Paul Robbins - Environment and Society

What is the benefit from this extra cost? Why are “green” alternatives more expensive to produce? Where does the extra money spent on each product go? How would you know? Where would you go to find out?

In this exercise, you will identify a “green” innovation or new technology and consider ways to market it. First, name and describe an environmentally desirable technology or process that might be used on campus or by your friends or classmates. These might include devices like reduced-flow showerheads or efficient light bulbs, or it might entail a product that changes how people do things, like freely available shared bicycles. Next, consider how much this alternative might cost relative to current technologies or available alternatives. Is it a great deal more expensive or inconvenient? Why is this? Finally, develop a convincing marketing strategy for this product, which might include short text, photos, slogans, catchphrases, or even a jingle. This will necessarily include some information to prove that your innovation is actually an environmental improvement over the status quo. What would actually make such an alternative compelling, especially if it is more expensive?

Imagine a scenic canyon, visited by many local people as well as tourists from beyond the local area. Consider a scenario in which a mining company has proposed to the local authority that it be closed to the public and put into the production of coal. Thinking in terms of economics as a way of adjudicating the relative value of one use of the canyon over the other, what would you need to know in order to make a comparison or assessment? What kinds of quantitative data would inform your decision, and where might they come from? What kinds of things might you need to know that are hard to measure? Once you have listed the kinds of information and data that might be available to inform this decision, do you think it would be sufficient to making this decision, why or why not?

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Keywords

Common property

Game theory Institutions

Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Source : iko/Shutterstock.

Controlling Carbon?

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

The Tragedy of the Commons

The Evidence and Logic of Collective Action

Crafting Sustainable Environmental Institutions

Are All Commoners Equal? Does Scale Matter?

Thinking with Institutions

There is a growing consensus on the science of climate change and the urgency of the problem. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose job it is to vet the science surrounding global warming, global temperatures are rising, sea-level rise is expected, water availability may be impeded, and extreme weather events are likely to become more common and more severe. These changes will be felt unevenly but no country will be immune to such effects.

Given the widespread and severe nature of the problem, why are global carbon emissions so hard to control? One might think of many good reasons for this to be true. People tend to ignore problems they cannot see, governments are under the influence of oil companies, and so on.

One compelling argument holds that the root of the problem is that carbon quite simply does not stay put . With every combustion event (driving a car, burning a log, firing a coal plant for electricity, etc.) the carbon that is released quickly finds its way into the atmosphere. Carbon released in one country is – instantly – a burden shared by all countries. From the point of view of any individual country, moreover, carbon reductions are not “free,” since they require creating new rules, potentially reducing or redirecting economic production. A “carbon-reduced” product – whether a car, computer, or vegetable – may be more difficult to produce than its “status quo” counterpart. If such a product is more expensive as a result, it may not be competitive on a global market, especially if it must compete against products produced where carbon reductions have not been imposed. Many governments, including that of the United States, therefore express fear that if they make sacrifices in this direction while others do not, they will no longer be competitive. The benefits of carbon reduction, in a parallel way, would be experienced by all countries, but must be paid for by individual countries.

For many environmental problems, costs are often borne collectively, while benefits accrue to individuals; on the other hand, individual costs may lead to collective benefits. Nations must cooperate where there is no “super-government” to impose environmental laws and where there are few or no punitive measures for not cooperating. Such mismatches mean that hoping for spontaneous global action on climate change might be unrealistic. Arguably, some kind of rules and trust must be established to cooperate when incentives constantly lure people and states to follow their own self-interest … toward collective planetary ruin. In this chapter, we address this persistent and vexing problem: How, if at all, can rules and norms of global behavior be fashioned to encourage shared costs and collective benefits? At what scale is cooperation possible?