Global warming and magical thinking
Jun. 1st, 2009 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleA while back I came across the notion of "vicarious goal satisfaction", also known as the "remedy effect". This is the idea that you can cancel out the effects of a bad choice so long as you follow it up with something that promises redemption. As in, it's "OK" to eat a giant steak so long as you follow it up with a low-fat cookie. The most compelling demonstration of this was a study showing that the mere presence of a salad on a fast-food menu inspired people to eat more french fries.
This, of course, is magical thinking - that the effects of a low fat cookie will, through sympathetic magic, cancel out the effects of the steak. It also relies on the notion of sin, rather than simple cause and effect - the idea that eating the steak is essentially "bad" rather than merely fattening. Sin can be redeemed, but cholesterol cannot; the confusion between virtue and chemistry is at the root of this effect.
I was exposed to lots and lots of environmentalist thinking when I was younger, so I suffer from this effect myself. I think nothing of getting on the motorcycle and riding 30 miles into town and back for a bite of lunch, but I feel terrible guilt over using paper towels. (That, at a rate of about 1 roll every 2 weeks.) Of course, the environmental impact of those 30 miles could buy a whole case of paper towels, but something about using the towels casually still rubs me the wrong way. Call it brainwashing.
Conserving paper towels is my capitulation to vicarious satisfaction. I figure that by recycling the paper towels I use to dry my hands for cleaning up spills on the floor, I'm somehow mitigating the enormous cost to the environment of everything else in my life. Knowing that this is wrong on an intellectual level makes no difference - the emotional programming isn't worth the effort to overcome.
Americans use a LOT of energy - as I said before, our bodies need only 100 watts of power from food, but on average we use a hundred times that amount of energy to sustain our lifestyles. This is a LOT of energy with a BIG environmental impact and it is VERY HARD to cut it down to something sustainable. The impact of adapting a truly sustainable lifestyle, on a national level, would make the disruption of the current "economic crisis" look like a walk in the park - it would be much more difficult to adapt to than even the worst-case financial scenarios. Living an eco-friendly life is, by and large, a privilege of the wealthy, who pursue it for mostly emotional reasons. That some people are individually successful at this is, in my opinion, irrelevant to the larger problem - I don't see them as saints, but as dupes.
I am not a global-warming skeptic and my opinions on the subject are generally in accord with the IPCC reports. (Though, it bears mentioning that this position is often considered "skeptical" in comparison to journalistic hysteria on the subject.) However, just as with individual conservation, I do think that current efforts to cut down on CO2 emissions are a complete waste of time.
In fact, I have come to the exact opposite conclusion - that the only sensible course of action is to extract as much benefit from fossil fuels as we possibly can. This does not mean "wasting" them, but it does mean taking the opportunity to use petroleum while it's still available. Oil isn't going to last forever, and conservation on our part (whether on an individual or national level) means nothing more than giving those fossil fuels away to other parties.
An idealistic perspective imagines a world where, somehow, every country agrees to curtail use. The trouble is, the more countries that agree, the stronger the incentives are for the remaining countries to opt out. There has never been a successful international treaty of this type, and there probably never will be. The Kyoto protocol has been conspicuously unsuccessful, and I think it would be even less so if the United States had taken part. Countries don't cooperate on economically difficult tasks out of the goodness of their hearts, and neither do people; "morality" has always been founded in self-interest, and moral principles don't last when the parties involved individually benefit from ignoring them.
I could be proven wrong on this, and maybe there will be some exceptional and unprecedented new mechanism that will convince all the major powers to dial back on their fossil fuel use. The most rational and plausible mechanism is not conservation, but some sort of international tax on raw petroleum - say, a hundred dollars a barrel - with the money disbursed in a way that encourages every country to participate. And maybe instead of driving cars, we'll all be riding around on flying unicorns that fart rainbows.
In the meanwhile, the current cap-and-trade legislation is the low-fat cookie of our age. Maybe it's affordable, but it's almost certainly not effective. I am 99% certain that destructive levels of global warming are going to happen regardless of US actions or international treaties. The only question remaining is how we can adapt.
This, of course, is magical thinking - that the effects of a low fat cookie will, through sympathetic magic, cancel out the effects of the steak. It also relies on the notion of sin, rather than simple cause and effect - the idea that eating the steak is essentially "bad" rather than merely fattening. Sin can be redeemed, but cholesterol cannot; the confusion between virtue and chemistry is at the root of this effect.
I was exposed to lots and lots of environmentalist thinking when I was younger, so I suffer from this effect myself. I think nothing of getting on the motorcycle and riding 30 miles into town and back for a bite of lunch, but I feel terrible guilt over using paper towels. (That, at a rate of about 1 roll every 2 weeks.) Of course, the environmental impact of those 30 miles could buy a whole case of paper towels, but something about using the towels casually still rubs me the wrong way. Call it brainwashing.
Conserving paper towels is my capitulation to vicarious satisfaction. I figure that by recycling the paper towels I use to dry my hands for cleaning up spills on the floor, I'm somehow mitigating the enormous cost to the environment of everything else in my life. Knowing that this is wrong on an intellectual level makes no difference - the emotional programming isn't worth the effort to overcome.
Americans use a LOT of energy - as I said before, our bodies need only 100 watts of power from food, but on average we use a hundred times that amount of energy to sustain our lifestyles. This is a LOT of energy with a BIG environmental impact and it is VERY HARD to cut it down to something sustainable. The impact of adapting a truly sustainable lifestyle, on a national level, would make the disruption of the current "economic crisis" look like a walk in the park - it would be much more difficult to adapt to than even the worst-case financial scenarios. Living an eco-friendly life is, by and large, a privilege of the wealthy, who pursue it for mostly emotional reasons. That some people are individually successful at this is, in my opinion, irrelevant to the larger problem - I don't see them as saints, but as dupes.
I am not a global-warming skeptic and my opinions on the subject are generally in accord with the IPCC reports. (Though, it bears mentioning that this position is often considered "skeptical" in comparison to journalistic hysteria on the subject.) However, just as with individual conservation, I do think that current efforts to cut down on CO2 emissions are a complete waste of time.
In fact, I have come to the exact opposite conclusion - that the only sensible course of action is to extract as much benefit from fossil fuels as we possibly can. This does not mean "wasting" them, but it does mean taking the opportunity to use petroleum while it's still available. Oil isn't going to last forever, and conservation on our part (whether on an individual or national level) means nothing more than giving those fossil fuels away to other parties.
An idealistic perspective imagines a world where, somehow, every country agrees to curtail use. The trouble is, the more countries that agree, the stronger the incentives are for the remaining countries to opt out. There has never been a successful international treaty of this type, and there probably never will be. The Kyoto protocol has been conspicuously unsuccessful, and I think it would be even less so if the United States had taken part. Countries don't cooperate on economically difficult tasks out of the goodness of their hearts, and neither do people; "morality" has always been founded in self-interest, and moral principles don't last when the parties involved individually benefit from ignoring them.
I could be proven wrong on this, and maybe there will be some exceptional and unprecedented new mechanism that will convince all the major powers to dial back on their fossil fuel use. The most rational and plausible mechanism is not conservation, but some sort of international tax on raw petroleum - say, a hundred dollars a barrel - with the money disbursed in a way that encourages every country to participate. And maybe instead of driving cars, we'll all be riding around on flying unicorns that fart rainbows.
In the meanwhile, the current cap-and-trade legislation is the low-fat cookie of our age. Maybe it's affordable, but it's almost certainly not effective. I am 99% certain that destructive levels of global warming are going to happen regardless of US actions or international treaties. The only question remaining is how we can adapt.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 10:33 pm (UTC)Fuck yeah!
no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 10:53 pm (UTC)Conversely, when it comes to law, business leaders don't reveal the fact that restrictive legislation affects more than their own business. So long as every business suffers the same regulations, the competitive environment is unchanged; the product may cost more, but your relative position is roughly the same. The real reason for most regulation is not to make the world better, but to raise the barrier to entry so as to eliminate competition entirely. So, for example, requiring restaurants with wood-fired ovens in SF to put in hideously expensive air scrubbers isn't actually to improve air quality, it's to prevent other restaurants from being able to compete. I suspect a lot of superficially environmental legislation is actually anti-competitive legislation in disguise; it's often supported by large players and opposed by small ones.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 01:59 am (UTC)I really don't understand people who like lumbering, clumsy behemoths so much they're willing to buy gas to drive them everywhere. (Note that this is NOT talking about people who really, truly NEED a big vehicle for towing or hauling or whatever. I'm talking about the people who drive Urban Assault Vehicles by choice.)
As a partial aside - hydrogen as a private auto fuel is a ridiculous idea. Frankly, I don't know why an otherwise-sensible company like Honda is throwing so much money at it - unless they figure there's another application for all the research and patents they're piling up around fuel cells. End to end efficiency - with current or even projected sources for hydrogen, and counting the energy needed to compress it - is absolutely appalling. I also have little doubt that anyone but the most obsessive greenie would balk at the size of the fuel tank required for anything resembling a decent driving range.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 03:06 am (UTC)Well in some senses you are right (organic food, for instance) but in other stuff - like having the energy saving lightbulbs, double glazing and padding on the boiler, using recycled paper (usually cheaper, like recycled toilet rolls are usually the cheapest), using boxes and bags instead of plastic bags (I'm bad at this), recycling glass, switching off lights and not letting taps run, cooking healthier fresh meals rather than getting takeout or ready meals that need to be transported...etc etc. aren't expensive, either - actually save you money.
But you'd be surprised how many people don't - my parents generation did cos they lived through the oil crisis and were born just after the war...but I doubt others do.
I agree people tend to salve their concious doing little things...but if everyone did those little things, maybe added a few more - you'd be surprised how much energy would be saved.
I was thinking today what is probably the worst apart from oil - beauty products, fashion and the beauty industry...loads of people buy magazines that tell them to buy more stuff and make them feel ugly to buy more stuff which is created from oil and usually polluting - don't believe Body Shop anymore, they are now L'Oreal, the worst - to make people feel better about themselves...a total waste of energy and spiritually and mentally upsetting for everyone concerned except a few celebs...hmm.
Like travel, I think people will cling to those placebos. But anyway there is a lot people can do, and it saves them money. Whether they will or not is partly class-based/cultural and part ignorance.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 03:21 am (UTC)I'm maybe being unreasonably harsh on conscientious people who mean well, but I really do think that their example is not one that just anyone (or even very many people) can effectively follow. Even if there was the will, it would be co-opted by craven commercial interests exploiting the remedy effect.
Yes, you can save lots of money by being eco-friendly. Just as you can save lots of money by avoiding debt, but the fact is that lots of people are trapped in less-than-optimal situations for reasons that are not just practical, but wrapped up with issues of habit and identity that are hard to change.
I wholehartedly support initiatives that can allow everyone to reduce their footprint, what I don't think is effective is for elite people to do it as a fashion statement. Entire countries have to get on board, and the obstacles to that are profound. I'm not completely pessimistic, merely very pessimistic, about the prospects of finding a way to make this happen. But if some clever and plausible way came up, of course I would support it.
In the US the best thing in the long run would be a Big Ass Gas Tax that would fund all kinds of social programs, so that lower income people would actually enjoy a net benefit.
But that will never happen, because that would be SOCIALISM!!! Eeek!
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 03:30 am (UTC)It's already happening here - iniatives to make the energy reducing bulbs cheap enough for everyone - or literally giving them away.
The food thing interests me, cos a lot of people on the poverty line actually eat quite bad food that actually isn't that cheap - the cooking skill seems to have been lost. Again there are iniatives to teach more cooking in school, Jamie Oliver's School Dinners etc.
It's not inevitable, even though I do agree the people worrying about it tend to be middle class trustafarian types...that does need to change, but in a way that doesn't - as partly it does at the moment - blame the poor for the problem they never actually started...it's why I hate organic food, as 'good' as it is, it's cost excludes me and everyone else who actually have to work for a living and don't have daddy's money propping them up!*
*I'm exaggerating, but still you have to earn a lot to be able to afford to buy all organic.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 03:12 am (UTC)Well that is in effect wasting it. Using it as fast as you can cos someone else might get there first is just an endgame. No-one wins.
The alternatives to fossil fuels are there, and are coming online. Whether the US jumps onto that electric car or not is academic, really. If it does, it might survive. If not, it's reliance to oil will actually kill it, when Peak Oil is passed, if not already...
A lot of people talk about it being impossible - well the sad fact is the more impossible it is the more likely another more agile country will pull ahead, one that has invested in alternatives (no I'm not talking about the UK, more likely one of the 2nd world). But I don't believe it is impossible - look at what FDR did with the New Deal. Mass change is possible in the US and elsewhere...if people want it and realise that to put their own gain over the country's is actually harming both. Danger of capitalism though, tends to breed people who don't work like that...
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 03:25 am (UTC)That is correct - but some people lose more harshly than others. I really do think we are in a lose-lose situation here, the question is how to get through it reasonably gracefully. Avaricious but strategic use of remaining fossil fuels might be better not just for the US or Europe, but for the world as a whole, than magnanimously letting other people waste it outright.
Just a contrarian thought.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 03:31 am (UTC)If that was the idea then great. But it would probably all go on defence.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 03:31 am (UTC)Flying unicorns?!? Don't be silly. Everyone knows that the only flying equines are pegasi and that unicorns move by teleportation and only fart rainbows when they get indigestion from lollipop trees.