Shop Walmart:
you, and everyone else trying to sell to Walmart, have to spend all your time figuring out how to produce the same product with less. Walmart’s ruthless focus on reducing prices is driving producers everywhere to cut the costs of production: to switch to cheaper materials, use less packaging, cut down on waste of all kinds and to consolidate and rationalize both production and distribution. The result is a steady and inexorable decline in humanity’s impact on the environment for every unit of GDP.
The Green Police couldn’t do it any better. In fact, given the political cluelessness, uncertain signals (is nuclear energy a good thing or a bad thing?), and anti-scientific knuckle dragging from environmentalists on subjects like the use of GMOs in agriculture, it’s likely that a world run by Walmart would be both richer and cleaner than a world run by Greenpeace. Not that I want Walmart (or Greenpeace) to run the world, bu at the end of the day, being ruthlessly cheap is the most important way of being green. To cut out waste, to use methods of production that cut the energy consumed at every stage in the process, to strip packaging to the barest minimum, to reduce the amount of raw materials in every product: this is the mother lode of green. This is how a growing human population limits its impact on the earth. This is where Walmart and green are as one.
I still say that Sam Walton was a greater humanitarian, and did more to improve the lives of the poor, than any politician ever born.
Rand, don’t you think that you’d need to really analyze the situation in greater detail to know the truth regarding toxins and other kinds of environmental impact. The quoted piece shouldn’t be persuasive – it isn’t detail-oriented enough. At this details-deleted level of analysis, one could simply point out that the cheaper solution can be much more toxic for the consumer and/or can pollute the environment much more.
Bob-1 – what you mention could only be cheaper in the short run, until the personal damage and property damage lawsuits vs. toxic product/pollution producer start showing up. And with our increasing ability to gather knowledge quickly, that short run keeps getting shorter. It wouldn’t be in Walmarts best interest to use such suppliers.
“At this details-deleted level of analysis, one could simply point out that the cheaper solution can be much more toxic for the consumer and/or can pollute the environment much more.”
The reverse can also be true. Compare “Eau du bathwater” versus a very long list of aromatic hydrocarbon-based perfumes. Organic food production versus sane food production without that limitation.
Ryan, carcinogens often only do their damage over a long enough time frame that it is worth selling them and investing the profits. And there might not be plaintiffs for environmental impact (species loss, climate change, etc) until it is too late to make the plaintiff whole again.
Carcinogens make take a considerable amount of time to do damage to human bodies (depending on toxicity levels), but it doesn’t take that long to figure out of they are carcinogens.
As for your second example, you are in effect saying that there is no damage until there is damage. And I doubt anyone who has given the briefest of thought to the matter would say that the purpose of justice is to make victims ‘whole again’. There is no ‘undo’ button for life.
Handwaving “toxins” (which then morph to “carcinogens”) won’t ruin the Wal-Mart benefits.
Because the less-ruthlessly-energy-saving, less-packaging-reducing alternatives are just as likely (if not more so) to use some material that is a carcinogen but not known to be one.
(If, contra Ryan, you can suggest a known carcinogen sold to people in your “worth selling to people and investing the profits” context, please do so.
And I mean a known carcinogen that is known to be carcinogenic in a relevant way, not one that’s, for example, a carcinogen if injected in to the bloodstream but sold in a way that you could only get it in there by grinding up the product and getting out a syringe.
“A carcinogen” means nothing; it has to be one in a way relevant to the product’s use.)
Bob, as far as the chemical industry goes — the only people who could be generating your feared “toxins” — you’re wrong. Any waste product represents a loss of efficiency. Even if you’re doing nothing other than throwing away warm water, you’re wasting the energy it costs to heat that water. Hell, if you’re throwing away room temperature water, you’re wasting the cost of procuring that water in the first place, the cost of bigger pipes and more equipment to pipe it around, and the cost of a place to put it.
Furthermore, a customer like Wal-Mart can very much lead to significant improvements in efficiency. Why? Very frequently, the capital costs of an additional uptick in efficiency are high. You’ll get it back in the long run, yes, but you can only justify the capital expenditure (to your stockholders or the bank) if you’re very confident that you’ve got a “long run” coming up.
Enter Wal-Mart. You build a relationship with them, and you know you’ve got a long run ahead of you. You know they’re not going to go out of business, and you know that if you can supply them what they want at their price, then you can built a solid long-term relationship with a solid paying customer. Now you can justify the capital expense required for some incremental improvement in efficiency. Which, as has been pointed out, always redounds to the benefit of the environment.
If I had to guess, I’d guess you are mistakenly thinking that big business runs just like your family, and if it’s “cheaper” for you to just throw your used oil on the ground instead of recyling it, why it must be cheaper for big business, too. But it’s always a mistake to extrapolate from your personal experience to what a big business is like. (Proof? If such extrapolation were all it took to really understand big business, then nearly anyone could be a successful CEO of Chevron, American Airlines, or GE — and the historical evidence is quite strong that this is far from true, that in fact it takes unusual ability and uncommon insight to do those jobs well.)
Also, you’ve misunderstood the nature of carcinogens. It’s not that they take a long time to do damage; they do damage right away, instantly. How could they not? It’s a chemical reaction, and they don’t stick around. It happens right away if it happens at all.
However, the probability that any one chemical reaction will lead to cancer is very low. Some people will get lung cancer as a direct result of the first puff they take on a cigarette — but very, very few. Some people will get it on the second puff, or the forty-third, or the fifty-thousandth, and so on. What happens is just that if you want to see a significant increase in the number of people in a given population who get cancer, you have to wait until lots and lots of them have been exposed, or a relatively fewer number have been exposed again and again, presumably over a long time, just to build up the numbers above the noise of “natural” carcinogenesis.
Anyway, except in some very rare cases, fretting over manmade carcinogens other than cigarette smoke and diesel or coal-plant exhaust is an absurd misplacement of priorities. Gobs of people get cancer because of smoking, or radon, or breathing evil hydrocarbons in the air. The number who get it because of PCBs or cell phones or whatever the Fad Fear of the Day might be, is, by comparison, to within rounding error, zip.
Ryan, people sell carcinogens all the time. It’s no big deal. Hell, I’m smoking one right now (and the government of Canada is taking an 8 or 9 dollar cut out of every $13 pack of smokes).
I didn’t intend to imply that anything but individual choices should govern the production or sale of any product, regardless of whether or not it is dangerous (or potentially so, like carcinogens).
Just pointing out that Bob-1 wasn’t familiar with his topic. I certainly don’t accept the idea that potential danger makes government oversight legitimate.
Carl, nice point of clarification on carcinogens.
I am not against GM foods. If we want to feed the world’s growing population genetic modification is a useful tool which should be used.
What I am against is allowing the use of patents to corner the world seed market. This increases the barriers of entry to the farming market and eventually may lead to limited competition in farming in a global level which will increase food prices for all, when in the past farming has been one of the most competitive markets.
When you can be sued because someone else’s seed blew over to your land without your consent, something is not right.
Banana are radioactive! Ban bananas, ban bananas! Yes, I have no bananas. Except K, potassium, is an essential mineral for life.
Let’s put Bob in charge. That’ll fix the problem (what problem?)
Ruthless survival of the fittest in reducing resource consumption : good.
Belief that everything costing the smallest amount green bills is good for humanity and planet : utterly naive.
Simply because everything isn’t accurately measured in green bills, and cannot ever be.
Side note on carcinogens and how long they take to do damage:My understanding is that some carcingogens can slowly build up in your fat, and aren’t released until you lose weight. PCBs are a well-known example of a substance that is stored and released in this way (regardless of whether PCBs are in fact carcinogenic). I can imagine someone saying “So, I’m ok — pass the dip!” but of course even seemingly ever-expanding couch potatos can lose weight due to another illness.
I apologize that I don’t have time over the next few days to debate whether the market alone (without costly government regulations holding it back) will promote a healthy environment or make people sick, but this has been debated endlessly elsewhere, so I’m sure we can all agree that is no great loss if I don’t comment further this week.
Phoo, Bob, it doesn’t matter. The concentration in your fat isn’t going to exceed the concentration to which you are exposed, any more than your body temperature can slowly “build up” to a temperature higher than your shower, if you stand in the hot water long enough. Basic thermodynamics, no? That just means to me that if you stop being exposed, the risk of harm doesn’t fall to zero instantly — it tails off. Certainly a thought to consider, but if the maximum instantaneous exposure wasn’t dangerous — neither can the declining tail of it be.
Anyway, you don’t need to argue. Just take the long view here. (1) Would you agree that life in the 21st century is far safer, healthier and long than in the 15th century? (2) Do you think the overwhelming bulk of the changes in society since the 1400s have been brought about by (a) government regulation? Or (b) by what people naturally do when left to themselves, a.k.a. the evil “free market”?
If you answer “yes” and “b” than the case is closed, and you’re just arguing about marginal improvements here and there, about which reasonable men can disagree.
Carl Pham: Of course it matters. If all of a certain carcinogen you were exposed to over a long period of time was sequestered in fatty acid droplets in your adipose tissue and if then you quickly lost a lot of weight, then a great deal of toxin which previously had been harmless would rush into your bloodstream.
The concentrations of toxins in our bodies is not necessarily at equilibrium with the concentrations of toxins outside our bodies, which you seem to imply with you shower analogy. Toxins very often accumulate in living organism’s bodies.
About your statement that chemical reactions happen “right away or not at all”, I think you are a little imprecise. An intercalating agent (a chemical that inserts itself between base pairs in a double helix and can cause mutations), for example, may screwup replication, but animals cells are not in a constant state of replication, so such a carcinogen will not have an immediate effect. Also a very stable intercalating agent may be involved in multiple mutations. Toxins may also be sequestered where they can do no harm for awhile and later released.
About companies taking care of their waste without government intervention, have you really thought this through carefully? While I do agree that government regulation often goes to far, I really don’t think it is realistic to think that the fear of being sued and the desire for efficiency is always sufficient to avoid serious ecological problems.