Meter

Yesterday at lunchtime, I made a mad-dash to Busboys & Poets. Alas, I had no time to stay for a bite to eat or a cup of tea. I went there to pick-up a copy of Peter Barnes’ most recent book, of which, B&P still had signed copies.
As I passed the tragically ugly orange and brown gates at the U Street Metro Station, I justified the addition of the expense of the Metro ride as the cost of getting the autographed copy. It was also part of the consumer decision to favor a socially responsible business within my own community, rather than buying from Amazon, or Borders, or B&N.
It occurred to me as I walked at out-of-breath pace from the station, that the good people of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had done me a favor by telling me how much my trip had cost me. They quantified the exact cost to me of each leg of my quick little trip. This is not a fact that is so conveniently delivered to me by my car.
With a car, it’s not merely the gasoline that drives the cost of the trip. That’s calculated easily enough, based upon the givens of gas mileage, trip distance, and fuel cost per gallon. The cost of car payments, muddied by depreciation, plus insurance makes for a messier (though still solvable) equation. Wheels started turning over the per-mile cost of my tax dollars in both highway subsidies and public transportation funds; over the cost of the tread on my tires versus tread on my shoes; on driving and later going to the gym, versus walking to and from the train station and taking care of transportation and exercise together. I put the snowballing apples-to-apples dollar-comparison of rail versus car on hold.
Instead, Al Gore’s disembodied voice asked me to consider this problem in light of carbon. I began to wonder if I should have the right to know how much carbon my car introduces into the air per mile, and how much my daily train ride or my periodic plane trip. Obviously, I’d be willing to pay something for that information.
The USDA makes recommendations about diet, and mandates that food producers let the consumer know what exactly is in each serving. Vendors baulked when USDA began working toward this program, and anyone who buys food in the US pays a little bit for it. Perhaps the DOE or EPA could make similar recommendations with respect to carbon emissions, and require vehicle manufacturers and providers of transportation services to make their carbon emissions conveniently publicly available. Informed consumers could then better drive the market toward sustainable business.

Capitalism 3.0

Wednesday evening, I saw author Peter Barnes give a talk at Busboys and Poets, on his latest book, Capitalism 3.0. Barnes raises some good points on the role of both the state and the corporation in the division of resources, and offers some ideas on innovating the relationship between economy, ethics, and environment.
He contends that the state's role in commerce has historically been to redistribute collective resources or "common wealth" to entrepreneurs or corporations. Examples include the ridiculous land give-aways to US railroad companies in the 19th century, or the distribution of broadcast spectra to media companies in the early days of radio and television. Think farmsteads, mineral rights, logging rights, &c on previously public land. (Eventually, the state winds-up fighting itself with the advent of anti-trust and monopoly laws. The government punishes corporations for being very good at what the government helped them accomplish.)
Barnes discussed the expansion of trusts to act as perpetual agents of commonly held resources, in much the same way corporations act as perpetual agents of shareholders. Though, in his vision, trusts would be established not simply to curtail suburban sprawl in choice farm country, but also to leverage the economic value of common resources like the atmosphere, or the Gulf of Mexico. Companies would buy the rights to release waste into the air, rather than essentially getting this resource for free. On the whole, I think this philosophy has great potential.
I can't help but think that some of the event's peripheral discussions about for-profit organizations directly supporting nonprofit organizations may not be advocating the best new model. Clearly there is great potential for social benefit in such an arrangement. But, I'm increasingly thinking that we need to enact a broad shift toward the integration of ecological and social "cash flow" into the fabric of private enterprise. To become sustainable in the true sense, the firm must create products and services that directly benefit their communities and our collective environment.