Rambling & Musing

Remember when Stephen Harper described the Kyoto accords as a "socialist scheme?" What do you think he meant by that? Is there any truth in the claim?

I'm beginning to think that the looming struggle to combat global warming may result in policies that do smack of what critics like to think of as socialism.

A major objective in the fight to tame global warming is a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The key source of GHG emissions is consumption of fossil fuels - gas, oil, coal. Curbing GHG emissions is achieved either by resort to alternative energy sources or by reduced consumption.

So far there have been few encouraging signs that we're willing to break our addiction to fossil fuels, especially gasoline. There is an effort to produce renewable petroleum-substitutes such as biodiesel and ethanol but there are crippling drawbacks to both. Somehow we're going to have to cut consumption.

Some like to think that the fight against global warming is a matter of cleaning up nasty industries such as the tar sands and coal-fired power plants. That's wishful thinking. We can do much to clean up polluting industries but to make that meaningful we will also have to reshape consumption at the individual level.

We are a consumer society. We have a consumption-driven economy. Just look at the role the housing market has played in the American economy over the past couple of decades. The stock markets constantly fret over "consumer confidence." When it falls, everbody hunkers down. When consumer confidence is restored, the markets boom.

Much of our GHG problem is consumption-related and that, in turn, is directly related to relative wealth. Wealth triggers consumption whether it be multi-thousand square foot homes, holidays abroad, exotic foods and drink, the latest electronic gadgetry, the biggest SUV or even a yacht or two. After all, what's the point of having money if you can't enjoy it? The problem is that all of this consumption results in massive GHG emissions.

Wealthy people tend to have more and better toys. That means a much larger GHG "footprint." That makes them more of a problem when it comes to tackling global warming.

You don't hear much about carbon rationing. Nobody really wants to talk about it, at least not just yet. However a lot of the deep thinkers believe that's where we're headed and it's a matter of when not if.

Why carbon rationing? It's becoming increasingly obvious that we can't get GHG emissions reduced to our already modest targets without a lot of sacrifice. George Monbiot has written a whole book about it, Heat, which you ought to have a look at. It's a well-reasoned and pretty dispassionate take on doing without.

Doing without is a goal that the market economy isn't capable of achieving. Oh we could deter gasoline consumption by taxing it up to $100 a litre but then you would only have the rich folks filling up their SUVs at the pump while angry crowds of less fortunate pedestrians looked on. No, that wouldn't work. There'd be too many dead rich people. One by one the options falter until you're left with just one - carbon rationing.

Carbon rationing appears socialistic in that everyone is given the same quota. It's a per capita deal, right down the line. Each person is entitled to inflict a specified quantity of environmental damage and no more. Now imagine you're a billionaire and yet get handed your ration book. In it you find that running your yacht for an afternoon exhausts your entire monthly carbon ration. That means no gasoline for your Hummer, no heat for your mansion or any of your guest houses, not even a trip to the Bahamian retreat where it's always warm anyway. Your bank account is still full but you just can't use your wealth in ways that generate GHGs.

Faced with that quandry you would probably turn green in a big hurry. You're wealthy so you can afford to equip your properties with solar panels, wind generators, heat pumps and other renewable and energy saving technologies. You'll probably scrap the Hummer and opt instead for the luxury hybrids that, by then, will be available. You may beach the yacht and go for a well-appointed ketch instead. You'll get by although not without sacrifices.

Everything we buy, every product and every service, has a GHG footprint of its own. It takes a lot of energy to produce a product. Raw materials have to be found, transported and processed. Parts and components have to be fabricated. The whole business has to be assembled, packaged and shipped. Factories have to be built. Employees have to get to work and back every day. On and on and on. The upshot of that is that we can and will change our lifestyles to be greener but we will also have to curb our consumption. We need to buy fewer things and those we do buy are apt to be smaller, simpler, more durable, locally produced and greener. In this case, carbon rationing narrows an individual's purchasing power. A rich person may be able to buy a much prettier widget than the plebs but, at the end of the day, he still has just one widget like everyone else.

There's the problem. What if I only need one widget because I have but one abode but the guy who's awash in cash has four residences each of which also requires a widget? He's got them solar powered but that doesn't answer his product consumption problem. Do we let him have four widgets? What about Fred down the block? He isn't rich but he'd sure like to have another widget himself and he's willing to pay for it. Half the block in fact is lining up to get a second widget. All of a sudden we've got factories across the country working overtime turning out widgets. I think you get where I'm going with this.

I'm not trying to make the case for carbon rationing. I'll leave that to the experts. What I'm trying to do with my musings is point out that we're likely to face very real social issues in the effort to tackle global warming and we ought to start thinking about them now. How is our consumer society going to weather this transition?

If you have any ideas, by all means leave a comment.