"Green Phonies": Practice what you teach? ... continued

This is the first ever post in this blog with the title of "Practice what you teach?" and yet I have added the "continued," in case you didn't notice it already ;)

Just to let you know that there was another place where I did--a decade ago, in September 2004, I authored this piece at Planetizen, in which I wrote about the difficulty in trying to achieve a consistency between what we say and what we do, and how to draw the line "between my academic life and personal decisions."

I recalled there:

Katie in the front row (of course!) asked me, "Francesca and I were talking the other day about you, Dr. Khé. How come you don't drive a small car but drive a gas-guzzling Jeep Cherokee instead?"

It has been ten years since, and I am all the more convinced about the moral of the story:

academic life means a continuous attempt to redraw the line that separates what I teach from how I live.

It does not mean that I drive a small car now.  Or, a hybrid, like a Prius.  Because, I remain convinced that there is no single identifying litmus test, like whether or not I drive a Prius, in order to understand how much I am helping the environment.

In fact, I have even made fun of Hollywood celebrities who flashed their Priuses when they were introduced.  Those celebrities, who are the very embodiment of material consumption, pretending to help the environment by driving around in Priuses was the best joke of all.  But, dammit, people so believe that a consumption hog who drives in a Prius is more "environmental" than one like me whose consumption is way minimal.

Is it possible at all to help people understand that a steak-eating, California almond-munching, Prius owner is not helping the environment?

According to recent psychological research, these outwardly symbolic displays of green values are, if anything, too powerful. They can fool outside observers into thinking that we're a lot more environmentally conscious than we are. Perhaps worse still, they may lead us to fool ourselves.

Which means, even though I have refused to be fooled, the joke is really on me.  How twisted!  It is all because of "symbolic significance fallacy":

 The idea, which grows out of a large body of research on cognitive biases and mental shortcuts, is that we tend to focus far too much on outward symbols (like Prius driving) in judging whether people are energy conscious. As a result, these powerful symbols bias us into overrating certain kinds of seemingly green behavior, and underrating other behaviors that may be quite green, but don't seem that way to us at first glance.

No surprise that I am not viewed as left-of-center, environmental, or any of those labels, which is really who I am.  The price we pay for being rational in this shallow, superficial world :(

What's the upshot of all this? First of all, Siegrist says the results should make us concerned about what he calls "moral licensing": The idea that doing something that is symbolically green, like driving a Prius, licenses you to do other things in your life that aren't (like driving it huge distances).

The bottom-line then?

as we move into a world full of hybrids, electric vehicles, rooftop solar installations, and much else, we should bear something in mind. Energy use calculations may not be very intuitive or easy to carry out, but the fact remains that there is only one way to evaluate whether someone is actually green: Substance.

Focus on the substance?  Crazy talk!  Focus on substance calls for people to engage in the hard work of thinking, which is increasingly rarer than smog-free days in Beijing!

One word--Plastics. Plus one word--Ban. Equals two words--No Sense

Way back in high school, in one of Harold Robbins' many potboilers that I read, the plot involved a young man who was f*ing around with a young woman and her mother too.  Yes,  I read Dickens and Dostoevsky and also Robbins and Chase (James Hadley) and others; go figure!

A couple of years after that, sometime soon after coming to the US, I watched The Graduate in which the Dustin Hoffman character also, well, you know the story.

No, this is not about some strange young man with a mother-daughter sex triangle.  Stay with me.  In the highly sheltered existence of mine, those kind of things happened only in the fictional worlds, which is why they did not bother me at all.  Thus, what really impressed me in that movie with the glorious Simon/Garfunkel score was the scene in which the young graduate receives that advice in one word: plastics. Not the love or the sex story.

Ah, those were simpler times.  An era in which me the starving graduate student taking ziplock bags to India was a big achievement.  Plastics!

A few years ago, I was pleasantly shocked to notice that the vendor who was selling mangoes off his cart in Chennai was bagging a customer's purchase in plastic bags that he had.  The flower lady had plastic bags. And so did every seller, from the pavement to fancy stores.  Plastics had reached India, big time.

A couple of years ago, my neighbor went to Mali to volunteer his expertise in installing expensive medical equipment.  When he came back, his travel stories began with a question: "do you know what the national flower of Mali is?"  I had no freaking clue, of course.  "Plastic bags" he chuckled.  "They are everywhere on the street, on the trees, on open grounds."  He was unhappy with the littering he saw in Mali.

Meanwhile, in India, cows that looked like they had big stomachs turned out to be inflated because they had ingested a whole lot of plastic bags that were choking their stomachs.  And, yes, plastic bags had replaced the lotus as the flower of the country.

But, I don't ever think that the plastic bags are the greatest environmental threat ever--there are far worse things that I want to tackle first before banning the bags.  Not that I use a whole bunch of bags either--a long time ago I had switched over to reusable bags, which I regularly wash ;)

However, activism and politics are less about carefully thinking through and more about emotions and symbolic acts.  This, the great state of California and environmental activists passed a statewide ban on plastic bags.  Hallelujah!  All environmental problems solved!  Yeah, right!

It's a mildly positive step for the planet — especially if the goal is to cut down on plastic waste. But the disproportionate emphasis on plastic bags among people who care about the environment is also a bit misplaced. If you want to use your shopping choices to benefit wildlife and the environment as a whole, the type of bag you use is far less important than what you put inside it.

So, how would we then approach it rationally?  We would rank the practices that damage the flora and fauna by the order of their magnitude and then begin to focus on the worst ones first, right?

Not so, when it comes to activism or the politicians who are all about symbolism.

As an example, consider a vegetarian who prefers plastic bags versus a carnivore who wants to ban plastic bags.  Ready?

Isn't that picture worth a gazillion words?

These numbers can vary based on agricultural techniques, shipping methods, and other factors, but when you compare plastic bags with food, it's not even close. Yet for whatever reason, we associate plastic bags — but not food production — with environmental degradation.

Many fanatical environmentalists I know, especially among the left-leaning in academe, are also big time "nonveg" people.  They mouth the rhetoric, drive their expensive Prisues, travel to far away places to appreciate the natural settings there, yet, without seeing no environmental contradictions in their lives, eagerly champion banning plastic bags and plastic water bottles and ...

On top of all this, if plastic bag bans like California's end up causing people to use more paper bags — instead of bringing their reusable ones to the store — it'll certainly end up being worse for the environment. Research shows that making a paper bag consumes about four times more energy than a plastic bag, and produces about four times more waste if it's not recycled. 

When it comes to both climate change and trash production, eliminating plastic bags is a symbolic move, not a substantial one.

Oh well.  It provided material for a commentary! ;)  Maybe I should forget all about the plastic bags and, instead, watch The Graduate again.

When environmentalists ditch their mantra. Ah, fun to watch!

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks" wrote the incomparable Shakespeare in Hamlet.  Ever since I came across that phrase in my early youth, I have always been über-suspicious about people who insist, almost evangelically, about their beliefs, whether it is about anti-homosexuality or religion or war or the environment.  And, if by some fortunate accident should the person's doublethink be exposed, mayhem ensues.

Remember, for instance, Ted Haggard?  Christopher Hitchens went through such a phase himself, when he broke away from his leftist colleagues and friends.  For the most part, they never forgave him for that sin, especially not after the golden boy that he was when in that camp.

For people like me, who think there is no better drama than the one that unfolds in real life, those are some really awesome moments.

I suppose for the big protesters, their entire identity is built on a certain set of ideas and even when they know it is false, they simply have no option but to keep saying and practicing those very ideas because, if not, their identity and livelihood collapse.  They are prisoners of their own ideologies.  That is one problem that, fortunately, I do not have!

A few years ago, Patrick Moore, who was the co-founder of Greenpeace, shocked the environmental world with his volte–face:

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Moore now heads an energy coalition that champions nuclear energy, and freely admits to the mistake he helped propagate by lumping nuclear energy with nuclear weapons.

The latest in such "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" is Mark Lynas, who "spent years destroying genetically modified crops in the name of the environment."  Yes, he protested too much. Even with machetes:

Back in the mid-90s he'd belonged to a "radical cell" of the anarchist, anti-capitalist environmental movement. He was influential – a co-founder of the magazine Corporate Watch who'd written the first article about the evils of Genetically Modified Organisms [GMOs] and Monsanto, the multinational biotech company whose work with GMOs was to become notorious. He was a law breaker. He'd pile into vans with gangs of up to 30 people and spend nights slashing GM crops with machetes. He was angry. 

That was then.  "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" indeed!

And then a Damascene conversion!  Back in January, he spoke up:

My lords, ladies and gentlemen. I want to start with some apologies, which I believe are most appropriate to this audience. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I'm also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid-1990s and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment. As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

Reacting to that speech, The Economist politely said, "I told you so!"

His new position will be familiar to readers of this blog. “We will have to feed 9.5 billion hopefully less poor people by 2050 on about the same land area as we use today, using limited fertiliser, water and pesticides and in the context of a rapidly changing climate.” It will be impossible to feed those extra mouths by digging up more land, because there isn’t much going and because land conversion is a large source of greenhouse gases. Taking more water from rivers will accelerate biodiversity loss. And we need to improve—and probably reduce—nitrogen use (ie in chemical fertilisers) which is creating a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and eutrophication in fresh water. The only way of squaring this circle will be through the technology-driven intensification of farming—ie, GM.

It is not as if Lynas' conversion was a matter of one moment when the new year came around.  It was building up over the years, he says, starting with 1998:

He'd begun to notice a widespread denial in the people around him. The more he recognised it, the more it felt like hypocrisy. "Everyone thought of themselves as being tolerant and open-minded," he says. "But if you said something critical about them, you'd be in quite serious trouble."

Sounds familiar to me.

There is no way the believers will want their folks, especially an influential leader, to question their own beliefs.  Remember that wonderful scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian?

Lynas has been very critical of Greenpeace's policy towards a GM crop that's become totemic among campaigners. Golden rice is a crop that's been modified, by the insertion of the genes for the chemical beta-carotene, in an attempt to make it provide more vitamin A. "Vitamin-A deficiency is one of the leading causes of death in southeast Asia," says Lynas. "It's led to blindness and the death of about a quarter of a million people a year." Yet campaigners, including Greenpeace, lobbied against it.  Greenpeace insists golden rice is a "waste of money" and an "ineffective tool… [that] is also environmentally irresponsible, poses risks to human health and compromises food security". For Lynas, its stance is "just superstition. 

Finally, he can stop protesting too much.

My neighbor comments that I am a freaking tree-hugger, and it is true in so many ways.  I try to be ultra-careful when it comes to even using chemicals against bugs.  I mostly buy grains and vegetables, and occasionally chicken or beef, and cook my own meals.  I bring home the groceries in my washable bags.  I love the river that is close by, and love walking by its side.  The coffee I buy is certified that it was grown in environmentally safe conditions.  But, as much as my neighbor thinks that I am a tree-hugger, my arguments in favor of nuclear energy and GM pisses off people who believe they are out to save the planet.  I can only imagine their responses if they came to know that once for Earth Day I showed in a class the classic George Carlin routine on "Save the Planet."

The world will be much better off if only we can shed our ideological frames that distort our visions.  But then, that will mean going against what Shakespeare observed.  Maybe you are thinking Shakespeare was wrong.  Let me warn you--if anybody dares to argue that Shakespeare was wrong, then I shall protest too much! ;)

The Willamette River, in late September of 2012

Quote of the day: Nuclear power and environmentalists

“I know the environmentalists will not be very happy with my decision, but it is foolish romance to think that India can attain high growth rate and sustain the energy needs of a 1.2 billion population with the help of solar, wind, biogas and such other forms of energy. It is paradoxical that environmentalists are against nuclear energy”

That was India's minister of environment and forests Jairam Ramesh while  clearing the way for the Jaitapur nuclear power complex.  (BTW, isn't "environment and forests" tautological?  Doesn't the environment include forests?  Oh well!)

Ramesh is no simpelton politician. Or, to transliterate an Tamil expression, not a "ஒன்னரை அனா" :) (can't figure out how to bring in the correct letters!)  Which is why his statement has that much more weight.  He has excellent educational credentials--from india's top tier undergrad to America's best univs.  Ramesh is one of the technocrat-politicians, who are even more influential in China, who know well what they are talking about ...

Anyway, back to the nuclear power question.  The enormous need for energy is real. The constraints imposed by coal and petroleum and natural gas are real.  And, it is absolutely the case that with current technology and prices, we can't produce anything significant from solar or wind power ... and the fact that we need to square this off against global warming/climate change is undeniable.  Which then brings the nuclear question to the front.  Of course, the Greenpeace founder took quite a beating from environmentalists when he made the same arguments a couple of years ago; remember?  What did he write?  Ahem:

Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. 

Is there any difference between this statement and the one from Ramesh?  I think not.