Is it helpful to brand things green?

I've now branded this website thoroughly green. I have done so not without strong reservations about the the whole notion of a "green" as a distinct field or topic. I worry that “green” is too often marketed like some kind of exotic or luxury brand. This may lead people to conclude that society cannot afford to go green.

Sometimes think we might be better off if we didn’t distinguish between green and non-green, but rather just talked about uncosted Vs costed energy. The problem with coal or oil is that the price doesn’t include the real costs — damage to environment, including long term costs such as global warming.

But green sources are nothing other what usually proves the lowest cost energy when all the social costs that are not commonly included in the cost of energy are factored into the price. For example, windmills are usually “green” because what it costs — in total — is generally far less than burning oil or coal actually costs.

There may be times and places when a particular green branded “thing” won’t actually turn out to be lowest cost. But these are exceptions to the rule.

The bigger problem seems to be that people are not yet accustomed to thinking about green as being true-low-cost, and that’s because the prices of the alternatives don’t reflect true-cost. So we have people saying “we can’t afford green” which is tantamount to saying the true-low-cost option is way too expensive!

So what we have is a fundamental pricing problem that creates all these arguments. Since the market does not provide a true pricing mechanism for energy, a useful place to start would be a a carbon tax.

This post is based on some jots I first posed at Rick B.'s Ten Percent blog.