Recycling

The Telegraph reports that it may be contributing to global warming. I’m inclined to quote what Russell Arben Fox wrote last week:

… I am fully aware of the various economic impact calculations that have been made of recycling efforts over the years, many of which have concluded that melting down plastic and reprocessing paper and grinding up aluminum is ultimately a waste of time and fuel and money, and I am not persuaded by any of them. Why? Because they misunderstand the point of recycling. The point is not to ultimately lower overall energy use (a worthy goal, but one probably better achieved through other means), not to save us from being overrun by garbage (thankfully, there are few places around the globe where the future of WALL*E is anything except very, very distant, though of course it can’t hurt to start changing things now), but rather to simply stop using so much stuff. Forget all the environmental lamentations and warnings (as applicable and truthful as many of them are); there’s just no good reason to throw something away when you can re-use. As has been said, use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Recycling is a big part of that ethic–or, at least, ought to be.

To be clear: the particular concerns that are raised in that Telegraph article have to do with ecological considerations rather than economic ones, and there are some measures that are proposed therein – like, say, using waste to generate electricity – that are pretty clearly in keeping with the ethic of responsibility that Russell is endorsing here. But I still think that his general point is an important one: ecological responsibility is not – or at least: should not be – fundamentally an attempt to “save the Earth” or prevent or forestall some form of environmental calamity, but rather a basic aspect of a life well lived, and so something that doesn’t require complex calculations about things like carbon footprints to get it off the ground. That’s not to say that scientific findings can’t be helpful in determining the best ways to be responsible stewards of our environment, but only that they shouldn’t be allowed to displace the more fundamental ethics of care and restraint that stand at the ground of genuine ecological concern. If the stuff we’ve used can serve a better purpose than sitting in a barge or landfill, then that’s the purpose it should serve.

Earlier: I made a related point about cloth diapering.

Filed under: energy, environment

Kaboom.

Ryan Avent worries about what will happen if the Obama administration fails to pass significant climate change legislation:

I don’t think warming will mean the end of humanity, but it will be serious enough that major geo-political change will take place, leading to all manner of unpredictable, and often catastrophic, outcomes. And as we approach critical thresholds, I think you’ll begin to see some scientists and activists grow radicalized by our inaction. When people see that the political leaders aren’t going to take the necessary steps, they’re going to start blowing up coal plants. I’m not kidding.

And how much carbon would that emit?

Filed under: energy, environment

Eat Local!

As Lee joins Ezra Klein in cautioning against an overemphasis on locavorism, I’d like to emphasize in turn that there are lots of reasons to eat locally-produced food that have very little to do with the desire to reduce emissions. For one thing, as Jim Henley points out, local food tasty – and for a few others, it facilitates community, revitalizes local economies, and encourages the kinds of interchange that make us less reliant on the all-seeing wisdom of the centralized state. Oh, and it’s tasty. Call it the Cloth Diaper Rule: if you’re only including the emissions in your analysis, you’re probably leaving a bunch of important stuff out.

Ezra’s right, though, that not everyone can be a locavore year-round, though I don’t think that even the most extreme Slow Foodists would want to claim otherwise – for example, one of the best bits in the “Year of Eating Locally” chapter in Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy comes when he admits that he just can’t do without the (decidedly not Vermont-grown) bananas. And yes, if reducing emissions is your top issue, then the “food miles” approach is pretty clearly overrated. But none of that means that eating local and seasonal food is anything but good for the culture, quite a lot of fun, and very, very tasty too.

Filed under: energy, environment, food

The Future of Food

Michael Pollan’s missive to the next President on the future of American food policy is well worth reading, and not just because it quotes me:

Writing of the movement back to local food economies, traditional foods (and family meals) and more sustainable farming, The American Conservative magazine editorialized last summer that “this is a conservative cause if ever there was one.”

He makes a similar point about the potentially trans-ideological character of the push for good food a bit later on:

Reforming the food system is not inherently a right-or-left issue: for every Whole Foods shopper with roots in the counterculture you can find a family of evangelicals intent on taking control of its family dinner and diet back from the fast-food industry — the culinary equivalent of home schooling. You should support hunting as a particularly sustainable way to eat meat — meat grown without any fossil fuels whatsoever. There is also a strong libertarian component to the sun-food agenda, which seeks to free small producers from the burden of government regulation in order to stoke rural innovation. And what is a higher “family value,” after all, than making time to sit down every night to a shared meal?

It probably goes without saying that there are certain aspects of Pollan’s argument with which I disagree: I’ve argued before, for example, against the idea that we should simply shift federal subsidies toward the “good” kind of farming, a move which would come right out of the same sort of central planner’s mindset that Pollan rightly tags as having done so much to get us in this mess in the first place:

It must be recognized that the current food system — characterized by monocultures of corn and soy in the field and cheap calories of fat, sugar and feedlot meat on the table — is not simply the product of the free market. Rather, it is the product of a specific set of government policies that sponsored a shift from solar (and human) energy on the farm to fossil-fuel energy.

That obviously wasn’t those policies’ ultimate intent, though: they were primarily meant as a way to encourage the production of the most food at the lowest possible cost to consumers, and in that they clearly succeeded. And so it seems to me that the lesson here should be obvious: large-scale governmental policies can have severe consequences that often belie even the best of intentions, and given the ever-present possibility of regulatory capture it’s probably best not to trust our federal overseers with any more power than they absolutely need.

The same goes in spades for proposals like this one:

The F.D.A. should require that every packaged-food product include a second calorie count, indicating how many calories of fossil fuel went into its production. Oil is one of the most important ingredients in our food, and people ought to know just how much of it they’re eating. The government should also throw its support behind putting a second bar code on all food products that, when scanned either in the store or at home (or with a cellphone), brings up on a screen the whole story and pictures of how that product was produced: in the case of crops, images of the farm and lists of agrochemicals used in its production; in the case of meat and dairy, descriptions of the animals’ diet and drug regimen, as well as live video feeds of the CAFO where they live and, yes, the slaughterhouse where they die.

… which if you’re looking to raise the cost of food unnecessarily and play right into the hands of the biggest companies out there, sounds like a terrific idea – but otherwise …

Seriously, though, the essay is really excellent, and lots of the other stuff that Pollan suggests – schoolyard gardens, a Victory Garden on the White House lawn, policies that bring the sticker price of meat more in line with its actual cost, recycling food waste for compost, using our land grant colleges to educate farmers rather than mere agribusinessmen, and so on – is really, really right on. Give the letter a read, and report back on what you think.

Filed under: agriculture, energy, environment, food, government/law

8 Billion Dollars

Apologies for another post-less day – summer teaching is almost over. The following, though, is for your viewing pleasure:

More on ethanol here and here and here and here.

Filed under: agriculture, energy, environment

There is no light at the end of the tunnel

Depending on how you look at it, David Weigel’s report from a bloggers’ meeting with John Boehner – quick version: the man seems to have No Idea what he is doing – is either (a) a profoundly depressing window into GOP dysfunction, (b) an awesomely grin-inducing window into GOP dysfunction, or (c) both of the above. Megan McArdle’s explanation of the stupid economics behind the “anti-speculation” bill that scored 94-0 in a test vote on the Senate floor ought, on the other hand, to be straightforwardly depression-inducing all around.

What. A. World.

[UPDATE: James reports back on the Boehner meeting, sort of.]

Filed under: economics, energy, politics

“Drill, drill, drill”

Yglesias is going to love this:

Watching the 6-foot-9 [Kevin] Durant stroke one jumper after another in his one game on Tuesday was worth the price of a press pass.

He had 22 points, two 3-pointers and five rebounds in a single 27-minute appearance — and not surprisingly his team captured its first victory as property of the Oklahoma City Nicknames-to-be-named-laters. (Drillers seemed to be the name of choice at the summer league.) [emphasis mine]

When the Peak hits, can we move them back to Seattle and call them the ‘Sonics again?

Filed under: energy, sports

Gas taxes and road maintenance

A quick thought: it’s entirely reasonable to say that taxes on gasoline are a much more sensible way to fund road maintenance than a mixture of property and income taxes, proceeds from state lotteries, and so on. But one problem here is that fuel-efficient vehicles are no less hard on roads than gas-guzzling ones, and so an approach like this is one which tends – again – to privilege the pocketbooks of a certain sort of wealthy, Prius-driving type over those of the rest. If the goal is to make drivers pay for wear and tear, then such an outcome is inequitable and unjust; if the purpose is simply to use the higher prices to discourage driving or at least encourage the purchase of cars that use less gas, then I’m on record as being troubled for reasons that are by now familiar. Things like congestion pricing, highway and bridge tolls, increased costs for parking, and nifty pay-per-mile schemes (whether publicly or privately run) are better ideas, so long as any such measure is offset by corresponding reductions in taxes of other sorts.

Filed under: energy, taxation, transportation

Barack Obama: Wrong on ethanol, wrong for America

If you read just one thing from the latest issue of The American Conservative, skip my article and go for Jim Webb’s must-read book excerpt on our history of failed intervention in the Middle East (sadly not available online, though Larison quotes a bit of it here). Once you’re done with that, though, head straight for Tim Carney’s piece on the awfulness of corn ethanol. Here’s a quote to whet your appetite:

The economics are simple: when corn is being used for fuel and farm fields are no longer producing food or feed, the price of food and feed goes up. The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service finds that farmers received $5.15 for a bushel of corn in May, up from an already high $3.49 a year ago. Corn futures, trading near $2.50 on the Chicago Board of Trade throughout 2006, climbed to almost $7 this past month.

And because farmers are growing corn instead of other crops and selling corn as fuel instead of as cattle feed, the prices of other crops and animal products have been affected as well. Consumer Price Index figures from April (the most recent month for which data is available) show soaring prices among many staples. Bread is up to $1.37 per pound, a 32 percent increase from March 2006, just before the ethanol mandate went into effect. Eggs and milk are also up for the same period, 59 and 20 percent respectively. Ground chuck has climbed 10 percent, following an 18 percent bump from 2003 to 2006. Beer prices are climbing, too, spurred in part by higher costs for energy, bottling, and water, but price spikes in the agricultural elements of beer are the big drivers—barley is up 87 percent since 2006, while hops have more than tripled.

These rising prices hit consumers in obvious ways, but they can also ruin small businesses. Higher ingredient costs may cut into Budweiser’s bottom line, causing a 1.4 percent drop in profits. But for smaller microbreweries, ones with narrower profit margins, continued increases in ingredient prices could be disastrous. In Mexico, family-operated tortilla stands have had to hike their prices, so the poor clientele are switching to cheaper, mass-produced foods like Cup-a-Noodles.

As Tim goes on to point out, and as I have remarked before, this is one of those very, very few cases where Barack Obama is clearly in the wrong even while – get this! – John McCain actually gets things right. Such a point of divergence is, of course, insufficient reason to vote Republican this year (there is no reason sufficient to do that), but it does seem to me to be good enough to rule out voting for the other panderer, too. That Tim’s terrific article was published just as the World Bank issued a report (with a similar judgment set to be released today by the British government) claiming that demand for biofuels has increased global food prices by 75% only seems fitting; Wired’s Brandon Keim has promised to ask Sens. McCain and Obama whether this will affect their biofuel policies, but it is hard to imagine that it will make for any change of the believable sort. (We’ve got to achieve “energy independence”, you know?) Anyway, give Tim’s article a read when you have the chance, and know frustration. If the prices of beer and hamburger meat really are up, though, anticipate an uprising once the word gets out.

P.S. In related news, Matt Yglesias explains why corn ethanol is so damnedly inefficient, and Nathan Origer recounts his own experience with the biofuel racket.

Filed under: economics, energy, environment, food

Thank you, Megan McArdle

The question of auctioning carbon permits, vs. giving them away to companies, is often framed as a question of whether companies or consumers pay the cost. This is false. Consumers are going to pay the cost no matter what. Oil is in short supply, which means they’ll pay to the point where the market clears no matter who gets the revenue. And utilities are generally heavily regulated companies with so-so profit margins–Con Ed, for example, which provided electricity to both me and Matt growing up, has a 7% net margin and an ROE of roughly 11%. Pepco, which currently serves us (I think–my rent includes utilities), does 4% and 9-10%. The costs of carbon, whatever they are, will pass through.

The rest of the post is here; she is responding to Matthew Yglesias. My own opposition to taxing carbon is, as I have explained many times before, based on the judgment that it is prejudiced against those who lack the present ability to turn to alternative forms of energy. Whether this is so, and whether it is a sufficient reason to be so opposed, is of course open to dispute – what is not disputable, however, is that there is no way to ensure that only “polluters”, as opposed to “consumers”, will bear the burden of such a tax. On this point at least there is no relevant difference between Messrs. McCain and Obama.

Filed under: economics, energy, taxation