Stewardship vs. Control

The headline on Drudge today both surprised me and didn’t surprise me at the same time:

Of course, that this comes just days after Denver’s coldest June morning in over 50 years, and Drudge also dug up information about Denver that reveals 9 of Denver’s 12 warmest years took place before 1955. People were driving around in gigantic metal behemoths and having rip-roaring barbeques on a weekly basis in 1955.

It’s the details so far released regarding Denver’s “proposal” (hmmm, is it a five-year plan?) that should send chills up the spine of freedom- and capitalism-loving peoples nationwide, because while Denver is a granola-crunching, Birkenstocks-and-socks wearing haven for hippies and anarchists, this could easily be a trend resulting in either nationwide acts like this or big cities following suit.

Much of the city’s plan involves finding ways to encourage energy conservation by mandating efficiency standards for new construction and setting standards for older homes that would be enforced when the home is sold.

The city also would give incentives for car pooling and the use of hybrids and other low-polluting vehicles, possibly by giving them priority in parking.

To cut back on use of landfills – methane gas from landfills is a major contributor to global warming – the plan would encourage recycling and charge residents for the amount of trash they throw away.

Denver may ask voters to approve higher rates for “excessive” use of electricity and natural gas. The plan also floats the idea of using insurance premiums to penalize people who drive long distances.

…The plan suggests a $10-a-month fee per household that would fund the replacement of alley trash bins with garbage cans. That would allow the city to charge households for extra garbage pickup.

Yes, yes, it’s just a proposal. But what place does the government have deciding how much electricity or natural gas use is “excessive”? Who are they to decide you must fork out the money to retrofit your older home (trust me, the “when it is sold” clause won’t last long)? And “extra garbage”? Who decides how much trash each resident is allowed? Will there be a diffentiation between, say, an older married couple, a single person, and a two-parent family with four kids? Most insurance premiums already take into account the amount of miles put onto a vehicle on a yearly basis, but does this mean Denver will be adding an additional premium to vehicles driven by salespeople, on-call physicians, pastors, and super-busy moms? By the way, who, exactly, benefits from the higher premium? Does that money go into state coffers?

Of course, none of that really matters. It’s all socialism, and matters in which the government has no business. This is not a market decision; it’s a mandate driven by ill-informed and trendy hysteria.

The market will take care of such things. Indeed, it already does; many people carpool in order to save money if they can work it out with their schedules. Many Americans are happy to recycle by taking things to the proper drop-offs, separating recyclables, or (shocking!) re-using items like glass jars for other things at home. They don’t jack up their thermostats or air conditioning without just cause because the costs of doing so are already rather prohibitive, especially when Kid #2 needs braces and the dog just ate the tires off their car. Most folks flip off the lights when they leave a room. It’s a market choice. Either it’s profitable and reasonable for them to do such things or it isn’t.

Also, I just love how Denver suggests an extra $10 monthly ‘fee’ to replace alleyway garbage bins with trash cans in order to allow for more simple billing of over-trashy residents, and I’m not talking about the folks who have a sofa on their front porch and a rusted-out Fiero on blocks in the backyard. Just how much do trash cans cost, anyhow? $120 a year trash can fee? Are you kidding me? Obviously, the city isn’t planning on getting a bulk discount from the local Lowe’s. I’m assuming these are indestructible, immovable, unstealable, self-deodorizing titanium trash cans. Come to think of it, those might be nice to pack with ice and ginger ales for the next barbeque.

Fire up that grill! And be sure to throw on extra briquettes so we can burn those paper plates afterwards, Dad. Ought to be great for making s’mores…

The point is (other than this is ridiculous but not unexpected from Denver, which I belive is buried upon a foundation made up of soybeans, rabbit pellets and petrified granola bars, spiked with the bones of Rachel Carson), Denver and similarly-minded cities should sit back, take a breath, and wait a few months. I guarantee the market – not the government – will come up with far better, far more efficient, and far more effective solutions to this problem. Furthermore, said solutions will very probably create more private-sector jobs for said city’s residents instead of more government-dole jobs that involve paying an illiterate alien $20 an hour to count garbage bags. Regulating business, much less regulating the actions of the citizenry in such a truly trivial matter is not the government’s business.

If there are Nazi bombers flying overhead, yes, tell the citizens to turn out the lights, pull the shades, and turn down the heat so they aren’t such an obvious target. Most folks will see the obvious sanity of such actions and probably don’t need to be told to do this. But since “global warming” or “climate change” or whatever y’all are calling it this week is NOT a foregone conclusion, such regulations are overly burdensome to the populace almost across the board. Again, most Americans do care about the condition of the earth, but figure we contribute in our own small ways like everyone else and do the best we can under the circumstances.

Tim Carney had something interesting in AFF Brainwash today along these same lines, and it behooves everyone to read his piece in its entirety no matter which side you’re on.

The impulse towards state action often arises from the frustrated realization of the guy who bikes to work to reduce his pollution, but realizes that his own little contribution won’t reduce smog by any appreciable amount. He thinks he’s not doing any good, because he’s not noticeably changing the world. Therefore, he concludes that through politics—through government’s ability to coerce the masses—is the appropriate way to show stewardship.

But this way of thinking is wrong because it ignores two important aspects of virtue. First, the nanny-stater forgets that coerced virtue is barely virtue at all. Freedom is a pre-condition of morality.

I should also note that freedom is a pre-condition for prosperity and a high standard of living. Why do you think Hillary wants to take it away from us?

Carney’s thoughts are very interesting, especially the next couple of paragraphs, when contrasted with those of Beth Conover of Greenpoint Denver, who said,

“You can think of them as penalties or you can think of them as market signals,” said Conover. “There’s some choice involved.”

Is that so? How is it a choice when it’s mandated that even though you work from home and DO create more garbage than the next-door-neighbor who is only home four hours a night? Or when you need that SUV to lug around your kid(s), their friend(s), and the dog to school, hockey practice, and the grocery store? Or because your live-in-mother has cancer and chills very easily, and the home needs to be warmer for her comfort on freezing winter nights?

Any time the government takes money out of anyone’s pocket in the name of “fairness”, “equality”, the “common good” or better yet “your own good”, or in the name of “punishing” the “rich” or “privileged”, it’s immoral and wrong. But that’s what Denver hopes to do.

What does Mr. Carney think about these “market signals”? Uncanny, really.

These types, and their political patrons, often call for “market-based solutions” to environmental problems. But conservatives and libertarians aren’t supposed to love every “market” that comes our way. We like markets that are freely entered or exited. If the government starts rationing carbon dioxide emissions, sure a market to trade CO2 credits will emerge, but, heck, government food rationing in the Soviet Union created all sorts of markets that wouldn’t have otherwise existed—and we don’ think that was good.

…Libertarianism is a philosophy about government, not about a way of life. It doesn’t prescribe which decisions you freely make. And conservatism tells us we should be wary of modernity’s project of conquering nature. Simple morality tells us that it’s wrong to use more of a scarce resource than you have to, and traditional ideas of virtue teach that sacrifice and frugality are good habits for our soul.

Indeed, reflecting on conservation as a virtue impels us to reject both extremes—disregard for the environment and heavy government intervention in the name of protecting the environment.

Now, I know I am one of those evil people who likes to joke about leaving the car running all day on “earth day” just to tick off the really dedicated environmentalists. It’s fun, darnit, because the majority of them can’t take a joke and their cute little bespectacled heads nearly burst when one throws out remarks like that.

That said, I do think we have a duty to take care of that which God has blessed us with. I love animals, for one thing (we just rescued a very angry racoon the other day at considerable danger to ourselves), and greatly enjoy the beauty of the world around us. I feel completely inept as a nature photographer because I’m fascinated and awed by both the vastness of it and the minute beauties that are before my eyes all the time. I love trees for their majesty and sheltering branches as I hike among them, the roar of a mad river or the soft movement of a quiet one, swimming into the ocean and seeing the little creatures that live beneath the waves. I have been given a knack for seeing the best of creation in the oddest of places, and it’s a blessing (and a bit of a curse sometimes).

I don’t burn coal just because I like to see the smoke, I re-use all of our glass jars for various projects (and because I just can’t throw something so useful as glass away, it’s downright silly to do that!), I re-use paper, even, printing on both sides and then using it to paste recipes onto both sides of for insertion into my own cookbook when the information is no longer useful. I mean, for Pete’s sake! I far prefer to shop at our local farmer’s markets because the food is fresher and tastier and sometimes less expensive – that it saves fuel on both ends is just a side bonus. When creating cards, I save every sliver and scrap of paper – primarily because I can use those slivers and scraps in other projects and often do (it’s so nice not to have to slice up a new sheet when all one needs is a bit of it).

Notice a theme? I do these things because they work for and are profitable to us as a family – but they’re also a bit conservationist. Hey, I hate waste. (Also, I love really fresh ‘maters and fruits, and they generally aren’t fresh at your supermarket unless they’re purchased locally.)

Part of me thinks I’m not big on tossing stuff like that because it’s profitable for me to save them, as with cards and paper – and why use a plastic container that makes things taste funny and can leach all sorts of garbage into my sauces, dressings, and buttermilk when I can use a glass one that doesn’t do that? The other part of me can’t throw stuff like that away because, well, it’s wasteful to throw something as valuable as a glass jar away. Waste is not a Godly trait.

My grandmothers and great-grandmothers would probably have never imagined chucking a glass screw-top jar into the wastebasket just because they’d used up the pasta sauce within. Nope, if it was resealable, they’d reuse it for jams or sauces or applesauce. If not, it would be cleaned and used to hold flowers, kitchen tools, or the various nuts and bolts and screws their husbands collected (my grandfather has quite a collection of Smuckers jars jammed with such things, no pun intended). I admit to being really surprised when people just toss a glass jar, because to me it represents real value. Not only can I use it for any of the above suggestions, I can paint it, use it to hold craft supplies, put kitty treats inside, put sand and candles in there, safely store dry rice and pasta inside, or even fill it with goodies to give as a gift. Regardless, one never knows when they’ll need a nice glass jar, especially if it’s a screw-top jar.

If you ask me, it’s really imprudent to toss one and I can’t imagine doing so even though the cabinet beneath our sink sounds like a china cabinet if I’ve not been creating away in the kitchen. The idea of tossing a glass jar is almost repellent to me (actually, it’s a little strange, but we all have our ticks).

But I’d never make it a law that you HAVE to keep and re-use your glass jars. Never. That’s just plain silly. I might hint that you could reuse, donate or even recycle them, but I wouldn’t force you to do so. Hey, if you don’t want to be smart and keep a few around to mix stuff up in and store things in, that’s your problem, not mine.

As Carney noted, where a lot of probably well-meaning environmentalists, tree-huggers, and miscellaneous earth lovers go wrong is in expecting and urging the steel hand of government to force people to do things (although God forbid kids say prayer in schools, or we allow a song about God to be performed in a public school building at Christmastime). The really odd thing about this is that where a lot of conservatives want to force pornography, for instance, back underground and into seedy alleys, a lot of us will say, “Well, I guess they can keep making it even though it’s lothesome, destructive, and explotative and I hate the stuff; just keep it out of plain sight and in the cultural ghetto where it belongs.”

The socialists and well-meaning deceived who carry their flags for them, though, want to outlaw the horrendous moral evil of…incandescent light bulbs. The internal combustion engine. Your air conditioner. And all of this at tremendous costs to individual citizens either directly or through government grabs, also known as ‘taxes’ and ‘higher premiums’ or forced retrofitting of one’s home. Trust me, you’ll be able to find porn if you want it. The store may have grimy windows and a bouncer at the door, but you’ll find it and dirt cheap, too. But if I or my mother-in-law or my grandmother goes to Home Depot and Target and every store in between, only to learn incandescent light bulbs are off the market…what do we do? We have to retrofit every socket in our home, every lamp to get a lightbulb that is packed with mercury, for one thing, and gives us migraines and everyone else a sickening pall.

I don’t mind people recycling paper, carpooling, dressing sustainably, walking to stores within a short distance when only a few small things are needed, driving a smaller car, line-drying clothing (come on, most women’s clothing ought to be line-dried anyhow just to keep it pretty) and so forth. I don’t even mind their encouraging such things. It’s amazing how some people never even think of just walking to the ice cream shop that’s two blocks away, or saving their jars, or line-drying their clothes. Really.

Where I draw the line, though, is when such people start hinting that “there ought to be a law!” and going so far as actually creating and enforcing laws against personal behaviour that is truly not harming a soul and is very unlikely to do so (in contrast to pornography or prostitution, which can hurt not just the physical person and related persons but definitely harm the soul and spirit).

I don’t think stewardship of the earth is a right or left issue, but the different styles of dealing with it certainly are. Still, it’s best to err on the side of freedom, especially in this area. Stewardship is not forcing others to do what you do so you feel better, it’s about doing those things yourself (Al Gore and Clear-Cut Edwards, are you reading this?) and being an example to others who is always willing to kindly and rationally explain to them why you do what you do and encourage them to take steps of their own. In general, that’s a far better way to get people to understand your point of view and maybe even agree with you in a few areas than, oh, I don’t know, lopping off people’s heads or cutting off their breasts and leaving them to die because they won’t convert. Or yelling at them and calling them “evil” and “earth-haters”.

If instead of trying to terrify everyone with his (inaccurate and misleading) graphs and goofy little animations Al Gore was making videos of himself standing and working in his own garden and adding weatherproofed windows to his home for additional natural light, a lot more people would be willing to take him seriously; instead, he likes to scream at us, scare us, and refuse to have debates with those who disagree with him or have questions about the methodology he cites. Well, no wonder we carbon-positive Neanderthals on the right like making fun of him and pointing out his hypocrisy. He’s being unreasonable and sensational, not to mention divisive.

I don’t have any problem with living sustainably, responsibly, and respecting the beautiful natural world God gave us. Just don’t mandate it – because again, as Carney noted, there’s no virtue in doing good because you’re forced. At least let people be happy that they’re doing the right thing because it’s right, not because they’ll be penalized otherwise.

God bless America and Israel, and may He guide and protect our troops.

All photos shot by me.