1. USPS truck vs. your car. The USPS is going to be coming by your house whether you get Netflix or not and the weight addition is negligible. You driving to the video store causes an increase in emissions.
2. Video store vs. factory. The video store has a lot of wasted space in it. All those aisles to browse in, all that lighting, AC, heat, etc. running from 9am-midnight or later. Netflix is probably open from 8am-4pm if not less in a factory that can be made really space efficient.
3. Labor. Here's an interesting premise: we all pollute by breathing. If we are doing something more productive, we can better justify that pollution. For example, no one would say that EMTs should walk a person to the hospital in an emergency - the use of the ambulance is justified by the importance of the situation. However, walk for less important things (if you live in a suitable area) to lessen pollution. Likewise, if we can reallocate labor to more important/productive things, it's better than if we have labor sitting behind a counter with no customers for hours on end. Netflix uses labor efficiently. Package everything up, get them out, go home. Vs Sit behind a counter for lots of idle periods doing nothing.
Netflix just works off a much more efficient model. More importantly, I think we're seeing that in a decade Netflix will be a purely virtual model. They're a smart company getting into the video on demand business so much. That will really cut down and, really, in this day we don't need physical media to transmit audio/video.
This touches on a point that I make in almost any discussion of the environment and our impact on it: no matter what we do, we are going to negatively impact the environment. Yes, we can mitigate that impact (and I am completely in favor of doing so), but sitting around stressing about using Netflix isn't the way to do it. There's plenty of other low-hanging fruit that each one of us can pluck (sell your car, walk more places, cut down on general consumption).
I will say, however, that I appreciate Slate actually approaching this issue--many people seem to think that "electronic" equals "green" because there's no paper, no delivery, etc, etc. They forget, however, that there is a vast, (currently) energy dependent system that supports the internet.
Yeah. Even when thinking about getting stuff shipped from Amazon I feel this way. UPS/FedEx are really efficient - they have to be. I mean, they choose their routes based on what will use the least gasoline! They have advanced software meant to save them money by limiting distances traveled, gasoline, trucks and labor used, etc. If I drive to Target, the goods still need to get to the Target in the first place and my driving isn't going to be as good as UPS'.
I really try to cut down on the easy things. Getting rid of single serving containers from the supermarket, reusing containers, etc. A nalgene is a bottle just like the bottle of bottled water. While an environmental scientist might be able to calculate out precisely what Netflix and Blockbuster use, there are some no-brainers that most people don't do - like turning the thermostat down and putting on some nice wool socks. Plus, I'm cheap and those energy/waste savers also tend to save money!
My parents worry about the HVAC in their (more than) 3500 sq ft house. Not worry in the sense that "we might not be able to live" but worry in the sense that "turning down the upstairs thermostat a few degrees sure saves a lot of money."
Brand name products usually use fancier packaging, they spend money on advertising (direct mail fliers for example), the extra profits encourage more waste in the company since they can afford it, while generic manufactures will go to great lengths to be very efficient. And if money is not spent there it goes to larger marketing budgets, and finally if nothing else to profits, and larger salary. Larger salary usually means larger home, etc, and all that goes with it. So, no, it's not an edge case.
PS. The environment should not be your only reason for choosing or not choosing something to buy. But comparing the price will help you avoid greenwashing.
Without thinking particularly deep about this issue, I suppose your idea runs alongside the efficient market hypothesis. You're making assumptions about the relationship between resource input and product output and perceived value. Like in the EMH, the ideal conditions are perfect information (let's also say perfect money->resource conversion), and rational customers.
EMH advocates would say the system is pretty efficient at pricing already; you could argue that the fancier packaging and expensive marketing takes all the markup into account, so when a customer buys, the products are fairly priced, at least in terms of summing up the steps in the value chain. I'm not so sure about that. Tulips, for example.
So at the cheap end of the scale I would tend to agree with you. For brand markup though, I still think the same rules don't apply as well. It is plausible that the higher the price, the less exact the correlation between environmental impact. In other words, intuition says that "environmental cost of a product is almost exactly equal to it's monetary cost" is less and less applicable as price rises noncompetitively, and brand markup and investor exuberance, are such cases.
Oh, I thought of another example. This is just silly: virtual goods. Anyhow your rule of thumb of buying cheap still holds here (the alternative to buying a virtual good is simply not buying, because you have nothing in both cases!). But this is a clear case where you are purchasing a psychological effect. And I would venture a guess that the more psychology you mix into the pricing the less you can infer its environmental cost.
Alright, I'm stating the obvious... nitpicking over semantics I guess.
Don't forget about profit. The company (i.e. shareholders) are making a larger profit from the marked up item. The money they earn will eventually be spent, and will have an environmental impact.
To your virtual items example:
What determines scarcity and cost? Or more accurately: what is the input into the product to create it?
There are two options here: the items is simply marked up for no reason (i.e. the server releases them rarely for no reason at all), and then the profit situation takes hold.
The other option is that the virtual items are priced correctly, so what makes them rare? (If they were not rare, and priced correctly, then their value is zero.) Usually what makes them rare is the human time spent on making/finding them. Which means that their cost is basically wages, and no different from a real item.
No not sarcastic. Except for pollution the cheaper one really is better for the environment. Please read my post I just linked.
Building a windmill, or solar panels (not sure about geo-thermal) costs a tremendous amount of resources, and energy. So yes, except for CO2 emissions oil actually can be better for the environment. Do please remember that there is more to the environment than CO2. It takes at least 10-15 years for a windmill to pay back it's environmental costs. And for solar panels it's something like 30 years (infinity actually since they don't last that long).
Except for pollution the cheaper one really is better for the environment.
This is actually a great heuristic, but pollution is only part of the story. A more general (and correct) statement would be "excluding externalities (including pollution) the cheaper one really is better for the environment".
Externalities are basically costs or benefits (to society, the environment, etc.) that aren't reflected in the price paid for an item. One really important thing to note is that externalities extend far beyond pollution and can be both positive and negative.
Pollution is one of the more visible negative externalities that get discussed, but there are plenty of others (for example, driving a car involves a host of negative externalities in addition to pollution such as increased road congestion (longer commute times, more fuel burned in traffic, more accidents)).
There are also plenty of positive externalities that often get ignored. Take windmills, solar panels and hybrid cars. The positive externalities associated with manufacturing these items include lower future manufacturing costs for such items (and lower prices and environmental costs as a result) and investment in R&D aimed at making electricity and/or transportation cheaper (both in terms of environmental and financial costs). So even though solar panels may currently be losing proposition environmentally, there are positive externalities that make buying solar panels today (and thereby moving the industry forward) a Good Thing for the environment.
Ideally, price would completely capture that information. Of course, in reality, pollution imposes a cost on others, but it's hard to calculate the external cost, because, like crime, the cost isn't paid by the decision-maker, and unlike crime, the actual cost is very small (individually).
In any case, there's no way to actually avoid all costs being imposed on others from your actions (waste heat, if nothing else), so it's unclear to me what's to be done about it.
One thing you can do about it is to tax a commodity that acts as a proxy for the negative externality in question. For example, we could tax fuel sources relative to the amount of pollution and/or greenhouse gases that are produced, on average, when they are burned. So coal would have a given tax rate and gas would have another and propane another... this would capture the environmental cost of consuming those fuels in the price.
Unfortunately, such a simple and effective solution is politically very unpopular, which is why we have yet to see it passed into law. People want to take care of the environment, as long as it doesn't cost them anything. Well, most people anyway.
One reason I'm against such an attempt at a solution is that it would be very difficult to do this in such a way that it isn't worse than the original problem.
I don't think that's so. For example, a tax on fossil fuels based on carbon output would be simple and easy to enforce (importer/extracter pays the tax). It would cause all goods to reflect their true carbon cost. Why would that be worse than the original problem?
You could even couple the tax with an offsetting decrease in other taxes, if you're worried about increasing the total tax burden.
Except why pick carbon? There are many other pollutants I care far more about. VoC's for example (someone spray painting), smoke, NOx's, heavy metals. Trash litter. Spilled toxic fluids.
I consider those much worse than carbon.
If a pollution tax was implemented I would give the money back as cash to every person in the country. So the money would basically move in a circle, but those who are more efficient will gain.
"If a pollution tax was implemented I would give the money back as cash to every person in the country. So the money would basically move in a circle, but those who are more efficient will gain."
Well, I'm predisposed against this idea, but that sounds more like an argument for than against it. If everyone's paying in proportion to their cost to others (a big 'if'), then those who cost others less should be paid more than they pay, all else equal.
What makes you think I'd be against externalities taxes on all of the above? I think it makes much more sense to tax those things, which we don't want more of in our society, rather than say capital gains, which we do want.
One problem is that if it turns out that we enter a cooling period (due to solar activity decrease or something else), it seems unlikely that such a tax would be repealed just because it was actively harmful (cf. prohibition).
Presume for a moment that you believe global warm is a real and present danger. Then a carbon tax makes perfect sense.
I agree if you think that global warming is uncertain, or that perhaps we actually want to increase CO2 in the atmosphere, a carbon tax would be a bad idea.
"30 minutes spent reordering your queue in a well-lit, climate-controlled room with the computer running"
They're assuming a lot to come to that conclusion. What about 15 minutes spent (because that's all it takes) on Netflix on my laptop in my CF light bulb lit room that isn't climate controlled?
The only real reason to sweat something like that is if it's really and truly your biggest impact.
My company is flying me most of the way across the continental US next week. While I shouldn't and don't interpret that as a carte blanche to stop caring about the environment, it does make fiddling around the edges rather a waste of my time. I've already plucked the low-hanging fruit (efficient computing with laptops, CFCs in my house, taking care of the insulation).
Not mentioned is any thought about the cost of making the discs and disposing of them when they wear out. I'm betting the netflix model allows more people to efficiently share fewer physical discs than the blockbuster model.
What is stupid is that the movies could be delivered completely over the internet with no physical disks at all but this hasn't happened despite the technology existing that would make it trivial to do so.
I'd say itunes movies is as green as it gets so far.
It isn't destroying the environment, but it is pretty dumb that they have to mail me a CD instead of just letting me download a rip of the movie.
Instead, their "instant" offering is a low-quality, DRM-encumbered stream, with only the least popular movies available. Why would I pay for this when I can get the full 1080p versions mailed to me, or downloaded from Usenet?
I live in ontario, my blockbuster runs off nuclear/hydroelectric power. I somehow think it beats out the mail trucks Netflix would be using if they expand into Canada. So for me Blockbuster's energy costs are effectively zero to begin with except possibly the minute increase in heat created by the accelerated decay of nuclear isotopes.
The answer this guy is looking for is that both are bad for the environment and he should feel and extreme amount of guilt for causing a global environmental catastrophe. The solution of course is to get an AppleTV and rent your movies off iTunes.
1. USPS truck vs. your car. The USPS is going to be coming by your house whether you get Netflix or not and the weight addition is negligible. You driving to the video store causes an increase in emissions.
2. Video store vs. factory. The video store has a lot of wasted space in it. All those aisles to browse in, all that lighting, AC, heat, etc. running from 9am-midnight or later. Netflix is probably open from 8am-4pm if not less in a factory that can be made really space efficient.
3. Labor. Here's an interesting premise: we all pollute by breathing. If we are doing something more productive, we can better justify that pollution. For example, no one would say that EMTs should walk a person to the hospital in an emergency - the use of the ambulance is justified by the importance of the situation. However, walk for less important things (if you live in a suitable area) to lessen pollution. Likewise, if we can reallocate labor to more important/productive things, it's better than if we have labor sitting behind a counter with no customers for hours on end. Netflix uses labor efficiently. Package everything up, get them out, go home. Vs Sit behind a counter for lots of idle periods doing nothing.
Netflix just works off a much more efficient model. More importantly, I think we're seeing that in a decade Netflix will be a purely virtual model. They're a smart company getting into the video on demand business so much. That will really cut down and, really, in this day we don't need physical media to transmit audio/video.