Bishop Hill Pluralism - an explanation for greens
This letter was sent by Steven Landsburg, professor of economics at the University of Rochester and the author of several popular books on the subject, to his daughter's teacher. It concerns the school's attempts to indoctrinate the girl in environmentalism. The letter forms part of an article by Landsburg in which he discusses the need for pluralism and respect for those with different views, noting how these environmentalists seem to fail on both counts. This is also worth a read for those with the time.
Dear Rebecca:
When we lived in Colorado, Cayley was the only Jewish child in her class. There were also a few Moslems. Occasionally, and especially around Christmas time, the teachers forgot about this diversity and made remarks that were appropriate only for the Christian children. These remarks came rarely, and were easily counteracted at home with explanations that different people believe different things, so we chose not to say anything at first. We changed our minds when we overheard a teacher telling a group of children that if Santa didn't come to your house, it meant you were a very bad child; this was within earshot of an Islamic child who certainly was not going to get a visit from Santa. At that point, we decided to share our concerns with the teachers. They were genuinely apologetic and there were no more incidents. I have no doubt that the teachers were good and honest people who had no intent to indoctrinate, only a certain naïveté derived from a provincial upbringing.
Perhaps that same sort of honest naïveté is what underlies the problems we've had at the JCC this year. Just as Cayley's teachers in Colorado were honestly oblivious to the fact that there is diversity in religion, it may be that her teachers at the JCC have been honestly oblivious that there is diversity in politics.
Let me then make that diversity clear. We are not environmentalists. We ardently oppose environmentalists. We consider environmentalism a form of mass hysteria akin to Islamic fundamentalism or the War on Drugs. We do not recycle. We teach our daughter not to recycle. We teach her that people who try to convince her to recycle, or who try to force her to recycle, are intruding on her rights.
The preceding paragraph is intended to serve the same purpose as announcing to Cayley's Colorado teachers that we are not Christians. Some of them had never been aware of knowing anybody who was not a Christian, but they adjusted pretty quickly.
Once the Colorado teachers understood that we and a few other families did not subscribe to the beliefs that they were propagating, they instantly apologized and stopped. Nobody asked me what exactly it was about Christianity that I disagreed with; they simply recognized that they were unlikely to change our views on the subject, and certainly had no business inculcating our child with opposite views.
I contrast this with your reaction when I confronted you at the preschool graduation. You wanted to know my specific disagreements with what you had taught my child to say. I reject your right to ask that question. The entire program of environmentalism is as foreign to us as the doctrine of Christianity. I was not about to engage in detailed theological debate with Cayley's Colorado teachers and they would not have had the audacity to ask me to. I simply asked them to lay off the subject completely, they recognized the legitimacy of the request, and the subject was closed.
I view the current situation as far more serious than what we encountered in Colorado for several reasons. First, in Colorado we were dealing with a few isolated remarks here and there, whereas at the JCC we have been dealing with a systematic attempt to inculcate a doctrine and to quite literally put words in children's mouths. Second, I do not sense on your part any acknowledgment that there may be people in the world who do not share your views. Third, I am frankly a lot more worried about my daughter's becoming an environmentalist than about her becoming a Christian. Fourth, we face no current threat of having Christianity imposed on us by petty tyrants; the same can not be said of environmentalism. My county government never tried to send me a New Testament, but it did send me a recycling bin.
Although I have vowed not to get into a discussion on the issues, let me respond to the one question you seemed to think was very important in our discussion: Do I agree that with privilege comes responsibility? The answer is no. I believe that responsibilities arise when one undertakes them voluntarily. I also believe that in the absence of explicit contracts, people who lecture other people on their "responsibilities" are almost always up to no good. I tell my daughter to be wary of such people — even when they are preschool teachers who have otherwise earned a lot of love.
Sincerely,
Steven Landsburg
Reader Comments (137)
To be honest the guy sounds like a bit of a whack job.
Mailman
Ha ha! I am not sure I am absolutely 100% in agreement with Prof. Landsburg...is he winding them up? I would have a job arguing against that letter, however. I am looking forward to the response......
Not really.....it will doubtless be anodyne nonsense. Or they will just send the police round.
With all due respect to Mr Landsburg, in a civil society, individual rights should not exist without individual responsibilities. The absence of either is a recipe for conflict.
I love another story from the same book. His daughter's teachers ask her, for her homework, to finish the sentence "I will be more like God. I will..." clearly expecting something like "cuddle more kittens." He suggests "slay the firstborn of my enemies." Love it
Mailman
That doesn't mean he's wrong about indoctrinating his daughter though.
Hmmmmm! - Landsburg IMO makes the mistake of coming across as a bit of a nutter.
I see myself as an Old Fashioned Environmentalist - i.e. someone that cares about the environment and is angry that "environmentalism" has been hijacked by the anti CO2 brigade.
I see no problem with recycling. I see no problem with being a TRUE environmentalist if by definition that means caring for where we all live.
What I strongly object to is idiots who label CO2 a poison when even a rudimentary knowledge of Krebbs Cycle proves that it is a vital constituent of life. Similarly a rudimentary knowledge of Photosynthesis proves how the Carbon Cycle is a system for life - stating that CO2 is somehow "bad" and needs to be taxed, banned and even eliminated simply underlines the total LACK of scientific knowledge of the AGW crowd.
Landsburg's response is an ill considered one in my view.
Too easily dismissed as a rant.
Shame - it could have been a chance to really get some good points across - instead this seems to me to have been a missed opportunity.
Recycling bins may be perfectly reasonable local government policy - it depends on the economics. In lots of rural areas glass bins collect glass, people do go and drop off their bottles there, and the amount of money the locality gets from the results can be 10% or more of the locally levied taxes. Its hard to see anything wrong with a community passing a bylaw which says that it will operate such a scheme, or that it will have recycling and ordinary refuse bins. It is responsible for providing the rubbish collection service, and why not provide it in the most cost effective way?
When it comes to teaching global warming and turning off standby TV to save the planet, or promoting wind power to save the planet, that is a different matter of course. Its the global warming mania that is the problem. There is nothing very environmentalist about recycling the garbage, that is just business.
This isn't a recent article and presumably the letter (if it was actually sent) was older. The amount of indoctrination has grown since then.
I particularly liked the comment: In each case, her five-year-old mind had no difficulty grasping the point. I fear that after a few more years of indoctrination, she will be as uncomprehending as her teachers.
Trying to explain why "sustainable" makes no sense to someone who has never heard anything against it raises the same feeling in me
The problem with most recycling is that it uses more resources than it saves.
I agree with the posters above, he goes over the top. Not all of his arguments are particularly well made but he’s right that the indoctrination of kids is wrong.
He tells his kid that it might be worth sacrificing some wilderness to be saved the effort of sorting trash. Hmm, not very persuasive. The best argument against recycling is to question whether it saves energy and for many items the answer is ‘no’. Metal recycling does work, glass less so. The mass collection of recycling that is then shipped abroad to be sorted, where it is then deemed unsuitable to recycle and finally dumped is a good example of bad policy. He misses the point about forests when he claims that not recycling paper creates bigger forests. Commercial forests are too uniform in design and species and don’t suit wildlife or the environment. There is no economic argument for maintaining mixed woodland, only a moral one.
When mankind needs something it should take precedence over nature but when we only want something then nature should have at least an equal right if not a slightly higher one. Environmentalism is often more an expression of whim rather than good sense and this can lead to more damage than good and should be stamped out.
Is it a case of an eye for an eye,or does the prof believe that encountering propaganda by being even more intransigent seems strange to me. Why would someone be idealogically against recycling? I don't think that this letter in any way marries to your recent report by the WGPF and I am frankly surprised that you consider it worthy of a post. The title"professor" does not cut much ice these days,and frankly, "fussy parent", would seem a more appropriate description.
So if a teacher in a predominantly Christian school casually uses language which the Greens deem offensive to non-Christian religions, they send a lynch-mob to the school to re-educate the teacher about "diversity" and about not allowing religion indoctrination in the classroom, but if the teacher casually fails to indoctrinate the children in the beliefs, customs and observances of the Green religion, the same lynch-mob turns up and checks that the entire school's ethos is Green.
There is a simmering row in the UK over "faith schools" at the moment which re-opens the debate: religious education in state schools (enforced pluralism) versus the tradition of faiths, with state financial support, running their own schools (permitted monotheism). However, the Government takes the view that "Green" is not a religious faith, even though a judge has ruled that it is. The more the CAGW fraud in particular and the Environmentalist movement generally try to cling on to untenable positions, the more they will lose public tolerance or support and be seen instead as a freaky religious sect.
There is a certain irony in Landsburg having his letter recycled.
The problem with most recycling is that it uses more resources than it saves.
Not so sure, although I have read Matt Ridley's description of it in TRO, however I also recall a recent documentary on the beeb (Timeshift perhaps) where they described recycling in the 1930s-1960s (I think). The local council more or less handled the whole thing - seperating out metals, wood, glass themselves and using the remainder as fuel for a local housing heating scheme.
Households only had one bin to fill and no fines for popping a can into the glass by mistake.
As for this piece it doesn't represent most people's views of environmentalism at all. He does seem a bit bonkers.
Many people will miss the fundamental point in all this. With three young children I have personal experience of the environmental indoctrination of children going on in our primary schools. Don't be sidelined by the arguments for/against any individual element of the environment debate, it is the assumption by many in the teaching profession that it is acceptable to continuously present only one side of the debate to children that is the problem. Those children are placed in their care by trusting parents to carry out one of the most important roles in society; to educate young and impressionable minds. When I see the respect, admiration and love my children have for their teachers it brings home just how important their role is and why the abuse of that position is such a shameful thing. Added to that, it would appear that many teachers think parents have no right to monitor and intervene in their children's education. Those are the problems at the root of this.
Thankfully, most of the teachers in my children's school are worthy of their role but there is one tainted with greenness. Some minor disagreements were brought to the attention of the headmaster who applied the impartiality rule. I fear his kind are becoming more rare by the day.
"I am frankly surprised that you consider it worthy of a post." Apr 22, 2014 at 9:10 AM Trefjon.
If we only discuss things that are all right or all wrong then we'd get bored and boring. This letter is probably how we might be portrayed - inflexible and a bit careless, but to a person, we've rejected Landsburg's black and white view. Economics are an important consideration but not the only one.
He is right in that we don't put enough value on our time. Environmentalists need to factor it in when they make their plans because it is one of the issues that is most likely to cause people to ignore them eg, I'm less likely to recycle if I have to wash it first or if I have to spend time agonising over which bin to put it in.
http://heartland.org/policy-documents/recycling-your-time-can-be-better-spent
Recycling is not as practical as it would appear to be.
A superb article. Bravo Landsburg! I urge readers to download and read the article, and read the associated letter again. What a tonic to read the words, and share the thoughts of someone with such spirit and sagacity.
"Apr 22, 2014 at 9:07 AM Bishop Hill
The problem with most recycling is that it uses more resources than it saves."
Have you a good reference for this statement that shows what is cost effective and what isn't cost effective to recycle?
When mankind needs something it should take precedence over nature but when we only want something then nature should have at least an equal right if not a slightly higher one. (TinyCO2)
Does this mean that nature should also have responsibilities? Or is this anthropomorphism?
IMHO, the line between 'need' and 'want' might just provide a reductio ad absurdam.
His grace is right. And the recyclers regard our time as being of no value; they want it free.
I feel it was a poorly constructed letter with an all too easily criticised streak of inflexibility. I personally respect the notion that there should be differences but it might have been better put.
As for "environmentalism" of whatever flavour it surely cannot be the case that it is the wrong way forward by definition. Issues of pollution, resource depletion etc are most categorically important issues of our time.
Despite the notion that recycling utilises more resources than it obtains, which may or may not be true ( I don't know) it should surely still be a laudable aim. Shouldn't it?.
Ah well, that's my ha'peth worth.
Strange that folks still want to question Landsburg. He was pretty clear about that. He just wants to be respected. Clearly, he is out of luck. But that is another issue.
@son of mulder
Tim Worstall's "Chasing Rainbows" has an interesting section on recycling and IIRC has some figures. Can't find my copy to check though...
Cardboard, paper, soft drink cans and bottles, together with beer, wine and whisky bottles, all go in the recycling bin. Cans that contained food or anything else that would require time to rinse with water that I have to pay for go in the normal rubbish bin. The recycling bin is invariably full when its fortnightly collection comes around, often causing some recycling material to have to be placed in the normal bin which is rarely full for its weekly collection. Thus, had I spent time and money rinsing dirty food containers early in the fortnight, it would have been a waste as the same relative volumes would still have been placed in the two bins.
Not the ordinary police. An environmental SWAT team is appropriate and necessary for menaces such as Professor Landsburg
Apr 22, 2014 at 9:49 AM | Unregistered CommenterJones
'Despite the notion that recycling utilises more resources than it obtains, which may or may not be true ( I don't know) it should surely still be a laudable aim. Shouldn't it?.'
The way to find out if it is a laudable aim is to do a proper cost benefit analysis of the entire recycling process vs using new resources.
Your comment gets to the heart of the matter; the assumption that because something looks like it is the correct thing to do it is the correct thing to do. Given the emerging doubts about recycling the question is was a proper analysis ever done by government/local authorities or were they carried along by the wave of unquestioning green ideology.
When you stop thinking critically you are vulnerable to manipulation.
Some discussion of the economics of recycling here.
In the UK, councils' formal 'recycling' has never been about re-use, it's been avoidance of an arbitrary tax, currently £72 / tonne.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/landfill-tax.htm
Jones
You may also need to consider other related issues such as levels of poverty due to unemployment, inefficiencies of tender, stagnation of societal growth.
If we all recycle then there is less of a need for a recycling trade, less companies, less jobs, higher unemployment higher levels of poverty.
We are not trained recyclers, I don't think that the council leaflet stuck on the wheelie bin could be counted as training, which means we are en mass inefficient. Trained recyclers would be so much better at sorting and preparing for final process and large scale recycling would bring further efficiencies in area's such as storage containers, not wheelie bins and plastic bags.
The removal of the need for individuals to recycle would enable them to concentrate more on the area's of their own expertise rather than being a jack of all trades which would benefit society to a greater extent.
Pigeons-cat-Pigeons!
Yes, I also see it as a missed opportunity.
Like DougUK,
A good analogy is the teaching of the "10 Commandments": Nobody really disagrees with them. But they are not the sole property of any of the traditional religions, and are not a justification for accepting commandments 12 to 12 million.
A child being indoctrinated about the evils of carbon dioxide is clearly not being taught science very well.
Recycling has been with us for centuries. In households, as finding a use for something not fit for its original purpose, as in using material from clothing grown-out-of to patch that which still fits. In commerce, as scrapping, demolishing and selling the result for what can be got. Also, and not considered as virtuous recycling, is making a profit out of seeing how by using the unwanted or undervalued by-product of one process some further process can be undertaken and a valued product obtained.
The sign of non-wasteful recycling is satisfaction being greater than costs of all the time and bother - or monetary profit.
Steve,
Thank you. Indeed, it should certainly be a question of cost/benefit. If landfill turns out to be the most efficacious manner of disposal then fair enough.
I've never been of the view that something is all warm and cuddly because of the language used. I automatically go into defensive mode too when I hear the phrase "think of the children".......Oh, I get nauseous too.......but one who can use language as an offensive tool can immediately retort " so you hate children" .........To paraphrase though "not when fried or boiled".....
Over the years I have learned to mistrust words.
Thanks again.
I'm quite surprised at the negative response of most commentators. The article is mostly about applying economics to environmentalism and finding the assumptions underpinning the latter to be wanting. The letter is just the conclusion.
I think you would find Tim Worstall to be making exactly the same case, particularly with regard to recycling. In that instance the point is this: Cost is a measure of resource consumption. If recycling a material makes sense from a cost point of view then those things are already being recycled by companies eager to save costs. For example, most steel is recycled without a government having to pass a law to enforce it. That things have to be recycled by law tells us that it is uneconomic to do it by that means.
Steven Landsburg is every bit as bad as the Greens he criticises and far worse than the religious teachers that he also criticises. He seems to be more tolerant of drug taking than of recycling. He seems to think that his daughter should not hear anything in school that he might disagree with. What if all the other parents took the same attitude? Should evolution be banned from biology lessons? Should education be confined to the lowest common denominator of the opinions of all the parents?
Next stage of the indoctrination:
Or not sorting your rubbish into pre-ordained containers!
Perhaps he should send his daughter to school in Birmingham?
DocBud
As with packing a car for holidays let your watchword be
Don't pack air
You have to add to the cost of recycling by crushing everything.
TDK, the negative response arises because many climate sceptics (myself included) are environmentalists.
The man does come across as a nutter, complaining about indoctrination while proclaiming how he indoctrinates his own daughter not to recycle. Of course you can raise questions about what happens to the stuff you put in your green bin, and that's fine. Or yearn for the good old days of recycling from your youth, when milk and cider bottles were rinsed and returned for reuse. The letter seems to come from a 2007 book, of which the first chapter is "How Seat Belts Kill". Libertarian contrarianism taken to silly extremes.
Roy
You're not even close to the point.
jones:
Issues of pollution, resource depletion etc are most categorically important issues of our time.
Well, they have certainly been made into issues of our time. But that is Landsburg's point, I surmise. I hope you haven't contracted Ehrlichosis. But this link may provide an antidote. ((And so many sentences begun with a preposition. Sorry.))
http://www.thegwpf.org/julian-simon-happy-earth-day-1995/
+1 to Steve Jones.
My daughter's primary school near York had been taken over by one greeny teacher - and she was only part-time.
Every light switch in the building had a picture of a polar bear stuck on it and every tap had something about running out of water. None of the other teachers had ever questioned this or said "hang on a minute" - they just went along for a quiet life. Including the headmistress.
Other schools are not so extreme - but even the school syllabus has been stuffed with green issues.
Current levels of recycling are shoved down our throats by EU directives. This, in turn, has spawned a huge local government 'industry' staffed by overpaid bureaucrats.
Recycling should be left to the market to determine what is or isn't economic, which was the case until the EU eco loons got involved.
Apr 22, 2014 at 8:31 AM | Unregistered CommenterMorley Sutter wrote
"With all due respect to Mr Landsburg, in a civil society, individual rights should not exist without individual responsibilities. The absence of either is a recipe for conflict."
Prof. Landsburg did not refer to that. He wrote that he disagreed that with PRIVILEGE comes responsibility. I agree with him because he made the point that responsibilities arise, WHEN ONE UNDERTAKES THEM VOLUNTARILY.
It is more accurate to say there is no FREEDOM without responsibility. One is FREE to do anything, just so long as one is prepared the accept the consequences.
BTW, I don't recycle either , because the stuff is stockpiled in one heap as China no longer takes our crap.
Cordially.
Paul Matthews:
Or yearn for the good old days of recycling from your youth, when milk and cider bottles were rinsed and returned for reuse.
Yeah, yearn for the good old days. I don't seem to recall the 'rag and bone men' of my childhood living in luxury. But living in luxury is a modern crime (I wish I could afford this particular criminality). Maybe the old days could be made good by making the present times worse, a bit like fiddling the temperature records.
I'm not an environmentalist because I'm an antiismist. All ideologies specialise in getting it wrong.
"That things have to be recycled by law tells us that it is uneconomic to do it by that means.".
Or someone is getting cheap (sorry, free) labour.
I think Mr Landsburg makes the point that environmentalism is politics. There is the other more general form which is care of the environment. Mr Landsburg is lambasting the political view, and I'm in full agreement with him on that.
When our Council first started getting into recycling some 15 years ago, or there abouts. It was well known at that time, and demonstrated by our own recycling program, that recycling was cost inefficient.
But it does put the resources back into circulation. Glass and paper will probably never be cost efficient. But steel and battery recycling is probably good in the long run for other reasons.
Allan M 10:48. Yeah, yearn for the good old days. I don't seem to recall the 'rag and bone men' of my childhood living in luxury.
No but they made a living.
Even moderately well off people were hard up in those days. I remember working in the local Parks Department in school holidays. One of the workman with a family told me how they had been given a record player. Now they were saving up to buy an LP record.
But steel and battery recycling is probably good in the long run for other reasons.
Apr 22, 2014 at 11:04 AM Greg Cavanagh
Steel and car batteries have always been recycled -- because there is money to be made doing it.
I think Landsburg's point has been well demonstrated.
While most will ask "Why should I recycle?" the companion question should always be "Why shouldn't I recycle?"
If you don't actually ask both (or, as an impressionable child are not encouraged to ask both) then of course it might not be so unusual to presume that all issues can be addressed from just the one perspective.
If you think an opinion sounds outlandish, deliberately contrary or willfully anti social, but you're not even aware of any arguments for that position, there is always a chance you have yourself been a victim of a little indoctrination!
"Apr 22, 2014 at 9:07 AM Bishop Hill
The problem with most recycling is that it uses more resources than it saves."
Have you a good reference for this statement that shows what is cost effective and what isn't cost effective to recycle?'
If something is worth recycling, drug addicts and drunks will do it for you