Where We Live: Sweat The Big Stuff

They say “Don’t sweat the small stuff” and on a personal level I agree, but what about the big stuff? I tend to talk about little things- a park, a company, a stream, and I usually shy away from anything so big it’s not Shoreline/Lake Forest Park-specific. This column is, after all, about “where we live”, but as the saying goes “think globally, act locally”. We can’t rationally or ethically concern ourselves only with our own back yards because we can’t possibly fix our big problems if we do. 

The Big Stuff. That’s most of sustainability.  Indeed, there’s one school of thought that basically goes ‘it makes no difference to do the little things, so don’t bother’. Stated that way it sounds thoroughly defeatist and I don’t believe it for a second, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good points to it.

Back in 2007 a new graphic novel called “As The World Burns, 50 Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial” was published. It is strident and for many a truly uncomfortable read, but that’s the point. If you can read it and remain comfortable your mind or your conscience simply don’t work. It says, in essence, if you fixate on changing to a more efficient light bulb but don’t address the huge, institutionalized, legally ossified problems behind energy production and usage it will do no good.

The same point was made in a very different way in fastcoexist.com’s article “Why The Planet Doesn’t Care About Your Eco-Friendly Lifestyle”, an interview with economist Gernot Wagner. His book, “But Will The Planet Notice?”  is just out. The thesis is it just isn’t enough to do all the small, individual things one can- things he, himself does- like not drive, not eat meat, recycle, or whatever, if one doesn’t put full effort into eliminating, for instance, all subsidies for fossil fuels (not just ‘foreign sources’- ALL of them), redesigning wholesale our cities, preserving all farmland and reestablishing what’s been lost, etc.

What almost always happens is someone, say, replaces an old Explorer with a new Prius and thinks ‘okay, I’ve done my part.’ Then they don’t do this or that or some other additional thing they might. It’s called “single action bias” and is equivalent to stepping out your door in the morning knowing you must get to work but thinking that first step is sufficient to get you to work by itself. Put like that it’s obviously ludicrous, yet it is a common psychological phenomenon.

It’s really about economics, changing the tax system- what’s incentivized or disincentivized- and the trade system, manufacturing policy, transparency, and other things. I will argue much of this can happen only after we eliminate the power of money in politics by radical reform of campaign financing, and remove all power from corporations. The current system is tilted all the way toward them and they do not willingly cede power back to its rightful wielders- us.

Somehow we need to directly tax carbon, or total energy concentration, or in some other way put a direct, visible price on energy usage and waste. Some things would inevitably get more expensive, at least in the short term, but other things would get less expensive and everything would readjust. Most importantly, ‘the market’ would finally be able to work. ‘The market’ only works (for the people) when consumers are informed enough to make rational decisions about any particular thing. Done well, this will help us get a lot more efficient fast.