Environment in the Debt-Free Society

I'd like to challenge the notion that human flourishing necessarily has to come at the expense of the environment. This is of course what we have been taught most of our lives, and I even went to pursue a PhD to contribute to "solving" the problem of humanity's interactions with the larger environment. But it was during that period of study that I came to be disillusioned about the "Eco-Industrial Complex," which brings in billions for itself while propping up other failed ideologies to guarantee that the "problem" of human-environmental interaction cannot be solved.

And along the way, I ran into some real solutions.

Debt and time preference

Time preference is, roughly speaking, the "time frame" in which you make decisions.

You might have seen Seventh Generation laundry detergent, which features a quote from the Iriquois that says "we make decisions based on how the next seven generations are affected." In this case, we see a time preference that is very long-term, or a low time preference. In contrast, if you are robbing a liquor store knowing that you could very well end up in handcuffs tomorrow, because you need to get drunk today, that would be a very high, or short-term time preference.

As you can guess, many of the truly harmful decisions that are made, from criminality to adultery to getting into debt, come from the high-time-preference mindset that does not see more than 15 minutes into the future.

Debt increases time preference

Debt, in contrast to savings, is a short-term, high time preference decision. Usually, if you use debt at all there should be a pressing reason. And once you are in debt, you are tied to making payments, which means that your attention is necessarily changed from the future to the present. Who has time to think about planting trees to cool your neighborhood in the summer when you need to pay that car/house/college degree off?

Now apply this thinking to the environment. If the environment is a resource, then improving it is an investment. Exploiting it is much like spending an investment. If you are in a position that you need to keep producing resources to pay debts, then you need to consume capital in the present. This is true for people, paying with labor, and also with owners of natural resources, be they individuals or states.

Long-term thinking

Given that low time preference and "thinking ahead" is beneficial, our ancestors gave us some truly genius institutions to encourage long-term thinking:

> Savings and investment will make you richer over time if you do it.

> The family means that you are tied to your parents and to your kids, and as such you think beyond yourself.

> These two together create the institution of inheritance, which makes you think about wealth in multi-generation terms instead of just for your use 20 years from now.

> Beyond the family, things like one's community, nation, and faith also invite someone to think about how their action will impact said community for many years into the future, such that "altruism" is really multi-lifetime investment

Notice that in all of these, in no place does debt have a substantial presence. We aren't trying to maximize next-quarter profits with leverage, we're trying to build something that is going to be lasting.

Environmental Investment

One of the more interesting things I learned in my PhD was about a particular South American tribe that had made soil enrichment a local custom. After burning a fire, they would deliberately place the ashes in the same place, and over centuries some areas had as much as 10 feet of rich, black soil. In more recent years, county governments, including one near where I grew up, changed their water purification methods to begin using a series of wetlands to clean wastewater. This allowed the county to recycle the water, reduce its water needs by 20 million gallons a day (substantial money savings), and the wetlands also became home to migratory birds that had lost habitat elsewhere.

For both of these examples, human interaction with the environment actually made both the people and the environment better. This leads us to ask the question, "can we find even more cases of interaction like this, and can we make environment-improving activity the norm?" I think so.

The biggest debt-environment burden

If debt leads to shorter time preference, and shorter time preference is harmful to the environment, then why do politicians claiming to care about the environment simultaneously say nothing about debt? I would put it down to an evil idea: Keynesianism . This is the idea that an economy's success is measured in spending, and of course, there's no faster way to increase spending today than for a state to borrow money, while pushing policies to get its citizens to do likewise.

Alongside debt, is promises. Anyone paying attention in politics knows that pension systems of all sizes are in trouble, all around the world, and the "solution" given is "more economic growth!" In other words, spend more resources. The eco-hucksters also chime in "just make more of that spending go into my 'green' projects!"

But we do not need more spending, we need less debt. and instead of individuals being seen as mere productivity units for "green" central planners, I think that unshackled minds will better improve the world around them. The unshackling is both in a matter of thinking, and in terms of unshackling people from debt.

If you've liked this, please check out the Debt Free Society group, where we talk about these issues in more detail.