The Ecological Crisis & Its Solution (Part 4): What Can We Do To Fix It?

But There Is Hope: What Can We Do?

"The social relations—the economic relations, the marketplace—have a more profound affect upon our relationship with the natural world than even our attitudes, important as these attitudes may be."—Murray Bookchin

The problem of climate change demands a political solution and one that is certainly not laissez faire. This is why conservatives and right-libertarians, people who advocate laissez-faire capitalism, reflexively reject the claims of climate science. The problems posed by climate change, as well as the other ecological crises that mankind has caused, simply cannot be dealt with in an individual manner. You cannot convince all the individuals and all the corporations in the world to stop polluting. In order to stop climate change and turn back the clock a bit, it will be necessary for social action to be taken. It will be necessary to alter our social relations and our economic relations!

Murray Bookchin had a libertarian socialist or anarchistic vision for how these problems might be solved. In his estimation, we destroy the planet because we see nature as something to be dominated. Bookchin held that the domination of nature is predicated on the domination of man. Consequently, the elimination of social hierarchy and domination of man over man is necessary in order to rid the world of domination of man over nature. He called his vision social ecology. While I love Murray Bookchin, I don't think his vision of social ecology and libertarian municipalism is capable of solving our problems. Long before his political revolution can transform the fundamental nature of the world's socioeconomic system, ecological disaster will have led to the extinction of the human race. Bookchin is correct that the solution will have to be political and economic, not merely an individualistic transformation of a psychological and mystical nature. Janet Biehl, who was his partner and a leading advocate of social ecology for decades, ultimately came to call herself a "social democrat." I too have come to believe that the solution we seek will have to be social democratic rather than anarchistic.

There is no laissez-faire mechanism in place to penalize companies that pollute the air—the free market would allow corporations to render the planet uninhabitable due to air pollution. There is this myth of the rational consumer, which supposes that consumers make decisions on a completely rational basis, but consumers often act on incomplete knowledge or in their own private best interest instead of acting in everyone's best interest. Sometimes the private best interest of consumers does not align with the best interest of society as a whole. I have heard both libertarians and distributists assert that people can vote with their dollars, and thereby alter the nature of the market. If you don't like the practices of this company, you can simply purchase from that company instead. In a competitive marketplace, there is some truth to this. However, most people don't have sufficient knowledge to make accurate judgments. I imagine that there are quite a few people like myself who would prefer to make their purchasing decisions on the basis of which companies are most ethical. However, there are two factors standing in the way: (1) it is impossible to ascertain the relevant information in regards to every purchase, and (2) it would be much more expensive to buy from the most ethical company most of the time. This is basically a failure of the market to bring about socially optimal results. The cost of pollution is a negative externality on all of society—that social cost is not reflected in price. People tend to purchase the cheapest product of an acceptable quality. The cost of pollution is simply not reflected anywhere in the final product: the product is neither more expensive nor of a lesser quality. Suppose that two companies produce widgets. Company X produces them with energy obtained by burning coal, thereby producing a lot of SO₂, NO_X, and CO₂, which produces acid rain that damages nearby crops, kills fish in nearby lakes, and contributes to global warming. The cost of the pollution falls on the farmers and fisherman in the area, as well as on the greater community. Company Y, on the other hand, has a more ethical approach. They produce widgets with clean and renewable energy. However, the clean energy is more expensive than coal, so it costs Company Y more to produce their widgets. Both companies produce products of comparable quality, but Company X sells them for 5% cheaper, even though their production process is more harmful to everyone. Consequently, the average consumer will end up buying their widgets from Company X rather than from Company Y, even though this is an irrational choice. By purchasing from Company X, making that decision on the basis of price and quality without considering externalities, consumers are actually enabling and encouraging the destruction of the environment.

Every single product that you purchase generates some sort of externality. It is impossible for the consumer, being a fallible and limited human being, to obtain and comprehend all the information necessary in order to make a rational decision in all cases. Even when the consumer does know about negative externalities, the consumer still tends to make their final purchasing decision on the basis of price and perceived quality alone. The way to remedy this failure of the market is quite simple. The community that bears the cost of the negative externality ought to charge the company a fee for generating the negative externality. In the scenario I mentioned above, I firmly believe that Company X ought to be charged a fee for polluting so that it costs them more to produce in a manner that is socially harmful. If this is done, then Company X will have to sell their widgets at a higher price, which allows the consumer to see the actual full cost of production in the final price. The price increase may be 10%, but that increase merely represents the cost of production that had previously been socialized and born by the community. The consumer will now look at the price and see that the eco-friendly alternative offered by Company Y is actually 5% cheaper. Thus, the average consumer will now prefer the product that does not generate negative externalities in the form of acid raid, poisoned crops, dead fish, and global warming. An approach like this, which taxes corporations by charging a fee for certain emissions, is a type of Pigouvian tax. A Pigouvian tax is "a tax on any market activity that generates negative externalities (costs not included in the market price)."(Wikipedia). Cap and trade or emissions trading is an analogue to an emissions tax—the end result is similar, even though the form of the policy differs. Cap and trade is essentially a Pigouvian tax on emissions that is reframed as a tradable permit scheme. The end result is largely the same: the one policy just taxes the polluter before they pollute, whereas the other taxes them afterwards.

Murray Bookchin is correct when he asserts that in order to have an ecologically sound economy, we need to fundamentally alter our social and economic relations—we need to change the way consumption is done in the marketplace, thereby altering the way that production is done. Bookchin is also correct in his assertion that this alteration of our social and economic relations cannot be done simply through a moral/ethical or religious awakening. He is right when he asserts that a political change must precede the economic change. It will take a change in the political realm in order to alter our social and economic arrangements. Yet, Bookchin advocated a communalist—and ultimately communist—alternative to capitalism and the Nation State. I, however, do not see this as desirable. Bookchin's approach would essentially require the majority of the world's population to adopt a more anarchistic approach to politics. A democratic confederalist or libertarian municipalist revolution would take much too long to save the planet. I have no doubt that such a model can work. I think Abdullah Öcalan and the democratic confederalist movement in Rojava, the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, really proves this. The EZLN in Mexico and the CNT-FAI in revolutionary Catalonia also bear witness to the basic workability of democratic confederalist systems of governance. However, I do not think that such approaches are at all capable of dealing with the sort of problems that we face in the world today. I reject both individualist anarchism and social anarchism. Government policies have actually been extremely effective at reducing pollution. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed into law a set of amendments to the Clean Air Act. These amendments did several things, the most important of which was phasing out CFCs and establishing cap and trade for certain emissions linked to acid rain, such as SO₂ and NO₂.

CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) used to be widely used as refrigerants and propellants. They are what used to force the hairspray out of the bottle when the button is pushed. CFCs turned out to be extremely dangerous because they float up into the atmosphere and turn into chlorine in the ozone layer, breaking down ozone (O₃) into oxygen. Ozone blocks UVB radiation from the sun, protecting life on Earth from harmful radiation. One of the negative effects of ozone depletion would be an increase in the rates of skin cancer.

"CFC molecules are made up of chlorine, fluorine and carbon atoms and are extremely stable. This extreme stability allows CFC's to slowly make their way into the stratosphere (most molecules decompose before they can cross into the stratosphere from the troposphere). This prolonged life in the atmosphere allows them to reach great altitudes where photons are more energetic. When the CFC's come into contact with these high energy photons, their individual components are freed from the whole.... Chlorine is able to destroy so much of the ozone because it acts as a catalyst. Chlorine initiates the breakdown of ozone and combines with a freed oxygen to create two oxygen molecules. After each reaction, chlorine begins the destructive cycle again with another ozone molecule. One chlorine atom can thereby destroy thousands of ozone molecules. Because ozone molecules are being broken down they are unable to absorb any ultraviolet light so we experience more intense UV radiation at the earths surface."(Depletion of the Ozone Layer)

The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act phased out CFCs; and CFCs were finally banned in the United States in 1996. As a result of banning CFCs, the hole in the ozone layer has started to fix itself. As of 2017, the hole in the ozone layer is the smallest it has been since 1988. The cap and trade policy went into effect in 1995. In five years, SO₂ emissions decreased by 40%. As a result of cap and trade, acid rain has been greatly reduced. The establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and legislation such as the Clean Air Act has greatly improved air quality, reduced smog, and helped slow mankind's destruction of the natural world.

I still consider myself to be somewhat of a libertarian, which is why I am attracted to both cap and trade and the fee and dividend approach to emissions taxes. Cap and trade is a market-based approach, making it much preferable to a central-planning approach. Although this approach does entail intervention in the marketplace, it still allows market processes to determine the most cost-effective ways of bringing about the desired change.

"The great advantage of cap and trade systems is that they're market based, allowing the private sector to determine the most cost-effective ways to cut emissions. They work exactly the way they sound. An emissions cap is set for the area covered by the program, typically as an allowed weight of output. These caps are often set to ratchet down over time to meet emissions reduction goals. Then permits are allocated to the emitters.... If a company has more permits than it needs for its level of emissions, it can sell the excess. And if a company needs more permits, it can buy them. Because companies have a choice between cutting emissions and needing additional permits, the price of the permits will converge on the marginal cost of making those cuts; and that should mean the cost of the overall emissions reduction is the lowest it can be."(Cap and trade system in 60 seconds)

My libertarian leanings also make me skeptical of handing more money over to the government, which is why I like the fee and dividend approach. With a fee and dividend approach, the revenue from emissions taxes do not go to funding government. Instead, the revenue from this tax would go into a permanent fund and be divided up equally among all the citizens. Each year, every person in the country would receive a check or deposit for their share of the revenue generated by emissions taxes. This would be like the permanent fund in Alaska, where part of the oil revenue goes to fund a dividend to locals.

I would like to see a combination of the cap and trade and fee and dividend approaches. I envision this working something like this: Every year the government sells a certain number of tradable permits and allows company's to transfer those permits by sale, but all the revenue from the original sale of the permits goes into a permanent fund for a citizen's dividend. This would essentially be a libertarian social democratic approach. It is libertarian insofar as it is a market-based solution and does not increase government revenue.

I also support the use of other Pigouvian taxes for environmental protection purposes. Plastic is piling up in landfills and littering sidewalks and parks all over the world. Ireland has imposed a tax on plastic bags at the grocery store. This tax has resulted in people opting for reusable bags instead. Pigouvian taxes could also be used to encourage soda companies to return to using reusable glass bottles. You used to be able to return soda bottles to the company and they would clean and reuse them. By imposing a tax on plastic, we could easily get soda companies to return to their old recycled bottle model. It is extremely hard for individuals in a capitalistic consumerist economy to "go green" if the corporations aren't eco-friendly. If corporations persist in unnecessarily packaging things in plastic, then consumers will continue to purchase things packaged in plastic. It would be good to tax things in such a way that their final price begins to reflect the full cost including externalities. If we were to do this, we would see less plastic waste and people would start to consume less meat.

40% of food in America goes to waste. This has a big carbon footprint. Grocery stores throw away tons of perfectly good food every day. There are actually many people who live entirely off of dumpster-dived food. If we could cut food waste, that would really help make our system more ecologically sound. One way that we could possibly do this is to tax grocery stores for food waste. We could make it a requirement that they either donate all of their edible food excess to people and organizations that can use it or else pay some sort of fine or tax for the waste that they produce.

While the situation looks pretty bad, I am actually quite optimistic because of the effectiveness of Pigouvian taxes and policy changes at altering human behavior. With the Trump Administration and the Republican majority, it seems highly unlikely that anything good will come out of Washington in the near future. However, I remain optimistic. The Trump Administration and the Alt-Right are so extreme that they are actually driving people further to the left. The majority of millennials dislike capitalism and have a favorable view of "socialism" (if by socialism you mean the Nordic Model of Social Democracy). The younger generation is moving more to the left as conservatives and the Republican establishment continue to alienate them. For the first time, in 2018 millennials will constitute the majority of the people eligible to vote in the United States. I suspect that we may very well see the collapse of the Republican Party as a major party and the rise of a few minor left-wing parties, like the Green Party and Socialist Party, as they fill the void and begin to compete with the corrupt and generally conservative Democratic Party. I really think that Trump's extremism is making it more likely for America to ultimately embrace social democracy and move much further to the left.