Time to Think Small: How Nimble Environmental Technologies Can Solve the Planet's Biggest Problems

Time to Think Small: How Nimble Environmental Technologies Can Solve the Planet's Biggest Problems by Todd Myers

Libertarianism and environmentalism can go together well. Small scale, bottom-up improvements can exceed top-down mandates. Some general principles are remarkably simple. Energy costs money. People like to save money. Making it easy to reduce energy saves them money and encourages more savings. Mandates can backfire. I have a house that was built at a time when GU24 sockets were mandated. This was a hard mandate to encourage more efficient lights. However, this used CFLs which are expensive and hard to dispose of. Shortly thereafter, LED bulbs with standard sockets became popular. These are cheaper, use less energy and are easier to dispose of. The top-down failed by mandating something, while the bottom up got something better. The author alludes to similar cases of energy markets. The west coast had heavy regulation which limited innovation possible. Even west-coast startups were first to launch out east.

The book describes many technologies and companies that have done small things to improve the environment. Many have succeeded despite the difficulty of battling against entrenched interests and regulation. Microgrids can provide enhanced resiliency and greater efficiency (since electricity does not have to travel as far.) However, they do not fit in well with the large scale regulated utilities. Providing better knowledge about electricity usage can help users cut back on waste. Small scale clean up innovations can help reduce oceanic garbage. There are many other examples. Small improvements that spread can have a much bigger impact than large mandates that people are reluctant to use. Nobody came down and said: "we will require everyone to use a vehicle that ways 10 times as much as them to get around". However, people gradually started to use cars. Government came in to "improve" some of the problems with cars by creating highways to reduce congestion, safety standards, fuel economy standards, parking requirements, etc. These were attempts to improve issues, but they have also created additional issues and entrenched the poor environmental policy. The small solutions are the ways to move away from this, but that may require breaking away from the existing government challenges.