Skin as Thick as the Bark of a Pine

I am very pleased with the first comment made on this Blog (from Anonymous, see below). The author is thoughtful, well-informed and raises a few excellent points, surely worth addressing in today’s post. As Anonymous is familiar with both the longstanding debate regarding the roles of genes versus culture and with the capacity for economic incentives to alter outcomes, I hope my general readers will indulge me if I reply to the comment at the level it deserves. That comment once again:

“Altruism (genetically programmed or culturally derived) may not be necessary to foster cooperation and avert planetary disaster. It seems that systems could more easily be put in place to reward good behavior and penalize the environmentally destructive, thus tapping self-interest to foster good. How about huge tax breaks for not owning cars...or for having two or fewer children? Add special taxes for meat purchases (raising "food" animals has created an environmental disaster). Provide free public transportation. How about huge incentives for green companies (e.g. no taxes for five years)?

Some willingly try to live green for altruistic reasons and others could be moved by policies that tap self interest for the greater good.” - Anonymous

First let me say that Anonymous is absolutely right – at least in theory. There is nothing in the current state of the theory that rules out the possibility that a purely cooperative solution among otherwise self-regarding (that is, non-altruistic) individuals might be fostered and, further, be dramatic and timely enough to lead to a sustainable planetary solution. In fact, there are many research models that show that if the conditions are right, cooperation can indeed become the one surviving behavior in what appears to be a stable equilibrium (at least nothing going on within the “society” will change it). In some cases, these cooperative outcomes will even prove resistant to “invasion” by less desirable behaviors from the outside or through mutation; these especially robust solutions are Evolutionarily Stable Strategies (ESS). See Hauert’s interactive website: http://www.univie.ac.at/virtuallabs/PublicGoods/ or Nowak’s beautifully diagrammed Evolutionary Dynamics (2006) for examples of the sorts of models with just this sort of cooperative promise. Self-regarding egoists who are smart enough to see the profit in engendering cooperation with others can flourish, and the whole society flourishes with them – without an iota of altruism in sight. In my own research, I am currently intrigued by what I am calling Cooperative Tipping Points (CTP) – sometimes surprisingly small but absolutely essential levels of cooperative behavior that trigger long term growth in those cooperative behaviors and improved outcomes for all. In simple models I will be happy to describe for interested readers, I can show that if the social group (say, a society or an organization) begins with enough cooperation to be beyond the CTP, then the long term prospects for cooperation are excellent. If, on the other hand, the social group has the misfortune to start off below the CTP, all is lost, and a defective outcome will eventually obtain. My former teacher, dear friend, and colleague, Ralph, agrees with my observation that the tone set by entrepreneurial leaders upfront often lasts for a long time. These leaders are fulfilling what I consider a critical obligation of leadership by encouraging the first generation of employees to move beyond the CTP, and hence lead the organization to long term cooperative outcomes. For another example – a kind reader, Sheryl, conveyed the need for more of them – I would suggest that the adoption of the Bill of Rights as an appendage to the US Constitution set in motion a set of ideals that pushed us ever so slightly beyond a political CTP and hence helped set in motion a “rights” evolution that may someday fulfill Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of an “arc of history [that] bends towards justice.” (See Foner’s essay on “Blacks and the US Constitution” in Who Owns History? for the frustrating details of that slowly bending arc.)

Anonymous’ final note that “some willingly try to live green for altruistic reasons and others could be [so] moved” is reminiscent of those few in my models who push us over the CTP in the initial condition and so “lead us” – through their shining examples – to long run cooperation.

Altruism -- loosely, the proclivity to act as if (not necessarily intend that) the welfare of others matters to us enough to pay at least a small price to advance it (not as some mistakenly believe, the tendency to obliterate one’s one interests for others)– is not an essential feature of most of these models of cooperation. Although I may need to remind my readers that those who cooperate in defective environments (environments in which it would be more personally profitable to join the defectors) may need a bit of altruism in order to persist, and possibly inspire others to join them bending the arc of justice.

To take stock: I cannot reject out of hand, at least on theoretical merits alone, the optimistic claim of Anonymous that cooperation can be created and sustained at levels sufficient to avert calamity without hoping for or counting on a mobilization of altruistic people to lead the way.  Nor do I deny that the solution ultimately resides in the right sort of incentives to be green and clean.

But I must nonetheless disagree. I disagree that we can hope to adopt the sort of economic incentives described by Anonymous – without first undergoing a major change in attitude of people on this planet towards one another and, more critically, toward the young and yet unborn. That is, without a transformative revolution in our consciousness that leads to the understanding of our interconnectedness and responsibility towards one another – i.e., without Altruism – I am doubtful that we can succeed in moving forward with the sort of incentive schemes being offered.

The basis of my disagreement with the optimistic idea that we can do this without altruism is not so much theoretical, as it is practical. I refer my interested readers to Sach’s Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet for some of the details I will be recounting below. (I might note that Jeffrey was a classmate of mine in graduate school, but he was so brilliant that he passed his comprehensives – I think they took him six weeks – and was on his way before we ever got to know each other.) I must also thank my beleaguered wife Carol for taking the long dog walk that provided me with the sounding board I needed to flesh out this argument.

The gist of the argument is this: we have very little time to accomplish an extraordinary amount. We have belatedly discovered that we are actually at the eleventh hour. The party is over, the guests have gone home, we just woke up drunk on the couch – and the last bus leaves in three minutes. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen from its pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm to current levels above 380 ppm. That 100 ppm increase has been associated with a 0.8 C (1.4 F) increase in average global temperature. The impacts of climate change already are multi-faceted and are far more complex than just global warming. As Sachs describes so well, we are facing rising ocean levels, habitat destruction, increased disease transmission, differential and inequitable changes in agricultural productivity, changes in water availability, increased natural hazards, and changes in ocean chemistry. The list is not just meant to be alarming; it is meant to remind us that the problems are complex and anyone who asserts that we can ignore the risks is doing so at your peril, as we cannot understand how these changes interact and how those interactions change as global carbon and temperature continue to rise. We have many reasons to believe that the interactions will be nonlinear, and possibly worse than we are projecting now.

There are many estimates of just how high we can afford to let atmospheric carbon dioxide go. Few but the most severe back-to-nature Luddites ever expect to see a return to pre-industrial levels below 300 ppm. Not many expect that we can keep levels below 400 ppm. What is the threshold beyond which irreparable and devastating damage to the planet’s many ecosystems are expected? Hansen of the Earth Institute has concluded that levels well below 560 ppm (twice the pre-industrial level) must be achieved, and it would be ideal to try to stop levels at 450 ppm. The consensus of scientists around the world is that we must not let levels get above the range 450-560 ppm. The upper limit, twice the planet’s natural level, of course, comes with greater risks.

So what sort of changes will be needed to achieve these goals and on what timetable? Here, the answers may be somewhat shocking. Within the natural lifetime of my daughter (now in college), the world economy may increase by a factor of six. Increases in industrial and consumption pollution will increase by a factor of six if we do not improve the way we produce, transport, and consume, and we do not improve what we consume and how. Doing nothing is simply not tenable; business as usual could raise planetary temperatures to potentially catastrophic levels within forty years. Note that we can barely afford a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide for pre-industrial levels (about a 50% increase from today's levels) – so the bottom line is that for every unit of production in the world economy in 2050, we must somehow produce it and consume it at a vastly reduced level of pollution relative to today, or we must not produce it at all.  By my ad hoc calculations, we need to quadruple the gas mileage on your car -- and do the same to everything else at the same time.* On the face of it, this is obviously a huge task. Even if we in the Industrialized West were willing and able to put an end to all economic growth that does not come cleanly – that is, hold our current levels of carbon emissions constant – we still have the problem of a rapidly industrializing China and India. We had our turn at prosperity, so who are we to deny them theirs (even if we could)?

To return to Anonymous: just what sort of economic incentives does the world need to put in place to accomplish these draconian changes in worldwide behavior? Let’s be specific: what will it take to eliminate the deadly notion that continued economic growth is good (it is not feasible) – and who is going to convince the rapidly-growing Chinese, Indians, and others that we ran out of ice cream before they got to the table? Let’s be even more specific: what would it take to impose such incentives in the US alone (after all, with 5% of the population we create 25% of the mess)?

As Anonymous suggests, we could tax and subsidize intensely. Fossil fuels account for about four-fifths and deforestation one-fifth of the problem. We could impose huge taxes on the use of fossil fuels in electricity generation (one third of the problem in total), transportation, residential and commercial heating and cooling; similarly we could impose large taxes on meat consumption and paper products – major sources of deforestation. On the flip side, we could subsidize activities that promise to get us away from fossil fuels: we could become as green as the Wicked Witch of the East. But no matter how draconian we set those levels of tax and subsidy, how much can we really change? What will we tolerate?

My point is that politicians would have to enact such legislation. We are asking congressional representatives -- who now blow with the wind for a few lobbying dollars -- to so completely change their ways that they are willing to thumb their noses at their irate constituencies. When gas prices at the pump rose in the summer of 2008, even a presidential candidate of some integrity (McCain) was transformed within weeks into something of a buffoon, singing “Drill, Baby Drill” alongside his attractive wife (the apparent object of attention) at a Bikers' rally. At the Republican National Convention, the candidate was more balanced:

“We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we'll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.”

Green investments not withstanding, the thrust of this remark was to differentiate the GOP from the Democrats in their willingness to drill more wells now.  An absolutely horrific idea, of course.

McCain could not resist the political pressure to pander to those who were so worried about tomorrow’s commute that they were willing to damn their grandchildren to a much reduced existence – so who can? Obama’s first climate control legislation was, by the standards of most environmentalists, far too tepid. Nonetheless, even this weak legislation faced a taxpayer’s revolt. See:  http://energycitizens.org/?gclid=CPDnutDmxJwCFdFL5Qodl2fHmA. There are plenty of so-called think tanks that will be employed in the war against environmentally sound legislation, even going so far as to deny the problem itself. E.g., http://www.heritage.org/press/commentary/ed051508b.cfm

Sachs is notably more optimistic than I. He argues that for a price of somewhere between 1 and 3% of world GNP – and a lot of perfect policy and technological development – we may indeed stem the tide of climate change. This is not on the face of it infeasible. But this is also not trivial – for the average American family this might mean a “tax” of $2000 a year –and we cannot swallow this bitter pill until we acknowledge that is far worse to leave our children and grandchildren compromised than to take our medicine.

I think it is too much to expect that in the absence of a transformative revolution in the way we think about our role on this planet and our responsibility towards one another – and towards future generations of humans, much less animals – our legislators will lead the way to the solution of the problem. This might bear repeating: if we are not in agreement that some sacrifice is needed today in order to preserve the planet for our grandchildren, how can we expect politicians to enact very severe, truly draconian legislation that will incentivize us to do the right thing? Anonymous is sound in his or her thinking that harnessing the private interest for the public use through taxes and subsidies is worthwhile, and is the right means to the ends, but I remain highly doubtful that we as a society, much less a world population, are ready to give our politician the leeway to act in the interests of non-voting children – and non-voting future generations, yet unborn. Politicians cannot be expected to get way out in front of us; at best, they can represent us. Of course, if we collectively decide to sacrifice for future generations; that is, if we become altruistic in our relations to future generations, our politicians may do what we ask (if we can make it worth their while and stem the pressures of lobbyists who do not share our interest in the planet). We cannot perform the implementation plan suggested by Anonymous until we are willing as a world society to support policy makers to trade off our current interests for future planetary well-being.  And without a groundswell of human understanding, compassion, and a willingness to act, and then the activism to get it done, I do not think the political system can do any better at solving the "problem of seven generations" than can the market.  In fact, it may bear paying special attention to the Great Law of the Iroquois: “In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation... even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine." [Italics mine.]

That is, to care about the future means to accept a price to ourselves – and that is as it should be. That’s altruism, and I think it is needed. 

Thanks once again to the comments by Anonymous.  Further, this posting is dedicated to my mother who remains adamant that human ingenuity can and will ultimately save us from ourselves.
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* In my original posting, I believe I had underestimated this factor; the current text reflects a corrected estimate.