Taking the Environment Seriously

Chase Nordengren flags a recent Brookings paper from Tom Loveless about environmentalism-related questions on the PISA. Loveless is concerned about what he perceives to be ideological bias in questions related to "responsibility for sustainable development." Students taking the test are asked if they agree or disagree with the following statements:

• Industries should be required to prove that they safely dispose of dangerous waste materials.
• I am in favor of having laws that protect the habitats of endangered species.
• It is important to carry out regular checks on the emissions from cars as a condition of their use.
• To reduce waste, the use of plastic packaging should be kept to a minimum.
• Electricity should be produced from renewable sources as much as possible, even if this increases the cost.
• It disturbs me when energy is wasted through the unnecessary use of electrical appliances.
• I am in favor of having laws that regulate factory emissions even if this would increase the price of products.

Loveless says that these statements:

...embrace a superficial view of responsibility. None of the prompts asks students whether they are willing to take personal responsibility for sustainability. They ask whether someone else should—industries, car owners, factories, and society as a whole.

It's wrongheaded to define seriousness about environmentalism in this manner. In what conceivable way could a student "take personal responsibility" for protecting the habitats of endangered species, regulating factory emissions, or disposing of toxic waste? It's the equivalent of taunting someone who's concerned about the national debt by asking if they'd be willing to tithe an extra 10 percent of their paycheck to the federal government. If you're concerned about budget deficits, the best way to "take personal responsibility" for that is to vote for politicians who will promote policies that combine economic growth with spending restraint and sufficient levels of taxation. Just like if you're concerned about carbon emissions, the best thing you can do is elect someone who supports CAFE standards and a real cap-and-trade plan. Or if you're concerned about toxic waste, someone who will regulate toxic waste. The idea that your committment to the public policies that actually matter is "superficial" unless you've also got a compost heap in your back yard is just a way to deflect attention from the real issues at hand.

It's also worth remembering that PISA is run out of France, and Europeans have different baseline views on various issues, including environmental issues. In America, for example, it's taken as a given that everyone should be allowed to vote and get married and attend public school regardless of their race, gender or religion. It wasn't always that way, of course, and still isn't that way in many other parts of the world. And there are still a small number of Americans, your white supremacists and whatnot, who have a different opinion. But those opinions aren't respected or given credence; rather they're deliberately marginalized by our education system and the way we inculcate civic values circa 2009. Similarly, certain attitudes toward sustainable development that are considered controversial here are more or less settled issues elsewhere. Many of the fiercest public debates involve struggles to move ideas back or forth across the line that bounds topics considered to be legitimate subjects of debate, for obvious reasons.