Former Governor James Florio speaks at first colloquium of Rutgers Initiative on Climate Change, Social Policy, and Politics.
Consensus, according to Jim Florio, is the thing to aim for in dealing with climate change, as it is in most public policy questions. And the former governor and senior policy fellow at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy thinks he sees a consensus waiting to be built around the issues of climate change and energy independence.
“We’ve been in a period of marking time. We don’t know what we want, but reassuringly, we do know what we don’t want: We don’t want our environmental laws repealed,” Florio told an audience of faculty and students at Eagleton Institute of Politics September 27.
Florio delivered his remarks at the first colloquium of the Rutgers Initiative on Climate Change, Social Policy, and Politics (CCSPP), which, under the leadership of Martin Bunzl, professor of philosophy, focuses the efforts of Rutgers social scientists on the issues of global warming and climate change. Bunzl also is involved in the Climate and Environmental Change Initiative, led by Anthony Broccoli, professor of environmental sciences at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.
Florio reminded the audience that the nation’s consensus on environmental protection has held up despite many assaults from President Bush’s administration. Still, he conceded that building a consensus between alternative-energy advocates and those concerned about slowing down climate change will be harder than building a consensus around environmental protection.
The trade-offs, Florio said, are harder to figure out. Which of the many heat-trapping gases we omit ought to be reduced first, and how quickly? Should we tax consumption, or encourage cap-and-trade activities between producers of carbon emissions and consumers of products that produce those emissions? No strategy is perfect, Florio said. “We might plant more palm trees for the palm oil, but that might mean cutting down the rainforest, as they’re doing in Indonesia,” he said.
The consensus he sketched is between those Americans who are concerned about slowing down climate change, and those who are concerned about making the country less dependent on fossil fuels for its energy needs. Florio conceded that such a consensus may be easier to describe than to achieve. Some people will defend their short-term private interest over the long-term public interest. But the success of the environmental movement over the past 30 years gives him cause for optimism. “I guess I’ve always believed that it’s possible to advance the public interest when the interest of the private sector parallels the public policy goals you’re trying to achieve,” Florio said.
David Hughes, associate professor in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and a specialist in African human ecology, expressed some skepticism about Florio’s approach in the question-and-answer period.
“You set ‘quality of life and prosperity’ as a goal, and that’s not a good basis,” Hughes said. “The fact is, Americans will have to have a lower quality of life and less prosperity – driving less, using less, living like the Dutch, or worse.” The audience chuckled at the notion of the citizens of the Netherlands living badly.
Garrett Broad, a senior and an undergraduate fellow at the Eagleton Institute, suggested to Florio that the conventional definitions of “quality of life” and “prosperity” might need revision. “I think it’s necessary to reframe the idea of the good life away from mere economic growth,” Broad said. “We might use a different guide, like the Happy Planet Index, an index of “human well-being and environmental impact” promoted by the environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth, and take material growth out of the picture.”
“You’re not going to be able to sell deprivation,” Florio said. He insisted that the public interest is defined by the coming together of many private interests, and that such coming together – a consensus – emerges through the give-and-take of elections. Elections define and redefine consensus. “There are no permanent losers,” he said.
The Initiative on Climate Change, Social Policy, and Politics will host a colloquium the second and fourth Thursdays of each month at the Eagleton Institute of Politics.
The tentative schedule for future speakers:
- Rutgers Professor Michael Greenberg on nuclear power, October 11
- Jeanne Herb, director, Office of Policy, Planning and Science, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, on the state’s 2050 energy targets, October 25
- Rutgers Professors Alan Robock and Martin Bunzl on geo-engineering, November 8