Freedom, Responsibility, and the Price of Carbon
The Super Bowl is right around the corner and, given my interest in sustainability, I can’t help wondering how much fossil fuel will be burned in order to bring the annual spectacle into existence. How much carbon dioxide will be spewed into the environment for the sake of this one day of entertainment? Despite its rhetorical nature, my question does indeed have an answer. It would just take a whole lot of work for us to arrive at a reasonable estimate.
Am I being elitist for
picking on the Super Bowl? Perhaps. After all, I enjoy a good film festival now
and then, which has its own sizable carbon footprint. And this post resides on
servers that require a lot of energy to power up and keep cool. What’s the
difference? We’re all creating carbon dioxide with our various endeavors and
diversions. It’s a free country, right? Indeed, this is a question that
touches on some of our most deeply held beliefs about freedom and personal
responsibility. Before I delve into that, however, let me tell you a little
story.
When I was a child, my family vacationed over the week of the Fourth of July at a little resort on one of the scenic rivers in southern Missouri. Most of the guests returned year after year, so it was a week spent getting reacquainted with old friends. We rode horseback and played tennis and miniature golf. Mostly, though, we went swimming in and floating on the river, or hiking and exploring along its rocky banks. On the evening of the Fourth, however, we all gathered down on the riverbank for a makeshift fireworks display put on by one of the families. As the show progressed to bigger, louder, and more colorful pyrotechnics, so the good-natured jeering of the beer-drinking adults grew more and more boisterous. Whooshhh…Pow! “Yeah, that was probably a couple of bucks!” someone would feign dismissiveness as the pace of the ignitions picked up, and the ritual proceeded. Whooshhh…BAM! “There goes five dollars!” someone else would exclaim. The jeering and laughter became contagious. Whooshhh… KerPOW…Bang, Bang, Bang! “Ooohhhhh! That had to have been a ten-spot!” And so it would go until the last ordnance was fired, its monetary value assessed, and the good-natured jeering gave way to sincerely appreciative applause.
The next day, however, would always be a little bit sad down by the river. The remnants of the previous evening’s festivities would be littering the beach and floating in the water. Half-burned cardboard tubes, tinfoil rocket fins, and plastic propeller blades from the various projectiles could be found here and there, and far downstream. It took a while for the river to clean itself and return to more pristine condition.
In economic circles, such litter is referred to as an externality – negative in this case. The river was diminished by some amount that was not accounted for in the price of each of the fireworks. There was no clean-up crew that accompanied those fireworks, nor was there any credit given to those river visitors whose aesthetic enjoyment of the scenic beauty was decreased by all of the trash that seemed to be everywhere one might look. But that’s not all. There were chemicals and heavy metals in those fireworks that disbursed on the air and dissolved into the water. Such potentially harmful pollutants eventually worked their way into the bodies of living beings, with very difficult to calculate effects resulting over time.
This is a free country and, depending on local ordinances, we have the freedom to shoot off fireworks. But we also recognize that freedom comes with responsibility. We can’t shoot fireworks at people, or burn down the property of others, for instance. And if we really take seriously the responsibility that goes hand in hand with our freedom, we shouldn’t diminish the health or aesthetic appeal of the environment around us either. If we do, we should pay the community for whatever damage we’ve caused. But how exactly should we quantify this negative impact on the environment so that we might add this onto the cost of the fireworks? And what should be done with the extra revenue that’s generated?
Which brings me back to the Super Bowl. I’m quite certain that the incremental cost to the environment of the fossil fuel burned in order to bring the entire spectacle to life is nowhere to be found on the balance sheets of any of the NFL teams, the league itself, the product manufacturers and suppliers, or the entertainment companies and television studios. In other words, the carbon tax is unaccounted for – the incremental cost of a degraded environment vis-Ã -vis climate change is passed on to all of us. But the cost is especially borne by those who live close to sea level, or in other places where the effects of climate change are already being felt in the form of drought or destructive rain, fire, and wind.
How would we even begin to calculate what such a carbon tax should be? Should it be a proportional share of whatever amount is sufficient to fund efforts to remediate the impact of climate change? Is it sufficient that the additional cost merely nudge energy users away from fossil fuels and toward alternative energy sources? It’s a complicated question.
If we were to accurately account for the externality of the carbon dioxide that we create, if we were to have fossil fuel use priced appropriately, then we would be appropriately balancing our freedom to burn whatever fuel we might choose with our responsibility to reimburse others for the harm that we cause. Such a carbon tax, if implemented, would prompt companies to either find alternative ways to power their operations or pass the additional cost onto those who buy their products or services.
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