Rubbish about rubbish

In a posting on December 7 ("Green taxes, dark thoughts"), I noted the increasing tendency in the media to propose non-market solutions to the problems posed by climate change. I said that as an economist, this made me very queasy. In the Times for January 2, Martin Samuel has a piece that illustrates exactly what I was worried about.

Samuel opposes the "polluter pay" principle because he doesn't believe that he is the polluter. "We did not ask for green beans to be available 12 months a year, cased in two layers of cellophane and a black plastic tray. We did not ask for every single item of furniture to arrive requiring assembly and swaddled in enough Sellotape to gag a busload of hostages for six months".

Actually, Martin, "we" did. Tesco isn't flying in green beans from Zambia (or, my current favourite, pak choy from Morocco) so that Sir Terry Leahy can show off to his dinner guests. Ingmar Kamprad of IKEA hasn't become the world's richest man because his family have an insatiable lust for flat packed furniture. These things have happened because these entrepreneurs have identified a consumer demand and moved to satisfy it.

You can argue with some validity that "we" wouldn't have made these choices if "we" had understood the environmental consequences (but if you want to be taken seriously, you'd better not be sitting in your 4x4 when you make that argument). But there are beans airborne in our direction at this very moment, and Ikea is planning further expansion. What are "we" going to do about it? Martin Samuel seems to despair of any solution -- the Government is afraid to tackle the "real" polluters (big business) and has left it too late to change the societal attitudes that have tolerated so much wastefulness.

You think so? The collapse in sales of SUVs in both the US and the UK over the past year suggests that high energy prices can quickly change consumer behaviour. Making the consumer pay for pollution will have the same effect. If Martin Samuel can persuade enough people to stop buying Zambian beans in January, I can assure him that Sir Terry Leahy will stop bringing them in. (I wonder if Martin will spare a dime for the Zambian farmer he has just returned to poverty). Just conceivably, higher prices will be even more effective than a column in the Times in bringing about the desired shift in behaviour. And if he wants to do something more direct, Martin can rip the excess packaging off the produce at the checkout, giving the store the trouble and cost of disposing of it. Mind you, this probably isn't practical at Ikea.