Is it too late to reverse the tide?

To celebrate the opening of the brand new Schad Gallery for biodiversity, the ROM held a panel discussion on May 20, ambitiously entitled “How to Save the World.” Moderated by writer, philosopher, and U of T professor Mark Kingwell, the discussion focused on how to develop market solutions to the many challenges threatening the earth’s environment.

Situated in the main hall, stuffed grizzly bears and century-old totem poles presided over the dialogue between three of North America’s elite environmental and economic thinkers, Terry Anderson, Gregg Easterbrook, and Thomas Homer-Dixon, who gave intellectual context to the new gallery and to prescient environmental issues. Kingwell introduced the discussion by stating that society has reached a “green rhetorical consensus, when very few people dissent from the view that we need to do something”. Ideas on what, exactly, we should be doing were presented over the next hour.

Terry Anderson took the most hard-line approach to environmental pragmatism. Anderson said human ingenuity is the only way out of the environmental crisis. As a staunch capitalist and American-style free-market devotee, he advocates working toward finding creative solutions that combine market liberalism with conservation practices. Anderson said property rights are the best way to ensure the protection of the environment. By privatizing environmental resources such as water, trees, and land, and by maintaining the rule of law, people will begin to treat the environment better because they have a stake in it, he explained. In other words, “No one washes a rental car.” It’s Adam Smith meets David Suzuki.

Anderson’s work and research at the Property and Environment Research Centre is aimed at finding more of these solutions.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, chair of the Centre for International Governance Innovation at Waterloo, agrees that the environment and markets must “point in the same direction,” and work together to improve emissions. The market can reduce green house gases because carbon emissions can be priced. Homer-Dixon campaigns for privatizing the atmosphere, a scheme whereby people would pay for their carbon, which would lead to a reduction in carbon consumption. A cap-and-trade system, in which people trade their unused carbon for profit, would both generate capital and reduce emissions. However, he vehemently argued against Anderson’s claim that you can put prices on species and wilderness conservation.

Amongst all of the free-market talk, Anderson does make room for government and other social institutions, which can provide individuals and private enterprise incentives and rewards for environmental conservation.

Public institutions play a leading role for Greg Easterbrook, author of The Progress Paradox—How Life Gets Better While People Get Worse. When it comes to saving the world, Easterbrook holds that nothing will happen until the United States, still the largest economic and ideological power in the world, takes significant action. “U.S. government regulation is the only way out of this, even if it means the developing economies of China and India surge ahead. If nothing is done, there won’t be an America or China or India anyway,” he said.

Led by President Barack Obama, U.S. domestic controls are on the legislative horizon. Congress will likely pass domestic cap-and-trade legislation very soon and on May 19 Obama released a plan for imposing new fuel and emissions standards. Regulations such as this can spark innovation in the antiquated American economy, said Easterbrook. When American companies, such as automakers, are forced to develop new products that meet new regulations, they are compelled to innovate and develop new technologies, workers, and products. That innovation will keep the American economy ahead of the developing giants in the East. Homer-Dixon supported this thought.

However, Easterbrook is doubtful that the United States will sign an international agreement akin to the Kyoto protocol at the upcoming UN Conference on Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen this December. International regulations are still beyond America’s radar, and “Congress just isn’t ready,” he said.

Homer-Dixon said there is a critical need to get developing countries on-board in the international arena of environmental politics. He proposes these countries should receive large sums of capital and technology transfers from the west in exchange for environmental cooperation because developing countries are unlikely to impose restrictions on their rapidly growing economies otherwise. Under this system, Homer-Dixon projects that the quality of life in Beijing or Mumbai would improve along with the cleanliness of the atmosphere.

“The political and social challenge is enormous,” Homer-Dixon said. The average present atmospheric carbon content is 430 parts per million. This is increasing by three parts per million a year, meaning there is a 50 per cent chance that the global climate will warm by five degrees by the end of the century. “It would be an absolute catastrophe for human kind,” said Homer-Dixon. We [in the west] each generate an average of 20 tonnes each year, but need to reduce emissions to two tonnes per person to halt the climate crisis he explained—a 90 per cent reduction for every individual in countries such as Canada and the United States.

Easterbrook is a bit more optimistic. “Global warming is an air pollution problem,” he said, “and other air pollution problems in the past, such as smog and acid rain, have been addressed and dramatically improved through domestic and international regulations.” The same can happen for the reduction of green house gases.

As moderator, Mark Kingwell kept his opinions in check. But in an interview after the discussion had concluded, he voiced his thoughts about the role of universities in fostering environmental solutions. “Universities can and should play a leading role in showing how solutions are possible,” he said. “Environmental reform at universities can be profitable, and educational institutions should be exemplars for the private sector. At U of T especially, disciplines often talk past each other instead of developing a dialogue from which ideas foster and grow. It’s only by pooling our intellectual resources that we will overcome this.”