The actor Ed Begley Jr. has a widely-circulated OpEd piece touting his eco-friendly activities, featuring a proud announcement that his exercise on his stationary bicycle generates the electricity he uses to toast two pieces of bread.
Now those two pieces give him 200 calories, but he burns at least 100 calories on the bike. So half of his eco-friendly exercise is lost because he needs to obtain additional food from elsewhere to maintain his weight — food whose growth and distribution have environmental consequences too, as does the manufacture of his bicycle.
This illustrates the general equilibrium difficulties of so many pro-environmental activities about which the rich and famous boast.
Saving the environment in one market generates consequences in others. Perhaps the best illustration is the misguided effort to generate ethanol from corn by subsidizing farmers to switch to corn production. Fine for gasoline users, and fine in reducing environmental damage from gasoline; but corn uses lots of water (environmental depletion) and, moreover, the subsidies have helped fuel the spurt of inflation in food prices worldwide.
There should be a rule: before helping the environment in one market, we should be required to think through the impacts on other markets.
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@ L.A.King
There are a few domains where free market should not apply, and I believe health care is one of them. To prove it you just need to compare health care systems in different countries…
The first economics piece I ever read as a freshman in college was by Henry Hazlitt and was called something like “The two main fallacies of economics”. They were: one, only considering the impacts of an action in the short run and not the long run, and two, only considering the effects of the action on one group and not all groups. I only have a BA in Econ and am no expert but still it seems to me that most misguided economic policies today can be said to suffer from one of those two fallacies. If only those in charge could have taken one day of economics. Imagine if Doctors had less than a day of medical school.
@6 (Ryan)
We’re probably way too down the path of arguing about the trees rather than the forest. However, I note that the health benefits of excercise (especially heart risks) can be found independent of weight. Thus, Ed can’t just eat less and be healthy, he must excercise. It is a nearly perfect example of a win/win (although I note there may be additional energy costs of making the machine he uses to convert the mechanical energy to electricity)
Well, if Mr. Begley Jr. used his feces as fertilizer to grow a tree, then he could get some of those calories back that he ate in the form of toast.
Really, we have to just accept that we’re not plants and we’re on the “wrong” side of the carbon exchange in terms of our biology. But if we cultivate a garden in an organic, natural way, we’re doing fine.
As was pointed out, the cost of exercise offsets a greater cost in terms of medical care for a sedentary lifestyle. Efficiency gains are always win win. If you can do what you have always been doing with less resource input that’s just plain better. People need a source of exercise and activity or their health suffers. Instead of letting his work just go to heat, Ed is capturing it for reuse. Now, an even better solution would be to get exercise while planting trees or collecting recyclable material off the street. However we shouldn’t criticize someone for doing something good just because it isn’t best.
How far is this argument taken? If Ed exercises and so increases his lifespan by improved health, he harms the environment in the long run. Humans are bad for the Earth, so he should strive to expire as soon as possible.
And on the topic, what’s the problem with gasoline? It’s carbon neutral (just like trees): 50 million years ago, carbon from vegetation was “sunk” into dinosaurs and sequestered into oil. Now we’re liberating that carbon and simply putting back into the environment.
This article features an invalid comparison but it refers to a large issue in carbon and other environmental regulation where we are to give ‘credits’ for reducing impacts.
Should Beagley get a credit for reducing energy usage on an activity he might have done using traditional methods(toast/pollute)?
Should he receive less of a benefit if the traditional activity got its energy from a ‘green’ source?
Should he even be charged for the effects of his activity?
This is commonly referred to as a baseline or benchmarking issue. The funny thing is it is the industries that pollute the most who stand to benefit the most from pollution trading schemes if they can game the benchmarking process!
#7 (Speed) nailed it: green initiatives should be required to complete economic impact studies. Ironically, if economic impact studies were to become required, the green lobby would be faced with a procedural hurdle they themselves invented. What comes around, goes around.
I applaud Ed Begley’s efforts; I can do without his condescending manner. That’s the problem, in general, with the green movement: too much preaching, not enough pragmatism. When will the greens start calling BS on the Hollywood-types who talk a good game but own 4 guzzling luxury cars, 3 large homes with large heating/cooling needs, and 1 plane?