What is Environmental Politics?. Elizabeth R. DeSombre
are likely to use less gasoline, and when you have building materials made out of plastic or aluminum you are no longer in the market for wood.
Were we to get to a point when we were almost out of oil or rare earth elements, or even wood, the price of that resource would be so high that it wouldn’t be cost effective to extract or use it. By that point society will have shifted to other ways of providing energy or technological components or building materials. It is in that sense that we will not run out.
The story of innovation and conservation sounds seamless, but it isn’t. When prices increase, real people suffer – especially those who are poor. New fuel-efficient or alternative energy cars may be invented, but, for people who simply can’t afford to buy a new car, increasing fuel prices will make their lives, at least in the short run, more difficult. The same situation transpires when policies are put in place to decrease the use of these resources through making them more expensive (either directly, by taxing them, or indirectly, by requiring decreased use, which increases the price). Not everyone will bear the same level of personal cost or disruption from these changes. Anticipation of such harms may make those types of policies politically unfeasible. People concerned that addressing climate change will make fuel prices higher may vote or work against taking action, even if they are concerned about climate change, because they fear the short-term costs. There are ways that these policies can be made less difficult for portions of the population, and considering those types of policies may help avoid some of the political pitfalls of trying to change environmental behavior.
Even though we may not, technically, use up the last of these resources, there are other reasons to pay attention to them. An important aspect of environmental concern is the ecological destruction that results from extracting resources. Once the most easily accessible sources of these materials have been exhausted, removing them can cause serious damage to landscapes and ecosystems. Mountaintop removal to access underground coal destroys ecosystems and pollutes waterways; mining and processing metals can put toxic chemicals and other dangerous substances into the air and water, among other harms.
Many of these non-renewable resources are themselves the cause of serious pollution, even apart from their extraction. Coal, oil, and gas cause air pollution and are major contributors to global climate change. So even if we are not in danger of actually running out of them, their use causes damage to the environment.
What is Politics?
What does it mean to study politics, and how does that differ from looking at policy? Policy is the specific set of approaches society has chosen (often through governmental processes) to address problems or provide services to people. Politics, on the other hand, is the process within society for making those types of policy decisions. This distinction is important and often elided; we can’t understand the rules we create to prevent or address (or fail to prevent or address) environmental problems unless we begin by looking at the different preferences that various sectors of society have for economic or environmental benefits and the political structures through which these social decisions are made.
Those who advocate for policies to protect the environment often overlook the political aspect of policy: any decision involves a set of tradeoffs between different types of benefits or harms to different groups of people. Politics is the social process of arguing for, and deciding how to make, those tradeoffs. In that process, a simple policy idea may undergo major transformation as political jockeying attempts to carve out benefits for different constituencies. What to economists might look like a simple and effective tax on gasoline is likely to become much more complicated – and less environmentally effective – as exceptions are made for different populations or conditions. In addition, once passed, policy needs to be implemented, and it may face different levels of political capacity to impose, monitor, or enforce rules.
An essential aspect of this social process of politics is that, while good people may have different opinions about what the best option is, there is no inherently, objectively best way to resolve these tradeoffs. Even if we agree that global climate change is happening, is caused primarily by human activity, and will have problematic effects on people and other species, and even if we understand reasonably well what those types of effects will be, we can have different answers to the question of what, if anything, we should do to prevent it. Those different answers may come because of the direct benefits or costs experienced by different people, because of different levels of risk aversion or acceptance, or because of different ideologies or values.
For example, climate change is caused, in large part, by the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas). People who make a living, directly or indirectly, from this industry would likely prefer that we continue to use these fuels; after all, they may find themselves without employment if their industry ceases to operate. Countries with large reserves of fossil fuels would have to give up their right to use what is, for them, essentially free sources of energy, a costly decision for them that might constrain other important priorities they have for providing benefits to their citizens. Those people most affected by existing climate change – people who live in low-lying island states already affected by sea-level rise, for instance – are likely to be strongly in favor of reducing fossil-fuel use. (And since climate change is also caused by land-use changes, fossil-fuel industry actors or those who rely on fossil fuels may prefer that, if changes are to be made, they be made by preventing deforestation or changing agricultural practices rather than by restricting fossil-fuel use.)
But even the rest of us, who are less immediately affected by the issue, likely have a range of preferences and opinions on the topic. Are you afraid that transportation will be more expensive or less accessible if we pass rules to decrease the use of fossil fuels? In the short run, that’s a realistic fear. And, depending on how those rules are implemented, the burden of those decisions might fall on the poorest members of the population who are least able to afford price increases or new technology. When you consider the characteristics of environmental issues, in which the effects of problems are experienced primarily by people not responsible for causing them, and those effects may be felt far away in time and in space, it’s easy to understand why people may not be willing to make their lives harder or more expensive to prevent problems they may not experience any time soon.
The role of science, and scientists (discussed in chapter 2), may be more important to environmental issues than in many other issue areas because of the important role of uncertainty in the creation and resolution of environmental problems. But science and politics interact in complex ways. Even if relevant science is produced and successfully communicated, the political process can turn what appears to be a clear approach into a set of political compromises that undermine the original goal. And science will not save us from having to make political decisions – there is no one right solution to environmental problems, only tradeoffs among options with different advantages and disadvantages for varying groups of people.
What most people focus on when they think about politics are the mechanisms by which these social decisions are made. This is where things such as the forms and processes of governments come in. Do democracies protect the environment better than authoritarian governments do? What effect do different types of governing bodies or the political process of elections have on environmental outcomes? Does the way that laws are created influence the character of rules or the way they are implemented or enforced? These questions are discussed in chapter 3.
Other elements of society also matter in these political decisions. Who are the political actors? Some relevant ones are officially part of the political process. Political parties – how many and of what sort? – can influence what policy options are considered or which ones pass. The bureaucracy is a set of offices and organizations within the government that plays a role in implementing policy; it remains reasonably constant even when elected officials change more regularly. The judicial process – and the courts and judges that comprise it – help decide conflicts among laws or various actors in ways that affect the implementation and enforcement of environmental policy. Non-governmental actors, be they groups of