The Green family realised that their success was exacting a high price. Their country farmhouse was their home as well as their business premises. But while their enterprise was creating a healthy profit, the vibrations caused by the heavy machinery used on site was slowly destroying the fabric of the building. If they carried on as they were, in five years the damage would make the building unsafe and they would be forced out. Nor were their profits sufficient to fund new premises or undertake the necessary repairs and structural improvements required.
Mr and Mrs Green were determined to preserve their home for their children. And so they decided to slow production and thus the spread of the damage.
Ten years later, the Greens passed away and the children inherited the family estate. The farmhouse, however, was falling to pieces. Builders came in, shook their heads and said it would cost £1 million to put right. The youngest of the Greens, who had been the accountant for the business for many years, grimaced and buried his head in his hands.
‘If we had carried on at full production and not worried about the building, we would have had enough money to put this right five years ago. Now, after ten years of under-performance, we’re broke.’
His parents had tried to protect his inheritance. In fact, they had destroyed it.
Source: The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
This parable could be taken simply as a lesson about forward planning in business. But it is more interesting than that, for the tale can be seen as mirroring a serious dilemma of much wider concern: how do we respond to the environmental threats facing us today?
Take climate change. Experts agree that it is happening and that it is probably man-made. But there are no measures we can realistically take now that will stop it altogether. The Kyoto agreement, for example, would only delay it by about six years. However, the cost to the United States alone of implementing the agreement would be the equivalent of the money required to extend provision of clean drinking water to all the world’s population. You have therefore to ask whether the cost of Kyoto is worth paying.
The point is not that, without Kyoto, the US would in fact provide clean water for all. The point is rather in the parallel to the Greens. Could we end up with a situation where we merely delay the inevitable at the cost of economic growth, thus depriving future generations of the funds they would need to sort out the problems they will inherit? It can’t be better to postpone the problem of global warming if doing so merely leaves us less well equipped to confront it when it starts to hurt.
That is not to say that we should do nothing about global warming. It is merely to point out that we should make sure what we do is effective and doesn’t inadvertently make things worse. That requires us to take into account more than just the spread of environmental damage, but future generations’ ability to deal with it. A lot of green campaigners seek to avoid damage to the environment at all costs, but that is as shortsighted as the Greens’ strategy of minimising damage to their farmhouse at all costs.
This would seem to be just common sense, but it is intuitively unappealing to those who care about the environment, for three reasons. First, it suggests it is sometimes better to let the Earth get more polluted in the short term. Second, it emphasises the role of economic growth in providing the source of solutions to problems. That emphasis on finance and economics is anathema to many greens. Third, it is often linked to the idea that future technologies will help bring solutions. And technology is seen by many environmentalists as a source of our problems, not their solution. Those three reasons might explain why Greens resist the argument, but not why they should.
See also
| 10. | The veil of ignorance |
| 22. | The lifeboat |
| 60. | Do as I say, not as I do |
| 87. | Fair inequality |