will tell you that I rarely work.  Ask my colleagues--they will tell you I am goofing around and my work is mere mashed potatoes. Mine is a life of leisure! ;)

          Leisure

William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare

Never enough?

Years ago, soon after Amazon released the Kindle, my daughter bought me one.  And later, she was surprised that I was not using that gadget.  I tried my best to explain to her that I am not into gadgets just because they are new and fancy.

Now, it does not mean that I am not a consumer.  I am one hell of a consumer.  A wasteful consumer as much as anybody else.

much of the world’s waste is a product of habitual practices we think normal: driving a car, yes, but taking a daily shower, too, or heating our homes or changing our underpants daily (by 1986, 45 percent of German men did compared to the 5 percent who did in 1966). It has almost nothing to do with individual motives or morality.

I think of my own life, and can easily see how rapidly my consumption has increased.  Take, for instance, clothes.  Back when I was a kid, all my clothes could have been packed into a small carry-on.  Come to think of it, back then most of us kids did not even wear underwear.  I say this with confidence because one of the punishments at school was to stand up on the bench.

One of the old jokes related to this punishment is this:
The teacher asks, "where is Kenya?"
The student has no clue.
The teacher tells the student to stand on the bench.
The smartass student then asks, "if I stand up on the bench, will I be able to see Kenya?"

It was a public shaming--the one standing up on the bench did something wrong according to the teacher and now the entire class and anybody who passed by is made aware as well.  We would giggle at being able to see the bat and balls, if you know what I mean, of the one standing adjacent to us.  Chances are that, now, no urban first grader boy in India ever goes to school without underwear on.  A small change in daily life, but that is an example of daily life consumption, right?

Unlike my six-year old self, whose clothes could be packed into one small carry-on, I will now need a few boxes to pack all my clothes.  And then the footwear!  I have three pairs of work shoes, two pairs of sneakers, two pairs of sandals--in contrast to one pair of slippers (flipflops) and a pair of shoes that I wore to school when I was a kid.  What I had as a kid was itself a great deal more than what my father had--he got his first pair of footwear only when he got to the "First Form"--sixth grade, I think it means.  Until he was eleven or twelve, father went about barefoot like almost everybody else.

My point is that my not having a Kindle or an iPad or whatever does not make me any holier.

From a larger perspective, we need to understand this--it is not anything "American":

Trentmann demonstrates that by the twentieth century, states of many kinds—not just the liberal democracies—regarded consumption as indispensable. Countries such as Britain and the United States set the model: there, the link between the citizen and the consumer was forged tightly. At the heart of the New Deal were ideals of freedom and plenty, understood as mutually reinforcing propositions. But Trentmann seeks to extend the point more broadly, to demonstrate that freedom was hardly necessary to a thriving consumer society. Nazi Germany, for instance, sought to deliver the goods or, failing that, to promise their appearance; German factories continued producing toys and cosmetics until the defeat at Stalingrad. With its canny embrace of consumption, the contemporary Chinese state furnishes another good example. Starting in the late 1990s, China created “a nation of property owners” in less than a decade, a feat that outstrips the record of Herbert Hoover and Margaret Thatcher, the Anglo-American “champions of home-owning democracy.”

I consume, therefore I am!  One of the paradoxes of economic transformation from the old agrarian past.

To consume less is not American!

In a commentary that was published back in 2007, I wrote about a strange way of life here in the US, which I referred to as "an American solution to an American problem."  I wrote then:

Well, a few weeks after I came to this country for graduate studies, it was nearing Thanksgiving and the television ad for Alka-Seltzer that I watched then is what I refer to as American solutions to American problems. In this ad, the audio commentary and the pictures presented all the wonderful foods that the viewer would end up eating at Thanksgiving, which then resulted in stomach aches and heartburn. And, presto, Alka-Seltzer to the rescue! My reflexive thought was simple: if the problems came from overeating, then why not simply advise the viewer to eat less? Of course, as I have come to realize, to consume less is not American. (Yes, I, too, am an American!) Instead, the American way is to consume more, and then when problems develop savvy entrepreneurs provide solutions to facilitate further consumption.

I never imagined savvy entrepreneurs devising something that is bizarre, and maybe my visceral reaction is also why I even subconsciously filtered out the news.  But then the friend made sure I read about it :(

A new weight loss device offers a novel approach to cutting calories: draining them from the stomach before they are fully digested.
The AspireAssist system consists of a thin tube implanted in the stomach, connecting to an outside port on the skin of the belly. About 20 minutes after finishing a meal, users connect the port to an external device, which drains some of the recently consumed food into the toilet.
The manufacturer — Aspire Bariatrics based in King of Prussia, Pa. — says its system removes about 30 percent of food stored in the stomach before it ­begins causing weight gain.

People eat and then 20 minutes later they drain the recently consumed food into the toilet.  What the heck?  Weren't we worried about people who engaged in such behaviors?

It undoubtedly sounds gross, and even a bit like assisted bulimia, but this device may be a long-term solution for patients struggling with obesity, characterized as having a body mass index between 35 and 50. “With this device, you only remove about a third of the food, and that’s because the device sits primarily in the upper portion of the stomach,” Kathy Crothall, the CEO and founder of Aspire Bariatrics, told Quartz.

It certainly sounds gross :(

Who ever thought that this gross device will be the way to fight the obesity epidemic in the US!

 The two reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that efforts to encourage Americans to lose weight — at least to stop putting on more weight — are having little effect.
Overall, 38 percent of U.S. adults are obese and 17 percent of teenagers are, the two reports find.

 A couple of weeks ago, a student was chatting with me about life, and talked about his weight issues--he was slightly overweight.  He talked about his plans to lose weight, and to win the competition against his mother who had already shed quite a few pounds.  I love my work especially in contexts like this where I get more evidence that teaching is not merely about what goes on in the classroom.  The fact that he was at ease with me to talk about such issues says a lot.

I encouraged him in his summer plans.  I reminded him about the three things that I usually tell anybody who talks with me about weight issues:

It is about calories in versus calories out.
It is about what kind of calories that go in.
It is about when those calories go in.

Seriously, draining the calories from one's stomach?

And thus Black Friday reveals our consumption culture :(

BBC reports on a few ugly scenes:

A man is in a stable but critical condition in hospital after being shot in the early hours as he left a Walmart with a group of people in San Leandro, California, when they resisted two armed robbers who demanded their purchases

Police are reviewing CCTV as they look for a woman who left 20 people with minor injuries when she used pepper spray as shoppers rushed to buy Xboxes at a Los Angeles area Walmart on Thursday evening

A man was reportedly detained for resisting arrest after a fight at the jewellery counter in the early hours at a Walmart in Kissimmee, Florida

Police are looking for two suspects after gunfire erupted early on Friday at a shopping centre in Fayetteville, North Carolina; there were no reports of injuries

Security workers reportedly used pepper spray on shoppers who began grabbing at goods before they were unloaded from pallets at a Walmart in Kinston, North Carolina

A woman was shot in the foot by a robber as she loaded her purchases into her car in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; the gunman fled as one of the victim's companions brandished a revolver and fired warning shots

Seriously?  Pepper spray? Guns?  WTF!

This rap parody of life in the "first world" is more than a statement on our bizarre culture of consumption:

Thank heavens it is not seven billion Kim Kardashians!

BTW, all the other cartoons I came across--on this topic of the world population at seven billion--were  Maulthusian.  Pretty much variations of the theme of imbalance between the demand (from the seven billion) and food, or resource, availability.  Like the one below:

Is it because a Malthusian framework appeals to us a lot more than otherwise?  Are humans somehow wired to be pessimistic that way?  Is it because since the proto-human times we have been worried about our individual and collective abilities to survive?

It is an unfortunate irony that not a single cartoon pointed out that if we should be worried about the resource issue, it is not the actual number of people that drives consumption.  Consumption--and overconsumption--comes from affluence.  If only a cartoonist had transformed into an image the following words:

the populations that are rising fastest contribute very little to climate change. The poorest half of the world produces 7% of carbon emissions. The richest 7% produces half the carbon.

Are CFLs a dim bulb approach to saving nature?

In this blog, and in my classes, I refer to arguments and analysis that Bjorn Lomborg offers.  With students, I typically present an environmental issue, and by discussing it they soon realize the tradeoffs that are needed.  It is always a rewarding moment for me when I see that metaphorical light bulb click on in a few of them, at least.

Light bulbs are what Lomborg tackles this time around--the government mandate that bans the use of  incandescent bulbs in favor of the compact fluorescent ones.  Lomborg, who has often argued for R&D investments that could lead us towards less carbon in our consumptive behaviors, reminds us, yet again, that:

The solution should be to focus on improving the technology—making the lights safer, brighter, warm up faster, and save more energy, so that more people will replace more of their lights. ...

Governments talk far too much about setting a relatively high carbon tax on emissions while focusing far too little on ensuring a meaningful increase in research and development to bring about necessary breakthroughs.

Limiting access to the "wrong" light bulbs or patio heaters is, ultimately, not the right path. We will only solve global warming by ensuring that alternative technologies are better than our current options. Then people the world over will choose to use them.

A mere mandate does no good.  Well, other than to get people all worked up.

With the exception of a few crazies who question the very climate change (and Lomborg is not one of them) most of us recognize the urgency to change the way we live on this lonely planet.

Some do get carried away to extremes--like those who want to restore nature to its pristine conditions and, sometimes, even represent humans as the worst living creature ever.  To these, Ron Bailey, while reviewing Emma Marris' new book Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World, reminds us that the pristine nature is a myth.

“Nature is almost everywhere. But wherever it is, there is one thing nature is not: pristine,” writes science journalist Emma Marris in her engaging new book Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. She adds, “We must temper our romantic notion of untrammeled wilderness and find room next to it for the more nuanced notion of a global, half-wild rambunctious garden, tended by us.” Marris’ message will discomfort both environmental activists and most ecologists who are in thrall to the damaging cult of pristine wilderness and the false ideology of the balance of nature. But it should encourage and inspire the rest of us.

I am reminded of a graduate course I took years ago, in which we were required to read a book, whose author/title completely escapes me.  The bottom line in that book was simple: everything will be great if only there were no humans.  The professor seemed so committed to this idea as well that, and being a highly self-conscious guy during those years, I opted not to challenge him.

Bailey wraps up the book review:

One hopes that readers will take to heart Marris’ chief insight about conservation: “There is no one best goal.” She bravely and correctly concludes, “We’ve forever altered the Earth, and so now we cannot abandon it to a random fate. It is our duty to manage it. Luckily, it can be a pleasant, even joyful task if we embrace it in the right spirit. Let the rambunctious gardening begin.”

Yes, a rambunctious gardening, with light from bulbs that we willingly purchase because they are wonderfully efficient and pleasing and do not trigger headaches.

More on "it is the energy, stupid!"

A follow up to an earlier post from a few days ago.

In the Atlantic, Julio Friedmann writes about why it is hard to talk about energy, and notes:

Energy is the largest economic activity on earth (much larger than agriculture) and the industry with the highest capitalization (much higher than car manufacturing). Energy units are confusing (megawatts, kilowatt-hours, tons of carbon, CO2 equivalents, BTUs and Gigajoules), but the scale of the system makes these units even more remote (terawatt-hours, exajoules, gigatons, quadrillion BTUs). This makes it hard to bring the discussion home -- the discussion starts in a rarified, almost other-worldly place. (Click chart below for larger view.)



Let's talk gigatons -- one billion tons. Every year, human activity emits about 35 gigatons of CO2 (the most important greenhouse gas). Of that, 85% comes from fossil fuel burning. To a lot of people, that doesn't mean much -- who goes to the store and buys a gigaton of carrots? For a sense of perspective, a gigaton is about twice the mass of all people on earth, so 35 gigatons is about 70 times the weight of humanity. Every year, humans put that in the atmosphere, and 85% of that is power.

Now, that gives us a sense of scale, when we realize that we put in the atmosphere about 70 times the weight of the entire human population on the planet.  Wow!

So, what does the president propose?

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

I hope that we will, sooner than later, talk about energy as grown up and responsible adults.  As the world's leading energy consumer, it has to begin here in the US.  But, that ain't gonna happen with the tweedledums and tweedledees that we have in politics.

The day after tomorrow ... are we ready?

First, an excerpt:

Has the contribution of the modern world of finance to economic growth become so critical as to support remuneration to its participants beyond any earlier experience and expectations? Does the past profitability of and the value added by the financial industry really now justify profits amounting to as much as 35 to 40 percent of all profits by all US corporations? Can the truly enormous rise in the use of derivatives, complicated options, and highly structured financial instruments really have made a parallel contribution to economic efficiency? If so, does analysis of economic growth and productivity over the past decade or so indicate visible acceleration of growth or benefits flowing down to the average American worker who even before the crisis had enjoyed no increase in real income?

Reading this, you might think that I excerpted it from an essay in The Nation ... Well, it is not.  It is from Paul Volcker's piece in the NY Review of Books.
Rightly, Volcker reminds us about the crisis that is more than merely about banking and finance:

We are not a small country highly vulnerable to speculative attack. In an uncertain world, our currency and credit are well established. But there are serious questions, most immediately about the sustainability of our commitment to growing entitlement programs. Looking only a little further ahead, there are even larger questions of critical importance for those of less advanced age than I. The need to achieve a consensus for effective action against global warming, for energy independence, and for protecting the environment is not going to go away. Are we really prepared to meet those problems, and the related fiscal implications? If not, today’s concerns may soon become tomorrow’s existential crises.

Beware of Neo-Malthusians, too

On the stimulus package

“One man's expenditure is another man's income.” 

 

That was the succinct remark from the economist John Maynard Keynes, describing the world that was trapped in the Great Depression where tightening spending and loss of income worsened the situation for each other. 

 

Now, as we try to deal with the worst recession ever since that awful Great Depression, Keynes’ ideas are again rapidly gaining favor among economists and policymakers alike.  And, yet again, the fundamental struggle is to figure out how to get households and businesses to spend such that it will trigger “another man’s income.”

 

The latest economic data show that retail sales were down almost ten percent compared to a year ago.  What a dilemma: on the one hand, unnecessary material consumption being down can be good for the environment.  However, in a consumption-driven economy, a dramatic and sudden decrease in expenditures will only ensure that the economic recession that we are in will get nastier.  In the quite strange and complex global economy that we operate in, it turns out saving money is not a virtue if it completely dampens the spending.   

 

I was thinking about all these when my neighbor walked over to remind me about getting the gutters in my home cleaned.  When I told him that we are planning to get the exterior of our home painted this coming summer, he lightheartedly remarked that I might be the only one in town spending money a few months down the road.  As our conversation on the economy ended after only a few minutes in the freezing cold, we parted company and rushed to the warm interiors agreeing that it is not going to help the economy if everybody stopped spending. 

 

This unique quality of money is best summed up by Dolly Levi—the lead character in “Hello, Dolly!”—who  often quotes her late husband’s words: “Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.”  Yes, the words from the musical are far more meaningful today as economic interpretation than as mere Broadway lyrics more than forty years ago.

 

Dolly’s advice to spread the money, or Keynes’ observation, imply that when people and businesses stop buying, the economy has no growth opportunity whatsoever.  As corporations tighten their expenditures, for instance, corporate aircrafts are being shunned, and we feel the impact right away in terms of job losses at the Cessna plane factory in Bend. 

 

And households tightening their spending and eating only at home quickly leads to job losses at local eateries—sometimes even permanent closures of those establishments, as has been the case with Café Zenon and El Vaquero. When consumers are no shows at eateries, it affects the jobs of those who work there, which in turn affects their own spending habits. These horrible multiplier effects can have disastrous impacts causing a massive downward spiral.

 

After driving myself crazy with such half-baked analysis of the global economic meltdown, I decided to take my daughter’s advice and simply stop reading and thinking.  For a while, at least. 

 

Thus, on a cold but sunny Saturday morning, I headed out to The Country Bakery on the remarkably picturesque Peoria Road.  It was past nine in the morning, and about 31 degrees, when I parked on the gravelly driveway.  The moment I stepped in to the bakery, I knew I had forgotten my worries about the economy.  How could I not, when I was greeted with the warmest smile, and with fresh pies, breads, and doughnuts on the shelves?    

 

As I walked out with a marionberry pie and a glazed doughnut, two other vehicles pulled up.  I wondered whether they too came in for that simply delicious home-baked comfort food, made by a baker who wakes up at midnight to get things going. 

 

Sitting in the car, I bit into the doughnut, which had quickly cooled down with that momentary exposure to the freezing temperature.  That is when I thought that maybe we do have a guaranteed way out of the recession: every man, woman, and child in America will get a pie from The Country Bakery.  Now, that is a package with a lot of stimulus in it.

Hard to live green when just surviving

Chennai has been unseasonably warm during this visit, compared to my trips the last few Decembers. The overnight low, which is normally around 65 degrees, has been consistently and significantly above that — typically about 73 degrees. Is this a mere blip in the weather pattern, or a part of the overall climate change story?

Thanks to the cooler early morning temperatures, stepping out for a walk at 5 a.m. is an activity that I always look forward to. For one, it will be months before Eugene warms up to that temperature, and therefore I feel an urgency to enjoy the warmth.

Also, after having become accustomed to the milder Oregon climate, while I rush around the park in Chennai wearing shorts and a T-shirt, it is quite a sight to see the young and the old walk and jog wearing woolen beanies, scarves and sweaters. I suppose after getting used to temperatures in the high 90s and in the triple digits for most of the year, 65 can seem relatively cold to them.

This time, though, my sister mentioned the other day that she has yet to take the woolen blankets and sweaters out of the boxes. It is no wonder, then, that I have spotted very few people wearing sweaters in the park.

The much warmer overnight temperatures also have made the city a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes. While not as huge as the mosquitoes that sucked the blood out of me in Alaska, the smaller ones here in Chennai are equally thirsty for nourishment and seem to enjoy my “American” blood, much to my discomfort!

Yet there is very little talk about the weather and climate change. Those topics have been pushed way back by the worsening economic conditions and the possibility of a war with Pakistan.

Furthermore, all it takes is one trip outside the comfortable enclaves in cities to the smaller towns and villages, where the majority of India lives, to understand why climate change fails to register as the biggest worry for the struggling millions. Thousands of villages and towns in India lack even the basic necessities of sanitation facilities and a protected and clean water supply.

As one commentator put it recently in an Indian newspaper, “Out of the 1.2 billion people who defecate in the open worldwide because they have no access to toilets, more than half are Indian.” Ouch!

When daily life for millions is thus severely constrained by economic and public health limitations, it is not difficult to understand why these issues might take precedence over climate change.

I am not dismissing the reality that as more and more Indians, Chinese and the rest of the world’s population become affluent, the more they also are going to contribute to global climate change — particularly given the reliance on inefficient carbon- based energy sources. And, of course, we could make a convincing point that even the poor in villages and cities need to worry about climate change because we are all doomed to experience its effects, irrespective of how poor or affluent we are. But the importance of climate change pales in relation to the immediate struggles of daily life.

Thus, with every trip, I am convinced even more that the burden is on us in the advanced countries, and the United States in particular, to take the lead on tackling this global environmental challenge. (It is ironic, indeed, that I should write about climate change after having traveled to the other side of the world in highly polluting jet planes!)

The economic recession gives us an opportunity to consider our enormous consumption — which is, after all, a significant part of the climate change story. We need environmental equivalents of Slim Fast to get us on to a consumption regimen that can help slow down this urgent global problem. The highly influential Oprah Winfrey can launch a “climate change diet” program — perhaps even a separate television channel, “O!-lite,” that will be exclusively devoted to this topic.

Maybe we can employ one strategy that we have used to educate and alert consumers about dietary consumption — the nutritional labels on food packages.

I can imagine easily the packing on the 56-inch high-definition TV or an iPhone having a “climate change” information chart similar to the nutritional labels — information on carbon dioxide emissions, for instance, comparable to the calorie data on a chocolate bar. We can then make decisions as informed consumers, just as some of us avoid junk food packed with fats.

Otherwise, it is equally possible that the bloodthirsty mosquitoes of Chennai will enjoy the warmer world, and write the final chapters of the planet’s story.

Published in the Register Guard, Jan 4, 2009