Mark Maynard and MM.com reader Jim ask how we can convince our US Representative, the incoming Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, John Dingell to take global warming seriously. Mark says,

While I realize that, given his constituency, he may not be as gung-ho as I am to see fuel-efficiency standards substantially raised and a gas tax implemented (both which would seriously piss off his automotive industry base), I have to think that there may be some wiggle room with regard to what he can get away with. Given the growing awareness of both the true cost of our nation’s dependence on foreign oil and the environmental implications of burning fossil fuels, the cost of supporting such legislation, especially if done in concert with a multi-billion-dollar initiative to fund alternative energy research at the federal level, may not necessarily mean political suicide.

As an aside, I think that political suicide would be a neat trick for Dingell to pull off. He's so established that the Republicans don't even run symbolic opposition against him anymore, and well-enough liked that the Greens, Libertarians, and Natural Law candidates can't even pull votes away from him. He was just reelected by 90%+ of the vote, a claim that you usually have to be Castro, or some other ruler with dictatorial control of the election process to make. I think he can safely do a lot more than he has.

But also, as I pointed out in a comment to MM's post, reducing our dependency on cheap energy doesn't have to involve economic sacrifice. That belief relies on the assumption that reducing energy demand can only be done by raising fuel efficiency standards, which would disadvantage American automakers, which would cost Michigan manufacturing jobs. News flash: we don't need to do anything at all to cost Michigan manufacturing jobs. They're going away, without any effort on our part regarding fuel efficiency necessary. But I don't think even that is the way to combat the "energy efficiency will cost us jobs" mantra. I think this attitude needs to be reversed - we can change our economy in ways that will provide local jobs, and, as a bonus, this will reduce our energy use. Don't try to argue with the mantra - flip it over and shake it like a snow globe.

Here's my rambling, pre-coffee comment to that effect on MM.com, in which I go all Cradle to Cradle / Natural Capital, with a dose of Wendell Berry thrown in for flavor:

I think we just need to ask:

* What's the trend look like on the locations of auto manufacturing jobs?

* How much energy are we burning for the privilege of shipping jobs overseas and cheaply produced cars back?

It pained me deeply to see Granholm and DeVos arguing over which could better bring back the auto industry with tax breaks - I think that time in Michigan's history is past, unless we want to dismantle every labor and environmental protection and every social program we've got. We need to work within new models.

My answers to the above questions, "Going, going, gone," and "Way too much."

And it's not just shipping cars here from the third world that burns energy unnecessarily, but the creation of new cars in the first place. The one-way product lifespan of manufacture -> ship -> use up -> junk is hugely energy (and resource) wasteful.

I'd like to see Dingell (and the rest of us) consider a model that egpenet will find quite familiar: repair, don't replace.

With a product lifespan that looks like manufacture -> ship -> use <-> repair, we benefit twice. First, we save loads of energy on the manufacture and ship stages, even before we consider things like fuel efficiency, in the use stage. Second, repair is a strictly local phenomenon, and relies on human intelligence, skill, and labor rather than on capital and cheap energy. We will never be shipping our cars to China for mechanics.

What would happen if we built our cars to last for 20 years, rather than 4, and hired people to repair them as needed, rather than junking and starting over? I believe it's BMW that, years ago, started barcoding every part on the vehicles. Because some European countries require deposits on cars (while we still argue about bottled water), BMW gets their used cars back, at which point they can disassemble them and put the still-good parts back into the manufacturing or repair streams - they're replacing capital and energy with labor! My bicycle is 20 years old; faraway capital and materials expenditure plays much less a part in this than paying for a local tune-up every once in a while and judiciously replacing worn parts. The same thing is possible with cars, if we get over our disposable attitude.

But why limit the discussion to cars? Why not look for further opportunities to repair, rather than replace, and thereby direct our consumption dollars back towards local labor, and away from distant capital and cheap energy?

Quick question: you all know Michigan is the number 1 cherry producer in the US. Sure, that's easy. But how about #2 in asparagus, after Washington? How about #3 in apples? (WA, NY, MI, CA, PA) Washtenaw County is Michigan's leading producer of sheep, no less. But when was the last time you saw Michigan asparagus, apples, or lamb chops in the grocery store? You probably have no idea.

If you did see such a thing, it was probably asparagus that was picked in Michigan, but shipped off to some processing plant in Colorado, where it was mixed with asparagus from all over the world for processing, freezing, and showing up in anonymous supermarket bags. And, at that point, the global system will replace expensive Michigan labor with cheaper south american labor (note: even within Michigan, actually) and cheap energy. If we let our food be anonymous, then agriculture, Michigan's second largest industry after manufacturing, will wither just as manufacturing has, victim to the mobility of capital allowed by cheap energy.

Let's move on to housing. Obviously, living in an old house is environmentally the best thing you can do, both in terms of material use and locationally. One neat thing that's popped up in New Orleans, though, is a new prevalence of home deconstruction, on the other end of the lifespan. Even in a house that's been rendered unliveable by flooding, 85% of the material can be salvaged for reuse if the house is deconstructed rather than bulldozed. Sure, yes, deconstruction takes a little longer, and requires more labor - but the increased labor requirement comes in exchange for reduced landfill space and also a chance to use materials you already have in construction or remodeling, rather than buying new ones from distant places or cutting down trees. (Note: tourism is the third of Michigan's big three industries - preventing landfilling and intensive resource harvesting is a good thing there, too.) Here, again, is a way to spend less on distant capital and cheap Saudi energy, more on local labor.

I don't know if this is even readable. It's early yet, and I'm just having my coffee. But hopefully my gist is clear - we can't pull back manufacturing based on a model of cheap production. We have to look for ways to tip our spending, societally, towards repairing, reclaiming, and reusing - things which are more dependent on local labor, less on big business's capital and the cheap energy model of lowest-cost labor manufacturing.

Skimming through, the food piece is nearly completely unrelated to the rest of this - but I can't possibly rant about economic relocalization without talking agriculture, especially in Michigan. Having consciously invoked McDonough, though, I can now use the "waste = food" model to tie that in a little. How much of our landfill-bound wastestream is biodegradable? (Read: compostable.) And how much oil do we import in the form of fertilizer? (Lots.) And, meanwhile, Michigan is gridlocked over feedlots, with concern over manure on the one hand countered with a charge of economic harm on the other? Okay, so lets make that manure an asset, rather than an environmental liability, make all of our compostable garbage an asset, rather than a landfill consuming liability, and stop importing all that oil that we use for fertilizer. Ta-da! We just addressed three issues at once, and improved our local economic balance sheet in the process!

So the real question here is not, "How do we convince Dingell to think about reducing energy use", but, "What policies can Dingell push for to advance this relocalization of our economies?"