intellectual properties

big footprints

i think one of the reasons that many people – myself included – are skeptical about the idea of a global carbon market – in which companies/organizations/governments buy and sell their carbon emissions – is that the calculation of such a thing is so complex, nearly every eco-economist disagrees with the metrics of the others. in the same vein, for the last few years the idea of individual “carbon footprints” has been around – that each person can easily calculate how much their standard of living costs in carbon each year, or consumers can calculate whether it’s better go paper or plastic or buy a real or a fake christmas tree. websites like carbonfootprint.com make it seem like it’s a straightforward computation that anyone who cares enough should be able to figure out. but is it? for example, which is greener:

1. For a New Yorker to buy a French wine, or a California wine?

2. For a Londoner to buy English lamb, or lamb imported from New Zealand?

Proponents of the local food movement would probably that in both cases, buying the product produced in your own country is always the best choice, using the logic that buying food produced closer to you is greener because it is transported a shorter distance:

It is a logical and widely held assumption that the ecological impacts of transporting food—particularly on airplanes over great distances—are far more significant than if that food were grown locally. There are countless books, articles, Web sites, and organizations that promote the idea. There is even a “100-Mile Diet,” which encourages participants to think about “local eating for global change.” Eating locally produced food has become such a phenomenon, in fact, that the word “locavore” was just named the 2007 word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary. — “Big Foot” by Michael Specter

however, as New Yorker Big Foot article discusses, beginning with one British grocery chain’s challenge to put a carbon sticker on every one of its 70,000 products showing how much carbon was used to produce that product, once the math really gets going, the results are often surprising. due to differences in transportation, energy production, and farming practices, in both cases above the answer is that it’s greener to buy the product produced on the other side of the ocean (see article for details).

The article also talks about other important aspects of this debate, such as the sometimes confusing line between science and morality:
Possessing an excessive carbon footprint is rapidly becoming the modern equivalent of wearing a scarlet letter. Because neither the goals nor acceptable emissions limits are clear, however, morality is often mistaken for science. A recent article in New Scientist suggested that the biggest problem arising from the epidemic of obesity is the additional carbon burden that fat people—who tend to eat a lot of meat and travel mostly in cars—place on the environment. Australia briefly debated imposing a carbon tax on families with more than two children; the environmental benefits of abortion have been discussed widely (and simplistically). Bishops of the Church of England have just launched a “carbon fast,” suggesting that during Lent parishioners, rather than giving up chocolate, forgo carbon. (Britons generate an average of a little less than ten tons of carbon per person each year; in the United States, the number is about twice that.)

…Environmental organizations like Carbon Trade Watch say that reducing our carbon footprint will require restructuring our lives, and that before we in the West start urging the developing world to do that we ought to make some sacrifices; anything else would be the modern equivalent of the medieval practice of buying indulgences as a way of expiating one’s sins. “You have to realize that, in the end, people are trying to buy their way out of bad behavior,” Tony Juniper, the director of Friends of the Earth, told me. “Are we really a society that wants to pay rich people not to fly on private jets or countries not to cut down their trees? Is that what, ultimately, is morally right and equitable?”

Sandor dismisses the question. “Frankly, this debate just makes me want to scream,” he told me. “The clock is moving. They are slashing and burning and cutting the forests of the world. It may be a quarter of global warming and we can get the rate to two per cent simply by inventing a preservation credit and making that forest have value in other ways. Who loses when we do that?

“People tell me, well, these are bad guys, and corporate guys who just want to buy the right to pollute are bad, too, and we should not be giving them incentives to stop. But we need to address the problems that exist, not drown in fear or lose ourselves in morality. Behavior changes when you offer incentives. If you want to punish people for being bad corporate citizens, you should go to your local church or synagogue and tell God to punish them. Because that is not our problem. Our problem is global warming, and my job is to reduce greenhouse gases at the lowest possible cost. I say solve the problem and deal with the bad guys somewhere else.”

as well as the tension between environmentalists vs. technological progress:
‘The trouble with you environmentalists is that you see a problem coming and you slam your foot on the brakes and try and steer away from the chasm. The problem is that it often doesn’t work. Maybe the thing to do is jam your foot on the pedal and see if you can just jump across.’ At the time, I thought he was crazy, but as I get older I realize what he was talking about. The whole green movement in technology is in that space. It is an attempt to jump across the chasm.

it’s a long article, but a great read that touches on a lot of the ideas around not only the carbon market but ways of thinking about dealing with global warming (note: we can’t stop it. even if we stopped all greenhouse gas production today, the earth would still continue to warm because of what we’ve already done. we need to DEAL with it). halfway through, i started to get a little exhausted. how can any average consumer, then, be expected to make a good judgment? will the market drive change if no one understands the market? are consumers too overwhelmed, and is it government’s job to regulate? where is the middle? i think the carbon market is definitely PART of the solution, but as previously noted, there are a lot of things it leaves out (like equity), and as discussed here, the calculation is really like hitting a moving target.

however, i do have more hope than i used to about humanity moving forward in a progressive (not regressive) and sustainable way. 2 years ago i was pretty much with the fatalists who were pretty sure we were all totally screwed (damn Al Gore and his depressing movie) unless we all became Amish or something. now, i see dim lights of hope.

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