Sleight of Hand Environmentalism Problem

 

When it comes to spending money, there are things we spend our own money on directly that we can manage well ourselves (clothes, wine, holidays), things the government spends our money on, on our behalf, that we couldn't so effectively manage locally (defence, rule of law, welfare), and things the government spends our money on, on our behalf, that we (or they) would better off not spending money on. 

Using cars to illustrate, the government model for provision, as everybody knows, is roughly this. They take your money, buy you a Ford Fiesta, and tell you they are doing you a favour because you really need a Ford Fiesta. The people who wanted a Ford Fiesta don't mind as much as the people who wished they could have used their own money to buy a Honda Civic, or a motorbike, or a bicycle and a holiday - but even the recipients of Ford Fiestas could have bought them with their own money if the government hadn't taken it. The real beneficiaries in this equation are the suppliers of Ford Fiestas, and the politicians who take the money to buy each of us a Ford Fiesta and keep some for themselves. Ford makes many sales it would not otherwise have made, and many consumers end up with Fords they wouldn't have otherwise bought.

Cronyist organisations, like those seeking to sell their wares off the back of environmentalist dogma, lobby the government for more and more money, under the pretext that the planet is going to hell in a handcart, and we should therefore be forced to spend money on their products. Most climate policies are like Ford Fiestas in those scenarios - we get them whether we want them or not, and we have no easy way to opt out of them.