Truly Green Environmentalism

I recently decided that the two dominate US political parties are both worthless when it comes to true environmentalism, so I ceased to align myself with any party. However, I have wondered if a truly green party did exist what would be the platform of such a party? This post examines that question. I will motivate that with what I believe to be the most important factors we face today.

• We are destroying the planet! This I believe is quite self-evident. Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), rapid deforestation, loss of wildlife habitat, pollution of oceans with trash and nanoparticles of plastics, loss of fisheries, loss of polar ice, ozone hole, depletion of aquifers and surface water, disastrous geo-engineering projects (Aral sea, Yellow River), and extinction of species. Many more can be added; simply pick up any newspaper.
• The root cause of this destruction is that we have too many people that are consuming too much in planetary resources. While many people may agree with this statement, most people believe that we can technologically overcome the effects of human degradation of the planet while continuing to grow the population. My response to that is that there is no evidence that a technical solution exists or could be found that would allow an unlimited population with zero effect on the planet, and in actuality historical evidence strongly suggests that we would likely create new disasters with our erstwhile technical solutions. But, the fact is, there is an almost linear relationship between population and resource usage, so we know we can reduce the latter by reducing the former.
• However, reining in the population to sustainable levels is simply not possible in a growth oriented economy. Economic growth is strongly dependent upon population growth, and our retirement model is heavily dependent upon a growing working class. We are hamstrung - our economy necessitates a growing population and that economic reality means zero population growth will never be tolerated by our current economic model.
• Economic growth is fueled by planetary resources. It is a zero-sum game: when the economy wins, the rest of the planet loses. As much as we think our massive resource extraction projects are benign, even the ones that comport with EIS review, there is always something that is losing out. 
• Humans are not going extinct but many species are. We have adopted an attitude that we have a right to exploit any living or mineral resource on the planet, without constraint. Where does that "right" originate from? It certainly doesn't exist objectively so was pretty much made up by our religions and other social myths. I believe no such right exists and quite the opposite, that as the biggest-brained species on the planet we have an obligation to protect all life, not just human.
• Capitalism has been a disaster for the planet. I have been a proponent of capitalism most of my life, as I believe it brings out the best in people (and the worst) but capitalism encourages the wanton rape of planetary resources with the results listed above. But socialism is no better. The political debate we should be having is not capitalism vs. socialism (or some variant on socialism), but rather what economic model is appropriate for the next few centuries in which we act as partners rather than masters of other life forms.
• AGW has captured the intense interest of politicians, as it rightly should but there is a danger that is being miscast as the environmental problem, while in actuality it is a particularly nasty manifestation of the damage humanity is doing to the planet. We cannot fall into the trap of thinking all we have to do is solve AGW and we are home free.

So assuming the reader recognizes that yes, we do have a severe problem, here is one way to change our path of environmental destruction. There are two parts to solving this, which will be discussed below. One part is a new economy, the other part is a social structure that complements the economic model.

Green Economics

Classic economic theory is that wealth arises from production, in particular labor. Raw materials are converted into useful products that have value substantially more than the materials that went into them. As products become more complex, a chain of value is created that stretches from the source to the consumer with incremental value added along each link and the total value is due to the added value of labor. This has been the view for 250 years, since articulated by Adam Smith in 1776.

The trouble with this view is that ecosystem costs are ignored - anything that can be extracted from the earth, oceans, or wilds of the planet are assumed to be costless. To be sure there are costs with operating a mine, for instance, but those are all labor costs as nobody is writing a check to the earth to compensate it for what it is giving up, and nobody is compensating the wildlife that lose their land when it is fenced and converted to farm land. Because of this, Adam Smith's definition of value is deeply flawed and has contributed to where we are today.

One note on terminology: By "ecosystem" I mean the planet itself: atmosphere, lands, oceans, and resources including water and mineral, as well as all plant and animal life. Ecosystem costs can be due to physical loss, as in mineral extraction, or functional loss as in polluted oceans. 

The point here is this: creating wealth comes with costs to the ecosystem that we are not paying and entirely ignore. For every increment of wealth that we create in which raw materials are used, and outside of the services sector, it is almost impossible to find cases in which materials are not used, there is a corresponding loss to the ecosystem. It is a zero-sum game: humans win, ecosystem loses.

All modern economic systems, whether communist, socialist, or capitalist, are built upon this false economy, that wealth can be created out of thin air with only labor. Capitalism and socialism only debate about who controls the excess value that is created but both assume that all important resources are costless, which is false. Everything we do has a hidden, intrinsic, ecosystem impact associated with it. If you buy a cell phone, it was made from materials that came from destroyed jungles in Indonesia, for instance, but that is never included in the cost, but it should be. Tesla cars are full of lithium which was mined at great costs to the ecosystem. All modern products have plastics in them which carry a huge ecosystem cost. When we grow the population, there is an environmental impact that is ignored, but shouldn't be. 

We need to shift the conversation we have about economic policy away from our purely human-centric view (e.g., is socialism better for the people, or is capitalism) and move it towards an economic model that is planetary, e.g., will this or that policy have zero net effect on the planet in its totality? If we are asking the ecosystem to give humanity something, we need to give up something in return. It is the only way to achieve a reasonable, net-zero accounting with the planet.

What I have described here is a form of Green Libertarianism. That is, the idea that humans are equal partners with the rest of the planet and need to give equal consideration to it. Since we have built societies that center our interactions around economic principles, I have tried to cast Green Libertarianism as an economic problem. Now that we have identified a value system that is consistent with responsible living within our ecosystem, what would be the political structure to support it?

Green Political Structure

Both capitalism and socialism rely upon a growing economy in order to finance debt and to support retirement. For thousands of years of civilization, people did not retire, they simply got too old to work and if they had family, they took care of them until they died. Nobody intentionally stopped working. It was a burden to the family to take care of elder, or sick, members so nobody really complained too loudly when someone who is dependent upon the care of others died. But at some point in the early 20th century our family centric structure was replaced with the state; it took on more and more responsibility for caring for the sick and the old, even going so far as to allow people to retire. 

The end result is the late 20th century social-political structure provides compassionate care, and retirement leisure, all at the expense of the ecosystem. The calculus for this is pretty simple - more compassion is financed by exploiting the ecosystem.  There is really no way around it. Those who advocate a synthesized economic plan that guarantees more compassion, more wealth, and a reduction in environmental harm (the "Green New Deal") are naïve; it has the ring of Prometheusean hubris. It is just not possible; something has to give. The nanny state exists at the expense of the ecosystem.

This situation actually gets worse: Because a fraction of economic growth is due solely to a growing population, that has become the low hanging fruit for economists to pick at for easy income to keep the nanny state humming along. So they encourage baby production by giving incentives like tax breaks for each child and time off work for maternity and paternity care. 

The conclusion here is that our current political structures that rely on growth are anathema to a truly green social-political structure. In the following sections I will propose a political structure that offers more balance with our ecosystem while trying to maintain some of the social benefits we currently enjoy. But there is a cost to that; this is discussed below.

The Recipe

The following are the elements of a responsible, i.e., "green", socio-economic solution.

• Reject any growth-oriented economic system, whether it tends towards capitalism or socialism.
• Adopt the 'ahupua'a model of resource use and ownership
• Reverse the nanny state trend.
• Correct our economic value system and give proper weight to ecosystem costs.
• Assess societal progress by including ecosystem metrics

These are put together into a system I call Green Social Libertarian. This is described next.

Green Social Libertarianism

Social Libertarianism is an economic model (Noam Chomsky is one well known adherent) that is more akin to a city-state and a company-town. In social libertarianism, people own the means of production as basically an employee-owner model. This is not socialism since the state does not own companies, and free market competition exists. Resources, including land, are not owned by individuals. They are a community resource with access controlled by the state. This is the 'ahupua'a model. What is missing is highly stratified wealth distribution since ownership is no longer by individuals. This model does not preclude individual wealth accumulation, it just disallows that by exploiting natural or human resources. But if a company is built on a good idea, it can make the founders wealthy, but also all the workers since they also own it.

In this structure, the massive nanny-state is ratcheted-back from our current trend. The state provides a safe environment with some social services, like basic healthcare and retirement benefits, but governmental policy is not a function of demographics. In other words, the emphasis is shifted towards people having responsibility to manage their own lives rather than the government doing so. The government is a disinterested third party - people pay taxes and it provides services but otherwise largely leaves everyone alone. The population is not treated like a herd of cattle; they are treated like adults and individuals. 

The latter is a critical part of entering into an equitable partnership with the planet - we cannot create a structure in which the state is like a huge cattle ranch, raising humans, as it will (and does now) overwhelm the rest of the planet. Nothing can compete with such a juggernaut. The only way to be equitable partners with our ecosystem is to diminish the massive state structures we have created and live smaller and simpler. We have allowed science and technology to drive a wedge between ourselves and the natural world; older cultures lived in harmony with the natural world, now we excessively use our intellectual powers to keep it at a distance unless there is something exploitable. Living simpler does not mean returning to the stone age, it means finding and restoring balance.

Green Social Libertarianism is the synthesis of the economic system I described above and Social Libertarianism. The basic idea is that the new monetary system properly accounts for the impact a product or service has on the ecosystem and consumers will pay more for those things which have a high impact. One possibility is to award "eco-credits" to everyone that must last the person's life. These credits represent that maximum impact that is sustainable by the population and the eco-credit system prevents them from exceeding that limit. If eco-credits are distributed equally to all, every person has the same allotment, at least at birth. 

In this system, the credits can be spent any way each person chooses. For instance, having a child costs the parents a chunk of eco-credits. Buying gas-guzzling cars also costs them a lot of credits. People can make their own choices where to spend credits, but the total ecosystem impact of the population can never exceed the sustainable limit. This is largely achieved by eliminating borrowing, as least with eco-credits - it is entirely a "pay as you go" system with borrowing on the future disallowed; the system is static by design. 

As mentioned earlier, there is a cost here. How that bill is  paid, is up to the people. If they want a compassionate society, since compassion is a hit on the ecosystem, they have to give up something else, such as jet travel, driving a car, or perhaps having multiple children. Population reduction is one easy way to finance more nanny-state services since the per-capita share of eco-credits will go up and everyone can be afforded more services.

Within this system, birth control and abortion are free, as is hospice and euthanasia. A safety net only exists to the extent that it can be paid for by eco-credits. This is out of necessity in a society that does not live beyond its means, from an ecosystem standpoint. If you run out of eco-credits, you are on your own. The monetary system forces responsible living. This is controversial, I am sure. 

Bridging the Gap from Theory to Reality

I have used the term "libertarianism" a lot in this post but that designation needs elaboration. The meaning here is not that of John Locke, who sought relief from an authoritarian monarchy and a restoration of the rights of the individual. Here, it is less about individual freedoms and more about individual responsibilities as opposed to relying on the state for those functions. As discussed above, that puts a tremendous burden on the state to meet those societal expectations of perfect lives for all, and that of course ends up being paid for by ecosystem exploitation. In this sense, libertarianism is an alternative to the nanny state with its goal of fueling a growth economy through a growing herd of humans. Libertarianism is a necessary part of a non-growth economy that respects and lives in harmony with the rest of the planet.

Will this system of living and governance ever be a reality? I doubt it. I doubt that even a fraction of it would ever be implemented. The reason why is the same reason why climate change will never be resolved - people act primarily in self interest and once they have been given something, like cheap products made with plastic, cheap power from burning coal to run our air conditioners, and cheap gasoline, they will not give it up easily. And to ask people to give up the nanny state and safety net so that other species on earth can flourish as much as humans, will not go any further. The planet with its diversity of life as we know it will cease to exist within 100 years. 

So, what should one do? Neither US political party is going to address the sheer weight of humanity that is destroying the world. My response is that we should do nothing, let the chips fall. It is not likely with our current geopolitical climate that we will stop our use of fossil fuels or any of the other ills, we will just slow it down a bit so the planet dies a slow death; the Democrats will slow it down more than the Republicans but both will reach the same end point. The only silver lining is that if we burn all the fossil fuels in our dying orgy, none will be left for whatever crawls out of the ashes; indeed, one could argue that it is fossil fuels that really kicked off our Prometheusan fall, so ridding the planet of fossil fuels will be a good starting point for some future civilization.