Ruin to All

Jeffrey C. Billman tells you what to think

by Jeffrey C. Billman

"Overwhelmingly," began a June 21 New York Times story, "Americans think the nation needs a fundamental overhaul of its energy policies. ... Yet a majority are unwilling to pay higher gasoline prices to help develop new fuel sources."

We are now three months into the worst environmental calamity in American history, and although — as of this writing — it appears oil is no longer gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the ramifications of the spill will be felt for years, if not generations, to come.

Earlier this month, NASA reported that the first six months of 2010 were the absolute hottest on record, going back 131 years; what's more, this comes as "minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect" — in other words, at a point in the solar cycle when we should be seeing cooler temperatures — which is NASA's way of telling you that, yes, global warming is real.

We continue to buy oil from regimes that give money to those who wish us ill.

Last year's so-called "Climategate" scandal has been debunked in report after report after report.

And yet, Democrats are struggling to get even a watered-down energy bill through the U.S. Senate.

The legislation currently making the rounds won't go nearly as far as the version that passed the House last year, which included a cap-and-trade provision. Nor is it on par with the first draft of the American Power Act, a bill introduced by Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman that would reduce greenhouse gas levels by more than 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050 by imposing fees on big carbon emitters.

This bill would have done all of this at minimal cost to consumers, according to an EPA analysis, while shaving $19 billion off the deficit over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Nonetheless, it, too, was a non-starter.

Instead, Kerry, Lieberman and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are pushing for a scaled-back bill that will focus on offshore oil drilling, reducing oil consumption and creating green jobs — noble goals, sure, but also low-hanging fruit — along with a proposed cap on pollutants from power companies that may or may not ever see the light of day, because this might trigger rate hikes, and we can't abide that.

It's not like our kids' futures are at stake or anything.

As the aforementioned Times poll indicates, there's a chilling disconnect between what Americans want and what we're willing to sacrifice to get it.

It's a familiar tale in the recent annals of our history: We fight multiple wars while demanding tax cuts. We clamor for austerity while chastising the government for not creating jobs. We want alternative, clean energy, but hell if we're going to pay one penny for it.

More importantly, perhaps, we're blasé to the reality oil represents.

In his remarkable 2009 book Crude World, journalist Peter Maass details the havoc wreaked on both developing and developed nations by the allure of black gold's easy money — wars, dictatorships, poverty, famine, destitution, environmental catastrophes, corruption, death and destruction — from Russia to Equatorial Guinea to the Middle East to Latin America, all aided and abetted by oil companies that are either complicit in sundry misdeeds or willing to look the other way.

(Allegations recently surfaced that BP helped coordinate the release of the Lockerbie bomber in exchange for a drilling contract in Libya. This sort of thing, if Maass' research is indicative, is entirely commonplace.)

If that's not enough to make you want to buy a Prius and beg PECO to charge you more to use wind power, maybe this is: EPA projections show that, thanks to the rising sea levels that are a consequence of climate change, by 2100 much of Southwest Philly (including the airport) and the parts of South Philly that hug the Delaware River will be underwater by 2100.

But what we do as individuals can only move the needle of progress so far. When push comes to shove, the problem here is one of collective action: How do we get the American public — or more immediately, Congress — to take this stuff seriously?

There is no easy fix, Maass says in a telephone interview. "The good news and the bad news is that there is no ultimate answer. A lot of things need to fall into place for the entire country and also the entire world to reduce its use of oil and gas and fossil fuels."

In Maass' view, the answers are already out there — in Europe, where oil usage per capita is markedly less than in the U.S., or in China, which despite its lust for growth and thirst for oil, has emerged as something of a leader in green technologies.

"We're not really inventing new technologies or new ways to live here," he says. "There's no big mystery in terms of how can we cut back on things."

We may know how to do it, but we haven't yet solved the problem of convincing people that this change is in their best interest. Indeed, this is a problem as old as humanity itself: As biologist Garrett Hardin titled it in his seminal 1968 Science article, it's the "Tragedy of the Commons."

"The tragedy of the commons," he wrote, "develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

"As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, 'What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?' ... [T]he rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another. But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

Individually, we maximize our self-interest by getting cheap oil and gas, which allows for a more comfortable standard of living. It's in the politicians' interest to see to it that we're happy: The U.S. doles out billions of dollars in subsidies to oil companies every year to keep prices low, so we can use more for less. It's in the oil companies' best interest to drill anywhere they can, to extract as much oil as quickly as possible, to cut as many corners as necessary, to line the pockets of those politicians who make it all possible — consequences be damned — because they answer to shareholders who demand profits.

That's how the unfettered market works, and as Hardin pointed out a generation ago, in a world of finite resources, it is simply unsustainable: "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

"Do I have a plan or fantastic idea or argument for really moving people to the side of the debate where they would support higher taxes for carbon?" asks Maass. "No, I do not have the magic bullet or argument."

He sees reason to hope in, of all places, the sudden rise of the Tea Party movement, despite its antagonistic relationship with environmental causes.

"I do believe there are sudden changes all the time, the emergence of new movements all the time — the occurrence of the unpredictable in American politics and world politics in general" he says. "There are ... ideas that can catch on very quickly that you just don't expect."

Here's hoping, for all of our sakes, that a cap on carbon emissions is one of them.

(jeffrey.billman@citypaper.net)