Save (money and environment) driving better

Be a better lead chef in your car's kitchen.

Ingredient found at Econbrowser.

Xmas lights

Christmas lights. Bah-hum-bug!

Fural to be green VI: Frugal tax policy

If the shortest path in the kitchen to being green is being frugal, what is the obvious green tax policy? Consumption tax! Why Not Shift the Burden to Big Spenders? doesn't cover the environmental implications but is good background.

However, Kitchen Linker has concerns with the way this proposed tax is cooked. It requires reporting of income and savings: new frontiers in zero privacy.

Far better to concentrate consumption taxation on carbon, which has no privacy concerns and very directly attacks the number one global environmental concern (global warming, of course).

Be frugal to be green V

Last post in this series Kitchen Linker highlighted one extreme version of being frugal to be green, known as freeganism.

Another (of several) way of being frugal to be green is to turn an economist's eye on the problem. Sometimes the results are counterintuitive, e.g., when recycling uses more resources than it saves.

In this kitchen we want to be actually green, as opposed to just going through the motions. To be sure we are meeting this goal, an analytic component is necessary.

What Kitchen Linker really wants is to take the best of freegan philosophy and economic analysis -- and mash them together into something yummy!

Be freegan to be green?

Not Buying It in the NYT:

[T]he freegan movement has become much more visible and increasingly popular over the past year, in part as a result of growing frustrations with mainstream environmentalism.

Environmentalism, Mr. Torres said, “is becoming this issue of, consume the right set of green goods and you’re green,” regardless of how much in the way of natural resources those goods require to manufacture and distribute.

“If you ask the average person what can you do to reduce global warming, they’d say buy a Prius,” he added.

Kitchen Linker isn't a freegan, but has some sympathies. Freeganism is the extreme of be frugal to be green.

Be frugal to be green III

Kitchen Linker has pointed out a couple times that being frugal roughly equals being green. The San Francisco Chronicle has a nice summary of how being frugal sometimes directly equals being green. Read and implement!

Be frugal to be green II

stecay makes the case that frugality is the easiest and best way to be green:

A typical, and in my book unimaginative response to An Inconvenient Truth is along the lines of 'My next car's a hybrid'. Other commentators wax lyrical about 'a Prius in every garage'. And so on. Sorry, but I find it hard to buy a notion of the car as a route to ecological nirvana.

It's not very high tech, but the best (and easiest) way to be green(er) is to consume less.

Be generous. Use your car less.

Kitchen Linker agrees.

Be frugal to be green?

Tyler Cowen in Slate on "Can You Really Save the Planet at the Dinner Table?":

Pollan makes much of the energy costs incurred by the long food supply chains of American grocery stores. It may look like we are eating Chilean grapes, he argues, but in fact, once we consider transportation costs, we are guzzling petroleum. Economics offers a clearer view of what is going on. We do need to save energy, but it is difficult for a central planner (or for that matter a food commentator) to identify what is waste, relative to the costs of eliminating it. We should rely on higher market prices, if need be with the assistance of taxes, to increase conservation. If fuel becomes more expensive, we'll likely adopt peak-load energy pricing, and drivers may scrap their SUVs for hybrids. But we probably won't plant grapes in our backyards. While we must conserve energy, we cut back where it makes the most sense; grape-shipping is not the place to start. Global trade does involve transportation costs, but it also puts food production where it is cheapest, again saving energy by economizing on costs of labor, irrigation, and fertilization, relative to the alternatives.

So, is simply being frugal the best way to be friendly to the environment, at first approximation (which may be the most accurate we can be)? There's some discussion at Marginal Revolution.