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Six years ago, cognitive linguist George Lakoff published a book that caused a sensation, but ultimately failed to have the impact that it should have. One of the reasons was that progressives who should have known better misunderstood Lakoff's discussion of framing as only being about messaging, which is completely false. Of course framing is very important when it comes to messaging, but if you think that framing is only about messaging, then you can simply dismiss it as yet another consultant's trick. You can even denounce it as immoral--as Booman appeared to do in the discussion section of this diary. But as Lakoff himself tried to explain, framing involves our own understanding of things as well as how we communicate to others.
There's nothing terribly new about recognizing this. Indeed, historian Thomas Kuhn's 1963 classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which coined the term "paradigm shift" is all about the importance of framing in science: Scientific paradigms are conceptual frameworks that define what the basic elements of study are. They are not about communicating to others. They are about how scientists themselves think about what they are doing. This weekend, I want to give two different examples of this in action. I want to illustrate two different ways in which framing can matter. In the first, I want to talk about contrasting frames that can be virtually interchangeable in some situations, but that nonetheless take us in very different directions, so that their formal compatibility masks a pragmatic divergence. What these sorts of divergent frames show is that frames are ultimately rooted in purposive action, and reflect the logic of that action--a point that William James made repeatedly over 100 years ago.
I know you're probably thinking, "What the fuck is he talking about?" But I promise to make it very clear very quickly--as soon as I tell you what's to come in the next diary, tomorrow. In that one I want to talk about contrasting frames are not virtually interchangeable, where it's literally impossible to understand one of the frames in terms of the other. (In an even more confusing case, it's impossible to understand either of the frames in terms of the other--which is mostly what interested Kuhn. But I'll leave that topic for another time.)
Two Equivalent Coordinate Systems
There's a simple mathematical example of contrasting frames that can be virtually interchangeable in some situations, but that nonetheless take us in very different directions: The use of two different coordinate systems to describe the number plane. The number plane is what we get when we place two number lines at right angles to one another, like this:
(From Wikipedia)
It's also called the "Cartesian Plane," after philosopher/mathematician Rene Descartes, who first invented/discovered it. The two number lines are called the x- and y- axes, the point they cross at is called the origin, and it's given the value 0 on both axes. We say it has coordinates 0,0. These are called "Cartesian coordinates."
But it turns out that there's another way to think about the number plane, using what are called "polar coordinates".
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Every point in the plane that can be described in terms of an x,y coordinate pair can also be described in terms of polar coordinates: One coordinate is the distance from the origin, the other is the position on a circle drawn around the origin.
(From Wolfram Mathworld)
The circle is drawn with a radius of one, and it's called the "unit circle". Because the radius is 1, the circumference is 2pi [I'm not using the Greek symbol to avoid worrying about font and browser compatibility issues.] And for that reason, the coordinate is generally given in units of pi, which is equal to 180 degrees.
Because the same point can be described in either coordinate system, the coordinate systems are equivalent. There is no point in one coordinate system that doesn't exist in the other. So whatever operation you perform on a point, moving it to another position--say by flipping it over on the x-axis--can also be described in either coordinate system, and the descriptions in each coordinate system are equivalent. But that doesn't mean they are equally transparent or easy to understand. In particular, adding points together is quite straightforward using Cartesian coordinates. You add the x-coordiates together to get the new x-coordinate, and add the y-coordinates together to get the new y-coordinate. But there's nothing that simple you can do using polar coordinates. On the other hand, polar coordinates make it very easy to calculate what happens when you rotate a point around the origin: the distance coordinate remains constant, while coordinate on the unit circle increases or decreases by the amount rotated, depending on the direction of rotation.
Of course, that's only the beginning. The fact that these two basic operations are much easier in one coordinate system than the other leads to a whole lot of other consequences that have nothing to do with the number plane itself, and everything to do with how operations on it are described. And when you add a third dimension--creating a number space--the divergence only grows greater.
Carbon Tax vs. "Cap and Trade"
So what's this got to do with oil spills and global warming, which you may have noticed from the diary's subject line? The answer is fairly simple, although the analogy is not perfectly exact. Some time ago Mark Matson made the point that the carbon tax and cap-and-trade approaches were virtually identical to one another. He was arguing against my advocacy of the carbon tax, and he was calling attention to the same sort of basic identity that exists between the number plane described by Cartesian coordinates on the one hand, and polar coordinate on the other. There really is a starting point where the differences are relatively trivial, if not none-existence. But as the example of the number plane and operations on it suggest, even if the there were no difference at all in the fundamental reality, differences in how that reality is described can lead to very different pragmatic results, making some things very easy to do and others very hard, depending on which approach is adopted.
So it is with carbon taxes versus cap-and-trade. Conceptually, at the most simple, cap-and-trade limits emissions, and lets the price vary as it will as a result, while a carbon tax sets the price, letting emissions vary as they will as a result. The two can be made equivalent by dynamically varying the availability of permits (or scaling the amount of pollution they're good for) on the one hand, or dynamically varying the tax rate on the other. In theory, at least, the two can be made perfectly identical. But the concepts involved are quite different, and they lead in quite different directions, according to what each makes easier and more natural to do.
The carbon tax approach derives from the "polluter pays" principle, which in turn hearkens back to Arthur Cecil Pigou's concept of externalized costs. It holds those responsible who create harms for others, and by doing so it seeks to make the market price of goods reflect their true costs, so that markets work more like they should. It openly affirms and highlights both the inadequacies of the marketplace and the responsibility of the polluters at the same time that it seeks to correct both. The end message is not one of absolute condemnation, but of manageability under law. Markets are made to work by treating them pragmatically, rather than as objects of ideological worship. And corporations are made to act morally and responsibly by making it more profitable for them to do so.
OTOH, the cap-and-trade approach creates a "right" to pollute--a "right" to harm others. This is not just morally repugnant, it opens the doors for a whole string of other odious developments. Once there are such "rights", there is the question of allocation naturally and immediately arises: Who gets them, how and why? There are no such natural questions with a carbon tax: it's the carbon itself that is taxed. This is not to say that all questions are immediately answered, only that the basic principle is settled, and the hueristics for exact rule-making are clearly indicated.
But nothing similar obtains with cap-and-trade permits Indeed, the existence of such permits has facilitated the ease of argument that they should simply be given to those who need them most--the ones who are already polluting the most. There can appear to be a kind of "neutral" logic to this, even though the end result is that those who have created the problem in the first place are now being rewarded for it.
If the logical equivalency of the original comparison held, then polluters would simply have to pay for all pollution permits, the basic question would not even arise, although the means of purchasing--auctions or whatever--would still be debatable. But the logical equivalency does not hold, for the same reason that polar coordinate and Cartesian coordinates don't lend themselves readily to the same sorts of operations. Once you are talking about a permit market, then all sorts of other activities related to these sorts of markets (including, possibly, speculative bubbles) begin to kick in. Generating credits by "off-sets" to preserve rain forests or whatever is another sort of thing that comes naturally to such a system--with all the opportunities for double-counting, fraud, and the like. Which, by the way, loses the original advantage claimed by the cap-and-trade approach--the assurance that it would limit emissions.
While all these sorts of abuses are of course possible under a carbon tax system, it's much harder to make them seem natural. They are not part of the inherent logic that flows from the polluter pays/externalized costs perspective. And over time, inherent logic--a result of how issues are framed--has cumulative impacts that completely overwhelm the fact of formal similarities, even identities that may exist outside of how they are framed.
Oil Spills and Other Minutia
The situation with oil spills is relevant to the larger global warming framing issue as a micro-example of the larger problem, and how the "polluter pays" principle fails to be followed. Oil spills are a classic example of how energy companies do not pay the costs they externalize onto society and the environment in a wide variety of ways--as we are now discovering with new wrinkles emerging every couple of days. It could and should be quite different: They could pay every red cent of the costs they impose on others, plus punitive damages when conditions warrant it--and that would be the case if the "polluter pays" principle remained our guideline throughout.
Instead oil companies enjoy multiple forms of protection against being held responsible. They are allowed to seek signatures on voluntary waivers of the right to sue, as BP was caught doing for the princely sum of $5,000. They have liability absurdly limited by law to $75 million, and when Congress tries to move to change the law, we are greeted with specter of bullying poor, non-existing mom-and-pop oil drilling companies--who would not be primary targets in the first place, anyways, but absurd shaggy-dog tales are much more readily inserted in the cap-and-trade framework than in the carbon tax one.
And so the oil companies have gotten themselves exempted from any realistic environmental review. We can see these as any number of different shenanigans that oil companies pull--much like any other companies routinely do. Or we can see them as variations on one central theme: the theme of avoiding the payment of the external costs they foist onto the rest of society in order to keep making their obscenely high profits--profits that are now threatening to undermine the human habitability of our planet.
Conclusion and Looking Forward
The two different frameworks discussed here reflect different ways of looking at the same problem space, and like the choice of polar or Carterian coordinates, the choice between these frameworks goes a long way toward pre-determining what sorts of problems will be easy to solve, and what sorts will be hard. It's my argument here that the carbon tax approach makes it relatively easy to solve problems of responsibility and proper assignment and internalization of externalized costs. And this, in turn, makes it relatively easy to harness the power of the marketplace: Once the full, externalized lifecycle costs of all energy sources are internalized, the relative benefits of clean energy and energy efficiency will be reflected in prices, and market forces will become powerful allies in the necessary transformational process.
OTOH, the cap-and-trade approach makes it relatively easy for the problematic greenhouse gas polluting industries (not to mention other types of polluters, who are ignored) to adjust their business models. It is designed primarily for their benefit--along with that of ancillary businesses, such as emissions market traders and the like--and only secondarily for the benefit of others, particularly the general public good. Designing the system to suit the needs of the polluting industries may make it easier to pass legislation, but only makes even harder for the more important set of goals to be achieved.
Please note that cap-and-trade system is not more in line with "free-market" principles. If anything, the carbon tax system is much more "free-market" oriented: once the externalized costs are internalized, the the market incentives become the central driving force in directing us toward a sustainable future. Although the existing polluting power industries will certainly use "free-market" rhetoric as much as possible, what they are arguing for is actually a continuation of extremely self-serving and environmentally destructive subsidies, benefiting themselves at the expense of the general public and the environment, as well that of potential clean energy competitors.
There is a broader framework to be invoked here, relevant to corporations more generally, and that's the framework of psychopathy, which ties into the second diary I will be posting tomorrow. Put simply, for-profit corporations are structured to act like psychopaths. If we were to revise the rules of their basic structuring, we could alter that from within, and thus relieve a good deal of the burden of external regulation, which is often quite cumbersome, though necessary. |
