News flash: business responds to market incentives!

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Monday, December 7, 2009 - 4:49 PM Share

I've been a big fan of Jared Diamond's work ever since Guns, Germs, and Steel, and I enjoyed his op-ed yesterday describing how companies like Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and Chevron are "going green." But I thought the real lesson of the article got buried in his glowing depiction of these supposedly enlightened companies. If you read his account carefully, it's clear that these big businesses didn't suddenly acquire an altruistic concern for the good of the planet; they are simply responding to clear market incentives, reinforced in some cases by intelligent regulation. Walmart is working to reduce its energy expenditures because energy (e.g., fuel for delivery trucks) is expensive; Coca-Cola is worried about water supplies because Coke is mostly made of water and its costs will increase as water becomes scarcer; and Chevron now does more to prevent environmental damage because governments now require it to pay clean-up costs and that's more expensive than preventing oil spills and other environmental mishaps in the first place.

The moral is that we aren't going to get a greener planet if we don't make the cost of environment-damaging activities (like burning fossil fuels or wasting water) substantially more expensive, and if we don't make it harder for those who do the most damage to off-load the costs on someone else. Everyone watching the climate change talks in Copenhagen should keep this lesson firmly in mind: A truly effective solution isn't going to be cost-free, especially in the short-term.

Donald Bowers/Getty Images for The Coca Cola Company

EXPLORE:ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, GLOBAL WARMING, LAW, OIL

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NUR AL-CUBICLE

8:36 PM ET

December 7, 2009

Share the Recycling Burden

When Coca-Cola actually provides and manages huge numbers of recycling points for their plastic bottles and aluminum cans in every community in the USA, then I'll take them seriously.

MARCOGS

9:27 PM ET

December 7, 2009

Sorry professor Walt, but you

Sorry professor Walt, but you should know that "climate change" is a hoax. It was a hoax from the beginning, and the East Anglia University's leaked e-mails prove it.
Not to speaking of the middle-age climate-change: was it "man-made" too ?

BRETT

8:43 AM ET

December 8, 2009

Sorry professor Walt, but you

Sorry professor Walt, but you should know that "climate change" is a hoax. It was a hoax from the beginning, and the East Anglia University's leaked e-mails prove it.

One bad dataset does not disprove a science based on multiple datasets and different types of proof. Try again.

Not to speaking of the middle-age climate-change: was it "man-made" too ?

The existence of man-made climate change does not mean that there wasn't natural climate change in the past - in fact, a big part of climate change research (which has been largely verified) was in determining how big mankind's impact on the current climate change amounted to.

MARCOGS

10:38 AM ET

December 8, 2009

"Man made climate change" ? A

"Man made climate change" ?

A fraud inside a hoax: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/12/guest-post-woman-who-invented-credit-default-swaps-is-one-of-the-key-architects-of-carbon-derivatives-which-would-be-at-the-very-center-of-cap-and-trade.html

RKERG

2:40 AM ET

December 8, 2009

Is it obvious only to me that

Is it obvious only to me that the so called
climate change is about nothing but contaminating
future jurors in future civil suits
filed against coal burning power
companies and Big Oil? Smell the coffee
folks, the Tobacco Institute was quite
successful at muddying the waters for decades
before the floodgates burst and Big Tobacco
started losing lawsuits. Like every thing
else that so called conservatives mount
huge campaigns of lies about, this is nothing
but big corporations wanting to hold
on their money at any cost. Climate
change deniers should be invited to
go into their garage and close the door
and then start their car and relax.

RICHARD WITTYQ

10:03 AM ET

December 8, 2009

Climate Change is more Urgent than Professor Walt describes

There is ALWAYS something that we can do about it.

In this case, the Wal-mart, Coca-Cola recycling and fuel efficiency modeling is rational economically and ecologically. If incorporated into economic norms, those rational decisions would accomplish maybe 5% of the carbon reductions needed to avert the consequences of global warming long-term.

The two main features of global warming that are consequential are the migration of habitats precipitated by artificially rapid changes in rain patterns, and the loss of glacial origination of Himalayan rivers that supply 1.5 billion with fresh water (and fish, and power, and transportation path).

The "sea rising" will be moderate (maybe a maximum of 10 feet, and after a 300 ft swing from the full extent of glacial cycle).

The OPPORTUNITY to actually design our society for sustainability (over tens of thousands of years) will be lost. As the world is so crowded with people, planning is necessary. Land use and water particularly.

Greenwashing by giant corporations don't accomplish that, largely for the devastating effects of uni-dimensional globalization of markets, manufacturing, capital.

In the effort to establish a single global commodity market, 100's of regional commodity markets were destroyed and rendered inneffective as marketplaces. More market dialog mechanism was destroyed by global marketplaces than were created.

To see diversity (natural and cultural), you have to get out of the cities.

MARCOGS

11:25 AM ET

December 8, 2009

What a brave new world !

Chris Tryhorn, «More than 50 papers join in front-page leader article on climate change», Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/06/50-papers-leader-climate-change

Fifty (!) newspapers one (!) article !

What a lovely thing is free press !

Professor Walt shouldn't be so critic about AfPak war: it's cristal clear that the central Asia peoples have the right to enjoy this "freedom".

TOM G

12:19 PM ET

December 8, 2009

WHAT...

Every scientist agrees that the climate is changing but while the vast majority of them think the planet will warm, some think that the planet will cool but they all agree it is changing, the fact that some people still don't believe it is madness

MARCOGS

12:24 PM ET

December 8, 2009

Climate change is a fact,

Climate change is a fact, indeed.

"MAN MADE climate change" is madness (at least...)

Because climate IS changing since millennia.

DRLAKE777

5:36 PM ET

December 8, 2009

Do you normally discount the

Do you normally discount the conclusion held by 99 out of 100 specialists in the study of a phenomenon, or is it only when you don't like their conclusions? While it is possible that the consensus view is wrong, it is the height of arrogance to so glibly dismiss the combined efforts of tens of thousands of climate scientists in favor of a few hundred contrarians and hordes of non-specialist skeptics with various agendas to promote.

MARCOGS

7:18 PM ET

December 8, 2009

discounts and agendas

99 out of 100 specialists ?
A quite optimistic estimate, a "hockey stick estimate" indeed; of course it is a reliable estimate if you count only "specialists" of East Anglia University and Penn State University ...

agendas to promote ?
Ask to Al Gore or Blythe Masters WHO has agendas to promote.

Finally, a little piece of mental sanity:

MARCOGS

4:33 PM ET

December 8, 2009

Something "man made"

Here it is something "man made" beyond any reasonable doubt:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16442

Do you think that Iraqis's well being could be improved by, mmh, recycling points for plastic bottles and aluminum cans ?

GRANT

2:54 PM ET

December 9, 2009