How NIMBYs increase carbon emissions

A shopkeeper’s son smashes a window, causing a crowd to gather. Its members tell the shopkeeper not to be angry: in fact, the broken window is a reason to celebrate, since it will create work for the glazier. In the story, the crowd envisions the work involved in repairing the window, but not that involved in everything else on which the shopkeeper could have spent his money—unseen possibilities that would have brought him greater happiness. The parable, written by Frédéric Bastiat, a 19th-century economist, sought to draw attention to a common form of argument, which has come to be known as the broken-window fallacy.

If the window were to be broken today, the crowd might have a different reaction, especially if they were nimbys who oppose local construction. Their concern might be with the “embodied carbon” the shopkeeper’s son had released when breaking the window. The production of a pane of glass can require temperatures of more than 1,000°C. If the furnace is fuelled by, say, coal, the replacement window would carry a sizeable carbon cost. Similarly, the bricks, concrete and glass in a building are relics of past emissions. They are, the logic goes, lumps of embodied carbon.