How Not To Save the Planet

| Mon Dec. 7, 2009 10:54 AM GMT

If you really want to fight climate change, stop "going green." That's the message that Mike Tidwell, the director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, pushed in a Washington Post column on Sunday. Tidwell's piece has rocketed around the lefty blogosphere; Kevin wrote about it yesterday. This is the heart of Tidwell's argument:




Actually, the truth is broader. The essence of liberalism is the belief that the only way to do anything important is to "make broad changes to laws and incentives." That was basically the point of Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich's awesome book Supercapitalism, which came out in 2007. Reich argued that the left had lost its way, that politics had become "diverted" to activism. Reich charged that modern liberals focused far too much on the behavior of individual people and single corporations instead of pushing for broad change.

Instead of focusing their energy on passing laws requiring that all companies offer their employees health insurance, for example, liberals simply slammed scapegoat companies—say, Wal-Mart—for not offering health insurance. But by pressuring one company to do something that other companies aren't doing, you're probably hurting that company's bottom line—and helping its non-compliant competitors.

The exact same thing applies to individual efforts to fight climate change—you can try to live a "green" life, but you're just wasting your money and time if the problem isn't solved collectively. Thankfully, we know that President Barack Obama understands this problem. Remember this Obama quote from Newsweek's election roundup?


Indeed. But collective action, however necessary, is hard. In the next few weeks, we'll get to see if Obama can achieve it—on health care, and, just as crucially, on climate change in Copenhagen. You can follow our full coverage on the Blue Marble.
