แฟ้มประวัติChris Joosse's Blagรูปถ่ายบล็อกรายการเพิ่มเติม  |  เครื่องมือ วิธีใช้ |
|
16 เมษายน What's in the way of going green?Megan McArdle, whose blog you really should read, weighs in on her pique at regulators trying to push 'green' products that cost more and don't work as well as the products they're replacing-
"...when I look back at almost every "environmentally friendly" alternative product I've seen being widely touted as a cost-free way to lower our footprint, held back only by the indecent vermin at "industry" who don't care about the environment, I notice a common theme: the replacement good has really really sucked compared to the old, inefficient version. In some cases, the problem could be overcome by buying a top-of-the-line model that costs, at the very least, several times what the basic models do." I share this pique, really I do. Some 'green' products, like electric cars with a top speed of 30 mph and range of 30 miles simply can't replace the car I already have, and cost more than it did besides. I've been itching to own a serviceable PHEV that meets my needs, which aren't all that crazy in automotive terms, (able to go > 200 miles at highway speeds, with the ability to refuel in under 6 hours). At this time, no vehicle in commercial production meets these criteria and the closest the market has is a bit out of my realistic price range, at about $100,000.
It really is cheaper not to go green, right? Wait, what about the fact that green products are more efficient, cheaper to own? Who wouldn't jump at the chance to not pay for gas? Why doesn't the value proposition of greater efficiency drive the market toward providing electric cars? Surely it's possible to produce an electric car worth driving for under 50 thousand bucks, right?
I can't help but wonder if this conversation doesn't call for a better unpacking of the relationship between 'green' and being relatively expensive.
And I'm not talking about comparing that 30mph electric cart to my car- they really shouldn't be compared on price, since they don't compete for the same dollars. We're talking, for now, about comparing my Outback to the Tesla Roadster (yeah, they're not really the same, but the Tesla is the only non-aftermarket-engineereed EV with comparable range and the ability to cruise at highway speed). And I'm also not talking about why green tech is so expensive- most new technology is- I'm wondering why non-green products are so relatively cheap.
To be fair, the question of whether 'green' stuff is really all that much more expensive depends on how and when you measure the expense, of both the green product and its alternative- and also on what you don't measure about each.
Typically, what makes a product 'green' is that it is:
Better efficiency is a benefit to the buyer, and is its own incentive- that Compact Fluorescent light bulb will save you money over the long term. Under point two, however, the buyer doesn't get anything but the satisfaction of not polluting. One example McArdle cites- phosphate-free dishwasher detergent- doesn't kill fish downstream, whereas the phosphate-based variety does. The phosphate-based soap does cut grease better, especially if your water has a high mineral content- but is that worth the cost? Worth the cost to whom? To buyers of phosphate-based dishwasher detergent, which typically cost less than the 'environmentally friendly' kind, the decision is between paying less for what may get their dishes cleaner, and paying more for a product that might not work as well, and might require them to run their dishwasher more to get the job done. Bottom line: polluting is free, being environmentally responsible is something you have to pay for. 'Green' products do typically tend to be more expensive in up-front dollar costs than their non-green competitors, but by definition, they tend to be cheaper to own over time (by virtue of better efficiency), and they tend to be cheaper for others if you own them (by virtue of mitigating those negative externalities). Unfortunately, the value comparison between the green product and its 'dirty' alternative is apples and oranges- we don't measure the costs paid by others when we evaluate the price of the alternative. (for example, we look at the dish soap, we see the price on the box, but we don't see the price paid by downstream fishermen.) Effectively, in a certain sense, this makes the non-green alternatives artificially cheap in their purchasing context. If dish soap buyers had to pay to offset the downstream losses they cause, would phosphate dish soap be cheaper than the non-phosphate kind? Could it be that the problem isn't that new green technology is too expensive, but that existing dirty tech (or rather, the right to pollute, which dirty products leverage) is too cheap?
You can see where I'm going with this- it's not fair for me to incur an expense that lands on someone else's head- and the market effectively gives me incentives to keep on doing it. And it also makes it tough for would-be (green) competitors to compete on price, since part of the value they deliver (their mitigation of negative externalities) isn't reflected in the price you pay for their alternatives, and besides new technology costs money to develop. It's not an accident that the car I want isn't for sale- there's "no market for that car", as it would cost more to make than it could be sold for. This is a market failure, and it is in everyone's interest that it be resolved.
This, of course, raises all sorts of hard questions, among them being how exactly are we to assess the real cost of such externalities and assign them back to their sources? Too high a price would bring other problems, so what is the optimal price offset for, say, the amount of carbon dioxide your car will emit after burning a gallon of unleaded, and who should that money go to?
Economist N Gregory Mankiw proposes to address these hard questions by not bothering to try to compute fair price- instead, he suggests that we increase the cost of externality-yielding commodities (like gasoline) by an arbitrary number, and use the revenue raised from that tax to offset a reduction in payroll taxes, thus averaging the net individual cost increase to zero (assuming no changes in behavior), while creating a significant price incentive to conserve gasoline. Mankiw is joined by a growing collection of preeminent economists who favor so-called 'Pigouvian' taxes.
...so how does this relate back to Megan's initial question- "Why do we have so few green products"?
I'll posit that "green products" often solve a problem that costs the consumer nothing today, and green vendors are stuck asking the buyer to pay for the solution- no surprise when they don't. By shifting cost externalities back to the consumer of externality-generating commodities, we'd effectively 'price in' more in the way of green products and technologies, by putting a price on the right to pollute. Such an approach would definitely create winners and losers- owners of gas-guzzling cars, for example, would see the resale value of those cars go down- but the barrier to entry for other technologies would also be reduced, as consumers who know that the price of gas isn't coming down would be more likely to bet that that an electric vehicle would pay for itself in fuel savings over time. And that means we're more likely to see better markets for automobiles like... say, this one. |
|
|
