SUAREZ: But you mentioned globalization earlier. That’s one of the outcomes of globalization. It was presented to the people of the United States when they considered whether to have a North American Free Trade Zone -- whether to let Chile have a preferable trade status or not. That one of the ways you build a middle class in Mexico, a middle class in Chile, create markets for other goods around the world, raise the living standards in other places, is by being able to pick a Chilean plum off the stack of food and eat that. If we start retrofitting our costs, our consumer choices to reflect some of these externalities as you call them, are we going to break a promise, break a bond that we’ve made with farmers making our winter strawberries in Mexico, our winter tomatoes in Mexico, our plums from Chile?
SCHNEIDER: We learn that when we make a mistake, we correct it. We don’t have to correct it the next minute, we can do that over a generation and supposing we included those costs, it’s not going to triple the price of these things. It’s going to increase it somewhat, and I suspect that if people who want their strawberries in January in the US will pay a little bit more per pound to get there, it might reduce demand a bit. Again, the question is the transition. Globalization by itself does provide a more efficient world, and we have a very fast growing population, we have incredible needs for development; we need to have that economic growth. The problem is we don’t want the economic growth to have such a big footprint that it steps on us and makes our life worse than before the growth.
What we did wrong in globalization is that we didn’t include the environmental side costs – the health side costs – if you build those in, then you can solve both problems by having incentives to be more efficient. So it isn’t that you don’t want to trade. It’s that you want the trade to also include the full cost. That means the World Trade Organization which is so worried about protectionism that it forgets the fact that somebody who is an environmentally bad customer is getting away with it because they are not being charged. So if we put a tariff at our border which said OK we’re now making an equivalence in our strict environmental laws and your lax ones, they’re immediately going to go to the World Trade Organization … oh that’s not fair, it’s protectionism, but we could have an explicit set of rules, we could have an independent committee. We have a World Trade Organization that has only economists on it. Why aren’t there ecologists, why aren’t there agronomists, why aren’t there people from other specialties in there so that we can make a balance between environmental values, economic values and development. All of this is possible.
SUAREZ: Suzanne, you wanted to say something.
HUNT: I just wanted to point out that trade is one strategy for generating wealth and building up the middle class; there are many other strategies including wealth generation strategies where you keep the wealth in the community when you develop regional and local economies and when you keep wealth in an area, you have the economic multiplier effects that happen there. And then to pick up on your point about food choices, I think there’s generally a sense that to do a climate change and to help the planet we have to sacrifice. And in some instances that’s definitely going to be true, but often a lot of these technologies, these choices actually improve our quality of life when we buy produce from someone nearby it’s generally much more flavorful and much better quality. When we use renewable energy we get air quality benefits, health benefits, so there’s a lot of these things are going to improve our quality of life.
SUAREZ: Cynthia, this problem, this threat, this set of forces are so vast and the consequences so enormous that you can do one of two things: you can say this is too big for me, I can’t even think about this, forget it. One person can’t do anything, or I have to respond because everything is riding on this. What do individual Americans who are users of fossil fuels, who are consumers of food products, what do we do as individuals and as we’re all members of various communities and groups, what do we do?
ROSENZWEIG: Ray, I refuse to be pessimistic about climate change. It is a big, enormous environmental challenge at the planetary scale. But at the same time this issue is leading the planet to sustainability. All the things that Suzanne and Steve have been mentioning are and many, many others are, examples of people taking this challenge on board and beginning to change how we interact with our environment and our planet. So I don’t feel that it has to be on an individual per se, it’s the individual as you said in our communities, in our sector, our agricultural sector, the ag sector has always been the leader because it’s the primary industry across the whole world, and they can be a leader in taking on board being a leader on mitigation side and on adaptation side. So it’s a series of interlocking scales that are beginning to act together that are actually beginning to turn the planet around so we can emphasize the negative part, the pessimistic part of climate change and it is a huge planetary challenge.
But at the same time, look, it’s only been about less than 30 years really. It’s about 30 years that the scientists were first bringing forward the issue of global climate change. We have a global treaty which we are renegotiating at the international scale. Many of the nations around the world are actively setting regulations to help their nations reduce, we have communities in this country. We have states forming in-house gas initiatives, that’s what we have in the Northeast. And down to the agricultural communities are beginning to take on board they’re trying to see how this biofuel production can really work in a sustainable way. So I feel that rather than be pessimistic, let’s use this to guide us to a sustainable planet.
SUAREZ: Stephen, some of the most effective campaigns in recent years have had to do with showing consumers who are out there in the market place making choices the consequences of their choices. So if you buy these sneakers, there’s this 12-year old kid somewhere in East Asia who works 10 hours a day sewing them. If you wear jewelry that has diamond chips in it, there’s this little kid in India who stands there all day polishing what used to be waste product and is now considered global trade in tiny diamonds. Knotting rugs or sewing volley balls in Pakistan. There was an idea, and it was very successful, that what you do actually makes a difference. Is there a global climate change equivalent of those kinds of things? Can we make this concrete to individual citizens in the developed world?
SCHNEIDER: Now Ray that’s a great question. In fact, I talked to groups from community groups and college groups and high school groups right on down to Congressional committees, and everybody says I can’t negotiate with the Chinese how much they do. What can I do? And what I generally tell people is first look to your life style and your own family. If you’re a parent your kid says I want to go to Johnny’s house. Fair enough. The child needs to be driven because it’s too far to do anything else. Does it have to be now? And supposing you have to get some groceries and do something? Supposing you compromise, I go 15 minutes later, you go 15 minutes earlier, and you make one trip instead of two. You’ve saved gas, you’ve not worn your car out as much. You’ve kept the road less crossed and you’ve generated less air pollution to help the climate.
We’ve got to look toward these win-wins where people cooperate. You can’t talk up global warming and leave your computer on all night. Do you walk out of the room and leave the light on? This sounds very trivial but when billions a people make ten decisions a day like that, this really adds up to a mission. When you buy those refrigerators and those air conditioners and those products, do you look at the labels and see how much energy it is? Do you care about the gas mileage in the car or do you just want to impress your friends? If it’s the latter, you better look in the mirror and see if there is a moral person looking back at you. You have to get the service that we want is not energy, it’s energy service, refrigeration, and cooling and lighting and so-forth. And we want the service. We want good quality food, not necessarily long-distance transport, maybe sometime. So we have to take a look at all our lifestyle.
The second thing we have to do, we have left a pretty difficult legacy for the next generation for most of the people watching this, they’re looking at my generation saying boy, you left us some pretty big problems. That’s absolutely right. But we’ve also left a large base of knowledge and opportunities for new jobs, new innovations and global cooperation, but first you have not get scared off by the complexity of the problem.
The absolutely prerequisite to having people by themselves do anything about this problem is to get well-informed. You’re not going to get that in 5 seconds, 20-second sound bites on the evening news. Now, on the Lehrer program you’ll get it better, but you’ve got to get it, get on the Web, learn how to be a good consumer of information, watch out for the myth busters and the truth tellers. Who’s talking in ranges and possibilities? Become informed because when you’re informed you’re much less likely to get sucked in by false arguments. And then form coalitions with your friends. Form groups, make groups talk to groups. Pretty soon you have coalitions that make a political difference. Being informed, learning what the availability is and being well enough skilled so that your own contributions toward finding solutions not only help the world but actually might get you a good job. And it all works together if we put the effort into trying.
SUAREZ: Suzanne, it’s a little unfair but you are the youngest person at the table. This optimism and this sense of inter-generational responsibility, is there hopelessness or optimism among the people who are sort of the inheritors of this problem rather than the creators of it?
HUNT: It’s interesting. A lot of the projections are made for 2050 and that’s about when I should be a grandmother and it paints a very scary picture when you look at some of the business as usual scenarios. I think that logically we all know that when you let a problem fester it becomes infinitely more difficult to deal with rather than if you deal with it later on as opposed to now. So I think that what my generation should realize is that I think we need to start incorporating just how big this problem is and then not get scared off and realize that there are these enormous economic risks but also economic opportunities and start to figure out how we capitalize on those.
SUAREZ: Suzanne Hunt, Stephen Schneider, Cynthia Rosenzweig, thank you all. Our first hour is drawing to a close. In an hour from now our panel will return to answer your questions. Now a reminder to you, our audience, at the hundreds of participating sites. Now is the time to prepare your questions and e-mail them to us. Please follow the guidelines you’ve received. We’ll be back in an hour to answer your terrific, elegant questions.
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