I’m not writing this to appeal to flower children, green thumbs, habitual recyclers or conservation advocates. They already respect their relationship with nature, and quite frankly I’ve got no beef with them, but that’s irrelevant. I want instead to start a dialogue with a group of people that I’m shocked are typically hostile or otherwise indifferent to stewardship and sustainability. I’m writing to conservatives of all shades, from libertarians to neo-cons, to consider this basic tenant: environmentalism, to paraphrase science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, is simply selfishness taking the long view by acknowledging the true costs of our actions. That’s something any advocate of fiscal responsibility can surely support.
When I say altruism, I mean environmentalism isn’t about helping endangered organisms like polar bears and exotic snails to survive simply because we’re in debt to them for eroding their habitats. It’s not about tree-hugging and it’s not about serving nature. Those philosophies might resonate with more sensitive souls, but I expect the great majority of us to simply accept environmental damage as a cost of doing business – our liberated, fun-filled and (currently) wasteful consumer lifestyles practically demand it. But no matter how much we might wish otherwise, the costs will catch up with us sooner or later in a variety of ways.
Consider climate change. There’s a monetary value associated with carbon emissions that’s impossible to nail down with precision, yet it exists. Fertile lands swallowed up by the sea, grasslands succumbed to deserts, and entire marine ecosystems scarred by water too hot or too acidic are all likely possibilities as the earth reacts to a sudden and unprecedented increase in greenhouse gases over the century. While these impacts might be terrible for a variety of ethical reasons, what’s most relevant is they’re simply prohibitively expensive. Cities that don’t invest in seawalls will be slowly inundated by the ocean and thousands of communities will be forced to relocate or re-equip themselves for other economic ventures as the climate belts shift. The resources we rely on to sustain ourselves will become vastly more difficult to obtain and they’ll have to be split between billions more people in more cramped and stressful conditions. This is the erosion of trillions of dollars of productivity, and someone has to foot the bill.
As of now, our children and grandchildren will pay the full price, not us, even though our irresponsible behavior has contributed to these various long emergencies. Does that strike you as fair? Surely it’s a problem worth addressing. Yet if we expect the free market to combat this dilemma, as many conservatives advocate, our situation won’t fundamentally improve because of one simple fact: our current economics hide the true cost of our actions.
For example, what you pay at the pump for a gallon of gas is a gross understatement of its true burden. Every pound of CO2 emitted alters the ecology of the planet in some minute way, every trace of exhaust contributes to health problems passed on through doctor’s visits and higher insurance premiums and every fossil fuel, if not extracted responsibly, creates localized environmental problems, ranging from oil spills to tainted groundwater to ravaged mountaintop ecosystems. Summed together, these lingering effects create economic malnourishment and sap future growth. The immediate gratification of cheap and easy gas, which makes us competitive in the short-term, can potentially undermine communities and harm them immensely in the long term, yet the price at the pump does not reflect these hazards – the full cost is footed by later generations and passed on as hampered growth throughout the decades.
Some environmentalists seek to address this issue through ecological economics, a discipline that attempts the impossible by quantifying the full impact of our relationship with the biosphere and assigning a range of dollar values to it. This emerging field promises to take the simple logic behind the free market and incorporate it into an ecologically responsible framework that looks out for humans across all time scales, not just those here and now. But it takes political will to embrace such a transformative science. It’s in everyone’s best interest to acknowledge and prepare for a hot and crowded future, and the simplest way to confront this harsh reality and limit the damage is to assume full responsibility for our destructive habits. To curb our behavior, we need to cover our debts and pay the full price of our actions upfront.
The free market can behave responsibly toward the planet and toward future generations if it runs on eco-economics. This budding discipline promises to unite two seemingly disparate philosophies and provide an accurate and scientific reassessment of our lifestyles. Call me naïve for suggesting that green and conservative can be one and the same.
