Op-Ed
Selling People, Selling Pollution
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Educate Your Guesses
October 18, 2007 - 12:00amToday, I’m doing something that’s rare in the 21st century: I’m selling people. And despite whatever rumors you may have heard, I’m not involved in any sort of transpacific child trafficking. Rather, the Cornell Democrats are having a date auction to raise money for (and by “for” I mean “not for”) global warming. It’s a great idea, and it’ll likely raise a ton of money, as did the one we held two years ago. Still, part of me is slightly uncomfortable with the notion that I’ll be selling people. The reason I’m doing this, however, and the reason I’m OK with it, is the same reason why I’m a Democrat.
Having an environmentalist date auction frames a tension between means and ends. Saving the environment is obviously important, but does doing so by commodifying individuals somehow blemish the end result? There’s no doubt that holding a date auction is one of the most effective fundraising strategies available to an undergrad organization. But the commodification of human beings contradicts liberalism, even if those human beings have willingly opted to participate. The “church of liberalism” is constructed around a certain sanctity of the individual that commodification, bluntly stated, transgresses.
Selling people is kinda like emissions trading in this regard; it’s a great idea for environmental sustainability, but comes with some ethical bruises. The gist of emissions trading (a.k.a. cap-and-trade) is that the state establishes a maximum amount of pollution that industries are allowed to produce. A company that is polluting over that limit has two options: do something to lower its emissions or purchase part of another company’s right to pollute. Sustainable firms win, dirty ones either clean up or buckle, and the environment is better for it. The best part is that such a program provides strong incentives for the development of new, cleaner technology. The pragmatic value is clear, and no doubt there’s a certain aesthetic appeal to watching the invisible hand tackle environmental problems.
Imagine that we take this cap-and-trade idea and apply it to the western hemisphere as a strategy to slow global warming. Now if Peruvian factories need to pollute more, they can buy those rights from Canadian factories, or vice versa. The plan could work on a national level as well, with Peru simply buying Canada’s rights to pollute. Even if we do this perfectly (unlike in the E.U., where emissions caps were set too high to matter), a number of problems arise.
The first is an issue of environmental justice: pollution, under this program, can be expected to accumulate in areas where firms are not financially poised to pull off massive environmental makeovers. In our scenario, this likely means Peru ends up emitting Canada’s nitric oxide, not the other way around. So not only are Peruvians breathing just as many or more fumes as they used to be, they’re paying Canada to do so.
The second issue is that the emissions trading scenario only vaguely addresses the root cause of pollution: consumption. When the environmental and thus economic bar for an industry’s survival is higher, impoverished areas lose. As long as birth rates are generally connected to employment and education, such a plan probably wouldn’t send population growth in the right direction. Pollution will thrive with overpopulation.
Without claiming to have given the issue thorough treatment, I think we can see the recurring contradiction between what we’d like to accomplish (sustainability), and what we end up sacrificing in the process (a bit of justice). Now here’s why I’m a Democrat instead of a far or unaffiliated leftist, and why I’ll allow issues like emissions trading some flexibility …
Because I recognize that politics operates within the confines of reality; because the ideas I might have, however chaste, don’t find much traction when they stay in my head; because rather than retreating to moral highground, I’d like to take part in the decisions that are made.
So while the Democratic Party might be overzealous on FTAs and emissions trading, it’s still the locus of environmental decisions within the U.S. While I hate it just as much as any other environmentally conscious kid that Barack Obama has to talk up corn ethanol as it it’s the elixir of life if he wants to win in Iowa (corn ethanol is about on par with gasoline), I still think Obama will make a more intelligent head of state than any of the other viable options. And although there are downsides to commodifying both Cornellians and the right to pollute, with neither presenting a comprehensive solution to climate change, each is probably one of the best strategies in certain instances. I would count among those instances an undergraduate student body that cares about hot girls and boys but not the environment, and a Congress that’s usually half full of Republicans.
Don’t think I’m hailing the death of idealism; parties are dynamic institutions, and those who equate affiliation with such as grounds to stop minting their own ideas display unfortunate obliquity. The knowledge that the Democratic Party is so often wrong on issues like drugs and foreign policy should further motivate you to direct involvement.
And if that doesn’t motivate you, I hear there’s like a date auction or something going on tonight …
Tim Krueger is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at tkrueger@cornellsun.com. Educating Your Guesses appears alternate Thursdays.