The Easiest Way to Tackle Climate Change
Hopes were high as our leaders gathered in Durban late last year. But another round of prevarication, indecision, postponement and finally outright refusal to meet carbon targets has certainly left those of us concerned about climate change feeling very discouraged. Yet not surprised. Since the very first attempts at addressing carbon emissions, our governments have approached the problem in the same reluctant, reductionist way. We’ve been led to believe that reducing carbon emissions will involve sacrifice—that we have to tighten our belts and soldier through an economic rough patch if we are to hold back climate chaos. By way of excusing the Canadian government’s recent reneging on their Kyoto commitments, one journalist quipped: “where there are jobs there are emissions, in equal measure. The only sure fire way of slashing emissions across an entire economy is to have a deep and lasting economic collapse…” Even the best intentioned among us have a hard time stomaching this idea as we deal with the current credit crunch, widespread recession and the Eurozone crisis.
Fortunately, this widely cited equation of “jobs equals carbon emissions” is completely wrong. We can have a vibrant, sustainable economy with adequate employment, while reducing greenhouse gases and protecting the biosphere. To see how to get there, we need to take a long, hard look at how we do business today and how this inevitably leads to ever increasing emissions.
Wedded to a paradigm of unending “growth” our governments have steadily deregulated trade and finance through trade treaties, a whole host of visible and hidden tax breaks, and many other policy measures. Pressured by multinational corporations, governments have handed over power and it is now big business, including global banks, that determine the direction of the economy. And in this global economy, there is little room for diversity, for small business, for local production serving local needs, or even for efficiency. But wait a minute, isn’t the supposed reason for the growing scale of global businesses that they are more efficient? The fact is, the efficiency of the global economy is possibly the most pervasive myth of our time. Look behind the scenes and the illusion falls away to reveal wanton waste of people and natural resources, large amounts of pointless pollution and a mass of externalities for which we taxpayers foot the bill.
In nearly every country, production is increasingly geared toward export, which inherently involves more carbon emissions. Policies support this across the board. For example, in China, re-importing has become common practice. Selling goods domestically incurs a Value Added Tax (VAT) of 17%, but exports enjoy VAT rebates and imports are completely exempt. As a result, China’s businesses routinely export goods and then reimport them to evade VAT. In fact, China imported more goods from itself than it did from the United States between 2005 and 2008. This is just one of the many useless ways we have of burning fossil fuels.
Redundant trade is another: Because companies try to take advantage of minute price swings and other financial advantages, identical products are regularly swapped back and forth from country to country. For example, the United States exports around 350,000 tons of potatoes each year, while importing roughly 320,000 tons. Beef exports and imports both total around 900,000 tons. The same holds true for a range of other goods including sugar, bottled water and waffles. This is not a practice unique to the US; most other industrialized countries participate in the same wasteful food exchange with the same or different goods. For instance, the UK imports approximately the same amount of milk, bread, eggs and pork as it exports.
You would think all this waste was not only inefficient, but very costly. It is, but not to corporations because once again taxpayers cover most of the bill: from 2002 to 2008, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) found that US government subsidies for fossil fuels totaled approximately $72 billion, two and a half times the amount directed toward renewables.
If we really want to tackle climate change, shifting trade regulations and subsidies would be a relatively simple and very effective place to start. If we change our policies to support the local on a global scale, we could not only shave off a substantial portion of carbon emissions, but also take steps to rebuild local economies and communities. This is what an Economics of Happiness is all about—supporting small-scale on a large scale. It’s not hard to see how a thriving network of diverse local businesses providing for local needs will generate a people-friendly, job-rich and low carbon economy. This kind of economic localization enables us to reduce our ecological footprint in other ways as well by encouraging more low impact ways of producing food and consumer goods.
It’s time we recognize that the driving force behind climate chaos is the globalising economy, not our innate failings as human beings. Unfortunately, however, many of us have become trapped in a cycle of self-recrimination. We are told that we are not doing enough to reduce household energy use, that we are driving and flying too much… In the meanwhile, our tax dollars contribute to an escalation in redundant trade and other wasteful business practices. It’s high time that we start looking beyond individual consumer choices, and come together to push for real policy change. While it is absolutely true that we have a part to play as consumers, our individual efforts will do little to halt the warming of the climate if government and big business continue to promote an energy-hungry economy.
The first step in shifting direction is to inform ourselves about the workings of the global economy—it is an issue that unites all of us working for change in the world, whether our concerns are primarily environmental, social or economic. Through this deep understanding of how globalization impacts our lives, we can join together to push for a new economy—one that is smaller in scale, more localized, and more in tune with the needs of people and the Earth.
Author: Helena Norberg-Hodge
Bravo Helena, could not agree more – let’s rid ourselves of unnecessary ‘boomerang trade’ and all the wasteful things we do before we start looking at other things that bring pleasure and value to our lives.
Climate change is absolutely a symptom of a growth economy – no wonder we can’t make serious headway on tackling it, we’re attacking the symptom, not the cause.
Although individual actions do count, putting the onus back on individuals to solve massive systemic crises is not fair, and not working. People hear the world is coming to an end, but then are advised to change their lightbulbs. They are right to be suspicious about the disconnect between the scale of problem and proposed individual actions.
We all need to work together to change our economic, transport, food and other systems so that they are fair to all life, and fit within a finite planet.
British columnist and commentator George Monbiot put it well: ‘no political challenge can be met by shopping’.
http://postgrowth.org
Excellent overview. As an investor in companies that seem ethical, and socially valuable i have been questioning the whole growth obsession for long time so thank you.
Helena, I agree with the basic logic, that the right way to end growth would keep jobs and save the climate both. I’ve studied how real growth systems of all kinds really do that, in considerable detail, for decades. There are some things you’re leaving out. One is the real cause of what seems like our cultural “growth imperative”.
The real source of that is our social consensus for “stabilizing” our returns on investment. We just fail to notice how that also becomes a commitment to attempting to “stabilize an explosion” of ever multiplying investments.
Where the dilemma originates is in how any net-energy system first develops. To exist it has to 1) produce more energy than it uses, a profit, to not go physically bankrupt. Then to grow it has to 2) reinvest that profit in expanding its own structures. That’s what we’re caught in. It’s rule #3 that really determines whether that initial habit of growth turns into a cancer, destroying itself along with its host, or not.
So the rule of success in growth is 3) to switch from using your profits to endlessly multiply your demands on yourself and environment, and instead use them to heal both by building new relationships. The part of that people all over still leave out is it also means the same thing for money, i.e. no longer limitlessly adding financial profits to financial savings too.
That would “appear” to end the central institutions of capitalism. It actually only means removing the very limited features that turn evil,… but people mostly just back away anyway, for not yet knowing how to think about it. Where people usually go wrong is judging how the economy *would work* (if allowed to become stable) according to their own limited ideas of how it “did work”.
To start seeing the creative way the economy would really adapt to being relieved of its growth imperative, you kind of need to “have some faith” in nature’s other models. One needs to trust that nature knows what she’s doing, using that very same method for switching organic growth systems to maturing as how to end their growth, for *every* other kind of climax energy using system of hers that we admire the beauty and perfection of.
Thank you for your comments. At a certain level, I agree with you. But on the other hand, I think it is essential we understand the role of transnational corporations and banks in our in figuring out how the economy has gone so far wrong. One of the many ways that they’ve dictated the situation is to pressure governments to centralize economic activity and power. If we shift towards more decentralized (e.g. localized) systems there would automatically be less of an emphasis on unsustainable growth and unending profit.
P.F. Henshaw touches on a point I consider too. I fully support decentralization and growing the local economy for purposes of social, economic and environmental reasons. But that faith part of predicting what will happen to the economic situation. I picture lovely things – but have troubles with one aspect. If it’s a fully local economy, then money is recycled back and forth through exchange for goods and services. My wages buy my locally produced food, and goods. But, there comes a limit as there is little ‘outside’ $ coming in to the community, is there not? Hopefully I am making enough wages to support local businesses and put some $ away for retirement. So, without even considering other diminishing financial factors like interest, or insurance or income taxes, I have less to spend than what I made. This would apply to every community wage earner. Thus, the local businesses would see a continuous reduction in spending, which would lead to closed businesses. My understanding is the need for inflation in our system, aka growth. And to restructure the system away from income tax, retirement funds and insurance is pretty scary. And dealing with solely recycled money in a community is also scary when it means diminishing returns. Is there another aspect of these elements that I am not seeing? I know it wouldn’t be fully recycled money, some exports and imports will still happen, but enough to produce profits for wage increases, and compensate for all the dollars continually taken out of the community exchange pool? It’s the main problem holding me back from leading the charge to a better economy. Because I don’t fully see it as a true solution just yet.
It is also important for individual consumers to act by not buying Asparagus from Perou or Strawberries froom Marocco (off -season) etc.
I would like to also give credit to another innate desire of human beings to experiment with something new as adding insult to injury here! We all as consumers are more open than ever before to taste new and exotic products at the peril of our own home-grown varieties! What if we experimented on ground instead to grow strawberries ourselves than to import from China or elsewhere! This would not only save farmers caught up in producing glut-ridden crops and vegetables leading to a financial disaster for themselves, but also to the almost redundant breed of agro-scientists and the ilk to bring about newer seeds and methods of experimenting with newer crops and offer variety to the experiment hungry consumers today!!!