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You Can't Become Rich In Your Pocket Until You Become Rich In Your Mind | ||||
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These agencies banned the non-essential use of CFCs as a propellant in aerosol spraysFINALITY? DENOUEMENT THE FREE MARKET VS. THE ENVIRONMENT The inadequacies of the laissez faire—libertarian paradigm are not just theoretical. Bad theory can lead to devastating consequences. It may be that the environment, where effects are typically long term and potentially severe, will produce the most serious ones. We can defile the environment for a long time before we see the results. We may even become convinced that no matter how much pollution we discharge, the environment is large enough to absorb it and remain unaffected. Removing just one rivet at a time, we may be surprised, and pleased, at how well the structure appears to be holding together. Perhaps it doesn’t need rivets at all. By the time we see and recognize the first effects of our pollution, the damage we have caused may be irreversible. The structure may fall apart. Nonlinear processes play a role in this. Our pollution gradually and imperceptibly takes some environmental system away from a locally stable equilibrium. Nothing seems out of the ordinary and the process is reversible. Everything appears fine — until we cross some bifurcation point to an area of instability. Then, without any additional pollution, positive feedback takes over and carries the system further from equilibrium. The process, now irreversible, can lead to environmental disaster. The minor, barely noticeable, cause of crossing the bifurcation point translates into a major unpleasant effect. Unfortunately, it is not natural for an economy driven by laissez faire to sacrifice immediate profits to the cause of preserving the environment. The only institution with the consistent concern for and power to protect the environment is government. While government has been aided in this effort by groups of scientists and environmental activists, industry has generally chafed at environmental regulation and has been able to use its political power to blunt regulatory efforts. Attempts to forestall even serious environmental damage have faced uphill battles, and even the small successes have been hard-won. Still, some successes have had important long-term ramifications, justifying the environmentalists’ persistence. One of the most meaningful contributions of an alliance between science and environmental concerns is a ban on the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The significance of this issue stretches well beyond CFCs. It has led to the realization that human pollution can affect the entire planet, a realization that has since been extended to other pollutants. It has also provided an object lesson in the economically motivated reaction of industry to such concerns. CFCs are the primary cause of the destruction of stratospheric ozone, which plays a vital role in absorbing harmful ultra-violet radiation. Scientists had suspected such destruction before 1960, and as early as 1970 it was suggested that some uncommon chemical in the stratosphere might act as a catalyst, facilitating the decomposition of tri-atomic ozone into di-atomic oxygen without being consumed in the reaction. In this way a single molecule might account for the destruction of many ozone molecules. In 1974, Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland published a paper in Nature, theorizing that CFCs, used primarily as refrigerants, industrial solvents, and aerosol sprays might be the culprit and suggesting the mechanism by which the ozone destruction occurs. Many scientists reacted by advocating a ban on CFCs. They stressed that the damage caused by the destruction of the ozone layer was not worth the modest benefits provided by CFCs. A higher incidence of skin cancer due to the increase in ultraviolet radiation, previously absorbed by the ozone, was not their only worry. More important was the possibility that this radiation might fry both the phytoplankton that lie at the base of the marine food chain and the microorganisms that lie at the base of the land food chain. The ultimate risk, according to the pessimists, was the destruction of all life on this planet. Industry reacted sharply, calling environmentalists’ concerns premature and arguing that it was inappropriate to take concrete measures until the connection between CFCs and ozone depletion had been proved. (This was a remarkable argument, considering the relative magnitudes of risk and reward in continuing to use CFCs.) At first, Du Pont, the largest producer of CFCs, claimed there was no experimental evidence supporting the Molina-Rowland hypothesis and noted that some studies had even shown an increase in stratospheric ozone. “One CEO told an industry trade magazine that their [Molina’s and Rowland’s] notions, so disruptive to capitalism, only made sense if the pair were KGB agents.” (Horton, “Strong Weather,” Rolling Stone, March 20, 1997.) Even when evidence of Antarctic ozone depletion became undeniable, Du Pont insisted that it did not matter since it was evident only in the Antarctic and only during the Antarctic spring, ozone levels returning to normal within a few months. Fortunately, in the 1970s large industrial interests had less influence on Federal regulatory agencies. These agencies banned the non-essential use of CFCs as a propellant in aerosol sprays, an action followed by other countries over the next five years. As a result of work by the U.N. Environmental Program, the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer persuaded 20 countries to sign an agreement proposing the phase-out of CFCs. But little of additional substance was accomplished for a decade. Then, in the Antarctic spring of 1985, a British Antarctic survey team noticed a sharp 40% reduction in the ozone layer, much larger than anyone had expected. (Ironically, satellite surveys had collected comparable data for years, but scientists rejected the data as spurious because the ozone losses recorded were so much larger than expectations.) At that time, however, there was little domestic political support for environmental issues. Also, since the 1977 domestic ban, the European Community had taken the lead in CFC manufacture and export. England and France were intransigently opposed to any ban on CFCs. It was the rotation of the EEC presidency from England to Belgium, a country less pressured by industrial lobbies, that enabled the passage in 1987 of the Montreal Protocol, calling for a reduction in the manufacture and use of CFCs. (It also helped that the major CFC producers had developed HFCs, hydrofluorocarbons, environmentally friendlier replacements for CFCs.) Still, as late as March 1988, Du Pont argued there was no need to reduce CFC emissions. Now there is widespread agreement, even within the chemical industry, that a ban on CFCs is appropriate. Can we really trust the invisible hand and considerations of short-term profitability to make wise judgments affecting the survival of the species? Neither can we abrogate our responsibility to the professional environmentalists, who have become politicized, specializing in dramatic slogans and doomsday predictions to raise money for their organizations. These have become large, rich and powerful. They have economic, as well as environmental, agendas. The annual budgets of the largest environmental organizations add up to more than $500 million and call attention to the extent that environmentalism itself is an industry. Senior executives of these corporations, many of them accomplished spin-doctors who are paid handsome salaries, are motivated by economic considerations. Environmental organizations, despite the importance of their concerns, are like other large special interest groups. If environmentalism were no more than a response to environmental needs, if it were not an industry requiring a healthy economy, a solid upper-middle class, and government tolerance, Russia and China would be swarming with environmentalists. They are not. Even in the U.S., economic declines have periodically elevated worries about jobs above environmental concerns. It may seem distasteful to pure-minded worshippers of Gaia, the Greek goddess of the earth, but environmentalism has much in common with laissez faire. Darwin, whose work did so much to make us aware of the role of nature in determining the forms of life, was clearly influenced by Adam Smith. “The theory of natural selection lifts this entire explanatory structure [of Adam Smith’s laissez faire] virgo intacta, and then applies the same causal scheme to nature…” (Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, p. 123.) Both environmentalism, at least in its radical forms, and laissez faire imply it is wrong to interfere in any way with nature. Just as mining perturbs the natural functioning of the environment and so is wrong according to many environmentalists, government intervention perturbs the natural functioning of an economic system and so is wrong according to free market economists. Such a view, which forgets that humans and their activities are themselves a part of nature, is based on the appeal of “natural.” Just as “liberal” evokes negative emotions, “natural” evokes a favorable emotional response. Even bottled water advertises itself as “natural.” (What is “non-natural” water?) Such a philosophy — don’t mess with Mother Nature — may sound good, but it does not stand up. Forces of nature are not necessarily benign. Droughts, major climatic changes, earthquakes, plagues, some of the most potent toxins and carcinogens, are natural. Nearly all animals die prematurely, neither peacefully nor painlessly. The “J” curve, in which a population grows geometrically and then collapses to near zero, does not describe a benign process. (Unless we stem the exponential growth of our own population growth, there is little reason to believe homo sapiens will escape this fate.) Within Western history, the harshest and most inhumane prescriptions as to how we should treat our fellow humans stem from Social Darwinism. This philosophy seeks to model our behavior after the natural, in which the less fit do not, and so presumably should not, survive. This dovetails with laissez faire. If government does not interfere to protect the poor, then it will be the fittest — at least within the economic environment we have created — who survive. Natural selection (within our artificial environment) will prevail. That is why Social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer were stout defenders of laissez faire and government non-intervention. Millennia before Social Darwinism, Aristotle had used similar arguments to defend slavery as natural, and therefore appropriate. The sanctification of raw nature, though it may have a superficial appeal, leaves much to be desired: culture, scientific understanding, morality, even the leisure to be concerned about the environment. Only by advancing beyond raw nature do we become more than just another animal. Neither Gaia nor Mammon should be worshipped blindly. Yet neither the occasional misbehavior of environmentalists nor their misplaced faith in nature should obscure the significance of environmental issues. We presently face a problem similar to the destruction of stratospheric ozone in the greenhouse effect and global warming. Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, some 100oC hotter than Mercury, despite Mercury being much nearer the sun. This is due entirely to the greenhouse effect. We see the greenhouse effect in the temperature of a car that has had its windows closed on a sunny day. Glass is transparent to sunlight, which enters the car and is absorbed by the interior fabric. The fabric re-radiates longer-wavelength infrared radiation. Glass is opaque to this infrared radiation and reflects much of it back to the interior of the car. So, initially, less energy is radiated from the car than is absorbed by it. The amount of energy inside the car increases. This raises the temperature to the point that the amount of energy reradiated by the car equals the amount of energy that is absorbed. The greenhouse effect is useful for passive solar heating, and it raises the temperature of the Earth by 30°C over what it would be if we had no atmosphere. The planet Venus appears to carry it a bit far. The dense Venusian atmosphere is 97% carbon dioxide, which like the windows of a closed car, is transparent to sunlight but opaque to the longer-wavelength radiation reradiated by the ground. Our atmosphere, by contrast, is composed primarily of nitrogen and oxygen, neither of which is a greenhouse gas. They are transparent to the reradiated infrared energy and allow it to pass through to space without heating up the atmosphere. But our burning of fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas, gives off carbon dioxide, 7 billion tons per year. An additional 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide are produced from forest clearing. Our level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has reached 0.036%, still minuscule in contrast to Venus, but 25% above our highest levels of the past 400,000 years. Methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, has risen to twice its highest levels of the past 400,000 years. Most scientists agree that our climate has warmed by 1°C over the past century. Many believe this warming has been caused by the greenhouse effect. Several believe we face a serious danger of a runaway greenhouse, elevating ambient temperatures to a point that human life could not be sustained. The debate over the greenhouse effect highlights a peculiarity characteristic of environmental issues, one that makes rational argument difficult. The most important environmental matters are characterized by three cross currents: (i) We are rolling dice. (ii) They are heavily weighted in our favor. (iii) The consequences of losing are terrible. First, we are rolling dice. Our long-range predictive powers are minimal, in part because so many mutually interacting mechanisms are involved. Our pollutants include CFCs, carbon dioxide, dioxins, herbicides, methane, nitrogen and sulfur oxides, PCBs, particulates, pesticides, volatile organic compounds, and many others. Even traces of antibiotics have been found in many of our streams and rivers. We have no idea how these pollutants interact with each other and how their combinations react with our climate or with living organisms (particularly microbes). We have no clue as to where the fine lines lie between processes that are reversible and those that are irreversible, or as to the damage that could be inflicted by positive feedback in irreversible processes. Second, the dice are loaded in our favor. The likelihood of our causing a global environmental disaster that would wipe out all life is remote. Our planet has already been through many cataclysms. Intense vulcanism and strikes by comets or asteroids have generated acid rain on a scale we could not possibly match. They have caused sudden and prolonged ice ages. Intense bombardment by cosmic ray storms has imperiled the micro-organisms that lie at the base of food chains. Such catastrophes have occurred — and are likely to recur during the lifetime of species that are still around. These species have survived conditions worse than anything we might produce. In addition, nature has recovered from environmental disasters, ranging from oil spill of the Exxon Valdez in Prudhoe Bay to the eruption of Mount Saint Helens. It has recovered more quickly than even optimists had hoped. So we might be making a climactic mountain out of a climatic molehill. The George C. Marshall Institute insists that the greenhouse effect — if it exists at all — is greatly exaggerated by scientists who argue for public policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Third, even though it may be unlikely, it is nevertheless possible that the consequences of crossing a bifurcation point from an area of stability to one of instability could be dire. Positive feedback could trigger the extinction of many species, including our own. They could enact the prophecy of Chief Seathl: “Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.” While the probability of this may be low, the magnitude of a potential disaster is enormous, so that the risk may be unacceptably high. |
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