USA Today is reporting that CO2 emissions are falling because of the global recession. I’m sure that’s true. Yet I’m worried that the media is looking for evidence that folks who are concerned about climate change are somehow “rooting for recession.” Check out the framing in this quote:
A recession-driven drop in emissions “is good for the environment,” says Emilie Mazzacurati of Point Carbon, an energy research company. “In the long term, that’s not how we want to reduce emissions.”
Then, later in the article we get a fuller mention of Mazzacurati’s real views.
Some experts fear lower emissions may make companies and governments less likely to spend money to cut carbon output. “There’s a risk that it will push back needed investment into … cleaner production,” Mazzacurati says.
Mazzacurati is clearly making the point that, over the long term, a recession could hurt the climate more than help it. The credit crunch and other forces could choke off funds for clean-energy investment. Just so, we’ve already seen that badly conceived stimulus projects could deepen our addiction to oil and fossil fuels.
Yet even so, the first quote that the writer pulls from what was undoubtedly a long and nuanced conversation about the risk of recession to the climate is a phrase—not even a full sentence—suggesting that the recession is good for the climate. Having been on the receiving end of this sort of thing, it seemed me as if the reporter was looking for a nugget to back up a preconceived story line.
Truthfully, I don’t know the long-term relation between the global economic crisis and the climate. Climate change is a very long-term problem. Even if the economic crisis lasted for a decade, it still might not make much of a difference to the long-term trajectory of CO2 emissions. The important thing, then, is to make sure that we’re developing the right policies, and deploying the right technologies, so that emissions will fall no matter what happens to the economy.
In a nutshell: I don’t think anyone’s rooting for economic pain. But you can be sure that some reporters to try to claim the opposite. So just be aware that this is mostly a manufactured story line, not the real sentiments of the broader public—folks who are genuinely worried both about keeping their jobs and protecting the climate over the long haul.
Callie Jordan
Unpleasant events that seem to have a desirable side to them, hmmm. Reminds me of how cancer and oil spills are good for the GNP the way it’s now measured.
norberto rodriguez
I call this effect Collateral Gain ! Let me explain. At the same time that the economic crisis is causing so much suffering to millions of people, there are a few ecological benefits we are not realizing.For instance, now that the housing market is declining, automatically the demand for wood products has declined, and many logging companies are reducing, or have totally stopped, their logging operations. Of course, this is hurting many people in this industry, but at the same time many forests are having a break, at least for a little while.A similar situation happens with the decrease in sales for big cars and SUVs, and more people using public transit. People are not making these changes to fight climate change, but because their pockets are hurting. These changes help a little bit with reducing carbon emissions. I call this effect Collateral Gain, because it didn’t come as a direct result of new climate change campaigns, but it is a serendipity result of the economic crisis. And even if the gain may be only temporary, it is still a gain! It is similar to the thousands of civilians being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq that the U.S. Department of Defense calls collateral damage : “[the] unintentional damage or incidental damage affecting facilities, equipment, or personnel, occurring as a result of military actions directed against targeted enemy forces or facilities. Such damage can occur to friendly, neutral, and even enemy forces.” Other times it is also referred as “friendly fire.” We can rephrase the above definition and say that Collateral Gain is the unintentional gain or incidental gain affecting ecosystems and their creatures, occurring as a result of actions derived from the financial crisis.
Alan Durning
Norberto,”collateral gain”—I like this phrase. An alternative: “collateral benefit.”