I just discovered this related and entertaining passage from Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist (2005).
Here I am, going to a panel discussion organized by an environmental charity, and a very earnest young member of staff is grilling me before I even get past the door of the lecture hall.
“How did you travel here today? We need to know for our carbon offset program.”
“What’s a carbon offset program?”
“We want all our meetings to be carbon-neutral. We ask everyone who attends to let us know how far they came and on what mode of transportation, and then we work out how much carbon dioxide was emitted and plant trees to offset the emissions.”
The Undercover Economist is about to blow his cover.
“I see. In that case, I came here in an anthracite powered steamer from Australia.”
“Sorry . . . how do you spell anthracite?”
“It’s just a kind of coal—very dirty, lots of sulfur. OW!”
The Undercover Economist’s wife gives him a sharp dig in the ribs.
“Ignore him. We both cycled here.”
“Oh.”
Apart from being a good example of how irritating an Undercover Economist can be, this true story should, I hope, provoke a few questions. Why would an environmental charity organize a carbon neutral meeting? The obvious answer is “so that it can engage in debate without contributing to climate change.” And that is true, but misleading.
The Undercover Economist in me was looking at things from the point of view of efficiency. If planting trees is a good way to deal with climate change, why not forget about the meetings and plant as many as possible? (In which case, everybody should say they came by steamship.) If the awareness-raising debate is the important thing, why not forget about the trees and organize extra debates?
In other words, why be “carbon-neutral” when you can be “carbon-optimal,” especially since the meeting was not benzene-neutral, lead-neutral, particulate-neutral, ozone-neutral, sulfur-neutral, congestion-neutral, noise-neutral, or accident-neutral? Instead of working out whether to improve the environment directly (by planting trees), or indirectly (by promoting discussion), the charity was spending considerable energy keeping itself precisely “neutral”—and not even precisely neutral on all externalities, nor even a modest range of environmental toxins, but preserving its neutrality on a single, high-profile pollutant: carbon dioxide. And it was doing so in a very public way.
I just discovered this related and entertaining passage from Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist (2005).