Double diversion

The double diversion is two-part theory about environmental harm that was developed by William Freudenburg and colleagues beginning in the 1990s, and focusing on 'disproportionality' and 'distraction.' The concept of disproportionality involves the observation that, rather than being a reflection of overall levels of economic activity, the majority of environmental destruction is actually due to a relatively small number of economic actors, which enjoy privileged access to natural resources, “diverting” those resources for the private benefit of the few. Freudenburg's original work on this concept was carried out in conjunction with his colleague from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Peter Nowak. The reference to the 'double' diversion reflects the argument that this first diversion is made possible in large part by the second—the diversion of attention, or distraction, often ironically relying on the widespread but empirically inaccurate belief that environmental harm is economically beneficial to the population as a whole. The double diversion is two-part theory about environmental harm that was developed by William Freudenburg and colleagues beginning in the 1990s, and focusing on 'disproportionality' and 'distraction.' The concept of disproportionality involves the observation that, rather than being a reflection of overall levels of economic activity, the majority of environmental destruction is actually due to a relatively small number of economic actors, which enjoy privileged access to natural resources, “diverting” those resources for the private benefit of the few. Freudenburg's original work on this concept was carried out in conjunction with his colleague from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Peter Nowak. The reference to the 'double' diversion reflects the argument that this first diversion is made possible in large part by the second—the diversion of attention, or distraction, often ironically relying on the widespread but empirically inaccurate belief that environmental harm is economically beneficial to the population as a whole. The double diversion differs from previous theories about responsibility for environmental harm, which tend to focus on overall or average levels of environmental harm. The most notable example is Garret Hardin’s 1968 article The Tragedy of the Commons, which focuses on the conflict between individual self-interest and what benefits the society as a whole. Hardin illustrates this concept through an example of herders sharing an open stretch of farmland, which results in each individual developing an incentive to increase his individual number of cows. Hardin argued that as a result, all of the individual herders ignore long-term benefits that result from environmental conservation, resulting in “individual rationality leading to a collective tragedy”. This tendency to focus on overall impacts continued into the 1970s and 1980s with the development of the I = PAT equation by Barry Commoner, Paul R. Ehrlich and John Holdren. The formula states that human impact on the environmental equals the product of population, affluence, and technology, without considering that all individuals do not have equal environmental impacts. This is similarly true in the case of William Catton’s 1980 book Overshoot: the Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, in which Catton emphasizes the argument that all of us have lifestyles that are based upon a time when our carrying capacity exceeded human load. He argues that because we have been unwilling to modify our lifestyles as carrying capacities have been exceeded, subsequent generations are destined to inherit a world of increasing conflict for finite resources Also integral to the individual-emphasis from the writing of this period is the notion of the conflict between economic protection and economic growth. The typical feeling of this period is articulated through O’Connor (1988, 1991), who sees capitalism as relying on prosperity for the legitimization of economic expansion. What occurs as a result, according to O’Connor, is an ever-increasing exploitation of both the environment and workers. According to the double diversion hypothesis, the emphasis on overall or average levels of individual impacts, which many 20th century authors stressed, ultimately missed the importance of the disproportionate impacts that economic outliers can have on the environment. According to Lisa Berry, “For societies where a small fraction of the population consumes many more resources or produces much more pollution than other members, the I = PAT model fails to communicate the vast differences in resource consumption that exist within groups.” Freudenburg (2006) traces this emphasis to the fact that most scientists are trained to focus on statistical means. However, according to the double diversion hypothesis, rather than being discarded, the extreme cases need to be the focus of the debate. When this privileged access is threatened, according to Freudenburg, organized producers use distraction through 'privileged accounts” – the repetition of largely unchallenged stories and beliefs that divert attention away from the unequal patterns of resource use. These privileged accounts ultimately get repeated so often that they ultimately become “embedded” within our language and thought. If the opposition still refuses to stay silent and challenges them on their inequitable effects on the environment, they engage in a disappearing act, where they do not “respond” as to why their company has the right to profit off public goods, but instead point to the benefits that the populace supposedly receives. As a result, when laws and policies are created, organized interests can expect to receive tangible rewards from the political system, while the remainder of the citizenry can expect to receive mainly symbolic rewards in the form of rhetoric.