I truly believe we are going to solve global climate change by switching over the Federal vehicle fleet to Priuses and squeezing some more caulk between our door shims and window panes and recycling the deep fried remnants of our Whoppers to power the farm combines endlessly plowing our Corn Pops. And that ought to employ tens of millions of people in real good-paying jobs for many years to come, at a minimum. I mean, fuck incentives- let’s mandate the world to behave itself with a Bible of regulations.
There is a reason why two installments of the Cash for Clunkers tax credit program sold out in a matter of weeks and put tens of thousands of cleaner cars on the road, and a year later the stimulus program’s $5B grant based weatherization program has retrofitted less than two percent of intended houses. Not surprisingly, people rushed to save themselves money, and not surprisingly, an army of state bureaucrats couldn’t give a fuck if your house is weatherized. Generally, it’s difficult to argue that incentive and choice do not trump rules and enforcement when it comes to social policy. This is not an argument against government, but a plea for government to use a stronger set of tools.
I mean we spend 25 years of our careers trying, usually in vain, to add 1.4 years to our lives. We subtract more years trying to add more years than we statistically predict could be added. The stress level involved in decades long regulation and litigation and political triangulation aimed at reducing environmental stress seems to cause more stress than the old bastard windbag we call “the climate” could ever muster. Apparently there are legions of people waiting just a few more years for some environmental and culinary rapture, where everything is flawlessly clean and carries no risk. They’ll finally cast a line in their favorite river when the Mercury concentration drops just a few more parts per billion, or tongue that bucket of spicy KFC hot wings when the hormone levels at the chicken mills they monitor from their i-phone app dips a tosh. I for one have always just cast the line and eatin’ the fuckin’ fish. I am not so confident as to think I have much say as to when environmental Jesus will decide to make on Earth as it is in the great organic farm in the sky.
There couldn’t be a better example of this self-celebratory environmental small think than in our Nation’s capital, where they decided to Save the River and Be Green, (“Keep the River Green”?), by making you pay 5 cents for a grocery bag. For starters, if you don’t buy a grocery bag, a disposable bag to store the things you just purchased (for likely many hundreds of cents), because it costs a nickel, you have far greater things to worry about than climate change slowly whittling away at your children’s health over the next millennium, should you not starve to death before they reach adulthood, or your trash bags blowing into the pristine waters of the Anacostia- than ignoring a few inconvenient truths. Namely, the state of your personal finances and next meal.
And I wonder if the City Council that passed this even knows anything about global climate change. Do they know that a majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from coal plants, and nearly all the rest from cars, planes, trains and forest fires? Or that plastic bag curtailment could save the greenhouse gas equivalent of 14 nanoseconds of China’s economic growth? Policy like this, that lacks all perspective of magnitude or context, and yet is pitched like the Great Leap Forward at every bus station and financial transaction, forcing many an awkward conversation at cash registers across the District about whether you want a plastic bag for your tampons or 17 cans of cat food, is the codification of denial- the timeless political calculus that feigning productivity and progress while claiming credit beats the appearance of doing nothing.
I empathize deeply for the bureaucratically enmeshed career environmental regulator who has to attempt to solve global problems via a thousand little regional solutions, when obviously a couple big ones are what’s required. They usually look like they haven’t seen the light of day in four weeks, having to fill out three forms to get their three different bosses to let them write a report to seek interagency clearance, to then languish in Committee on the Hill while be slowly mutated by lobbyists beyond anything that abnormal levels of hormones could achieve. By the time they reach this point a good portion of their career, and will, has passed, and they would not last two days in the wilderness they so seek to protect- slowly adopting the same ghostly hue of the countless memoranda and email chains that pile around their cubicle sized windowless office.
No wonder so many of my generation have adopted “unorthodox lives”. No wonder so many of us hate polluters, and the fucking politicians they pay off- because we see the answer and the impediments all too clearly. In fact, it’s pretty obvious. My generation (read the surveys) says something like, “Jesus! You want to fix climate change- macro econ 101 says put a fuckin’ price on carbon, offset taxes elsewhere, and watch the clean economy build around you, employing millions of modern day Rosy the riveters and decent lower middle class jobs- the jobs that gives this country stability in the first place! But so long as coal is cheap as dirt, your plastic bag policies are a pipe dream.” After all, the primary function of government is to create middle class jobs- that soothing ointment for the many wounds of life that makes all the tedium and drudgery usually tolerable.
The more people lobby to stop global, fucking global, climate change by opting to pay a Citibank credit card bill online in lieu of getting a piece of paper mailed once a month, or inflating their fucking tires 3.2 more PSI, or turning down the thermostat two degrees, the more America loses- the whole point, a whole generation and a peerless opportunity. If irony is when something’s actual meaning is totally opposite the literal- then nothing could be more ironic than modern populist environmentalism.
