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Offsets: trouble whether or not you roll your own
BY GAR LIPOW
3 NOV 2011 11:21 PM Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan is feeling guilty about her plane trip to a friend's wedding and decided to try to make up for it by rolling her own offsets. While I appreciate her avoiding offset schemes, rolling her own not only misses the point, it makes life harder for her than it needs to be.
Guilt is kind of pointless in this context. I guess instead of taking a plane Elisabeth should have taken the high-speed rail. Oh wait, we don't have any existing true high-speed rail lines in the U.S. Well certainly she could have taken light rail from the airport to her final destination, or maybe rented an electric car. Oh wait, again. There is no light rail on that route. The airport doesn't rent electric cars, plus we don't have to infrastructure to fast-recharge or swap an electric battery several times between the airport and the wedding location. In short, I don't think she has much to feel guilty about. It is not as though most of those concerned with airline emissions want to eliminate air travel. We want to keep it from growing beyond its current level, and to substitute land-based electric transportation where possible. Some of us want to put an end to stupid wars that are responsible for many aircraft emissions. Some of us also want to curtail the tax breaks, and airport space for corporate and luxury jets - air yachts.
Instead of either purchasing offsets or rolling her own, Elisabeth might consider donating to the Institute for Policy Studies, Rising Tide or other groups that combine concern for the environment with opposition to war and opposition to the growth of the 1% at the expense of the 99%. After all, we did not get into this mess via individual consumer choice, and we won't get out of it that way either.
The gradual reduction of freight rail is the country was a result of public policy and public investment. We have less than half the miles of freight rail track we had at the peak of freight rail shipping; that is a result of a massive public investment in public highways - which do not in fact pay for themselves(PDF). In our system rail pays property tax and highways don't, much of the so-called gas tax is really diverted sales tax, and railroads also pay fuel taxes but don't get fuel tax money back the way highways do.
Similarly passenger rail in this country suffers from that same competition by public resources for highways. It also competes with massive subsidized parking for cars and trucks(PDF). It further still reels from the deliberate destruction of trolley systems that once existed all over the country. The latter happened due to a combination of a requirement that electric utilities (who owned many of the trolley systems) divest them, with a campaign to purchase and destroy trolleys by General Motors, Standard Oil, and Goodyear Tires.
The bottom line: consumer demand follows spending on public goods. It does not lead it. For instance: at a certain point, consumer demand may have driven the growth of the internet, but it came into existence, and grew large enough to attract consumer demand to begin with almost entirely due to military and university spending. Setting an example by doing some simple logical things to reduce an individual environmental footprint is wonderful. But ultimately we will not make up through private spending or lifestyle changes for the fact that we currently don't invest enough in public goods. Nor will we privately make up for the fact that much of our public spending is directed to the wrong public goods.
Contrary to the famous Dick Cheney quote, energy efficiency is not a matter of private virtue. The answer to collective political failure is political action.
The climate crisis is one of the great issues of the 21st century. Slavery was one of the great issues of the 19th. Certain utopian communes at that time raised their own cotton, and avoided buying any slave-made products. They were pioneers in treating political issues as a matter of personal consumer virtue. In contrast: Harriet Tubman, who wore slave-made cotton clothes, actually infiltrated slave territory and freed hundreds of slaves. Frederick Douglas, who wore slave-made clothes and used slave-grown sugar, was one of the great orators of his era and successfully promoted the abolitionist cause. If you were supporting the anti-slavery movement in the 19th century, where would a better place to have directed your support have been - the communes that ran on the principles of personal virtue, or Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas? If you wanted to go beyond donations to personal action, which example would have been better to follow?
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Links in this article:
The article I was replying to: http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-11-03-the-greenie-pig-gets-religion-on-global-warming
Institute for Policy Studies: http://www.ips-dc.org/
Rising Tide: http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/
Public highways don't "pay for themselves" with gas taxes: http://cdn.publicinterestnetwork.org/assets/28b773b9f18cdb23da3e48a8d7884854/Do-Roads-Pay-for-Themselves_-wUS.pdf
subsidized parking: http://www.vtpi.org/tca/tca0504.pdf
Destruction of trolley system: http://www.baycrossings.com/Archives/2003/04_May/paving_the_way_for_buses_the_great_gm_streetcar_conspiracy.htm
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