Does a $1,000 watch keep better time than a $10 watch? How about a $500 pen compared to a $2.95 model? Which one writes better? Is a MAC really easier to use than a PC?
In each of the above cases, and thousands more, the products are functionally the same. Product marketers have created the perception of style or cool by manipulating the product’s design and the marketing messages. For most people the $10 watch will keep time just as well as the $1,000 watch. The $990 difference is just marketing; yes, the $1,000 watch has gold and diamonds, but what value do they have beyond people’s perceptions? Marketing transforms the $1,000 watch from a utilitarian timepiece into fine jewelry. Pen enthusiasts swear that writing with their favorite model loaded with the finest ink is smoother and produces crisper loops and straighter lines than lower quality pens, but most of us can meet our writing needs with whatever happens to be in our drawer or the office supply cabinet. Again, the difference is in the perception created by marketing.
I wrote the above to make a point about a proposed solution to global warming. Americans are divided over their belief in global warming and even more divided over their willingness to make sacrifices to ease warming. Yet we are close to implementing Cap and Trade legislation.
Global warming supporters and deniers should all be concerned about the impact Cap and Trade will have on every segment of our economy. When you add costs to electrical production, manufacturing, and transportation, than you are effectively adding costs to everything. If the program hurts the economy and has little measurable impact on global warming than supporters will have no credibility for pushing other ideas to stop warming. And once a Cap and Trade is in place it will be hard to remove no matter how little impact it has on warming or how much of drag it is on our economy.
I don’t have a lot of faith that we can implement as huge program as Cap and Trade during the same period we implement irreversible changes to our nation’s financial structure, healthcare system, and foreign policy. That’s a lot of for a short period of time.
I fear that in our rush to pass Cap and Trade legislation we are ignoring better, easier options to Cap and Trade. If marketers can convince people to pay thousands of dollars for watches and pens, and create brand names that by their mere presence on everything from automobiles to clothes improves the product’s image and increases its value, why can’t we brand “Green,” and make it cool?
The answer is that we can. For a few hundred million dollars Congress could contract the world’s top marketing talent, hire the most popular celebrity spokes people, and fund a major marketing campaign to make ‘Green’ cool. Once “Green,” is cool, consumers will demand Green products that businesses will rush to provide. Companies that produce carbon will have real incentives to cut their carbon output because customers will want to buy products with Green brands. People that want green products will create the markets for those products and the cost to taxpayers will be measured in millions, with an M, not billions, with a B.
A marketing solution to global warming is real change.
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Good insight. But I actually think the ‘greens’ have been too successful with their marketing and it is leading us to cap and trade without thinking things through.
I am a Democrat and think Congress is overplaying its hand with cap and trade legislation. In my opinion the cap and trade bill will double our cost of energy over the years but much faster for gasoline. Unintended consequences are the other problem. The bill is just too complicated, with too many moving parts. Why? There are 880 lobbyists registered to lobby on climate change and their fingerprints are all over the bill.
Cap and trade will enrich a new class of financial speculator. This will cost American consumers billions, possibly trillions of dollars. It will drive-out manufacturing of every description. Even non-polluting Microsoft says it will move jobs overseas because cap and trade “makes U.S. jobs more expensive.” Cap and trade is worse than a tax because only 15% of the proceeds from auctioned permits go into our national treasury.
And the kicker? We’ll never even know if cap and trade ever works.
If instead the United States had a national mandate to replace coal generation plants with natural gas and nuclear energy, plus if we replaced our commuter cars with battery-powered electric cars, we would drastically reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce CO2 emissions faster and beyond the cap and trade targets. As a nation we need focus on smart energy policy.
Robert Moen, http://www.energyplanUSA.com
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