States and localities enact symbolic green regulations while embracing land-use regimes that harm the environment.
Recently, video-game computer company Alienware announced that several states had banned some of its products for consuming too much electricity. “This product cannot be shipped to the states of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, or Washington due to power consumption regulations adopted by those states,” read a disclaimer posted on Alienware’s website under several computers it offered for sale. The environmental benefits of these regulations are questionable: a trade publication notes that the California regulations targeted consumption in low-power modes, but one of the computers has a “short-idle energy consumption of 66.29 watts,” similar to a single incandescent bulb. Compared with total residential electricity consumption, it’s hard to see such regulations having much effect.
Such regulations are of a piece with other measures of the environmentalist movement that prize symbolism and “raising awareness” over substance. Take, for example, plastic-straw bans, enacted by cities including Seattle and San Francisco. Plastic straws hardly feel environmentally friendly, but they are a minor contributor to environmental problems. The website Earth.org admits, “Despite the concerted efforts by corporations, the plastic straws ban has only made a minor difference in plastic waste production. National Geographic reveals that where 8 million tonnes of plastics flow into the ocean every year, plastic straws merely comprise 0.025% of the total.” Earth.org also quotes an organization that suggests that the obtrusiveness of plastic straw bans is largely the point: “Lonely Whale, an organization that led the straw ban movement in the USA, proposed an interesting idea towards this question. They expressed that ‘Our straw campaign is not really about straws. It’s about pointing out how prevalent single-use plastics are in our lives, putting up a mirror to hold us accountable. We’ve all been asleep at the wheel.’”
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