A 150-foot-long blade is moved into position for delivery to a new wind farm in Fort Bridger, Wyoming, 940 miles away. (GLEN STUBBE / NEWSCOM)
Environment versus economy: a false choice?
By Eoin O'Carroll | 11.05.08
Watching this country’s quadrennial ritual of legitimizing its ruling class got me wondering: As millions lined up Tuesday to check boxes, punch holes, and tap screens in the hopes that the next iteration of the US government would better reflect their values, how much thought did they give to environmental problems?
As it happens, the advocacy group Environment America recently emailed me a 52-slide PowerPoint presentation that tries to answer that very question. Assembled by pollster and Democratic political strategist Celinda Lake, the slide show offers the results of dozens of public opinion surveys from different polling organizations, a glimpse of America’s environmental conscience.
There are some broad themes – most Americans believe that the quality of the natural environment is only fair or poor, and most take candidates’ environmental policies into account when voting. But when you take a closer look, the results become largely incoherent. According to the slide show, only 46 percent of Americans believe that human activity is responsible for global warming, but 71 percent have taken steps to reduce their carbon footprint. Some 13 percent say that environmental problems are the most significant threat to the US and its allies, but only 5 percent say that these should be the top priorities of the president and Congress. Three-fourths support a five-year moratorium on new coal plants and increased investment in clean energy, but two-thirds believe that the US should promote greater use of coal-fired electricity. Judging by this collection of surveys, we are a nation of environmental Sybils.
Now we all contradict ourselves from time to time, especially when it comes to the environment. But there’s no way that one in four Americans are trying to cut their carbon emissions while at the same time believing that carbon emissions don’t cause global warming. We may not be perfectly consistent, but we’re not schizoid either. The polls themselves must be responsible for sounding some of these dissonant notes.
I’ll bet that a lot of it comes down to the wording of the questions. Asking what someone believes will elicit a different answer than asking what they do. Asking about a government’s priorities is different from asking about threats to a nation. And perhaps some of the incongruities can be traced to the samples themselves and to when the surveys were conducted.
But I think that many opinion polls are actively inviting contradiction by the way they frame certain questions. Take this query, which the Opinion Research Corporation presented to 1,004 Americans in July:
I’d like to read you a list of priorities. Please tell me which one response you feel is the most important priority/second most important priority for the next President and Congress to address….The economy, health care, education, homeland security, national defense, the environment?
Not surprisingly, the economy won out, with 45 percent calling it the most important. The environment came in last, with only 5 percent.
But in June then the same polling organization asked 1,026 people this question:
With which one of these statements about the environment and the economy do you most agree – protection of the environment should be given priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth, or economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent?
Believe it or not, the results were almost evenly split, with slightly more respondents saying that they would favor the environment over economic growth.
How do the same pollsters manage to ask basically the same question within a month and get such wildly disparate results? Because it’s a really weird question.
When asked directly, most Americans don’t say that the economy and the environment are inherently opposed. Here’s what a 2006 Los Angeles Times poll [PDF] of 1,478 adults found:
The public is optimistic . . . that protecting the environment does not have to conflict with economic growth, long a contention of those who are looking to dismantle or weaken environmental protection laws. Almost three times as many said it does not have to conflict as said that it does (70% compared to 25%).
And here’s what a 2007 poll by the Center for American Progress of 500 adults found:
Americans view alternative energy and more efficient cars not only as a means for energy independence and reducing global warming, but also as economic boons.
• By a whopping 79 – 17 percent margin, people believe that shifting to new, alternative energy production will help America’s economy and create jobs, not cost American jobs.
• By a 22-point margin, 57 – 35 percent, Americans believe raising car and truck mileage standards will save, not cost, people money.
And in January 2008, a Zogby poll of 32,000 Americans found that a majority “believe that if their local communities adopt more environmentally friendly policies, there will be a positive impact on the local economy. They think green technology will create new local jobs [and] make their communities better places to live.”
If these polls are correct, most Americans think that improving the environment and stimulating the economy are quite compatible. So when pollsters frame the two as mutually exclusive, they get bizarre results. It’s like asking people if they prefer “exercise” over “jogging” and then expecting the answers to be meaningful.
Polls are about perceptions of facts, not the facts themselves. But reality seems to confirm that environmental protection and economic growth can go hand-in-hand.
As the conservative environmentalist John Bliese pointed out in 1999, US states with stricter environmental regulations outperform states with weaker regulations “on all the economic measures.” The same is true for countries – those with the most stringent environmental rules tend to show the best economic performance.
It doesn’t necessarily follow from this that strict environmental regulations actively foster economic growth, or even that they never hinder it. But it does suggest that we’re not always playing the zero-sum game that many make it out to be.
So why does the media keep pushing this economy versus environment meme? Well, you need some way to categorize things, and there are indeed many cases where an individual company’s or industry’s profits are directly threatened by environmental interests. It makes for a convenient narrative.
But one of the central messages of environmentalism is that things are often interrelated in surprising ways. How would cutting mercury emissions affect health care costs? How would swapping Saudi oil with American wind power affect national security? How would capping carbon emissions affect the job market?
Like other global problems, environmental degradation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It touches just about everything: agriculture, energy, trade, health, human rights, war, and peace. By listing “the environment” as just one of an inventory of discrete “issues,” we are ignoring the fact that, by definition, the environment is everywhere, and occluding visions held by many Americans of societies that are both green and prosperous.
<< Bush’s parting moves on the environment | MainComments
2. Sharon Rowe | 11.05.08
I took both into account when I voted Green. The Green Party promotes both environmentalism and economic answers. A living wage and more green-collar jobs are important tenets.
3. Holmes Boroughf | 11.06.08
Reference paragraph 4 of the Blog text/article.
Global Warming has been and is happening - carbon or no carbon. It is not caused by carbon emissions. The cause is very complex and not well understood.
BUT
Carbon gasses and human production thereof are a small factor and do affect the RATE OF WARMING. e.g.., What will the average temperature be in the decade 2020 - 2030? How soon will most of today’s ocean beaches be under water?
Therefore, Americans can try to cut their carbon emissions while at the same time believing that carbon emissions don’t cause global warming.
4. Mary Rene | 11.06.08
I’m a laid off auto worker and am really looking forward to all-electric plug in cars–on homes that produce their own electricity. I’m tired of being a SLAVE to oil, (especially OPEC) and utility companies.
We can stimulate the economy with a huge push in solar and wind production. Factories for wind turbines and solar panels, and solar roof tiles could replace all of our lost factory jobs in every state. The soldiers returning from Iraq could erect wind and solar farms all across the nation. We need more hydroelectric dam programs like the TVA. And if Ford, GM and Chrysler can’t come up with total electric cars, trucks, and vans– let the British and European companies that already produce working fleets of all-electric vehicles open plants here–or license their technology to our companies.
A solar and wind boom could out-produce the paper gains from the dot com era.
COAL is NOT the answer. I was born toxic to mercury because my mom and grandma had to inhale those emissions in St. Louis and passed them in utero to me and my brothers. (Mercury poisoning also contributes to Alzheimers.) Mercury ash will contaminate our farm crops. Remember the tainted cranberry bogs from nearly 50 years ago?
Thank God LED light bulbs will soon be here. Everyone snap them up; they use only 10% of the power.
5. James Spencer | 11.13.08
It is a fact that cattle, agriculture, and landfills produce fully 25% of the world’s greenhouse gasses, yet no one talks about changing what they eat or throw away. Why? Is it because the media cues the topics of our debate?
6. Jonas Hebert | 12.17.08
In 2007, the federal energy bill raised corporate average fuel economy (cafe) standards for the first time in three decades, to 35 m.p.g. for cars by 2020. Efficiency standards should be implemented for household appliances and lighting. Rules should be applied to buildings because one half of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions emanate from buildings so that there is an enormous savings opportunity by simply mandating green design. Furthermore, efficiency would increase if utilities were granted the right to charge variable pricing so customers would be charged more for power during periods of peak demand and less during off periods.
Global warming issues are discussed in considerable detail at http://www.onebiosphere.com
California has implemented a pilot program for variable pricing. Utilities should install smart meters that provide real-time information about customer energy use and make billing more precise and savings clearly known. Energy demand has fallen 13% in the pilot program. In California, various efficiency programs have kept per capita energy use flat for the past three decades, even though energy use per person in the U.S. overall increased by 50%. California’s green policies have eliminated the need for 24 power plants over the past 30 years that is known as demand destruction.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Leave a Comment
We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. The comments feature is a forum to discuss the ideas in our stories. Constructive debate - even pointed disagreement - is welcome, but personal attacks on other commenters are not, and will not be published.
Tip: Do not write a novel. Keep it short. We will not publish lengthy comments. Come up with your own statements. This is not a place to cut and paste an email you received. If we recognize it as such, we won't post it.
Please do not post any comments that are commercial in nature or that violate copyrights.
Finally, we will not publish any comments that we regard as obscene, defamatory, or intended to incite violence.
1. Christopher Bieda | 11.05.08
Here’s a question that tests the economy-environment dichotomy fairly: If reducing mercury emissions (chiefly a product of coal-burning) would act to reduce health care costs by more than the increased cost of generating coal-fired electricity (the author’s point that there may be a positive sum outcome possible), would you favor requiring health insurers to share their reduced costs with electricity producers in order to achieve a positive sum for society.
On its face, it seems absurd for HMO’s to pay utilities. But why? In fact, if beneficiaries of all potential positive sum swaps (where the cost of action by one party reduces costs to a different party to a greater degree than the original action’s costs) were required to repay the serendipitous benefit to the initiator of the swap, ALL such potential swaps would occur spontaneously in a market economy; government would scarcely be involved, and no consumer would, on average, be harmed (the guy with Al Gore electricity consumption levels who enjoys excellent health and through good genes could expect to stay that way would, of course, be harmed, but for everyone of those there’s a Ted Kaczynski living off the grid in the woods with heart disease). In fact, the average consumer could ONLY benefit.
There ARE certainly positive sum swaps possible. But so long as they do not require the unintended beneficiaries to “share the wealth,” they are anathema to the economic actors who must initiate them and so require prodigious political exercises to accomplish, clashes between the titans of the unintended beneficiaries (who urge the action) and the necessary initiators who ask rightly, “What’s in it for me?” These political exercises are lengthy and sloppy. A simple check from the beneficiaries to the initiators would be quick and clean.