Climate Bills and a Green Economy
Liars, Cheats, Thieves: The Terrible Truth About the Mean Greens
The right-on brigade has been unmasked. About time too, says Iain Hollingshead Iain HollingsheadMarch 17, 2010
Daily Telegraph - Every now and again there comes along a scientific study that proves beyond reasonable doubt what you instinctively know to be true: wine is good for you, exercise is dangerous, and self-righteous environmentalists are lying, cheating, thieving degenerates.
I'm exaggerating only a little. Do Green Products Make Us Better People?, a paper in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science, argues that those who wear what the authors call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. Faced with various moral choices – whether to stick to the rules in games, for example, or to pay themselves an appropriate wage – the green participants behaved much worse in the experiments than their conventional counterparts. The short answer to the paper's question, then, is: No. Greens are mean.
The authors, two Canadian psychologists, came up with an intriguing explanation for this. "Virtuous acts," they write, "can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviour." It's the yin-yang theory of psychology, or "compensatory ethics," to give it its proper name. Buy an organic potato, then go home and beat your wife with The Guardian. Hop smugly into a green hybrid car, then use it to run over little old ladies doing their shopping.
This "moral balancing" argument, however, clearly has its limits. Most people are sufficiently balanced without having to swing to opposite ends of the moral spectrum. We can give money to charity without dipping into the company till at the same time. Every good act doesn't necessitate a bad one. To every action, there is not an equal and opposite reaction. Buying an expensive courgette with a bit of mud on it need not turn you into a tyrant.
No, what this study really does is to confirm our deep-rooted suspicion that there is something fishy about people who profess to be greener than thou. Those climate-change scientists in East Anglia didn't do their cause any favours with their emails. The most inconvenient truth for Al Gore was when reporters discovered just how large his home energy bills were.
As with the worst type of religious zealot, there is nothing more annoying than the zeal of the converted, especially when it is tainted with the hypocrisy of self-righteousness. As we report today, people are more likely to buy environmentally friendly produce in shops than on the internet. Being seen to be green is more important than anything else. I wonder whether that will change if it now becomes a case of being seen to be mean.
We should, of course, distinguish between the quiet, worthy faith of the majority, who recycle when they remember and try not to fly long-haul to New Zealand more than twice a month, and the infuriating, evangelical minority, who pour white paint all over nice, black 4x4s.
We've always suspected they were bullies. In the Seventies British film Nuts in May, Mike Leigh hilariously skewered the sort of couple whose supposed love of the environment – and why do so many of these people live in towns? – is really just a device to stop everyone else having fun.
And now, at last, we have confirmation that they're tight as well. They might be willing to pay over the odds for a lovingly tended carrot, but in every other area of normal human activity, their greenness is merely a mask for miserliness. The wind turbine, the tandem bike with a dangerous little buggy on the back for the twins, the self-denying holidays in Wales… Get a boiler! Get a car! Get out of here!
We have been kind to these unkind people for far too long. Now that their halo has fallen and they can no longer boast their green credentials as a shorthand for moral superiority, it is time to fight fire with fire. How about a little compensatory ethics of our own? Double the tax on organic food as a deterrent; it is clearly a starter drug to a lifetime of amorality. Stop and search anyone in a Prius. Conduct dawn raids on north London allotments. Otherwise, one can only imagine the sort of dystopia that would ensue if these mean little green men were allowed to run amok.
Flashback: What Can We Expect Obama and the 111th Congress to Do About Curbing Carbon Emissions?
The Center for American ProgressOriginally Published on December 22, 2008
1. Wish they all could be California cars. California has a program to reduce motor vehicle greenhouse gas pollution by 30 percent by 2016. Sixteen other states plan to adopt it, too. [The Bush administration blocked California’s request for a waiver from the Clean Air Act to allow this program.]
2. Global warming: a real and present danger. The Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts vs. EPA that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA the authority to require greenhouse gas reductions from power plants and other sources. But first, the EPA has to make an “endangerment finding” that global warming poses a threat to Americans’ health and safety. [Despite a recommendation from agency scientists to do so, the Bush administration refused.] President Barack Obama should make the endangerment finding and begin to establish controls on greenhouse gases.
UPDATE: On December 7, 2009, The EPA declared that there was compelling scientific evidence that global warming from manmade greenhouse gases endangers Americans' health. In a monumental first for the U.S. government, the Environmental Protection Agency declared that greenhouses gases pose a significant health risk. The Obama administration took a major step toward imposing the first federal limits on climate-changing pollution from cars, power plants and factories, declaring there was compelling scientific evidence that global warming from manmade greenhouse gases endangers Americans' health.
3. Green stimulus and recovery. As the economy continues to tumble, the need for an economic stimulus and recovery package grows. This package should include $100 billion for clean energy programs, including the Weatherization Assistance Program, transit agencies, and energy efficiency in federal buildings. For other programs, see the Center for American Progress’ “How to Spend $350 Billion in the First Year of Stimulus and Recovery.”
SOURCE: AP/Charlie Riedel
4. Mercury falling. The National Research Council reported that prenatal and early childhood exposure to mercury can cause developmental delays and permanent brain damage in children. The EPA acknowledges that “coal-fired power plants are the largest remaining source of human-generated mercury emissions in the United States.” [The Bush administration proposed to delay mercury controls until 2018 and beyond.] The courts struck this rule down. The New York Times reported that the EPA “ignored its legal obligation to require the strictest possible controls on the toxic metal.”
5. Curb the enthusiasm for greenhouse gases. The administration should seek to reduce global warming pollution via a cap-and-trade program that achieves a 20 to 35 percent reduction from 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. It should also reduce emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The program should require all emitters to buy pollution allowances in an auction, and it should rebate half of the allowance revenues to middle- and low-income households to help them offset any increase in energy costs. The other half should be invested in clean energy, health care, and transit. Representative Ed Markey’s (D-MA) Investing in Climate Action and Protection Act, H.R. 6186, is one proposal that includes these measures.
6. The answer is blowing in the wind (and shining in the sun). Twenty-eight states require utilities to produce a proportion of their electricity from the wind, the sun, the earth’s core, and other renewable sources. The new administration should adopt a national renewable electricity standard that requires utilities to generate 25 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025.
SOURCE: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta
7. Bridge loans to the 21st century. The new administration and Congress should ensure that the next round of the bridge loan program for auto companies requires them to speed their efforts to produce fuel-efficient cars. A bridge loan program should replenish any funds redirected from the Advanced Vehicle Technology Manufacturing Incentive Program. Loan recipients must agree to cease all efforts to legally or legislatively challenge federal or state clean energy or global warming programs, including the California greenhouse gas standard for autos.
8. Pick the low-hanging energy fruit. Energy efficiency is called the “low-hanging fruit” of clean energy since there are myriad ways to employ technology to reduce energy consumption that save money. This would also reduce global warming emissions. A McKinsey & Company analysis determined that, “Almost 40 percent of abatement could be achieved at ‘negative’ marginal costs, meaning that investing in these options would generate positive economic returns over their lifecycle.” Efficiency policies should include incentives for states to rewrite state utility regulations to put energy efficiency on equal ground with new power plants. The new government should establish a federal energy efficiency resource standard that requires utilities to reduce energy consumption, similar to programs in 19 states, and it should fully fund the program to capture and reuse industrial waste heat.
SOURCE: AP/Reed Saxon
9. Green the wires. The participants at the National Clean Energy Summit, sponsored by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, concluded that the lack of transmission capacity was the most significant impediment to the broad expansion of renewable energy. Grid modernization must accompany increasing renewable energy generation, including the ability to incorporate intermittent renewable electricity generation. The modernized grid must carry this renewable power to urban areas, which will require some long-distance transmission lines. The grid can be made more efficient with “smart grid” technology that more efficiently directs electricity to where it is needed. There are hurdles to building necessary new transmissions lines, including public opposition to siting new lines, a lengthy permit approval process, and the environmental impact of the lines. Therefore, it is essential to adopt reforms as soon as possible.
10. Rise of the new machines. Research, development, and deployment of new clean energy technologies have been woefully underfunded over the past eight years. We must significantly increase the investment in clean energy research, including advanced batteries, energy efficient materials, and similar technologies. In spite of rhetoric to the contrary, government spending on renewable energy and efficiency R&D has consistently suffered under the current administration.
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