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February 12, 2007
Ignoring Political and Economic Science
Don Boudreaux
Yesterday Karol and I took our son, Thomas, to a Cub Scout event at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC.
After the formal program -- the building of a geodesic dome -- was over, we visited an exhibit entitled "The Green House." This exhibit showcases building materials and methods that, compared to more familiar materials and methods, are friendlier to nature. An example is flooring made from bamboo, a natural material that is plentiful and grows very fast.
Before I go on, I must be explicit that I have long been skeptical of "green." Unlike "green" folks, I am not especially inspired by nature. Yes, often nature is pretty and soothing to visit. But to get my blood pumping with excitement and awe you must show me a cityscape -- Manhattan's skyline, above all -- and not forests or mountains or beaches. My tastes run decidedly in favor of those amenities of civilization that allow me to escape nature. So the reason I am skeptical of "green" is that "green" people, more and more, seem to elevate their taste for nature into a moral proposition -- which, because I don't share their taste for nature, causes them to regard me and others like me as morally deficient.
Nevertheless, when visiting "Green House" I was impressed with the ingenuity that entrepreneurs, architects, and home builders pour into making houses more energy-efficient and even cleaner than are traditional homes.
But at the exhibit's end, a sign caught my attention and made me wince. I quote the sign in full:
Vote to conserve wilderness areas and support one of the 240 anti-sprawl initiatives across America
This little political advertisement is more than mildly annoying because it appears as part of an exhibit that is largely scientific -- that is, one that presents objective and very interesting evidence of non-traditional home-building methods and materials. And yet the above statement is wholly unscientific; there's nothing objective about it beyond its claim that there are now, across America, about 240 "initiatives" that some people identify as "anti-sprawl."
But will most, some, any of these initiatives, if enacted, really prevent "sprawl"? Will most, some, any of these initiatives -- even if they do prevent further "sprawl" -- have an impact on the environment that is, on net, positive? And will most, some, any of these initiatives -- even if they do have a net-positive impact on the environment -- be worthwhile?
The above questions not only are legitimate, they are minimally necessary to ask and to answer reasonably.
To descend suddenly from an interesting and (largely) objective display about non-traditional building methods and materials into a grotesquely presumptuous political command meant to appear as if it follows naturally from the rest of the exhibit is jarring and obnoxious.
Posted by Don Boudreaux in Energy, Environment, Myths and Fallacies, Politics | Permalink
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Comments
It may be jarring and obnoxious, but it is also just politics as usual in the 21st Century. It's just like the little "Save Our Planet" notices in hotel rooms encouraging us to "save" water by not making the housekeeping staff wash our towels. Once created, water is rarely, if ever destroyed, so using it shouldn't be an issue. Sure, it has to be cleaned after use so it can be reused, but since when has water treatment been a problem in this country? It's all disingenuous junk designed to lure the ignorant into supporting certain political agendas.
Posted by: Mike | Feb 12, 2007 3:20:17 PM
There's economics at play here! It's a generally safe message. The people who agree with it will agree with it a whole bunch, and there are a lot of them. The people who don't care and won't notice outnumber everyone. The people who would have an issue with it are small in number and it's just kinda shake your head stupid, not terribly offending. For most everyone, "sprawl" is the people who live further away from the center than we do. Mike's towel example works here too.
An example of an unsafe message might be "Save the environment, keep women at home.". Guaranteed to totally offend just about everyone, yet not stir much positive fervor in people who might agree, as few and far between as they might be.
15 years ago in The OC, lots of people had their "Save Laguna Canyon" stickers to show opposition to a planned toll road. Mostly harmless, as the toll road went through anyway and you can often find some clueless dork driving on it and sporting one of those stickers. But change your sticker to "Pave Laguna Canyon" and you could start a riot ;-).
Posted by: Brad | Feb 12, 2007 3:53:34 PM
Probably the best "anti-sprawl" legislation that we should all be voting for is school choice. Think of how many inner cities and first ring suburbs would be dynamic places to live rather than wastelands if all of the parents could choose their children's school from among a multitude of choices that would certainly develop.
Think also how much higher real estate values would be in these same areas. If people won't vote for better education through school choice, maybe they will vote to make their own property more valuable.
We live in a third ring suburb and it is primarily populated by others like us who have moved out from a second ring suburb when the schools there started to go downhill.
Posted by: Tom Kelly | Feb 12, 2007 3:59:12 PM
Getting government out of the massive road construction business would be a tremendous boone. I know that where I live in Central Florida it is an absolute mess. The government comes in and paves a massive two or three lane highway and then zones certain areas commercial, residential, and industrial. Then all of the PRO-GOVERNMENT people walk around complaining about how there is no mixed used development and everything in the area is designed around the use of the car. GEE I WONDER WHY? A little Jane Jacobs and her apreciation for spontaneous order can go a long way in helping to create interesting places to live.
Posted by: John Pertz | Feb 12, 2007 5:07:52 PM
Reducing sprawl is easy: make sprawling expensive. Of course, most methods involve government coercion, but there's one possibility that doesn't. Stop subsidizing free transportation to the suburbs! We're paying in time for our daily commute to the office, but what if we had to pay a free market toll instead? That might be enough to encourage some people to move closer in, and developers to start building up instead of out.
p.s. A better sense of property rights helps as well. In my "green" neighborhood there was a referendum that prohibited high density apartment complexes. Why aren't "green" people for high density housing? It doesn't make sense.
Posted by: David Johnson | Feb 12, 2007 5:29:40 PM
We stayed at the lodge in Yosemite and there was a small sign encouraging us to "SAVE PRICELESS ENERGY" by reusing our towels.
Can you imagine priceless energy?
Posted by: Sam | Feb 12, 2007 7:38:10 PM
Initiative #241: buy the freaking land yourself, with your own group's money (or even just your own), and stop with the pressure group tactics that try to use the same money to buy the votes of the asshat politicians. The land will be yours and then you can tell everyone else to stay the heck off of it and do as you please with it!
Posted by: lowcountryjoe | Feb 12, 2007 8:48:26 PM
About a month ago I stayed at a hotel in a desert. It's hard to take the "save the water" stuff seriously when the hotel was surrounded by acres of green grass, some of which was covered in ice because the hotel left the sprinklers run in the morning.
Posted by: Ammonium | Feb 12, 2007 9:07:24 PM
"Sprawl" is at least 50% fiction, because while I live 20 miles from the city center, I (and most of my neighbors) work/play/worship within a few miles of home.
And we have more acreage in forest today than 80 years ago, because increased agricultural productivity.
Posted by: True_Liberal | Feb 12, 2007 10:14:32 PM
As we see in France, so called "anti-sprawl" policies favor in fact "hyper-sprawl" behaviours. Anti sprawl laws tend to raise housing prices in the downtowns. As anti sprawl policies doesn't allow you to buy homes in the immediate neighborhood, you have to go to the next smaller city, sometimes more than 40 miles away of your job place, to find affordable housing. It means more transportation times, road congestion, less time with your family...
Anti sprawl policies are the main responsible of the formation of housing bubbles that harm the poorest people. midwest cities without such rules have experienced a very low housing inflation. More on this phenomenon can be found on wendell Cox website demographia.com - Harvard's Ed Glaeser has published many works on the topic, too (findable via google)
More: Anti sprawl policies, by raising the cost of land in inner cities, create incentives to favour only intensive uses of land: houses without gardens, buildings, less parks and green areas... This is obvously not good for urban environement and urban biodiversity. Numerous english and german studies have found that "sprawled" cities are more bio-diverse prone than big mono-culture fields.
Anti-sprawl policies are ethically highly challengeable: they deprive some owners from benefiting the same right to use their land than others owners enjoyed in the past, raising wealth of the latter at the expense of the former. Where is morality in this ?
Anti-sprawl policies are anti-economic, anti-social, and anti-environmental.
Posted by: Vincent | Feb 13, 2007 3:41:20 AM
If both Don and Russ live in Loudon County, VA, please forgive me for what I am about to say. That place is an odd place to live.
I have an Uncle who lives there and what you have to keep mind is that Loudon County has "Open Space" laws. These laws create odd housing developments, where you can drive several miles before you can find another house. There are rules about how many house can be built in certain areas. What is even more amazing is that while they are trying to save "Open Space" you have to continue to move further away from DC to find affordable housing. Which then causes traffic problems and also increases the emissions let out into the air to increase. It amazing me the hypocrisy of such laws.
On the note about the towel in the Hotel. Do you honestly believe that they are trying to save the enviroment? What is your biggest expense in the hotel industry other than building capital and labor? LAUNDRY! They aren't trying to save water for any altruistic measures, they are trying to save a few dollars. They just disguise it as saving the enviroment. Could be a great marketing ploy if you think about it. You appeal to individuals sense of saving the enviroment while cutting costs.
Posted by: Matt C. | Feb 13, 2007 8:43:22 AM
Vincent - "Anti-sprawl policies are ethically highly challengeable"
I agree with you completely with a minor note: When have you ever known, in recent times, any level of ethical integrity applied to legislation or government policy creation? So long as we continue on this path of "what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine" path of legislation and government, you can debate ethics until you are blue in the face.
Posted by: colson | Feb 14, 2007 12:17:03 AM
Of course the same folks who promote anti-sprawl initiatives are the same ones who bemoan the lack of affordable housing that results. Invariably more government intervention is proposed, in the form of mandating the construction of Affordable Housing Units, which in turn help accelerate the increased cost of living in the area. It's too bad poor people have yet to figure out how hostile environmentalists are towards them.
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