Center for Social Innovation

Not so fast, dear Prius-driving, Fair-Trade-coffee-drinking, organic-produce-eating, hemp-wearing, solar-energy-using, wind-up-radio-listening SSIR reader! Green products may not save the world after all, shows Matthew J. Kotchen, an assistant professor in the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Indeed, if green products crowd out money that used to go to environmental nonprofits, they may actually make the environment worse, he writes.

Kotchen presents his findings in the August 2006 issue of the Journal of Political Economy. Like many theoretical economists, he bases his findings on mathematical models, rather than on observations of people’s behavior. Starting from the fact that green products usually cost more than conventional products, Kotchen’s model suggests ... Read more