South Africa Dispatch: Marching To Pretoria

Land change. We're losing more and more critical species and habitats each year, as Stuart will tell you. The key to stopping it, of course, is limiting consumption. After all, consumption in the western world is driving these changes as much as consumption the the developing world. We've sent our industries overseas and inflict our environmental damage elsewhere now. For example, all the talk of the paperless office in the '80s never came to fruition. Sure, even though the Forest Service is mainly designed to sell off our forests, we actually do a decent job protecting our forests in this country now. But we consume even more wood and paper products. So now we just deforest other parts of the world. Similarly our taste for meat means that more and more Brazilian rainforest is converted to soybean plantations (which are turned into livestock feed). In short, consumption drives land use and land cover change. The solution, limit our consumption. Use less wood and paper products. Eat less meat.

Jon and Sheril,
While I agree whole-heartedly in autonomy over individual choices, the solution Jon offers may be flawed.

It's difficult to relegate all responsibility to an individual level when ignorance is so prevalent in societies worldwide (though I do pinpoint the U.S. as the main culprit).

Widespread societal compliance on simple everyday choices is also difficult to curb. For example, could curbside recycling be any easier? Why is it that people with the option don't care to do it?

It all boils down to priorities. If things are made easier and more convenient, you can expect individual choices to follow suite. But, if we have to constantly swim against the current, people often get weighed down with other responsibilities and tend to sink to where their feet can hold them steady, at least for a short time.

How to enact more streamlined policies that make environmentally friendly choices an easy everyday action is another story. I think a market exists for it. But, to convince a capitalist society that we need to change many wasteful practices, not so easy...

On the meat note, a change in the meat industry is inevitably needed. A change in our diets is definitely needed. There are farmers out there who don't feed their cattle grains and have more expensive (and far better quality) beef products. There are two individual choices that make grass fed beef a viable market. First, the farmer has to make the choice to swim upstream and change his or her practices. It's doable, but hard to make the initial switch which includes a changeover of cattle species. And, consumers have to choose to spend more on higher quality meat. This also means they would choose to eat it less.

It's my understanding meat used to be an expensive treat families could afford maybe twice per week. Now the average family eats it at almost every meal. Since I am single, no children, my dollar goes a lot further and I can make those kinds of choices. Additionally, I truly believe most people in the U.S. are ignorant about the meat industry or the global cycle it is part of. (AKA the ecosystem costs they are paying) If consumers became more aware of this(which would be highly protested by the commercial meat industry), they could then be held responsible for their choices.

In summary, you can't always blame an individual when choices are so limited. Not to say you can't hold people accountable for their actions, but I think widespread change must go hand in hand with informed consumer choices!

Meg makes good points and I think if we were to sit down and share a drink, we'd notice we're completely in agreement.

There's only so much individuals can do on their own and I agree that change must come from the top. The environmental costs of our consumption is rarely, if ever, factored into costs. One possible way to do this is through a carbon tax, though that's a political non-starter (even if economists of all stripes find it completely unobjectionable, along with Al Gore, Bush's fmr economist Gregory Mankiw, and even the American Enterprise Institute).

Ecosystem services are never considered when we destroy pristine ecosystems and environmental destruction is never included when figuring the cost of products. Informed, educated individuals can try to make personal decisions to try not to be complicit in such destruction, but until policies are enacted to force full accounting and stop thinking of environmental destruction as an economic externality, nothing will change.

Good thread.

Mark Hertsgaard found the same thing as Jon & Megan say when he traveled and wrote Earth Odysssey.

Much of my work is in urban ecosystem services, and until we price things accordingly, in my view, we won't get change as the 80:20 rule is in effect here (the 20% is the fraction who act to reduce their footprint). And, I assert that there are huge forces at work to prevent proper pricing in the market.

Best,

D

Welcome home...
Looking forward to more of your wisdom from the good old
USA.

Jon and Megan make excellent points. Limited consumption and personal choice do have an impact and more of us are realizing this. Markets are indeed a huge part of the problem and will be a prime component of the solution. Back from the SCB meeting, I'm encouraged and optimistic things are looking up and we may just be on the right track.