Re: [greenyes] RE: [CRRA] Comments on White Papers

[Alan Muller <amuller@no.address>]

I'm no waste wonk, but it seems to me that the obvious problem with 
recycling and related activities is that the costs are more fully monetized 
than the benefits.

There is some analogy to the deregulation of the electricity 
business.  This was done, essentially, at the behest of particular 
interests who did not want to help pay for the externalities of fuel 
extraction and burning (pollution, land destruction.....).  Electric dereg 
happened without any real input from the policy types who could have (I 
hope!) predicted the consequences:  the death of "integrated resource 
planning," the fading away of "demand side" investments, and so on.  Now we 
are left with all sorts of big industrial users getting cheap power, but no 
real framework for dealing with the larger problems.

Back to garbage:  One can argue that the actual health and environmental 
costs of dumping and burning aren't on the books, and if they were "zero 
waste" would be a much easier sell.  This is probably obvious to most of 
the readers of this list.     Electric wonks (Tellus...) argued at great 
length that if suitable externality costs were put on the books, market 
mechanisms could be made to produce reasonable outcomes.  Consultants 
collected millions to refine and assert these intellectually convincing 
arguments. But as far as I know it was not possible to get more than token 
externality charges properly attached in any of the sixty-some utility 
regulatory jurisdictions in the US.  We certainly can't get it done now 
under "dereg."

These costs are just not on the books in any commonly recognized way.  Who 
really thinks her medical insurance bill is too high because her electric 
and garbage collection bills are too low?

So the question bothering me is not so much "what should we do" as "how do 
we get there?"

Hmmm..a rant that should be deleted?

Alan Muller

Alan Muller, Executive Director
Green Delaware
Box 69
Port Penn, DE 19731 USA
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