Question Earthority!

While crawling the Web for today’s QE commentaries, I happened across two pieces which set the stage for the point I’d like to make. One examines reluctance to discuss gas rationing — the other cautions environmentalists against “doom and gloom.”

The reason for avoiding discussion of gas rationing should be obvious … as soon as that kind of talk starts, the discussion is over for the vast majority of Americans and other citizens of relatively wealthy nations. Even most “mainstream” American environmentalists aren’t going to allow their concerns over pollution and climate change to justify forcing what they view as sacrificial lifestyle changes on themselves.

On the other hand, Peter Madden has a point when he contrasts the future vision of the most forward environmentalists with what people really want:

I’m not saying we should go too much in the other direction. If we are too optimistic and cheery, we can come across as all Panglossian, implying that we can solve the world’s challenges by some easy “green consumer” choices or the development of new technology.

Of course we still need to scare people a bit, to grab the attention. But we risk paralyzing and de-motivating people if that is all we dwell on.

When greens do paint visions of the future, they are often utopian, hippie, bucolic, and frankly unbelievable. They either seem to think that everyone will live in some variation of rural France, on a small-holding complete with small vineyard, goat, and squeaky bicycle. Or they describe the kind of world that most normal people would run a mile from. I certainly don’t want to live in a future where I have to hold hands with strangers and wear flowers in my hair.

In point of fact, I disagree with Madden on one key point: I think that we can — scratch that, must — “solve the world’s challenges by some easy ‘green consumer’ choices or the development of new technology.”

As a matter of fact, I think that’s the only way we’re going to solve the world’s challenges — and not just environmental ones.

One of the first arguments I run into when advocating libertarianism (or, when I’m feeling frisky, outright anarchism) is that “people aren’t perfect” — that all of us fallible human beings require restraint imposed from without, because we don’t have the capacity from it within.

The standard counter-argument, of course, is that that’s the point — people ARE fallible. People ARE selfish. People DO want the best for themselves and screw the rest of us (and screw the environment, if it’s the difference between that new charcoal grill and a 0.0000000000000001% reduction in the day’s local CO2 emissions).

Those fallible, selfish people include, of course, the government officials and bureaucrats whom some would set over us to make sure we don’t give in to our most damaging impulses. Which means that instead of, say, 300 million people fighting those impulses for themselves, some of them winning and some losing, we get, say, 537 elected officials usually not bothering to fight those impulses at all, but rather clamping down on our impulses in order to aggrandize their own.

But it’s actually worse than that. In fact, those 537 damaging impulse machines (known as the US House of Representatives, the US Senate, the Vice President and the President), we get a passel of appointees with license to (do) ill, and a boatload of lobbyists trying to buy (and usually succeeding) indulgences from the Elect(ed).

And on the other side, it’s better than that. Over time, an instrument has evolved for naturally curbing the little devils on our shoulders. That mechanism is called the market, and it tends toward minimizing damage (which, after all, is seldom tradeable) and maximizing benefit.

As of now, nearly every light bulb in my home is a compact fluorescent. Those bulbs last longer than the old incandescent bulbs, making them ultimately less expensive (although more per bulb at point of sale — I have to buy them less often) and they cost less to operate (because they draw about 1/4th the wattage of the incandescents). Finally, they reduce polluting emissions because less electricity has to be generated (from the burning of coal, or whatever) to operate each bulb. Instead of sacrificing to save the earth, I’m benefiting by saving the earth. I get just as much light as I got before. I pay less for it. And the planet takes a smaller hit. Everyone wins.

And, the pretensions of various politicians notwithstanding, I didn’t have to be forced by any of those 537 rulers or their minions to buy the damn things. I bought them of my own free will. Why wouldn’t I?

In my opinion, it’s not really the “doom and gloom” that bothers most people. It’s the fact that they’re being told that the only road out of environmental doom and gloom is the road that leads to regulatory, bureaucratic, mandatory doom and gloom. And that’s just not so. Freedom works. Really. It’s the only thing that ever has.