Crazy Volly-style anti-envornment letter to the editor

[Xess]

The following letter to the editor was in my local paper The Stonewall Argus and Teulon Times.

Red turns to green
Environmentalists like David Suzuki constantly warn that we should imagine the ecological repercussions of the products we purchase, the activities, ranging from digging the raw materials, to the processing, manufacturing, transporting and selling. What I find amazing is that when they understand the environmental aspects of the marketplace, they of all people should understand that free market capitalism is the only system that works and yet they treat it as their worst enemy.

Snip story about the making of a pencil as told by Milton Friedman's "The Pencil Story"

The Kyoto crowd of all people through their understanding of the environmental impact of the market place should realize that a centrally planned command economy could never co-ordinate all of the logistics in the making of the lowly pencil as told by Friedman, without collapsing and resulting in no pencils. Yet even though the disastrous Marxist experiment of the Soviet empire fell with the Berlin Wall and vanished all together two years later on Christmas Day 1991, Leftists everywhere continued their war on freedom and capitalism by reinventing itself by switching from a Red banner to the Green banner.

The 1992 UN Rio conference, the grand daddy of today's global climate change movement started in haste, less than a year after the Soviet Union's demise was a poisonous passing of the torch by the Hard Left. Marxists during the Cold War said capitalism was evil because it made people poor. Reinvented Marxists like the Kyoto crowd now parrots the line that capitalism is evil because it makes people rich. The greenhouse gases from soccer mom's driving SUVs are responsible for floods; droughts and monster hurricanes of Biblical proportions go the rhetoric.

The Green Party siphons away votes from the socialist NDP. When the Kyoto crowd and Soviet Suzuki longs to over regulate peoples lives by their push to ban SUVs, incandescent light bulbs, having many children and "unnecessary" air travel, they are nothing more than Soviet style Marxists waving a green flag. Environmentalists long to micromanage people's lives economically and socially just like their Soviet ancestors. It is 1984 and Big Brother is green,

There's so much there I don't know where to start. I want to point out that environmentalism is not counter to capitalism and that environmentalists don't want to control peoples lives. I'm just not entirely sure how to properly word my response and have probably missed some obvious points I can mention to counter those in the letter.

[Darth Wong]

Virtually all of his letter is about politics, not science. That's the most obvious starting point for a rebuttal; the fact is that these environmental problems are being caused by industry and agri-business, and the free-market model won't fix them because it presumes that people will make purchasing decisions based on environmental impact: a presumption with no supporting evidence whatsoever. In reality, people make purchasing decisions based on immediate monetary cost, not long-term social and environmental consequences. That is how a nation of flag-waving patriotic Americans ended up making Wal-Mart the biggest retailer in the nation even though most of its goods are made in China.

[CaptainZoidberg]

There's so much there I don't know where to start. I want to point out that environmentalism is not counter to capitalism and that environmentalists don't want to control peoples lives.

Well, you kind of have to control people's lives. If there's a company that wants to dump some toxic sludge into a river (very simple example, but you get my point) because it's the cheapest and easiest way to deal with the waste - how are you supposed to protect the river without controlling the company and running counter to capitalism.

I'm just not entirely sure how to properly word my response and have probably missed some obvious points I can mention to counter those in the letter.

I'd just ask him about how capitalism is supposed to preserve the environment. If a company acts to maximize its own profit, and spending money to not harm the environment brings no immediate profit to the company, I can't imagine anyway that you could preserve the environment without government regulation.

[Darth Wong]

I'd just ask him about how capitalism is supposed to preserve the environment. If a company acts to maximize its own profit, and spending money to not harm the environment brings no immediate profit to the company, I can't imagine anyway that you could preserve the environment without government regulation.

I know how these people think. They will answer that it is not in the long-term interests of any company to destroy the environment or kill off their own customers. The problem is that companies simply don't think on such a long term. Corporate behaviour is dominated by what shareholders want, and shareholders want quarterly profit. Anyone who has any experience with the stock market knows this: share prices can plummet and CEOs can be threatened with dismissal based on a single bad quarter. A whole year of reduced profits is considered a catastrophe; this is their idea of "long term".

PS. Back in the 1970s, smokers often used this argument to "prove" that cigarettes aren't that bad for you: "Why would the cigarette companies be lying? Why would they want to kill off their own customers?" It always amazes me how much faith people put in businesses.

[CaptainZoidberg]

I know how these people think. They will answer that it is not in the long-term interests of any company to destroy the environment or kill off their own customers. The problem is that companies simply don't think on such a long term. Corporate behaviour is dominated by what shareholders want, and shareholders want quarterly profit. Anyone who has any experience with the stock market knows this: share prices can plummet and CEOs can be threatened with dismissal based on a single bad quarter. A whole year of reduced profits is considered a catastrophe; this is their idea of "long term".

I think there's more to it then just the long term / short term issue. Even if a company had a complete long term outlook, and every investor only wanted to cash in after 40 years - the company still might try to screw the environment over.

Consider air pollution. The company isn't effected one way or the other by how much it spews into the atmosphere, since most of it will blow away irregardless. But if the company acted in the collective interest, even for the short term, it would reduce its own pollution.

So the environment isn't really a long term vs. short term issue, its more of a self-interest vs. common interest issue. In light of that, it's essential that there is some body which is looking out for everyone's interest to punish defectors, since there's no real reward for any individual to reduce their own pollution.

If you're ever in a debate, this might be a neat little thing to bring up:

http://www.univie.ac.at/virtuallabs/Sno ... do.pd.html

The red dots are defectors, and act in their own self interest. The blue dots are cooperators. Note that both cooperators and defectors survive in the system no matter how long you keep it up - showing that even if companies and their investors act in their long term interests, polluters can still survive.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

The only way that the corporations will take into effect long-term issues, such as the environment, is if the government, the local populations, or consumesr become a pain in the ass for them.

If a company IS acting in the best interests of the community, such as in the Chevron-Texaco Kubutu oil field, or those businesses who invested in the Marine and Forest Stewardship Council's programmes, it was they believed they were making money in the process.

To get them to believe this, the government needs to be a component of making it unprofitable for the companies to behave like they do. Consumers and locals need to get angry enough to litigate or stop buying their products. To an extent, the market did this in the case of the Forest Stewardship Council's standards.

Another more effective strategy is to find weak links in the production/transportation/retail industries. For example, consumers of raw materials (wood, e.g.) were able to force the suppliers (the logging companies) to adopt F.S.C standards by refusing to buy their products by forming buyer's groups. But the only reason they did this was pressure from consumers and the government placed on them.



Edit: You need to be careful, because no all corporations can be convinced even this way. Instead, they create a counter propaganda campaign designed deliberately to confuse consumers. "Certified Humane" labels on some eggs and "organic labels" are examples. Some companies have mimicked the forest and marine stewardship council's labels and accreditation programmes and produced their own bogus standards and agencies to act as fronts. This makes it difficult for the "market" to work alone.

Some suppliers resisted direct government regulation for nearly a decade, but responded almost immediately to consumers, such as IKEA or McDonalds, who got the suppliers to comply. Perhaps the government can apply pressure to these links in the chain, who then apply pressure to the problem causers.

[Darth Wong]

I think it's important to realize that a company which did not make every effort to circumvent consumer-protection rules for its own profit would actually be doing a disservice to its shareholders. Shareholders expect and demand utter ruthlessness from a company.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

True. When Ford voluntarily increased worker wages, he was sued into submission for a fiduciary duty violation.