I am not old enough to have experienced rationing during World War II, but I heard stories about it from grandparents. They remembered well having to pay an inflated price for many goods, not just in money but also rationing stamps and tokens issued to every family. The government first rationed tires, but soon added gasoline, coal, firewood, meat, fish, cheese, milk, butter, coffee, lard, shortening, oils, sugar, even shoes and nylon stockings.
Every household in America was affected, as in other countries. My grandparents understood the need to sacrifice certain things for the common good because all else depended on the war effort. But I never heard anybody suggest that they liked it. That is precisely suggested, though, by two British teachers at the University of Leeds.
They write that “the rejection of markets, and a commitment to fair shares, is a key part of the value of rationing, and precisely what made rationing attractive to the public in the 1940s.”
Nathan Wood and Rob Lawlor have created a media buzz by suggesting, in a lengthy scholarly article, a return to rationing to address global warming – which they claim will be popular. “Rationing and Climate Change Mitigation” was published by something they call the “Inter-disciplinary Ethics Applied Centre” and the “Sustainability Research Institute” at Leeds. In other words, the article was self-published, on their own websites – yet still managed to attract worldwide media attention. One representative headline read, “How to Fix Global Warming: Bring Back Rationing, Say Scientists.”
Three things make this “study” stand apart from similar works in scholarly journals. First, it was not published in any scholarly journal. Second, neither author is a “professor,” and third, neither is actually a scientist in any normally understood use of that term. Wood is a “Teaching Fellow” and Deputy Director of postgraduate research. He has a Masters in Environment focusing on “corporate social responsibility,” and a PhD in “Energy, Capability, and Justice.” Lawlor is an “Applied Ethics Lecturer” with degrees, not in science but in Ethics and Philosophy. They were quick to point out that the project also had a steering group, “which included representatives from business and engineering, in addition to academics.” But not in climate science?
Sensational headlines aside, these authors do not even try to claim their proposal is based on science. Rather, they explain that “although the empirical details play an important role, the paper is primarily based on philosophical and ethical argument and policy analysis.”
The paper’s abstract strongly suggests climate change cannot be mitigated without significant changes in consumer behavior. And they conclude that people will never voluntarily reduce their evil consumption. Studying British military documents from World War II, they quoted one memo saying that the public showed “a complete and expressed unwillingness to make voluntary sacrifices, but an apparent readiness to face compulsory sacrifices without undue grumbling.” Therefore, they say nations should return to the wartime strategy of rationing, not just for gasoline, but also meat, and energy consumption. In their view, it would be appropriate for government to dictate not only the temperature on which you can set your thermostat, when and whether you may use heating and air conditioning, and how many miles you may drive, but also what you may eat for dinner.
They cite “a broad scientific consensus that avoiding the most severe impacts of climate change requires a rapid reduction in global emissions,” leading them to conclude argue that “rationing could help states reduce emissions rapidly and fairly.” Crucial to this proposal is the strategy for selling it to the public, especially if climate change policies create economic hardship. The solution – rationing.
“Given that these policies would result in scarcity, this might still be hard to sell. But given the increasing recognition of the problem and the clear link between fossil-fuels and climate change the message would be simpler and… easier to sell: to avoid inflicting serious harms on future generations… we must drastically reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn.” They explain that “Rationing would then be the second stage of this approach. While regulation created scarcity, rationing would manage the scarcity.”
Apparently with that straightforward explanation, the public would support rationing. Perhaps we would even like it, they theorize, because it would be so fair.
My own hunch is that government rationing of meat and other products would be even less popular than banning gas stoves and would do even less to alter the global climate. Clearly there are no ration stamps for common sense.
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