Carbon Footprints

Over the holiday weekend, while relaxing on the Cape Cod shore, I had the opportunity to be subjected to a number of carbon-themed radio segments, including one excoriating me for using a charcoal grill instead of a gas grill (I prefer gas grills actually, but I use what I can). Other stories told of the glories of cutting one's carbon footprint by moving into micro houses worthy of Thoreau's cabin.

Honestly, this has all become too much. I am very concerned about the noticeable effects of climate change, and I feel that strong measures must be taken as soon as possible. However, efforts like those mentioned above strike me as an "ascetic chic". The inhabitants of the developed world should obsess over the carbon properties of their slightest actions and should dutifully self-flagellate themselves (paying a carbon-offset premium on a plane ticket is another example). But this all just a distraction. The problem is not Americans or Europeans using charcoal instead of propane, but the hundreds of millions of Africans and South Asians that use charcoal as their first and only energy source. McMansions are definitely a grotesque excess of American culture, but the remedy is not to force everyone to live in garden sheds. Even Thoreau lived in his cabin for only two years as a thought experiment. The great mistake of this movement of modern-day hermits is that they assume that were society's members to live in a simpler way reminiscent of past times, that we all would be in tune with a healthier nature. Unfortunately, the truth is closer to the opposite. I have actually lived in rural, less-developed societies, and the pollution and environmental degradation is often worse, not better. We should remember that the English and the French swtiched to coal as a fuel source because their landscapes were largely denuded of trees by the early Modern Period. And that was without chainsaws, multinationals, factories and credit cards.

Humans will demand to live in a more complex, progressively more technologically advanced civilization. Attempting to turn the clock back is a pure pipe dream. This is not to say that overpopulation, pollution and climate change are not extremely serious issues: indeed, they are arguably the most serious issues that civilization faces today. However, the more developed parts of society would do better to focus their energies on preventing deforestation, making agriculture more efficient, and developing clean, alternate energy sources for industry and consumer use. Market forces, not shame or self-righteousness, will be the only means of meeting these goals. People must be given a real incentive for making choices that help to restore environmental equilibrium. Just to give a personal example: in the Northeast, during the winter, I rarely use our natural gas heating system, as the cost is (in my opinion) higher than the actual value of some 5 C degrees of extra heat. In the former Soviet Union, however, where natural gas is subsidized and only directly costs consumers pennies, I had no compuction of lighting up the stove to heat the apartment, opening the window to the Siberian winter in order to prevent asphyxiation (don't try this at home!). Pricing incentives, and focusing on the truly big issues in global climate change seem like a much better investments of time and energy than worrying about how your dogs are grilled, or if you should move into a teepee.