The New Yorker had a valuable article about the carbon offsets market: its logic, its viability, and the underlying debate it provokes over the motivations of different approaches toward reduction of fossil fuel emissions. In particular, I thought the following quote from Richard Sandor, chairman and CEO of the Chicago Climate Exchange, gets to the crux of how changing human behavior so often comes down to figuring out whether to make appeals based on incentives or morality:
People tell me, well, these are bad guys, and corporate guys who just want to buy the right to pollute are bad, too, and we should not be giving them incentives to stop. But we need to address the problems that exist, not drown in fear or lose ourselves in morality. Behavior changes when you offer incentives. If you want to punish people for being bad corporate citizens, you should go to your local church or synagogue and tell God to punish them. Because that is not our problem. Our problem is global warming, and my job is to reduce greenhouse gases at the lowest possible cost. I say solve the problem and deal with the bad guys somewhere else.
February 23, 2008 at 11:37 pm |
I so agree! I have no problem with incentives and self-interest as a motivation. The tide turned against drunk driving when MADD caused people to feel vulnerable to random collisions with drunk drivers. Smoking was banned publicly when the severe ill effects of second-hand smoke came to be appreciated.
Individuals and organizations are motivated by self-interest. This is healthy, as long as we don’t go too far, but sometimes we do. We may do what we want to do excessively, at the expense of others, or at our own expense when our risk:benefit calculus is wanting. Then we need others to set limits or provide incentives. Eventually, we thank them!