Public+Policy+Implications

=Anthropocentric Environmentalism:=

The Basics:
Anthropocentric (APC) environmentalism can be divided into strong and weak aspects. The distinction is one of degree. Both strong and weak seek to promote the success of humans individually and/OR holistically, but Strong APC makes no concessions for the environment (well, i'm not sure about this. depends what you mean here by "concessions" - certainly even strong-apc will favor environmental protection to the degree that such protection secures valuable natural resources for us) while weak APC allows for wiggle room concerning the value of nature. Both reject any notion of nature having value beyond instrumental. I will discuss this further below.

The logical policy extensions of a strong APC viewpoint lead to the micromanagement of ecology itself. Nature has no value beyond what humans, as value creators, bestow upon it. Therefore it is nonsense to preserve any aspect of nature for the sake of itself. Nature knows not what is our best interest and sometimes even causes harm to humanity (natural disasters, disease, sunburn, etc.). Therefore it is our responsibility to engineer nature in a way which is more conducive to human life. If a huge meteor was headed towards earth with its own celestial ecology we would no more think of the well being of these celestial beings than a sailor thinks of the chemical composition of water during a storm. The practice of ecological micromanagement could lead to a revolution in planetary engineering.

A Weak APC view lends itself towards a more harmonic relationship with nature while adhering to a human centric perspective. While nature may have no value beyond that which is created by self conscious beings, it would be erroneous to assume humans can control nature so perfectly as to attain an absolute satisfaction of human desires. Though we are the ultimate deciders of what is valuable, we should take the historical relevance of our ecological dependence very seriously. The practical policy application of this perspective is easier to understand as most people see ourselves as members of a naturalistic world as opposed to the strong APC viewpoint which perceives the ecological world as something worthy of exploitation for the sake of man. The public policy application explained herein will reflect a weak APC view giving regard to our impact as a normative force and not an exploitative force maintaining that all policy will have the well being of mankind as its highest regard. Weak APC policies are not trying to save the environment for itself but to preserve it for the humans who understand its true value.

Cap and Trade Policy:
Cap and trade policies have received quite a bit of attention recently as President Obama pushed for a new bill that narrowly passed which sets up the system here in the United States. The theory behind it states that the best way to economically reduce green house gasses is to provide polluters with the right to pollute a certain amount dependent upon production. In example, a coal plant which produces //X// amount of energy is given a carbon credit for //Y// carbon emissions. Should the plant produce less emissions it can sell its surplus credits to another plant which produced more pollution. The fundamental idea is a capitalistic, open market idea where the market will decide the price of these "coupons to pollute." This system works (in theory) three-fold. First individual companies are financially encouraged to reduce their emissions and therefore increase their revenue. Secondly, third party companies with new technologies that can reduce carbon emissions become more financially viable as the benefit to cost ratio increases (cost stays constant while benefit increases). Thirdly, companies who exceed the emission to productivity level must either cut there excess production to adjust for the deficiency or close down entirely. The companies who can create the highest ratio or productivity to pollution succeed while those companies that can't fail.

A Counter APC viewpoint is that this will result in higher energy prices. The United States holds the world's largest coal reserves which is the most pollutant of all the hydrocarbons. This new system will hurt the United States more that most because the commodity most prevalent locally becomes the least sought after globally.

Bill's Comments: a Carbon tax (with some proceeds used to pay for gas vouchers for low-income residents to help them deal with the higher gas costs caused by the carbon tax) would be much more effective and efficient and less prone to lobbying by special corporate interests (ie, midwestern farmers who wish to use corn fields as carbon offsets without including the carbon footprint of using fossil fuels to grow the corn... - something to research here) AND Obama's bill apparently is very GRADUAL - ie, the first year the offset permits are almost free?? Also Europeans have not had great success thus far with cap and trade..

Also - while it might seem obvious that APCers would reject anything that leads to higher energy prices, wouldn't a sophisticated APCer have a more nuanced view here? For instance if new "green" technology plus higher fossil-fuel-based energy prices lead to new economic growth, more profits, more jobs, then wouldn't higher fossil-fuel prices be a good thing... in this context? When it comes to green economies, green technologies will there be "winners" and "losers"? Where do APCers stand with winners and losers here?

To answer this counter-argument, there is now new encouragement to find ways to burn coal more efficiently with concern to pollutants.

My comment (Bill): 1) Obama, I think, actually favors clean coal burning technology already and the coal industry has been one of the main supporters of the cap and trade bill - ie, Duke Energy...; 2) most scientists say that it's nearly impossible to build a coal plant that emits no CO2 ... again, something to research.

Question to address here: why is climate change/global warming a "problem" from a strong and/or weak APC view? Are APCers committed to the interests of PRESENT or FUTURE generations of humans or both? : ). Also - what are APCer views with respect to wilderness areas? restoration, toxic clean up costs? etc...

--Theodore Roosevelt, Seventh Annual Message, December 3, 1907
 * "To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."**



[|Environmental Protection Agency] [|Business Waste Management]


 * 1) ===**Be sure to explain how this fits BEST with an APC perspective AND state as well whether it fits with a STRONG-APC or WEAK-APC view...** ===
 * 2) **Also explain how a carbon tax works and why (presumably) cap and trade is preferable from an APC perspective. (Bill)**

"The market will set the price... no business will be allowed to emit any greenhouses gases for free. Businesses don't own the sky, the public does, and if we want them to stop polluting it, we have to put a price on all pollution."

- Barrack Obama (October 6th, Portsmouth, N.H. speech)

[|Cap and Trade Policies]