Thriftiness: Old-school sustainability

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After two long weeks of Spring Break, the students of Bowdoin College have finally returned in search of educational excellence. While many students spent those two weeks skiing in the Rocky Mountains or sipping Coronas on some tropical beach, I was busy stockpiling ammunition and firearms.

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The history of United States is a story of various struggles and the struggle against racism is, perhaps, most prominent in the minds of students at liberal arts colleges. In America, racism is largely characterized as a white behavior and rightly so. It was the whites who propagated slavery. It was the whites who instituted the Jim Crowe laws. It was the whites who passed the Chinese Exclusion act and it was the whites who forced over one-hundred thousand Japanese Americans into internment camps during WWII.

Annuit Coeptis

Thriftiness: Old-school sustainability

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

April 17, 2009

From the commitment displayed on the walls of Thorne Dining Hall, to the myriad of environmentally friendly changes in our lifestyles, Bowdoin College has caught green fever. Although this new lifestyle may seem hip, it is actually very old-school. In the olden days Americans weren't coerced or instructed to live green. For them it was common sense. They called it thrift. This new concern with our impact on the environment is most certainly not that new at all. Why, the first Earth Day was held back in 1970. Except, back then, they were worried about global cooling. Yeah...global cooling.

I am reminded of that scene in "Men in Black" where Tommy Lee Jones tells Will Smith about all the things we humans "know." One thousand years ago we "knew" the earth was flat; 40 years ago we humans "knew" that the next ice age was just around the corner, and now we "know" that the planet is warming. Can you imagine how much we'll know tomorrow? To be fair, any truly green college student will tell you it's not global warming, it's climate change. So we're fighting against change, eh? Those environmentalist folks would have a much easier job if they could just make up their minds.

Regardless of which direction the temperatures swing, America should continue its revitalized mission to live sustainably. However, in doing so the United States should approach any green legislation with caution. It may seem tempting to enact coercive regulations on our means of production, like taxing the pants off the coal industry, but such intervention will prove costly. If this new green revolution has proven anything, it is that the solution to the "climate crisis" is likely to be found through cultural changes and not institutional changes. Institutional changes, in the form of Green legislation, only expand the scope, cost, and power of the federal government. Take, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA is an unelected bureaucracy with the authority to make and enforce laws. Like all bureaucracies, the EPA is subject to the will of the self-interested. Corporations can lobby in support of climate-control regulations and even provide some supporting evidence. If you think that information won't be biased you've got to remember, this is capitalism we're talking about.

Green regulations create overhead costs which burden small businesses. By abusing the system in this way, large corporations can create barriers to free market entry. Fewer small businesses mean fewer jobs. Generally speaking, environmental regulations create jobs in the government while eliminating jobs in the private sector. The ultimate result of green regulation is the consolidation of private ownership and a perpetuation of the staggering wealth divide that liberals love to hate.

Some environmental regulations create perverse incentives and unintended consequences. In Dexter, Maine, the municipal transfer station charges $50 to dispose of a television. A drive down a dirt road a few towns away reveals that this attempt to fund environmentally friendly garbage disposal actually leads cash-strapped Mainers to junk their old TVs by the roadside.

Subsidies for cellulosic ethanol in Maine have created new demand for tree stumps. This has caused the price of saw dust to rise dramatically. I know from experience that small-scale dairy farmers in Maine depend on saw dust for their daily chores. Increases in the cost of milk production mean profit decreases for struggling farmers.

These are just two examples of the detrimental effects unwise environmental regulations can have on the American people.

Now I'm not saying we need to give up the pursuit of the Green Revolution. Quite the contrary. As the educated youth of the greatest nation on earth, the power is in our hands to accelerate the transition to sustainability. If we are to achieve this goal, however, we must not turn to government solutions. Instead we must draw on the thriftiness of the old school and understand that what we seek is a change in culture, not change in the institution of government. Change in government can only mean more bureaucrats, higher taxes, and more waste. Expansion of our dreadfully inefficient government is the antithesis of the green revolution.

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