- Nathan Newman <nathan at newman.org> writes (against me) -'As for elites versus the public, the US public overwhelming supports -environmental regulation, even at the expense of short-term jobs'
>But these are the results of opinion polls, not a register of actual
>behaviour. Indeed they are a bit bizarre, since what 'the public' are
>polled as saying is that they want to see the public, themselves,
>restrained by legislation from excessive energy use. But if they were
>remotely serious, wouldn't they themselves reduce their energy use?
Jim, this is the silliest statement by anyone purporting to be a lefty I ever heard, even one who has defected to neoliberalism on a number of issues.
Collective action problems and free rider issues mean that individuals know that their individual actions are marginal and massive personal sacrifice is unlikely to benefit the environment or society, so public policy is needed to assure that sacrifice is shared and free riders don't take advantage of the virtue of others.
I don't expect people to be offered a whole array of subsidies for driving and, against economic self-interest, make personal choices that are personally economically irrational. Irrational subsidies of the car culture lead to irrational individual decisions-- garbage policy in, garbage individual action out. That average citizens understand this and car culture elitists like yourself don't does not reflect badly on the intelligence of the average person.
>Nathan counterposes 'elitist car users' to populist tree huggers. But
>car ownership is a far more popular activity than environmental protest.
How did we switch from environmental use of technology to banning it? This is a classic move- someone suggests economic and environmental efficiency as a solution and anti-environmentalists equate it with banning technology.
The US could cut its gasoline consumption in half with almost no personal loss of freedom or use of cars-- even SUVs could be far more energy efficicent.
As for the popularity of protest, voting is a very popular form of protest and pro-environment initiatives do extremely well at the polls in the US and involve mass numbers of voters.
-- Nathan Newman