The green challenge (again)

Good news: Spain emissions of CO₂ decreased by 16.9% during the first semester of the current year. Bad news: a closer look to the details of this decrease or to recent economic policies does not allow us to be very optimistic.

Disaggregation of data shows that the greatest part of the decrease of emissions in Spain is due to the sector of cement (30% decrease) and the industrial production. In other words: to a great extent, the decrease can be explained by the current economic crisis. It has nothing to do with fundamental changes in the productive sector or the consumer’s behavior. In this sense, the transport sector is the one with the smallest reduction in emissions (5.5%).

Some economic policies reaffirms the skeptic attitude against the initial euphoria. Two examples: due to a misleading regulation, Spanish people pay the electricity they consume below its competitive price (needless to say, “clean energies” are far from representing the greatest part of the bill). The resulting inefficient “over-consumption” is not surprising at all. Furthermore, the government has recently approved an aid to the acquisition of new cars (true: less pollutant, but still…). In the European context, Kyoto’s emissions trading market is already in place but some other “green incoherencies” are in place (the kerosene of the planes being, for example, one of the most pollutants fuels but the only one which is not taxed…).

My complaint is certainly rough, hasty and imprecise, but I’ve tried to show that our societies demand a “green re-conceptualization” which goes well beyond a punctual (and anecdotal) fact like the decrease in Spanish emissions commented above. Indeed, the environmental policy is one of the best examples of what we could call “cross-disciplinary policy”. It requires structural changes.  In this sense, the economic policy has to adopt a general coherence in all the sectors to internalize many of the myriad of externalities that we suffer and to fix a fairer frame of action for our societies. This shouldn’t be any more the project of marginal neo-hippy green parties but a project assumed by our modern western societies. Some authors of the political ecology (e.g: André Gorz) have shown that the current challenge goes well beyond this economic concern about externalities, but, in my opinion, it is still worth as a first –and “easier”- step towards awareness and action.