Liberals face a twofold challenge when it comes to green issues. Firstly there is the obvious challenge of coming up with solutions to green issues, secondly there’s the more insidious and less obvious challenge - challenging the collectivist consensus on green issues.
Most environmental pressure groups are collectivist and as such they are opposed to liberty and freedom. Just as Plato said that what was good was only what was good for the stability and persistence of the state, or fascists said that what was good was what was beneficial to the state, or class warriors said that the good of the class defines goodness, the environmentalist says that what is good is what is good for the environment or nature or the planet.
This is fundamentally opposed to liberalism since it doesn’t care about the individual. The individual human is incidental. Its true, the arguments can sound human based, but they again to not take the individual into account, simply the human race, humans in the collective.
The other fatal flaw with this approach is more a practical problem, it is not enough to say ‘this is good for the environment’, it will have trade-offs, often in the environmental arena. For example, a Prius may emit less carbon dioxide whilst being driven, but it requires a large battery which contains many pollutants. Is one form of pollution worse than the other? How do you decide?
The liberal challenge is to formulate an environmentalism based upon the individual and freedom. We are given two entries by the collectivist environmentalism. Firstly we can highlight the lack of concern with the individual and the human in much environmentalism. For example, organic farming has some environmental benefits, but if we were to adopt it as a universal farming method millions, if not billions, would starve as it is simply not as productive. Likewise, the hardships which giving up cars would produce may be attractive to neo-puritans and romanticists, but to most people the car is an essential part of their quality of life.
The second entry is to point out the contradictions inherent in much environmental rhetoric, to point out that benefits in one area have costs in another, often environmental costs.
So what do we do? How do we start this liberal environmentalism?
Firstly we learn from environmental ideas. For example, organic farming has some advantages - the lower usage of pesticides, better water retention, less fertiliser usage and more wildlife. Unfortunately is has the fundamental flaw of having a low yield which means it simply cannot produce enough food for the world. The liberal naturally would never ban organic farming, but neither would they subsidise it. Instead we should look towards new methods of farming which have many of those aspects yet also have a high yield. Today we know much more about the effects methods of farming have on the environment which means that we can approach farming in a new way. Of course, this means scrapping agricultural subsidy which is consistently shown to harm the environment.
How about balancing different forms of pollution? The LibDems already have the start of a possible solution - green taxes. Such taxes upon polluting activities at a level which accounts for the damage they do (don’t ask me how to calculate that). It allows us to simply evaluate the trade-offs between different methods and products as individuals. It also allows us to trade-off polluting activity with our own desires, removing conflict between the individual and external environmental problems.
Other areas which liberalism already has solutions are those which produce the tragedy of the commons. The Common Fisheries Policy is an excellent example. The absence of property rights means that people have no concern for protecting their future fishing ability and seek to maximise short term gains.
Liberals are also skeptical of collective action. The Kyoto treaty has nice noble aims, but is absolutely ineffectual. Government is not in a position to simply dictate the carbon output. The negotiations will again be based upon short term gain for the countries involved, just dressed up in spin.
Perhaps carbon trading is part of the solution. A liberal idea of trying to create a market and letting individuals or companies decide what the carbon allowance is worth to them.
An area I think the LibDems currently get it wrong is recycling. Perhaps recycling is good for the environment, but there are arguments that it is not. The best way to sort this out seems to be to tax pollution and environmental cost. Then if recycling is good it would be the cheapest method of waste disposal, or perhaps even profitable (as it currently is for many metals). If it was profitable then the waste disposal companies would even pay us for the opportunity to recycle our produce, or at least offer lower prices. This would then offer an incentive for us all to recycle and take the time to sort our rubbish.
The liberal method does not simply ban or force people to behave in apparently good ways. It seeks to make markets work and to let individuals make their own choice. It doesn’t rely on received wisdom but seeks to establish the truth and utilise technology. It does not rely on strong, wise government and it preserves individual freedom and liberty.
The ideas I’ve sketched out are by no means meant to be correct or the best methods, but they are meant to serve as a starting point.
The essential idea is that liberals can, and must, pursue environmental aims in an individualist and liberal manner rather than the collectivist manner that so many environmentalist groups pursue.
