Well, instead of fuel taxes, what about the Federal government requiring manufacturers to make cars and trucks more fuel efficient?? OH! Never mind! That was the purpose of Obama's program that Trump has worked diligently to destroy. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2012/08/28/obama-administration-finalizes-historic-545-mpg-fuel-efficiency-standard
Obama had the big 3 geared up for 54.5 mpg vehicles by 2025, saving $1.7 trillion at the gas pump. This was very good for the yellow-vest class AND the environment. It was not so good for Exxon & the Kochs who pressed Trump hard for roll backs.
Anyone who has any doubt where we are headed under Trump can choose between the videos of families escaping the Camp fire or videos of Houston during Harvey. Take your pick.
1
It's hypocrisy as practiced by many uber- consuming jet-setting rich people who can afford to be energy gluttons.
Do as I say not as I do anyone? That's how the global wealthy often operate.
8
Macron asks poor farmers and old people living on small fixed incomes to pay more taxes.
100 companies produce 71% of the world's global emissions. What are their investors paying? In many cases dividends from these companies are taxed at much lower rates than ordinary income. So those people who can afford to live off their dividend payments pay taxes at a lower rate than those who work.
Plus ca change...
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change
2
More affluent environmentalists need to recognize that that their relative economic advantages are a direct result of a global economy that incentivizes concentrated manufacturing operations in usually poor, third world countries that can not afford environmental regulations. This is something that environmental and economic scientists need to evaluate - the environmental effects effects of global capitalism since 1975. The global economy provides great economic benefit to the more affluent in society while the lower orders suffer for it. The arrogance of the wealthy liberal, embodied by Macron, is disgusting. That’s what the Yellow Vests are all about. It’s backlash, and it’s happening in one way or another everywhere. There’s revolution in the air.
3
Whether or not people care about climate change is interesting but not important. Climate change and several other environmental challenges are profound and our global civilization has to do something about it if we want a sustainable and desirable future. Just because the masses do not want something does not mean that the masses do not need it. We need leadership on these issues and sadly we are not getting it. Leaders need to ‘frame’ the case, hone their rhetorical skills, and get the masses on board to do something they may not understand yet. Imagine being on an airliner in which the fuel tank is leaking, one engine is on fire, and the landing gear is stuck. Do you want the pilots to come out and ask the passengers what to do? No. You want experts to fly the plane. We need to trust scientists and increasingly dismiss the ideas of most economists when it comes to facing the environmental challenges. Our environmental situation is serious and having focus groups with the public will not produce solutions.
3
@Paul Sutton - if only the likes of Trump, May, Macron and Merkel were the "pilots" you refer to. But our "leaders" are less concerned with landing the plane safely than taking care of the moneyed interests that support them in power.
What you advocate is a true technocracy, leadership by rulers (in this case science minded) whose own lack of personal ambition enables them to rule in the best interest of society. I've heard the same argument for Monarchism. When the King is selected at birth and raised with all any man can ever hope for, he can set aside personal ambition, and having been trained from youth in all the arts and sciences of leadership, can lead his country in its best interest.
Unfortunately it never seems to work out that way.
This is why I believe the only way out of this mess is through the education of the general public, who then use democratic means to bring about the necessary social changes.
But time is running out.
2
Inequality, not opposition or indifference to environmental concerns, is indeed at the center of the Yellow Vest protest, how could it not be? Mr. Macron has implemented a fully regressive tax policy. He has cut the wealth tax on everything except real estate by 70% and reduced the capital gains tax to 30% while raising fuel taxes and proposing cuts in housing subsidies to poor families. Yet he remains seemingly oblivious, even dismissive at times, to the real suffering and sense of injustice that his policies engender. He has dutifully earned the moniker "President of the Rich".
4
I'm an American, writing to you from where I live about half the time, in rural France.
This is what I hear around me, both from supporters of the Gilets Jaunes and those who don't agree with their protest tactics but often share similar views.
France is struggling to balance its budget per EU requirements. Macron represents the elite. He is, after all, a banker. He wants to reduce government spending (social support programs) and increase tax revenues overall while reducing the tax burden on the wealthiest (the so-called "job creators" and incidentally, his friends).
Environmental "concerns" are only a cover for the increased tax on gasoline and he is fooling nobody. His action is not really part of a global warming policy. It is part of a policy of reducing government social support. He is attempting to extend the work week, increase the retirement age, reduce pension obligations, etc.
With the gasoline tax he is attempting to increase government revenues on the backs of those who can least afford it.
The people of rural France are strongly concerned about the environment and committed to helping the country achieve its CO2 reduction targets. But what they see with Macron's actions, (and the gas tax is just the straw that broke the camel's back) is a government determined to push the costs of CO2 reduction onto the backs of the powerless in society, and away from the elite.
7
It really won't matter who's rich or not. In the end, we will all solve this problem or we won't and the world will be a different place. I do believe the rich, if they do believe in global warming, has faux environmental beliefs. How can you believe in global warming if you l live in large mansions, private jets, expensive, gas guzzling cars, yachts, etc. Per person the Uber rich produce more green house gas than anyone.
5
This piece beautifully illustrates the reality of the intense --and real -- struggles occurring in conservation/environmentalism. I have lived in Montana for almost 20 years, after growing up in New York City, and believe you me, folks "out here" could not be more different than the folks I grew up with in the East. Rural folks, especially in states like Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, are for the most part sharply divided into wealthy second home owners/retirees and those whose families have lived here for generations (or millenia, in the case of our Native communities, or "reservations"). When you find yourself comparing prices on a carton of milk at Walmart to make ends meet, it's a Maslow-ian reality that that milk shopper probably will not be worrying too much about mining in the mountains down from their town. In fact, if good-paying jobs could be had as a result of mining, the milk shopper will probably support it.
Macron blew it, indeed, by just annoucing it instead of gaining some back door, grassroots support. Careful messaging is critical.
But at the end of the day, the growing divide between the haves and the have nots is a serious problem that effects not only how we, as a society, consider options to preserve a healthy Earth, but many other issues as well.
5
While the author does mention that while people will support environmentalism when a worsening natural environment is present, he doesn't differentiate between acute degradation and world-wide climate change. Once again a reaffirmation that getting people to act globally is a much different thing than acting locally. We might vote with our dollars to keep our water and air clean, locally, reducing our emissions for the global benefit is a much more elusive and intangible thing.
4
As long as Machiavellian oil, gas and coal interests keep pushing the right hot buttons (and bribing politicians) to steer public opinion their way, there is no hope for the kind of environmental movement that this country saw in the 70s, which would be needed to change public opinion and get people to do the right thing. People nowadays have very little connection to the world around them beyond their favorite shows, their favorite apps, and their favorite (gas) car. I see people leave their car running for 20 minutes just so it's not cold when they get back into it. They could catch their death of cold if the interior temperature is less than 75! With that mindset (which nobody even blinks an eye at), we are doomed to see much higher environmental fallout in the decades ahead.
2
Too many words used in the article when 2 "self-interest" suffice.
1. "publics of poorer countries facing imminent resource loss from environmental destruction often hold the strongest pro-environment attitudes" is fully & precisely explained by self-interest. Fiji supports it only because their island would go under. If it was someone else's island, they would care not a whit.
2. The elite-left in the Western world & US care only because it allows them to virtue signal and moralize the rest of us - with no downside to their lifestyles. Put a restriction on big mansions or air-travel (Zucks & Gates etc) and see how they react - no less crazily than the coal-miners.
7
The world has largely shifted away from representative government in favor of rule by corporate oligarchs...the new nobility. With this dramatic shift of power and wealth, the average person's well being is dependent on goodness of these nobles, many of whom are simply not good, or who's interests are embedded with the fossil fuel industry or other such polluting endeavors. The nobility are those who throttle new environmental legislation or, as is the case in the US, repeal older environmental laws that were, in fact, working.
3
Environmentalism is for any person who lives on planet Earth and is an Earthling. Oh, wait, that's everyone. Silly us!!!
16
@RCJCHC Yes that is everybody, so why is it that tax payers have to pay to fix it? What about the industries that have made ridiculously mega trillions causing the climate change in the first place, in producing things like ALL of the plastic choking this planet's oceans, pay to fix what they have profited from.
5
Sorry, but rich people are the problem for the planet. Who drives the most cars, has the biggest houses, buys imported everything? Makes the most garbage? Takes the flights around the world? Whenever the economy is bad I’m happy...the less rich, the better.
5
@Julia Longpre - everything has scale. For the scale of income among the car owning public, the overwhelming bulk of the pollution from operating the car is due to those owned by the poorest, the ones who can't afford the tuneup, the best new car, and (until the used market ages more) the EVs. A big, wasteful, new SUV is very possibly cleaner and gets better mileage than the 18-year-old Grand Prix someone's barely keeping running.
The big new houses, while very wasteful in material, just as big new SUVs are wasteful in resource use, are, again, often more efficient than the houses the poor live in.
Consumerism is a huge problem, but when the economy is bad, the consumerism tries to continue itself, though it pollutes more, since maintenance and upkeep are expensive things.
And please remember that when the economy is bad, yes, global consumption drops, even CO2 emissions can drop, but it's still the poor who suffer most during those times, like during the good times.
What we need is smarter wealth. And smarter policies. It was pointed out that air quality in cities could be improved cheaply by simply identifying the 10% of dirtiest vehicles on the road, and giving the owner a replacement. Sensible, beneficial plan, but not one that most people liked to hear.
1
OK...what of your children. They deserve a future.
1
The good professor cites a ton of research yet misses the most important point. Environmental policies done right offer major economic opportunities for those of us who work for a living. Solar installation for example is one of the fastest growing employment opportunities and solar is the fastest growing industry in several states. Antipathy towards environmental policy & regulation among the working class is solely a function of demagoguery primarily by republicans paid for by the oil industry, land developers etc. Better federal policies around the environment could provide much more economic opportunity—e.g. storm water management. Get your nose out of the academics and advocate for policies that benefit people & the planet.
5
My questions concern, rather than environmentalism yes or no, but what caused the climate problems in the first place. Yes, over population & over use of resources but since the Industrial Revolution, it has been how industry has been conducted. There have been advantages for most in that there is employment & a higher standard of living & knowledge. But as far as The Money is concerned, it has gone to & continues to go to, a very select few. Now that all of this has caused Climate Change in a largely democratic world, the voters who do not benefit from "the spoils" are basically saying to the beneficiaries, "You made the money. You fix it".
1
Since the author is addressing the situation in France, he should have noted that France compared with other developed nations is farther is much more environmental than other developed nations including next door Germany.
75% of French electricity is generated by nuclear power. If other developed nations generated the same proportion of electric power from nuclear power there would be a significantly diminished carbon footprint.
France also has high speed rail (TGV) that speeds trains at 300 km miles miles per hour (185 miles per hour).
Putting in French high-speed in the northeast corridor and between other nearby major cities also is not for rich people.
Neither would an effective subway system in Los Angeles and other major US cities without subways as high speed mass transit that are faster than using automobiles during traffic times.
President Trump is advocating a green policy of retaining existing nuclear power plants (NPPs) while NYS Gov Cuomo wants to shut down Indian Point NPP and California has recently shut down one NPP and plans to shut down their last NPP in the next few years.
Following France's example of 75% electric from nuclear power and using electric high speed rail would substantially reduce the carbon footprint while not adversely affecting the poor.
4
@David MD,
Yes, great idea David. So how exactly are you going to pay to build the hundreds of nuclear plants? Taxpayer funding for a Socialist system, like what France did?
There is nothing preventing anyone from building nuclear plants, except for the fact that they are a terrible investment when coal and natural gas units are way cheaper, and wind and solar are coming in at even lower cost than that in many cases.
What we need is an *actual* free market in electricity, where any generators (including people with rooftop solar) can sell to any consumers. But a real free market cannot have externalities like pollution; that has to be paid for by the users.
4
@arty
It is not possible for solar and wind to provide the green electric energy developed nations need.
Solar and wind receive taxpayer subsidies that should also apply to nuclear power.
Moreover, air pollution of burning coal and gas should including the hight healthcare costs should be paid for by users.
We also need to put in real high speed rail and subway systems were needed in order to reduce the use gasoline.
@David MD,
Surely you are aware that the government subsidizes both nuclear and fossil fuels already, and has been doing it since the technology began-- that's how they developed to where they are now.
But instead of just asserting that renewables "can't" provide enough electricity, why don't we let the market decide? Restrict the utilities to the task of delivering the energy and arranging for people to buy and sell as they wish. There are versions of this already in place in the US and elsewhere; it can be just like Amazon or Ebay and UPS work.
If the externalities of fossil fuels are internalized, by some kind of tax, then people can buy the brand of electricity that best suits them. If wind and solar "can't" provide what people want, then nuclear plants will be built by private investment.
I don't see why anyone, right or left, should object to this.
3
On an annual basis my energy company writes me a letter and asks if I would like more of my energy to come from Wind, In this letter they tell me that if I select more Wind energy in my power mix, it will increase the cost of my energy bill.
Naturally I tell them I do not want more wind power included in my energy bill. If "green energy" is so wonderful, why is it so expensive? Sorry folks I want my energy bill to be as low as possible, so I reject any "green energy" additions to my current energy -- I view "green energy" and its concomitant price increase as a toy for environmentalists and the wealthy.
2
@judyweller,
Judy, depending on where you live, you pay "more" to get rid of your bodily waste products-- because your waste products would affect other people's drinking water and health if untreated.
It would cost you less if, instead of paying taxes for a sewer system, or paying to maintain a septic field, your toilet flushed directly into a nearby stream or river.
The point being that a free market system only works correctly if what we call "externalities" are eliminated; you don't get to have other people pay the cost of the things that benefit you.
The coal plant giving you "cheap" electricity produces both short term and long term pollution, that has negative effects on people both locally and globally.
2
@judyweller - I just looked in Maryland and there are 100% renewable plans offered for as low as 7 cents per kilowatt hour (rate for the electricity, not full cost including power delivery by your utility). This site lists a variety of electricity providers and includes offers including 25%, 50%, 100% renewables.
http://www.opc.state.md.us/ConsumerCorner/RetailSuppliers.aspx
Just take a look - and keep away from the offers that quote a price for the first month only. It might not cost as much as you think.
I pay a little bit more to buy from renewables, but I also signed up with my utility for their demand reduction program. During summer when demand is going to be high, I get a text asking if I'll reduce my use during a block of hours the next day. I do, and I get a money credit added to my bill, saving me money.
3
It didn't occur to me until now: the $7,500 EV tax credit is welfare for the rich.
Those that spend $46,000 for a base model 3 Tesla, $37,000 for a Chevy Bolt, or $30,000 for a Nissan Leaf aren't the working poor.
My friend just stretched his budget to upgrade his 2001 Chevy Malibu to a 2010 Honda Civic for $3,000. That car is his life-line to his job 8 miles away from home.
7
@Tom Stoltz,
Tom, and others who have made similar comments. Electric cars have a much, much, lower maintenance cost, much, much, lower fuel costs, and a much, much longer life expectancy, than ICE vehicles.
So, down the road (heh), if we vastly increased sales of new EV, poor people would be better off because they could get used cars without being ripped off for the inevitable transmission rebuild, and head-gasket replacement, and passing emissions tests, and on and on.
I keep seeing comments from people who have bought used Leafs for 10K; the batteries hold a bit less charge, perhaps, but it would work just fine for your friend, and perhaps end up being cheaper over the next years.
What we would need from the government would be a subsidy for such individuals to offset the initial cost, perhaps as a loan to be payed back with the money saved in gas and maintenance.
4
@Tom Stoltz - people buying $30,000 cars aren't "the rich", any more than the working poor buy new cars. My worst car ever was a B210 that I bought, very used, and depended on for work back when I was working poor and going to school to stop the "poor" part.
It's a shame there isn't workable transit for where he lives - 8 miles is a short trip to have to need a car for, but with the Koch's funding pressure groups to fight against transit, many like your friend have the tough choice of having to get a car.
Arty points out benefits of electric cars. With the EV credit spurring market growth, two things will be accomplished that will both end up helping the working poor who need their own vehicle:
1 - better, cheaper batteries year after year, lowering the purchase price of new and used vehicles.
2 - more and more used EVs and hybrids, so eventually everyone forced to own a car won't also be forced to pay for gas, oil changes, emissions controls, complex engine/transmission repairs.....
2
The poor have been practicing environmentalism since before it was a thing. Poor people don't purchase as many things as the wealthy, they turn off lights after leaving a room, they've been reusing bags, mason jars, etc. since they creation of such things. Also, people that make little money don't take vacations in various parts of the world or even too many locally. If you look at the foot print of a poor person versus a rich "environmentalist," the carbon foot print of the latter is likely to be much higher. The real polluters are the large (multi-national) companies, not the poor. You need a reality check Neil Gross and I suggest you befriend some low-income folks. The rich created this environmental problem which is negatively affecting the poor. The reason for the uprise is due to 1) the rich taxing the poor for what the rich began and 2) the rich themselves not being taxed enough and not doing enough for the environment.
6
Environmentalism is a concern of consumers (including, ahem, "postmaterial" consumers).
Cost of living is concern of producers (ie, working class people, who make all that stuff for the postmaterialists).
Trump Brexit, and Yellow Vests have one thing in common: working class people saying "enough" to the postdemocratic "liberal" clerisy.
3
When one considers that half the planet's human population lives in poverty, the premise that environmentalism is a only a concern of the well off is pretty sound and brings to mind psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Although intended as a model for indidividual assessment on the path to self actualization, Maslow's model can apply to social groups also. Taking effective action on a global scale on things like environmentalism, world peace, famine will not happen without a critical mass of the planet living at a sufficient socio-economic level to attend to such things. Wealth offers the freedom, if not the actual responsibility, to give attention to issues bigger than oneself. Conversely, if one's primary concerns are food, shelter and water for yourself and your loved ones, there really isn't anything left over for contributing to the common good. Of course, the corporations and the rich could up their games even more to make up the difference, but like poverty, avarice has its global social consequences too.
3
“Messaging” is not what’s needed; it’s education about facts. “Messaging” is a candidate leading a chant of “build that wall,” and is useless and degrading to those who don’t grasp that their world is much broader and more complex than such drivel. In this country, education – about anything – has been dumbed down and distilled into “messaging” to suit the ambitions of political carnival barkers and their benefactors who prosper personally by suppressing the needs of others. People lacking real education don’t understand why immigrants are vital to the nation, and they don’t understand why they should care about the destruction of the planet. Taxes are needed from the one percent; the 99 percent is already bleeding heavily into government coffers, without receiving much in return. And tax money allocation needs to be reformed to serve the people – who are affected whether they realize it or not, by the state of the environment, access to health care, education, employment, etc. The “messaging” we are currently bombarded with is, essentially, “let them eat cake.”
3
Any flat tax, like all consumption taxes, are regressive taxes in that they hit the poor much harder. Rather than tax a commodity, government should instead provide incentives such as tax rebates or investments in alternative fuel sources.
2
@Nima - those rebates and investments wouldn't help the poor who are forced to continue paying for gas (fluctuating market price and all).
There are emissions tax plans that would take what's collected and return it to consumers. That would help those who still needed gasoline to pay the increase in pump price, and it would reward people who increase their efficiency - buying a hybrid or electric would mean they'd get to keep more of the carbon tax money that's returned to them.
https://www.carbontax.org/what-to-do-with-the-carbon-tax-revenue/
Rebates and R&D are both important and useful, but the big thing we need to do as a society is to make sure the true cost of things we use is reflected when consumers are spending their money. Alternatives to fossil fuel exist today.
People will have less incentive to change when they're already paying the extra price, but as taxes for other reasons, and as premiums on healthcare.
Industry is where the profits stay as long as they're allowed to push the cost from the pollution, the climate impact, the impact on acidifying oceans and, let's face it, the cost in lives and money we've put into military effort in the Middle East, onto the public as hidden costs.
So a tax, but one that puts funds collected directly back in consumer's hands, is necessary.
1
The this of this article while well intended is wrong. Everyone is an environmentalist. Some just don't realize it yet. Think I am wrong? Try breathing without air. Try drinking non potable water. Try shoving money in your mouth instead of food.
3
Yes environmentalism is for rich people.
4
@Peter B - and suffering from the impacts of pollution from fuels like the Alberta Tar Sands is for poor people. We need to stop that.
1
Among the many stupid blunders that HRC on the road to defeat made was her quest to end coal Yes coal pollutes but the miners need jobs and we need cheap energy Would the elites accept work for clean coal or a gradual transition to clean energy?
1
@GDK - the platform she ran on included lots of money for retraining miners into other jobs. That they voted against their own best interests is one of the tragedies of 2016. Coal jobs in Appalachia peaked in the 1980s and continued to drop since then. Much of the coal is gone, the owners went to mountaintop blasting and/or increased automation to push as many men as possible off the payrolls. Then most of them declared bankruptcy and welshed on pension and health plans to former workers. Black lung's up, but coal isn't coming back.
Coal plants are not cheap - natural gas and renewables are killing them, because natural gas and renewables are cheaper. Fighting to preserve coal preserves expensive power. And leaves more toxic ash ponds to deal with over time. Not to mention all the dead streams and stripped mountaintops now making life worse in Appalachia.
Note, too, that the oil price collapse a few years ago put a lot of drillers and others out of work, and their industry got more automated, too, so fracking's up, but jobs declined. Plenty of work in renewables, it's growing.
But a question for you - how much money is being invested, to preserve their own industry, by the coal and oil interests to make carbon capture and sequestration work? Seems they keep pulling out of those projects, like the corporate leadership doesn't really care as long as they have their personal income protected.
1
Why even bother reading beyond such an absurd headline? There are plenty of committed environmental activists in poor and middle class communities. Just keep dividing people....
1
Cut taxes, reduce environmental regulations, improve economic conditions for working people, bring back good jobs for the non-college educated. Do you think the French people, who are sick and tired of smug big city elites looking down at them won’t look here and see that Trump has done these things? Don’t rule out a LePen led government next election
4
Although the wealthy may be willing to support an increase of taxes in support of the environment, they still use fossil fuels and discard garbage at a much higher rate than the rest of us.
5
I have a modest proposal. Stop calling it "environmentalism", a word coined in the 70s whose actually meaning is vague and call it "air and water quality". Cosmopolitan elites, rural farmers, and the wealthy donor class all understand they and they're children need clean air and water to live.#, Environmentalism sounds like something that high minded people want to do with someone else's money. Clean air and water is a life and death issue for everyone that breaths air.
6
If soft drink or beer/wine makers charged people a nickel for their cans or bottles, and paid consumers a nickel to return the cans/bottles, we could get rid of a lot of the waste that pollutes our streets, highways and waterways. Environmentally conscious consumers would return a lot of them, and less affluent people would return the rest.
Nest problem? Coal emissions. Solution? Elect Democrats.
1
I am all for higher taxes to help the environment , but i know politicians and those taxes wont be going to help the environment
2
Inglehart was almost right. It isn’t poverty that keeps people from environmentalism. It’s stress. Whether the stress is because you’re poor and struggling to make ends meet; or something else (Health problems for example), matters little. When people are overwhelmed in life their concern for the environment is put on the back burner. It’s simple.
.
We Americans are prosperous. But increasingly we take an every-man-for-himself attitude. Work hard and if you fail, work harder. If you still fail it’s on you and you alone. For most of us there isn’t time to worry about the environment. And if you can claim otherwise: I envy you. You truly are privileged.
4
Um, I bet if you paid working class people a great wage to work in a company that developed environmentally sound energy resources, they'd be environmentalists.
3
Until rich Dems start caring as much about the economic plight of poor miners and other lower-class whites adversely impacted by environmental laws and fighting climate change as they do about "saving the planet," our politics will remain just as divided as they are now. The truth is that fighting for the environment is a cost-free luxury for all the rich not directly impacted by the energy industry, whereas lower-class workers in that industry can have they jobs, their towns, and their families wiped out by the war for the environment That's why Trump was and is so wildly popular in Coal Country and the Rust Belt. We need to approach these issues with the empathy for the workers of a Bernie Sanders, instead of with the hauteur of a woman as insulated by her hundreds of millions of dollars from Wall St. as the hated Hillary was and is. We need a politics seeking solidarity between all our lower classes, regardless of race and gender, instead of the grotesque politics of divide the lower classes and conquer in which rich Dems deliberately make the Dems the "black" party and rich Republicans deliberately make their party the "white" party. This is the real "Southern Strategy" practiced by the neoliberal mostly white rich in concert with the almost all white Republicans in the same class. Ground our two parties in race and make the white and black lower orders dislike each other as much as possible, in order to keep them all from focusing on their oligarchic existential enemies.
3
We know the climate apocalypse prophecies is just politics because the one best solution is an all out effort to build nuclear, yet no politician or climate change "environmentalist" supports that.
6
@jaco - well, no.
First off, James Hansen, the guy who warned Congress in 1988 about global warming beginning to hit us? He's all-in for nuclear. It's disappointing because the group he's allied himself with appears to prefer attacking renewables rather than promoting a price on carbon in order to make nuclear appear cost-effective.
Texas produces more electricity than any other state (twice as much as #2 FLA)
https://www.eia.gov/state/rankings/#/series/51
Yet, in less than twenty years, they've gotten to nearly 20% of generation total from wind and solar, mostly wind.
Multiple states now produce more than 30% of their electricity from wind generation. Iowa's at 37%, up from 1% in 2000. Solar, wind and storage can scale quickly and prices keep dropping.
So saying "one best solution" is meaningless, since there's no single best thing to do.
Especially if saying the "best" solution is one where we currently have zero skills in rapid construction of nuclear plants (ask Georgia and South Carolina), and where the "new nuclear" has ZERO track record, is not a serious approach.
I'm not hating nuclear, I'm glad here in Illinois, a very nuclear state, that they worked a deal to keep uneconomical nuclear plants open, but I'd have preferred a carbon price as the mechanism, since that replaces "one best" with lots of different solutions, all at the same time. We need that.
And we need long-term solution for radioactive waste, especially if you want more of it created.
1
"Caught off guard by the intensity and popularity of the protests"
Well, yeah, sure -- since they don't give a rip about the concerns of those protesting. After all, the elites in Paris always know best.
3
Ideology and culture wars aside as reading to oppose environmentalism, people without employment alternatives have always tolerated health and safety risks to make a living. It's no surprise Fiji joined the Paris Accord without hesitation, its people have no trade-offs to weigh against action. I suspect it's not wealth or poverty that determines one's relationship to environmentalism, but one's economic options if environmental action requires the loss of one's livelihood. Much opposition to environmental action would probably evaporate with a job offer.
1
We're already facing opposition to ecological measures from fossil fuel companies and the GOP. The United States can't address global warming or transition to a greener future if political will is sapped when economic pain triggers grass-roots protests like the ones roiling France. Carbon tax revenues should be used to offset the rising costs of fuel and new hybrid and electric vehicles for people who are less able to afford them. Such revenues must also be devoted to creating a cleaner infrastructure, including wind and solar plants, vehicle charging stations, and battery research and development. But if conservatives or poor people think that environmentalism is just a luxury for educated elites, they will be paying the cost or suffering the most from that misapprehension.
1
There is an immediate need for everyone to contribute in this regard. One doesn’t need school education to know about the ill affects of pollution and global warming. Only common sense is needed.
I have chosen not to have a vehicle at all for the past two decades. My son is implementing the same for more than a decade. Individual and collective responsibility is the need of the hour.
In countries like America wherever there is public transportation, people can easily afford to go without vehicles. Small steps like using energy efficient bulbs in homes and offices, reducing the usage of air conditioners to the extent possible in homes and offices , making best use of public transportation go a long way in helping the reduction of carbon footprint in addition to whatever measures the state and federal governments implement in this regard.
1
Some Americans went to college when they first left home. Others went into the military and fought a war (and we have always been at war in recent history.)
Two very different life changing experiences. One to learn and think, the other to submit and fight. One to gain a decent income the other to struggle in an unequal nation.
Americans don't work together. Rather they each others worst competition. With a weak safety net compared to other countries, it becomes everyone out for themselves.
You can wave the flag and root for your team, but in the end, your team does not know you. Bye bye.
Statistics show the ones that went into the military are likely doing better than the ones that went to college, particularly better than the 60% that never graduated. Maybe they went off to think, but most did not learn very much. Bye bye.
2
A recent article in "The Nation" noted the birth of the modern environmental movement coincided w/ the birth of the eugenics movement.
For its founder, eugenics included protecting endangered plants, animals, landscapes--and the "superior Nordic male." Zero population growth had the idea that Nordic Europeans were genetically and biologically superior to Southern Europeans and Middle Easterners.
The article emphasizes that as revolting as eugenics is today, there is no question that its founders and followers sincerely loved the environment.
The article also noted that increased climate change will affect the poorest of the earth--in the Southern hemisphere--resulting in mass migrations, and possibly wars. It predicted that today's millennials, who care greatly about the planet, may face difficult choices when the US becomes more affected, and their progressive ideas on immigration today may change.
1
This column and many articles on this subject miss an important point. The price of gasoline in France right now is €1.54 per liter or about $6.60 per gallon. The price of gas right now without taxes is around $2.00 per gallon. In France there is a ~20% VAT so gas, without specific petrol taxes, would be about $2.40 per gallon. This means the tax on gas is over $4.00 per gallon which corresponds to a carbon tax of over $400 per ton. This is an extremely large tax on carbon -- far larger than numbers one typically hears environmentalists in the US propose. Given that France gets nearly all of its electricity from nuclear power, if the French government really wants to further reduce the carbon input from driving, it might be better advised to strongly support electric vehicles.
2
I wondered when someone would bring this up-clearly there are times when short term needs are so great that longer term goals are put off. I think of the stories of the poor fishermen in the Bahamas who pour bleach over the reefs to bring up the fish. I am furious about it, but then I imagine the pressures of poverty. We need to bridge the gap between short term needs and long term needs. The future of our world, the green future of our world concerns us all, regardless of class, finance or education.
Read Michael Crichton's State of Fear. Conclusions can be debated (the point) but the characterizations and media portrayal is right on the mark. Very timely for a 15 year old book.
1
Articles like this feed the destructive narrative that world-wide environmental collapse is the price we must pay for prosperity and that environmentalism is a sort of hobby for people of means. Who is really asking the poor (both rural and urban) to sacrifice? It's not the Sierra Club. Those who lack any engagement with the dispossessed are those who drive the destruction of our biosphere. Take just one example: The oil and gas industry forces residents of Indian reservations, who are desperate for jobs, to put up with land and water contamination (and now wants to prevent them from voting). For too long, large companies and their stockholders have given us a false choice: good pay or a clean environment. And we've fallen for it. We keep subsidizing the fossil fuels industry (and big ag and other wasteful players in our economy) and giving them a free pass to destroy our world. In return, they give some of us (if we're lucky) good-paying jobs and the rest of us the shaft. Environmentalism could do better. Yes, I agree. But it seems disingenuous at best to blame the child standing out in front of the stampeding herd for not being strong enough or good enough to stop the rampage.
7
This is exactly why the privileged need to create a green economy that helps everyone.
If we wait until most people are unsheltered and hungry from climate change, there will be no one left who can think beyond surviving for the day.
Postponing the problem of sustainability will guarantee that the only economy on Earth is a dog-eat-dog Mad Max economy.
3
Unfortunately today's "environmentalism" has been reduced almost solely to "climate change" (even in this article) and many environmental groups have completely abandoned the core issue of population growth. Not to mention open space; support for zoning; ecosystem & habitat protections, etc. We are living through, as EO Wilson has described, the 6th Great Extinction and most of this can be attributed to the insane footprint of nearly 8 billion humans globally, expected to soon grow to 9 billion; then 10 billion; then 11 billion+, before maybe, maybe, leveling off.
And yet, in Vermont, so-called "environmental" groups have repeatedly done the bidding of real estate developers and industrial energy developers who want fast-tracked status for all their projects and exemptions from everything. So a 40 year bipartisan commitment to protect the ridge lines was thrown overboard under one-party, Democratic majority control at demand of out-of-state multinational wind development corporations & for others. "Environmentalists" supported filling in streams for access roads; industrial solar development in land zoned for natural resources protections, including Act 250 protected wetlands and headwaters, etc.
Nationally, Sierra Club abandoned population growth at demand of hedge fund donors like David Gelbam. So, yes, doing the bidding of whatever donors and developers want suggests unfortunately environmentalism solely for rich people (especially "green-washing").
4
The yellow vest comment I remember stated, "You are asking me to think ahead to 2040,, I am struggling (financially) to think ahead to next Sunday."
A friend, in searching for affordable housing, needed to move 50 miles out of town to find it. Up here in Canada, with heavy taxes on it, gas costs $1.40 a litre, maybe $5.00 (US) per your gallon. So, his Catch 22, he can afford where he lives, but can't afford the daily $30.00 gas bill to commute to work.
6
I wasn't first enlightened to the field of environmental economics back in the early 80's at Colby! And have been trying to understand the psychology of people's attitudes since. I can't comment on other cultures, but what I've observed is that, foremost, people don't like to think their lifestyles, or those they aspire to, have negative connotations. Recycling doesn't impact a person's lifestyle. Living in a more efficient, read as "smaller", house or driving a fuel efficient car is not part of the typical American dream. It's difficult to sell people on these concepts.
What changes attitudes is the realization that the danger is imminent. People who suffer through hurricanes, wildfires ...
I think the recent US report forecasting climate change could decrease the size of the US economy should be a wake up call for everyone.
3
Giving out solar cookers would be cheaper, faster and safer.
Some of these places don't have the infrastructure to properly maintain a nuclear power plant and store the radioactive waste forever.
There are some groups giving out solar cookers in Africa.
I can confirm that they work. I have even cooked pizza in mine.
3
The short answer to the headline is yes. People who are rich tend to have immediate and long term needs met. They see the risks. The working class and poor of the world can't see life a few days down the road.
Bottom line is any taxes, fees, changes will be more burdensome on those without means.
Governments will not solve climate change. They can't, just like no government has solved poverty. Entrepreneurs will make billions of dollars, perhaps trillions mitigating, not preventing climate change. I'm investing in this.
3
I have been an environmentalist for decades and I am not wealthy nor am I being directly affected by climate change except for higher bills for air conditioning in the summer even though I keep the thermostat at 78. I received the scientific facts and thus I believe them. I see news every day of worldwide effects in the multitudes of climate migrants from Africa and other continents. In my humble opinion, the carbon tax should be a fine paid by fossil fuel producers and should motivate them to replace existing technologies with wind farms, solar etc. The individual consumer does not have the ability to replace fossil fuels with alternative energies. Industry and government must partner to make these changes happen nationwide and worldwide. Thus, the carbon tax is completely misplaced.
Uh there's a much more obvious explanation here. Which is that lots of people espouse one set of views in the abstract, and a different set when it is their bottom line being impacted.
Everybody is "for the environment," but a lot of people suddenly decide that actually, this particular thing that impacts them isn't such a good idea after all...
2
The bitterness of many of these comments is amazing. OK, OK. I accept that my life as an educated and retired professional with retirement savings makes my life easier than many of those commenting. But how does that excuse them from being environmentalists? Global warming will affect us all whether we live in Berkeley or Boise or Baton Rouge. The laws of physics affecting the biosphere don't discriminate on the basis of education or class. Don't any of these people have children or grandchildren whose livelihoods and whose lives, literally, will be impacted by the climate changes coming down upon us?
4
If the world had fewer people, all of us could still consume more and the aggregate impact on the planet would be less.
That's why population growth is a huge problem. We have surpassed sustainable population and consumption growth levels and are living on borrowed time.
9
I am one of those. A liberal progressive who still picks up their groceries in plastic bags and works for an industry that exudes cardboard and plastic wrapping materials.
And everytime I do the above, I think of the billions on this earth who don't have indoor plumbing. I believe that the number is about half the earths population.
I do rather think that the argument might be specious.
1
"Is environmentalism a boutique issue, a cause only the well-off can afford to worry about?"
You mean hypocrites with 5000 sq ft homes jetting around in their private jets telling the plebeians that they must reduce their standard of living to 'Save Mother Earth"?
6
A gas tax is a regressive tax. It does't take into account ones needs or way a life.
Liberal elites may be able to afford a gas tax and they may agree to it. It doesn't mean that less affluent and rural people don't care about the environment but they sure as heck resent the elites telling them they are going to have to pay for something they can not afford while the elitist are living a life they don't have access to.
4
Isn't this kind of obvious? Electric and hybrid cars are expensive. Rural and suburban people depend on cars. Refitting one's home to run on solar costs money. Only the young and fit can bicycle to work and that's only if they live in a city.
5
The wealthy tend to have higher carbon footprints. It might do us and the planet some good to have a carbon tax. As for Americans being well educated, I would love to see the statistics on that. I would bet that many other countries score higher than we do.
2
Taxes on gasoline (which is heavily taxed already in Europe), like all sales taxes, are regressive. There must be an exemption for travel to work for the poor. And what about taxes on luxury air travel, which is much more damaging to the climate and environment? Taxes must be progressive, and the French have always demanded this.
Macron does not think about the poor or the 1% paying their share.
3
N Gross has a good summary of the elitism of "enviros." Reading many of the philosophical rationalizations the e-groups use to wish self-sacrifice upon the rural and poor, you find mostly disdain for anyone who makes a living from the land, or lives in a non-urban setting. When Bruce Babbitt was in ascendence, there were many criticisms of the green movement being a quasi-religious effort. It wasn't, and isn't hard to find comments about the need for e-groups to argue from emotional ideas, not scientific facts. The supposed scientific facts that are employed are chosen carefully to support only the narrow goals of the e-groups. They are not truly universal goals.
2
The solution is justice. Just plain justice. Justice FOR ALL. That means the polluters need to be hammered, the rich taxed bigtime (nobody seems to remember that during America's strongest economic period - for the middle class, anyway - the top marginal tax rates was 92%), fossil fuels phased out as quickly as possible, and the transition to renewables made more palatable with tax cuts and subsidies for those financially struggling. There must be a way for the human family to be Pro People and Pro Planet!
3
Please, no "may be." A different interpretation of the Yellow Vest protest is in fact warranted. Climate policies cannot be isolated from wider questions of inequality and social justice. Macron’s policy didn’t encounter such resistance because it taxed carbon. It failed because it was a regressive policy that hit the poorest hardest while large multinational corporations and the wealthy — who are responsible for the vast share of carbon emissions both historically and currently — were given a pass.
2
Fox News.
The banning of DDT, the Clean Water and Air Acts, the Endangered Species Act, The Migratory Bird Act, a myriad of wetland and wildlife conservation concern, National Parks and Marine reserves.....None of it would have been able to be emplaced if Fox News was around.
The discord and division between rural and urban has been a calculated political operation, no less than gerrymandering or voter suppression, or the Southern Strategy. These are highly sophisticated Psychological Operations, we are finally beginning to learn.
Advertising is a Psy-Op. We shown this eons ago by people like Vance Packard.
----------------------
The concern with global climate change is NOT a run of the mill conservation ethic; it is too large, too consequential, and too complex and uniformly threatening.
This may sound weird but here goes:
You don't get to say your are an "environmentalist, if your only concern is Global Climate change. I suggest unhitching the word environment or environmentalist from our pressing need to instantly react much much more strongly to Anthropogenic Climate Change.
Fox News, truly the demon of our times, has utterly besmirched environmentalists. In Australia and New Zealand too, as its tentacles have in Europe and elsewhere.
You don't have to be an environmentalist to care about Climate change. As strange as this sounds, many people would find ease with this....That's how much damage Fox and these no-good-nick Republicans have done.
5
1] Liberal government systematically privatizes rural transportation services, forcing local people to rely on cars.
2] Government then raises taxes on gasoline. Local people revolt in desperation.
3] Government and smug journalists then explain that "the People" have rejected environmentalism when the people, in fact, have rejected the Government.
The French have an expression for this:
En m'offensant, Monsieur, vous offensez Thalie...
2
When someone is worried about paying bills and feeding their family this week its very easy to put the "environment" on hold for a while. Conversely, its really easy to be concerned with the issues of the environment of the world over a cup of latte at your local Starbucks.
6
Did some back of the envelope calculations.
Assuming 200 gallons of petrol consumed per year and OECD median disposable incomes, French citizens already spend 4.4% of their tax home pay on fuel. Americans spend 1.4%. Perhaps attaching carbon tax to the pump wasn't the best way to raise funds for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Fuel in Europe is notoriously expensive to begin with. Perhaps the Yellow Vests simply hit their breaking point. Tax the energy and power companies instead.
1
@Father of One
... and taxing the energy and power companies isn't going to increase energy prices for the working class?
That is just like saying Trump will make Mexico pay for the wall by raising Tariffs on products imported from Mexico.
2
Next time the the Global Warming industry has a conference, let them meet via video conferencing and set an example for the rest of us. I don't blame the working poor of France for being upset at the outrageous prices they pay for gasoline.
3
The kinds of sacrifices that environmentalists are asking working class people to make, especially in rural areas, are on the scale of the world war 2 total war economy. That requires not just a sense of crisis but also a sense that we are all in this together and that the sacrifices are shared by the elites who are directing them.
In the case of world war 2 that sense was created by the sons of the elite going into ( and dying) in combat, by the industrial leaders serving in Washington for $1 a year, by the surrender of private air travel and private train cars by Hollywood stars—they flew with the cargo flights if they didn’t want to deal with the public.
Where is that now? It is lacking. Instead of leading from the front, they seek to drive us from behind. Wherever free men are driven like slaves, the right response is rebellion. The right response is to burn something.
78
“Recommend” 1000 times.
I read a great theory that for all its ills, nobility and its ability to hand its assets down through generations may have actually been better for society in that families freed from worrying about the fate of their fortunes don’t have to focus on consolidating their hold on it and are often inspired to do more to “atone” for their accidents of birth (i.e. “noblesse oblige”).
Now, the newly rich have no history of extraordinary privilege or guarantee that their wealth will even persist through the next generation. Furthermore, they have been completely cut loose from any sense of social obligation by amoral teachings of places like business schools that teach that the only moral imperative of wealth making is to ensure that the fellow wealth makers and aggregators that are investors receive a profit, at all costs. Society and the Social Contract be damned.
And to make matters worse, the very closed-system nature of this situation primes these newly rich to think they did it all by themselves, rather than be just lucky enough to have inherited wealth. I don’t see any hope for change until business schools start teaching a profound responsibility to the social contact and governments step in to tax and redirect gross wealth inequality to building and maintaining the communal wealth of the rest of society.
As for why the Greatest Generation’s wealthy were so ready to sacrifice, whether noble or newly rich, I just don’t know. Again, education?
15
@KBronson
Wrong.
1) What sacrifices are the working class being asked to bear at all right now? Some small increases in the cost of fossil fuels? During some of the cheapest gas prices in history? Really? Real action hasn't begun, and the largest costs will be born by the rich who will lose value in their fossil fuel investments.
2) The people who will pay the highest price for the impacts of climate change are the working class (and the poor). The rich can afford to buy food no matter how scarce, or to buy new homes away from danger areas. They won't become climate refugees. Many of the working class will.
3) While taking action now on climate change will cost society, it will also (and already is) create new jobs. It also means an investment in a better, more sustainable energy and transportation infrastructure, so I would argue that it's a net benefit in the very long run. There will be winners and losers, but failing to take prudent action now on climate change will only increase the net costs down the road.
What you are right about is that we *should* be treating this like World War II. It is that kind of an all-hands-on-deck issue. But crying about how it costs other people, or other countries, less and therefore we shouldn't do it is just one more distraction from the biggest challenge that humanity has faced as a species since the onset of the last ice age (our last "climate change event").
13
@Bob
A thousand times, yes. This is absolutely an all hands on deck moment, and it is more terrifying than world war II because it could wipe so many of us from the planet. There is no way out but forward to an existential change in how we relate with each other and the planet.
7
"Rich people" fly in private jets, Have their 200 ft long yachts "crewed" to the locations they want to sail around (so they can just fly in); own multiple houses heated, or cooled, on "stand by" in case they need to get away for a weekend.
Rich people are not environmentalists in the way they choose to live; moreover many made their fortunes in mining, oil, and other extractive and polluting industries.
5
This is just a lightly warmed over Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs argument. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy are concerned with security issues (food, shelter and the like) while those at the top, with their lower-level needs fulfilled, are able to be concerned about their self-realization needs (more altruistic environmental concerns, social justice and the like). So, yes, I think there's merit to this approach.
It's not so much that the lower classes don't care about environmentalism, it's more that they have to "slay the bear in front of them" which is day-to-day survival. Look at the world's largest contributor to greenhouse gases, China, as an example. All the blue-bin's in all the suburbs in the US aren't going to mean a whit if China doesn't throttle back on their use of fossil fuel-based energy (coal most notably). Why don't they care about the environment and continue to use polluting technologies? Simply stated, China is working to develop their economy and pull large swaths of population out of subsistence living. Environmental concerns can wait until China hits it's economic destiny.
In a nutshell, I think the premise of this article is correct. The solution is to make so-called green technologies more economically advantageous than current polluting technologies such that individual benefit is derived from environmentally beneficial actions. No starving person will sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
1
I used to sell solar panels door-to-door, and I can tell you, people in Far Rockaway and Hempstead were far more receptive than people in Huntington and Oceanside (Long Island towns). This is partly because lower income people tend to be more liberal, more willing to save money, and, in the case of Far Rock, because NYC customers receive an extra benefit from the city. If governments create financial incentives for people to go green, they will do it over time. In France's case, the government will have to be a little more creative than simply raising taxes on gasoline.
1
Nice gratuitous falsehood about coal. Why would anyone favor its use except relatively few who are involved in its production when natural gas is readily available? And when dirty coal is produced, who stands to benefit? The mine owner, the owners of the means of production and distribution, and out of date utility companies make the bucks. Concern for the “working class” is just a cover in support of increased production of a toxic commodity that will most likely be exported. Nice try.
2
Dr. Moe-Lobeda addresses this and more in her important book, "Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation".
Practically speaking, “environmentalist” means you don’t want any more development once you’ve moved into a nice suburb, and you will pay higher taxes and fees to keep other people out.
5
Everyone supports cleaning up obvious environmental damage like acid rain, or smog type pollutions. Politically created fake environmental problems like the climate apocalypse are something else. One can always tell a fake political environmental problem because the prophesied damage is always decades away.
1
When the water quality became an issue in the rural areas because of the intensive usage of pesticides, but not in Paris, the Parisian environmentalists proposed to send the bill to the rural population because they were responsible for the pollution.
When the air quality became an issue in Paris because of the heavy traffic, but not in the rural areas, the Parisian environmentalists proposed to send the bill to the rural population because their cars are too old and not fuel efficient.
The affluent Parisian environmentalists are very good to send the bill to everybody but themselves. And they easily forget that the main reason farmers were told to use tons of pesticides was because the urban population refuses to pay a fait price for their fresh products.
2
Many actions one can take that are both environmentally sound AND economically sound are tied to property ownership.
If you own a property you can make the decision and have the legal right to install Solar, and EV charger, collect your rainwater, etc. If you are unable to afford a property that you live in then you cannot take any of these actions.
For the renting population (a large majority in m=most every urban area) accommodation must be made by the owners for the renter to benefit. This has been difficult as the owner generally doesn't pay the renters electric or gasoline bills which is where savings come from , yet must pay for the equipment and long term costs.
This has driven 96% of residential solar to go to single family homes and shift the cost of that savings onto the renters who remain.
A similar figure is emerging for electric cars.
Solutions are starting to come available but States and po0licy parties must take equipping multi-family properties and rental properties as seriously as they have single family. www.electrictrees.com is one example of a company solving this problem with a win-win solution for renters and owners.
2
Macron's mistake wasn't trying to address climate change, it was trying to make the wrong people pay for it. Putting climate change on ordinary people at the pump punishes a different set of people than taxing, say, capital gains from fossil fuel stocks.
6
Why is it that taxing is always the first thing a government comes up with? Why don't you improve public transportation that incentivises people to actually use it? Why don't they spend time educating people on the small changes they can make in their daily lives to make an environmental difference? Why don't they focus on mercilessly going after corporations that break environmental rules? This can all be done with existing governmental funds. It just requires a change of attitude and efficient use of funds by government institutions.
Here's an example of the government taking taxes and not delivering: many municipalities have recycling programs that they can't manage. The result is that most of the recycling you put into that blue bin ends up in a landfill. We pay for a recycling service through taxes - and clearly they're not delivering the service as sold!
I share the yellow vest anger, why doesn't the government fix itself and deliver on promises, before taking more of our money?! We all know the vast majority of the money generated through carbon taxes will be squandered and whatever is left will be used inefficiently.
4
The headline's implication is soooo wrong.
We well know that the primary victims of environmental misbehavior are first and foremost the less privileged, the poor, communities of color, and the vulnerable.
Can you say ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE? Climate justice is a real problem everywhere. For example, more disease downstream from coal, around oil and gas wells, asthma, earlier deaths, and sometimes even gag orders and efforts to suppress the facts and statistics.
The wealthy are more able to survive floods, fires, and other disasters, and they are able to live in safer places and more likely to have better insurance. They can move. Poor people can't.
(caps intentional, I mean to yell as loud as I can)
51
@Susan Anderson
True BUT....
I grew up under the glare of a gas flare from a separator that burned off the gas from the oil field that we lived on developed in the decade or so before I was born. In addition to the soot from that, I caught and ate fish from drilling contaminated bayous and our well water was likely contaminated as well. Furthermore our “royalty” was a mere $2 a month fixed.
Even so, we did not see it as a massive injustice. Unlike communities in so much of America that keep out oil and gas production, we were not reaping the benefits of the Industrial Age in someone else’s back before fossil fuel extraction brought modernity and a jobs based cash economy.
Every winter was a climate crisis because wood cut by hand was the only source of heat. Every summer was a climate crises because there was neither electricity nor air conditioning and having enough to eat for the coming year was dependent on the corn getting enough rain. The well threatened to go dry in drought and was always of questionable safety. When drought didn’t threaten, flood might as the collective wealth of the community didn’t provide for flood control.
I am just pointing out that while the poor suffer from pollution and environmental problem that the relatively wealthy usually escape, they have also been relatively speaking the greatest beneficiaries of the industrial revolution and specifically of the internal combustion engine and electricity.
2
@KBronson
Thank you. I realize life is tough, and as a woman of privilege, I don't have the thankless task of deciding between tomorrow, next year, and a decade or two down the line.
Nevertheless, it is your children. Apathy and despair of forms of laziness.
It is life itself. It may not look that way, but my take on this is:
Here we all are, and what are we going to do about it. Time and past time for clean renewable energy, and an end to the lies that people like you are benefited by having a job, any job, rather than working together to solve problems.
With love, susan
2
@Susan Anderson And it is the poorest that will suffer first and most, while they are the ones who consume the least amount of fossil fuels. Most of the poor worldwide don't even have a cell phone. Increasing population is not the main cause. The problem is an increasing population consuming fossil fuels (because their is no alternative). Corporations and all the wealthy enough to invest in fossil fuels are the problem and will continue to be until politicians stop being beholden to the oil industry. There is an every increasing amount of technological solutions but not the political will.
Because if you're poor, maybe you simply cannot afford to worry about another catastrophic circumstance that will hit your life---in addition to being poor--if climate change hasn't yet directly affected you...
27
What this analysis is missing is the fact that the top 10 percent of wealthiest people are responsible for 50 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world, while the bottom 50 percent of the population are responsible for about 10 percent of those emissions.
Environmentalism is not just for the rich -- it should be primarily focused with how to deal with the problem of the rich. The problem is not that there are "too many people in the world." The problem is the gross mismanagement of resources (and failure to deal with externalities) by the wealthiest among us.
5
I don't think the problem is "wealth." The problem is rampant inequality together with a decline in public services.
There are many examples of countries that have much less income inequality, combined with generous public services - good, cheap, fast public transportation, infrastructure and housing policies that allow people to walk or bike to work, childcare and medical coverage, and so on. When people's needs are met, and they're not existentially terrified, they care less about the inequality and more about the common interest.
But in America, and increasingly everywhere, we've had a surge in inequality combined with a planned destruction of all common services. So people become rightly terrified of basic things like housing, medical bills, childcare, food and transportation expenses. And they become vulnerable to appeals to xenophobia, racism, sexism, and the rest. It becomes a war of all against all, no one trusts each other, and there's increasingly no sense of sacrifice for the common good.
When Macron begins his reign by giving corporations and the top 5% huge tax cuts, and then says, hey, we don't have any money to pay for environmentalism, so we'll have to tax all you little people whatever you have left, he's obviously going to encounter profound resistance. That's not the same as being anti-environmental, it's just insisting that everyone help foot the bill.
2
We are all responsible for taking care or our environment, but there are often obstacles that make it difficult, inconvenient or close to impossible for many to take certain positive measures. It must be the responsibility of government, industry and the wealthy to create systems that allow the people, the consumers and the working class to do the dozens of things -- some of them simple, some of them not so simple -- that can make a difference. Then it will be everyone's responsibility to use those systems.
A good comprehensive explanation of the basic problems surrounding the need for more education and research into how to proceed on environmental issues. Cures for environmental problems cannot be built on the backs of the poor people of a region. While increases in gas taxes discourages individual transportation that only works if there is a cheap efficient mass transit alternative...something Macron could not offer those in rural areas. There is not a quick fix that offers a solution to all the problems of degrading environment. The first policy concern must be to offer to citizens a thoughtful, personal account of how such degradation will personally afflict them and any descendants. An educational campaign must be carried out at all levels of society, for environmental disaster will affect all of o us and the poor will be hit hardest initially. Solutions must come from every sector of society and be coordinated to avoid duplication. Ideally in the US, a strong and intelligent EPA might lead the effort with a new President representing the entire population. Corporations and other powerful organizations must change their mindset to include environmental long range planning or there will be no future for them or their shareholders. When all of the doubters are ignored and the future of our world becomes a concern of all, we will then have the power to perhaps undo some of our disastrous actions and look forward to a more healthful and prosperous future.
1
In my middle and upper-middle class neighborhood in Wilmington NC the residents all drive trucks and SUVs. They don't give a damn about fuel emissions and climate change. Wealthy, highly educated people often drive huge SUVs. So no, it's not just struggling Americans who can't afford to commit to saving the planet with all its flora and fauna.
3
I wonder how the rich fueling nascent space tourism fit in the various theories of distribution of support for global warming. We need to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary activities that heat up the planet. People clearing forests for planting crops to feed their family is different than low orbit sightseeing.
2
"[T]he question arises: Is environmentalism a boutique issue, a cause only the well-off can afford to worry about?"
-------
To the extent that environmental concerns are based on sound science, people have to worry about them, whether they're well-off or not. In many cases, environmental consequences fall even more heavily on the poorer populations. Those problem will catch up with everyone, regardless of economic status. There's no avoiding that.
The issue is how to solve environmental problems without making the less well-off even worse-off. Governments need to craft solutions with that criterion foremost in mind.
4
I worked in Mexico on the worst environmental disaster in their history-a mining spill of 40,000,000 liters of leached copper and heavy metals. In my experience, when people are being poisoned, they care, whether they are poor or rich. Pass policies that fix the problem, not policies that discriminate against those without resources. Most pollution comes from a handful of large corporations. spilldocumentary.com
49
I am guessing the Kerry/Kennedy argument on the Cape Cod wind farm was you wouldn’t put a wind farm in Yosemite Valley. There’s thousands of miles of coastline and one valley. The Cape Cod situation is akin to Florida getting exempted from the Trumpian reimposition of off-shore oil drilling. Off-shore drilling could easily tilt the scales in Florida to Democrats. For Kerry on Cape Cod, it is the same thing, concocting cockamamie distinctions to achieve a self-directed result.
1
A beachfront wind farm will be very high maintenance. Salt water and sand getting into the works, corrosion. There may actually be better places to build them. Solar on the beach could rock though. Form the panels into large, permanent beach umbrellas.
It seems like the headline asks a ridiculous question, but the reality is that it's the affluent on both sides that are framing the debate, as usual.
The Kochs don't live next to Superfund sites, to be sure. Neither do the Kennedys.
What's missing seems to be the grassroots populist explainers of why a cleaner environment is actually more healthy AND cheaper AND creating jobs for the masses.
As of now, the carbon barons control the economic debate by labeling environmentalism as expensive and job destroying.
5
If our honest leaders don't believe in the science then neither do I. After all, don't the scientist have to beg them for funding?
1
OMG. First we want them to do all the hard work for us, now we want them to fix the environment we've ruined. It SHOULD be the concern and movement primarily of the well off - we've benefited the most from its degradation.
3
Yes, and rich people are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses. The richer people love to make grand statements about how "all of us" should live, while themselves living as if the issue is really for others to deal with.
Now the smart people are going to get rich due to climate change, by providing remediation solutions and alternatives that will increase in demand over time while the aging fossil fuel types will disappear.
In the US the question should be Is all of the GOP deregulation only good for rich people and corporation.
1
Here's a handy figure: For every dollar you spend you release 1.1 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere. That's the 2014 gross world product (78.11 trillion USD) divided by the 2014 world carbon emissions (71.338 trillion pounds).
I've been waiting for a politician with the brass to say, "If you want to reduce your carbon footprint stop spending money". Until that happens it will remain difficult for me to take any political discussion about carbon emissions seriously.
Obviously the Republican approach to manipulating taxes to achieve social results is silly. Taxes are a blunt instrument with much collateral damage to any attempts to use them to achieve social goals. In fact, economic manipulation may itself miss the point with the environment. Maybe the carbon tax is clever, but just maybe it too misses the point. Perhaps, environment regulations have to be approached like crime control -- directly with rules.
Are you kidding me? When First Nations from the Pacific Northwest are worried that their salmon is going extinct, it isn't just a "cause" for environmentalists: it's a threat to their existence! When rice farmers in the Mekong Delta are losing their lands to salt intrusion, they know that their livelihood is at stake, and they know it's due to Global Warming. These are not abstractions of an elite, cozy in their armchairs: they're the threats that more and more ordinary folks are grappling with.
3
The yellow vest protest because they want more. They want to be as consumptive as wealthy people. They should go the other way. They should consume as little as possible and perhaps crash the stupid economy of shallow consumerists.
Growing up and as a young adult working my way through college I had no money. Reducing my energy consumption was the most effective way to make what money I had go as far as it could. When I finally made some money I still tried to keep my expenditures low and saved. I stopped working at 58 and even now am trying to simplify my life to things I actually enjoy, rather than simply owning things that are not really needed. I am also trying slowly to reduce my energy consumption through both efficiency and more slowly through purchasing of greener technology.
Poor people by necessity are typically more environmental. The problem is when they think they can't be happy without joining the shallow and gratuitous world of excess consumption. But then, all the propaganda tells them that happiness comes with owning things.
The best and, really, only way to make the “poor” “care” about the environment is to pay them living wages, educate them with top notch education, supply them with plentiful family planning services, and give them total access to comprehensive health care. And millionaires and billionaires must pay for it.
Then the poor will be fully freed to care about higher, “post-materialist” issues.
It is totally immoral and, frankly, anti-American that people like Bill Gates, who made billions leveraging US taxpayer-funded Cold War era technology research, are spreading their billions around the planet for niche, vanity and, ultimately, useless charity projects like giving money to Chinese tech entrepreneurs in a contest to design a better toilet. (No, really! It’s unbelievable and a slap in the face of his home country struggling with the catastrophic socio-political effects of rural and suburban poverty. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/business/bill-gates-reinvented-toilet.html).
He and others like him need to be back here, paying back taxes into the Social Contract that addresses the whole of our society, not Chinese toilets, and focusing on addressing the gross, socially and environmentally destructive inequality his wealth has created. Until that’s done, environmentalism will remain a rich man’s folly.
5
It’s time we get our priorities into order. In the US the environment is vastly cleaner than decades ago.
Today, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga river, notorious for having caught on fire 50 years ago, is so teaming with fish that dozens of eagles can be seen flying over river and the adjacent steel mills and petroleum tank farms in the midst of the Cleveland’s industrial Flats.
https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2018/11/bald-eagles-suddenly-gathering-in-large-numbers-in-clevelands-industrial-valley.html
We’ve cleaned the environment so well that financially comfortable people are left to fret about plastic straws at the same time inner city Chicago youths living a mile or so from Lake Michigan have never seen the lake.
3
You have a blind spot: a rich person consumes multiply more than a poor one. Tally up consumption (including vehicles, plane trips, upgrades, house size, etc...) and you will find the rich far outpace the poor. The rich environmentalists are hypocrites for the most part. That's the problem with the movement.
4
Underlying "environmentalism" is this question: do you believe you should pay for what you get, or do you believe that you are entitled to get something for nothing.
Hint: economically, thermodynamically, and morally, nothing is free, so if you aren't paying for something, it's because *someone else is paying for you*.
Burning fossil fuels creates waste. That waste is dumped into the common atmosphere and burdens everyone around you. Do you dump your garbage into the street? If not, you understand the concept of paying to dispose of your own waste.
Pay for what you get. That is what underlies environmentalism and stuff like gas and carbon taxes. If you are worried about working and poor people, there are a lot of ways to help them, but saying that they should not pay to dump their waste is just really really REALLY dumb.
It's ironic that this article doesn't even mention the campaign of Bernie Sanders, who cared about income inequality but also called climate change the most important issue we face. He had considerable support from working class people, but also captured young voters and voters who had gone to graduate school. People who dismiss Sanders voters as idiots might want to consider the usefulness of a stable climate.
1
Do the children of regular people drink water or breath air?
2
>
It is the rich that can afford the lofty ideals that environmentalism sets forth. At the end of the icy-cold calculation, the rich have the most to lose, i.e., a cushy life of privilege and oversized SUV's.
On the other-hand the working poor have little if anything to gain by these ideals. Need to hire a painter to paint your old house, sure right after you pay out several thousand for the lead remediation etc...... If you're rich you can wiggle by the high cost of environmentalism and at the same time feel proud doing it; the working poor have no more wiggle room. The working poor just have daily drudgery to lose. Unconsciously, deep down, they know Freud's death instinct is their only way out.
As Dylan said "when you ain't got noth'n you got noth'n to lose".
Sure the poor will suffer too, but their one reward may be watching the rich go down with them; Mother Nature does not take AMX, and you can only fit so many rich people on a rocket ship to god knows where
“Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor or neoplasm. We have grown in numbers and disturbance to Gaia, to the point where our presence is perceptively disturbing…the human species is now so numerous as to constitute a serious planetary malady. Gaia is suffering from Disseminated Primatemaia, a plague of people.” As E.O. Wilson points out, “Darwins dice have rolled badly for Earth.”
James Lovelock
This essay or whatever is unintelligible.
Monica Araya in Costa Rica.
Texas: https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2018/7/20/activists-houston
Rita Uwaka
Nninno Bassey
It escapes me what Neil Gross is getting at here.
Democracy does not fare well in a capitalist construct. That doesn't mean is cannot survive it, it means that those who live in a habitat of poverty and ill health due to its effects simply need to be heard and treated fairly here and in countries the United States employs occupation ranks.
Environmentalism is an "ism" with articles of faith and a heavy tithe.
Just like Dietary Hysteria (Glutenism), Detoxification, and Burning Man, it is a luxury of the Leisure Class.
4
Well it is people with means who can afford to do things positive. The rest of us are busy just trying to survive.
It is the duty of the more well off to try and fix things. If not then what are rich people for? I suppose we could eat them as has been suggested before.
Environmentalism is the general welfare and thus is worth providing for.
Should we expect the poor having been ground down to take the initiative?
The key here is who gets to choose the technology, public transportation, recycling system, housing, water and air quality, food sustainability and quality. If I am a rural farmer in Thailand, I don't have much say in any of that, other than my choice of crop based on my situation. If I am a school teacher in San Francisco, it's the same problem-- I can't afford to choose anything other than what is presented. It doesn't matter what I "believe" since I have little power.
Just like with certain American civil rights and protections, environmentalism is normally outside the scope of the voting public, other than (as in France) being opposed to a tax we shouldn't have to shoulder. In America, the ruling class doesn't pay its fair share for the welfare of the rest. Even if rural America doesn't "believe" in climate change, they depend on the ruling class and corporations, and the US govt, to protect them from it. It's political and economic, not cultural.
1
Sadly, the most economically vulnerable people are likely to suffer more immediate consequences of global warming. I understand that when you are overwhelmed by basic economic necessities there is no time for considering seemingly abstract problems like global warming. That doesn't change the hard facts that all of us will have to reckon with.
2
"Without a concerted effort to address inequality — which some in the environmental movement consider someone else’s department — the bold policy changes needed to slow global warming risk never getting off the ground."
Absolutely right. The sad truth is that nobody wants to be the one that sacrifices for the common good and this attitude is exacerbated if you think that you are the only one making the sacrifices.
I don't think poor people anywhere are against environmentalism - they're against shouldering an unfair burden of the weight of proposed changes. Changes that are proposed at great cost to the poor, by people who fly around in jets, run businesses that do everything they can to skirt environmental regulations and produce a far bigger footprint than any individual who is just trying to make ends meet. If the elites of the world want to make environmentalism everyone's priority, perhaps they can practice some noblesse oblige and set the example by practicing the austerity they would so thoughtlessly inflict on everyone else.
2
Why not use the money from fuel taxes to make their impact revenue neutral for those effected by them. Options could include tax cuts or rebates for those hardest hit, greater support for mass transit, lower taxes on basic necessities like food, etc. The object should be to encourage lower fuel use, not balancing the budget on those least able to carry the burden.
2
Not in my back yard. That is what makes people become environmentalists. Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, a suburb in my hometown sued to stop the construction of a highway that went through their neighborhood, hurting the scenic view and value of their property.
After the highway was built, I have not heard a peep out of these folks about the environment.
So long as someone else immediately and directly bears the burden of change, no one cares.
If all US residents lived near marine life affected by melting ice, we would care. But we are so short sighted, we don’t care.
2
Some of the best conservationists I’ve met are farmers, who were clearly working class. They know the value of clean air, and water. Environmentalism is not just about offsetting consumer choices, it’s about large multinational corporations becoming more responsible stewards. Empowering local management is the only way to recognize cause and effect on both the environment and society.
1
Is Environmentalism Just for Rich People?
70% Americans buy SUV's and trucks. Gas guzzlers. Great liberals still fly in their private jets, own big multiple houses.
France, CA, China, India ETC say yes.
Limousine liberals here say no.
Stopping global warming = achieving peace on earth.
4
Pitting the poor against the rich is a pathetic way to frame how we can act to limit global warming. It is wrongheaded to press tax increases for heating and fuel, when lower taxes and tax breaks for the rich are central government policy decisions. If there were a way to tax consumption over a certain volume, perhaps. Still, fossil fuel companies are seriously gaming, if not running, the system.
People who make less money are being manipulated into resentment by being charged more for what, to them, are necessities (heat, transportation). Or by being shamed.
When I worked 3 jobs, I had too little money to make any real choices about my housing or transportation. I lived in fear of car trouble.
I saw the unwillingness of most people to act on climate change, and I recognized the developing emergency. Action, In any real sense, was unavailable to me. To fret about my scrupulous recycling seemed like a joke.
Poor people find it infuriating when they are asked to "do their share" by paying more. We need to agree that small changes in consumption habits can help. And we need collective action.
Of course, many people are not "there" regarding CO2 and warming. That is the most frustrating aspect of our dilemma.
Tax on fuel is not the only way to "fairly" collect revenue to ameliorate environmental decline. But the big bump is still getting most people to accept the science, and to do it without making people, rich and poor alike, resent what they are asked to give up.
5
The author seems shockingly unaware of the environmental justice movement, which focuses on the way that everyday zoning and siting decisions impact not the wealthy but the poor. One needn't travel to poorer countries than our own to witness that.
1
The problem is the rich, with too much travel, are causing this problem. That they care about it doesn't mean much when they are causing the problem.
3
We will only mitigate (and we can do no better than to mitigate) the worst effects of climate change by working together, and by pooling resources, and coming up with solutions that work best for as many people as possible. To put undue burden on the working poor while the super-rich expect to keep all the comforts and privilege they have known, sacrificing nothing, is not a solution.
These protests are simply a preview. We are only at the beginning of what will be a perilous and painful chapter in the history of human civilization.
3
Good article.
The question is simple, I believe. If you live in a banlieu at the outskirts of Paris and are not served by decent public transportation (nor have the means to buy a fancy electric car) you’ll be very angry at privileged, righteous environmentalists whose basic message is: pay more taxes to get to work.
Don’t get me wrong. I strongly believe in the need to face climate change. The point is: it won’t happen without social solidarity and/or the sacrifices are not evenly distributed.
3
The problem appears to be who pays for social change that improves a higher quality of life. Higher fuel costs are designed to limit consumption of fuel, therefore car-dependent rural people (rich and poor) should be upset that they foot the bills of the urban affluent. But who is paying for urban mass transit, in Paris, for example? Are revenues from fares sufficient; usually not. In large Asian cities (Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo), land values are captured along transit routes and that's how O&M costs are paid. The protesters are seeing less police resistance than if they went to the heart of the problem - tax land value that is typically absconded by landowners. Sticky problems such as this usually arise because there is somebody making off with economic rent and ground rent (e.g., 2007-8 collapse). That is where political campaign money comes from, so it is clear these problems will not go away until there is a recognition of the problem and the will to do something once and for all to solve it.
1
Dr. Christopher Westley, professor of economics dubbed Cash for Clunkers - the US program to buy back and crush low fuel economy vehicles, "the I hate the poor act of 2009"[1]. Crushing 600,000 functioning but old vehicles removed used cars from the market that serves those that can't afford a new cars - the working poor. Used car prices did go up while new cars were being heavily discounted during the great recession.
As cities start to ban internal combustion engines [2], I picture
Marie Antoinette shouting from a tower, "Let them drive Teslas!".
I have spent most of my career engineering higher efficiency solutions - from construction equipment with 40% less fuel consumption to long haul trucks (DoE SuperTruck). I built a house with R-40 wall insulation and R-80 attic insulation, I have all LED lights, and I just bought my first Hybrid (2018 Accord - fantastic - NO compromises).
There are many energy savings technologies that save money, but hopes and subsidies won't make solar and battery EVs a ubiquitous and affordable solution. I have two co-workers that just took delivery of their new Model 3 - $60k each. My Accord hybrid beats my old Honda Civic at 42 MPG (vs 28), and costs $25k. At under $1,000 a year in fuel, even if charging were free, even a $35k Tesla wouldn't pay for itself, and you can't buy a $35k Tesla.
[1] https://fee.org/resources/the-i-hate-the-poor-act-of-2009/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_banning_fossil_fuel_vehicles
3
Gross are you kidding? The poor are the first to suffer from climate change!
2
@tbs Try reading the whole piece and not just the headline.
1
The propaganda campaign to undermine science began in the 70's. It has only gotten stronger and more effective since. I have no reason to think the same machinations weren't also going on in the EU.
The real harm here is the irrational change in laws (de-regulation) that makes it more important to give profits/dividends away to investors before re-investing it in R&D. Thus the GOPers in Congress have an excuse to give trillions away in subsidies where no subsidy is needed. Profit should first go to upgrades, then R&D, planning for the future, and then what is left to dividends after the bills for that expenditure have been paid.
If profits were first spent on R&D the corps would have a more rational sense of how much profit taking is reasonable and the taxpayer would have the funds or at least the credit to borrow (lets face it those subsidies are being given on our credit not from cash) to help the poorer among us cope with the necessary changes.
Wasn't there a story on here yesterday about how Oil Companies machinations to influence the change in auto pollution policy?
Our economy has been hijacked by a bunch of degenerate people who do not care about what harm they do and have convinced a fairly large number of our fellow citizens not to give a dam about their fellow man as well. In fact most business transactions in the country these days involves one party trying to rip off the other and a majority of us seem to think this is normal and OK! It isn't.
5
Complicated = Yes.
Your typical environmental event at any given college are just as white as any given Trump rally. Not only that, but there's as much or MORE moral posturing and finger-pointing. Pretty hilarious, the blindness and hypocrisy of the anti-Trump fanatics.
4
@david - funny you drag Trump where he wasn't mentioned in the article. By the way, are you familiar with the government's EnergyStar program, a voluntary program where companies creating things that run efficiently can get a label that helps consumers save money on appliances and thing?
Anyway, it's a terrific program, it's saved consumers hundreds of millions in energy bills, more benefits in a link down below.
But since you mentioned Trump - there's an EnergyStar rating for commercial buildings, to allow prospective tenants assess the efficiency of operations.
Trump Tower here in Chicago - the one that featured in one of his silly TV shows? It scores a 9 in EnergyStar for buildings. 100 is the best score. A developer putting up a new large building these days that's far less efficient than 50 year old structures is a cheapskate.
https://www.energystar.gov/about/origins_mission/energy_star_numbers
2
If you want the real story on what is going on with the riots in France, do not miss this news piece which summarizes it up in a complete and extremely well done package.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/12/05/yellow-vests-rise-against-neo-liberal-king-macron/
I can't speak to the "Yellow Vests" specifically, but to the extent there is a income gap between those who are willing to support serious action on climate change, it may be more easily explained in terms of short versus long term thinking.
This is not at all to say a lower income citizen of any country cannot think in the long term. It is to say that I think the less secure someone is financially, the more likely they are to to take ACTION based on long term considerations.
Consider how the GOP tried to offer the middle class a negligible, TEMPORARY tax cut. "A bird in hand" might seem like a good thing, but the same GOP tries to distract (unsuccessfully) from the long term costs of the much larger and permanent tax cuts/benefits afforded to much wealthier people and entities. Large corporations and high net worth individuals can afford to think "generationally"; securing strategic-level, institutional advantages.
Climate change is the same. Lower income people WILL be the first to be displaced and harmed by climate change and the costs will make any pain at the pump seem laughable by comparison. The longer coal country stays in the minds, the worse it will be in the long term, but without sufficient safety nets to provide them with a base financial security (such as healthcare; see also, billionaire tax cuts), they are "forced" to sacrifice the future for the sake of present-day scraps. It's always "jobs, jobs, jobs" until one's house is (literally) underwater.
2
Health care is a bigger employer in coal country than coal mines are. Lotta sick people there.
Regardless of your income or the size of the house you live in, everyone needs heat, water and electricity. These are necessities, not commodities, and should be priced accordingly. For example, each household could be allotted a monthly amount of electricity sufficient to power a one bedroom apartment for a nominal fee, or even free. Once you go beyond that amount, the price starts to increase progressively. It should cost more to heat a pool or light a tennis court, than just to keep the lights on. That would drive home the importance of conservation across all income levels and add a degree of social justice.
6
@Alan Zipkin
To follow up, a more just approach to conserving gasoline usage is not to impose higher gas taxes; that is a regressive form of taxation that lands hardest on lower income people. A sales tax and an annual tax on vehicles based on the MPG rating would go a long way making owners of gas guzzling vehicles pay for their indifference to their impact on climate change.
3
The lead is truly buried in this piece. The last line says it all, without serious efforts to reduce inequality, efforts to thwart climate change will have a tough time gaining traction. There is no environmental movement without a strong middle class. The rich are just going to have to start sharing their spoils with the rest of us.
4
Sadly, I believe it will take some catastrophic event (or, more likely, events) to really make this the urgent issue this is in most people's minds. We will, like the alcoholic who can't stop drinking, continue to go on as we always have because we cannot see how to live differently. We certainly are not prepared to make the changes we must to prevent the catastrophic damage (and the costs associated) that will occur due to climate change in the future. I'm reading, "what's the plan?" everywhere in these comments. The truth is (IMO) there will be no effective plan until we "hit bottom" with our dependency (and, yes, we are dependent) on fossil fuels. Until that time will continue to take "half measures" and make symbolic gestures to "address" the issue.
Conversely, how do I tell someone in India (who looks for fire wood to cook and heat their homes) that they shouldn't use coal powered energy as I sit in my three bedroom heated home in "first world" USA?
I know this sounds cynical, but I fear we will have to experience major loss of (fist world) lives and property (private and public) before we make the difficult (and they will be difficult) decisions we need to make to live sustainably on this planet.
2
Pretty muddled article. It might have been more streamlined if the professor started with this premise "Who can afford to mount extensive campaigns to enable continued pollution, while such pollution typically harms the poor and middle class much more than the wealthy"?
There is an entire industry in the United States devoted to fighting tooth and nail against environmental regulations, public infrastructure, progressive taxation and well-run federal regulatory agencies. This industry is well populated, well educated and well paid.
Corporations profiting from their ability to keep the cost of damage from their products on the taxpayer, rather than adding it to the cost of the product, fight very hard to keep it that way, with armies of lobbyists and lawyers.
Billionaire families with extreme libertarian views (really, just "It's All Mine" views) spend as much or more fighting proper regulation and any taxes than they'd lose to those regulations and taxes. And they gladly fund astroturf pressure groups to fight "for freedom" when it's really fighting against public transportation or electric vehicles or anything interfering with sale of fossil fuels.
Sociology should look at how public policy can best survive the pollution of public policy by these organizations.
5
Thank you. One of the most informative, thought provoking, incisive op-eds I've read in a while. Well done.
I think there are two issues which are "make or break" for all of us. One is climate change and the other is inequality. both issues drive all human activity in some way. events in France and this article illustrate the difficult dance we need to get right to survive. if you watch any science fiction movie, there is two future in general, a clean, skinny one and a dark, overcrowded one. I wish I knew who wins
Perhaps the 56% of Americans who say they don’t care a great deal about climate change are those who have actually made the effort to read an IPCC science report - not just the Summary for Policy Makers - and found this disclaimer therein: “In climate research and modelling we must recognize that we are dealing with a coupled, non-linear chaotic system and that the long-term predictions of future climate states is not possible”. And yes, it’s in there.
3
@JFB
And your point is what? Lack of certainty suffices to excuse the ignorance, or worse, lack of care by half of the country?
Gross makes the point he argues against. According to his bio, he taught previously at Princeton, the University of British Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Southern California —all bi-coastal enclaves of priveledge. No Mr. Gross, the US is not a well-educated and wealthy country—if you look beyond the aggregate.
Heath outcomes, educational disparities and wealth distribution all indicate why a substantial number of Americans have to worry about the costs of environmentalism.
I’m willing to sacrifice for the environment—but I also understand why many are not.
2
US example: in my home town in the rural west, the cost of living is so high that unless one is a tenured professor (a dying breed) or an administrator (unfortunately reproducing), one cannot afford to buy a house in this town. The solution? Rent or move to outlying villages, some many miles away, for cheaper housing. But that adds so much to a person's footprint. Professors in town talk about the "great bus system" but the secretaries can't afford to live in town -- so they buy gas guzzling SUVs to get them through the winters and into town to work. Recycling doesn't exist in those villages, most of which also don't have medical services, police, and public works departments. In many cases, there are no schools. So who ends up living the high footprint lifestyle? The poorer, less well paid people with their commutes and lack of services. The wealthier can live in town, use the public transportation, enjoy the curbside recycling, enjoy the proximity to services, and environmentally vet the town-level initiatives. Do the poorer 'care' about the environment? If the measurement is attitude, yes absolutely. Do they get to do anything about it? Not much. The renters feel like transients. The commuters are too busy just getting to work. Gas hikes hurt them because they need the gas to keep going, to buy groceries, to get their kids to school in the towns, to get to work. This is the situation in France, writ local.
141
@Liz Siler
This should have been a Times pick.
12
@Liz Siler. I’ve lived all over the PNW, including Washington, Idaho, Oregon and various parts of B.C. People don’t need gas-guzzling SUVs to cope with winter in the PNW. I’m sorry, but they do need a carbon tax to discourage them from purchasing SUVs. But as in BC, a carbon tax can be introduced neutrally or progressively.
15
@Liz Siler Clearly, it's cheaper to burn fuel (made artificially cheaper by not accounting for the negative externalities of fossil fuels), so they are making the smart decision.
3
It's education, stupid. QUALITY education. There should be no room for willed ignorance in any modern society; we just don't have the margin.
4
This argument that only the well off will support doing what is necessary to limit global warming is deeply flawed. Income inequality and environmental degradation share the same cause:
The 1% rapes the environment and sucks all the wealth out of the economy, leaving a large percentage of people with inadequate income to meet basic needs, let alone fixing climate change. No mystery that people choose food, shelter, and health care over the environment when they can't afford all of them.
The question should be why, in the wealthiest countries, can so many not afford ALL of these things. The yellow vest movement should have surprised no one- especially since it wasn't about the environment anyway- is was about filling the budget gap created by the huge tax giveaways to the 1%.
2
Environmental destruction and a bleak future with climate changes are but examples of our age-old tendency for resource exploitation. Whether exploiting humans or other species, whether it's trees or soil or water, gold, slavery, technology or clean air, the beneficiaries have almost always tried to enrich themselves at the expense of the commons.
The dramatically increasing imbalance is the root of calls for economic, social and environmental justice. It's all connected. It's time for substantial change, and either we do it with truth and compassion, or we risk chaos and violence.
3
I'm a low-income, college-educated bohemian-class adult and I need my 2001 Toyota to keep working, emissions be-damned. I do know that your Tesla does not offset your 10,000+ sq. ft house, your thrice yearly exotic vacations abroad and what ever god-awful world-destroying thing you do for employment to pay for it all.
151
@Ananda Yes, it's a bit galling to see people showing off their oh-so ecological Tesla, which they then drive to the airport where their private jet is waiting for them. And, that jet emitts more CO2 in one 3-4 h flight that most of us produce in a entire year's worth of driving, heating and using electricity.
25
@Pete in Downtown
Hear, Hear! My austere-living vegan friend regularly chides me for my regular airplane travel (I admit, he does walk, literally walks and bikes, his eco-talk) even though I’ve pared my own frugal lifestyle to pretty high environmental standards. Plane travel to far locales is really one of my few indulgences and joys in life. It also enriches my perspective which in turn informs my voting, interactions in my community, and so much more. As HW Bush used to say, “Na gonna do it!”
3
@Ananda
1998-2001 Toyotas are the best. Mine has 198,000 on it and is still going strong! It's gone times without oil or coolant..some kind of myth.
I can't afford a Nissan Leaf or a Chevy Volt, but my little Corolla is solid and I would be weary investing in a new EV. The quality just isn't there. I just saw a Leaf with the door handle broken off. You would have to take a baseball bat to my car, and even then!
4
There's no easy out here. The siren call of "bold policy changes" means higher fuel taxes and car prices, and likely hikes in heating and cooling costs. And that will always impact the poor and middle class more. Always.
And no, you can't simply tax the rich (another siren call). There aren't enough of them to make a difference, environmentally speaking.
1
@Chris - electric cars cost less to fuel per mile driven, they are far less mechanically complex, so have lower cost of ownership over the lifetime of the vehicle, and prices are dropping every year.
The country hasn't raised the national fuel tax since 1997, and so isn't keeping up with infrastructure repair, which leads to vehicle damage, hurting the poor and middle class disproportionately.
As for your comment about there not being enough rich people, you're thinking of the wrong quantity. It's the wealth that would be taxed.
Here's how much of US wealth the 1% represents:
Currently, the richest 1% hold about 38% of all privately held wealth in the United States. while the bottom 90% held 73.2% of all debt. According to The New York Times, the richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
As a practical matter, the only kind of wealth you can tax is real property, because financial wealth will migrate elsewhere to avoid confiscatory taxation.
1
The fact that poor people don't want tax hikes they can't afford doesn't mean they don't care about the environment. It means that it does not work to ask those who can least afford it to finance environmental solutions. We need other solutions instead, such as stronger regulations governing the manufacture of vehicles, and enforcement of them, as well as incentives, or requirements, that lead to the use of sustainable energy sources.
2
Of course, environmentalism is just for rich people. I'm defining "rich" by those who enjoy a U.S. standard of living - where residents consume 25% of global energy with just 6% of global population.
In 2018, over one billion of the Earth's inhabitants cook their food by burning wood or dung. Don't believe it? A trip to sub-Saharan Africa will provide compelling evidence - people who have never heard of "Greenpeace", of "Natural Resources Defense Council", of "Friends of the Earth". We can electrify their existence with carbon-free nuclear energy, so they can join us in prosperity. Or, we can promise them plastic solar panels as resources dwindle for all of us. Soon, we will no longer have a choice.
1
The notion that environmentalism is "elitist" or for the "affluent" only is a longstanding oft-repeated deceit of vested interests who profit by raping the environment which actually belongs to all of us. Supposed "social science" mentioned in support of this myth often patently exhibits attribution of causation to correlation.
Real pro-environment sentiment and advocacy depends on education and knowledge, and in our world the poor suffer from severe education inequality. Exceptions to this show exception to the misleading pro-environment = wealthy equation.
Poor people in poor countries suffering most from pollution, climate change, etc. nonetheless can be readily pro-environment despite vested interests in fake conservative American think tanks touting fables that this is "for the rich only."
Meanwhile, many affluent people, in the pseudo conservative US south for example, think that being informed and knowledgeable = having a steady diet of Fox News bias and sleight of hand.
There is, however, another complicating aspect. Mainstream "environmental" organizations have been widely hijacked by fakers interested mainly in milking money and attention from people who "care" about environmental problems, but don't have time to understand them in depth. This is a key source of support for pretend "Green" "coalition building" which has long since been twisted into feel-good political correctness and symbolism having little to do with concrete policy reform.
2
@Sage
When you say, " Mainstream "environmental" organizations have been widely hijacked by fakers interested mainly in milking money and attention from people who "care" about environmental problems, but don't have time to understand them in depth." I'm interested in hearing specific names. Who do you think is doing this?
To me the larger question is how do we motivate all people to recognize that the earth is where we get EVERYTHING we need: food, shelter, beauty, solitude and therefore the protection of earth and her systems should be relevant to the rich, the poor, the middle class...we all count on a healthy earth. And people need to make changes--the rich need to contribute the most, the middle class the 2nd most and the poor the least. Perhaps our system of capitalism of commodifying every flower, insect and grain of soil in nature needs to be abolished and replaced with a model that sees the health of earth's systems as most important and personal wealth as detrimental to global health. What do you think?
@The Truth
The leadership of nearly every major "environmental" organization has been co-opted, quickly or gradually over the last 30-40 year by incrementalist corporatists eager to raise funds in order to booster their own careers. You name it, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, 350.org, etc. etc. nearly all have turned to a lesser, more often greater extent, towards clickavism and tokenism.
Environmental quality has declined in recent decades and what have these phonies manage to achieve in response ? Close to nothing substantive.
I would favor reform, not abolishment of the capitalist system. As the Sierra Club used to say, back when it was an actual force for pro-environmental legislative reform: "not blind opposition to progress, but opposition to blind progress."
The issue with respect to action on climate change isn't a rich/poor issue. It's an issue of who will pay for it. Poor people in Fiji may support action on climate change because they see potential benefits but any costs will be borne by richer countries.
Poorer people in the US - who pay a greater portion of their incomes for fuel, heating, and electricity - see action on climate change as adversely affecting them personally. Notwithstanding all the claims that solar and wind will save money, when these facilities are built, utility costs go up.
For the upper middle class utility bills are a small portion of their income so they can afford to be environmentally pure. The poor in the US, less so.
4
Environmentalism is the vehicle for the rich and government elites to control the masses via taxation and higher energy cost. "Progressives" love to go on about how taxing the poor is regressive and then turn around and support taxes on fuel, policies that drive up the cost of home energy use and the price of food, such as the ethanol fuel boondoggle. Like modern feminism, it's a trendy club for upper middle class white people who can afford the costs associated with government environmental regulation while they virtue signal from their comfortable hybrid SUV or Crossover. It doesn't impact their lives one bit and they get to brag about how green they are.
3
The author is embarrassingly out of date.
Environmental justice ("EJ") is one of the major forces in the environmental movement. It is also known as environmental racism.
Perhaps being stuck in Maine has kept him from seeing how the movement has evolved. It is not just hikers and birders. The 'front' moved from national parks to fenceline communities many years ago.
1
@priceofcivilization, finding a race to blame for what has happened won't stop what will happen. If you want to keep the human race from being the prime participant in the next Great Extinction, all races must do their part and who is to blame isn't as important as what must we do.
@ondelette
Agree, if you mean white people with money must take responsibility for the harm their industries have caused.
The point of environmental racism is to point out that oil refineries, chemical plants, coal ash pits, and pig farm lagoons are always placed in poor neighborhoods...mostly African-American neighborhoods in the South. And they know they are being taken advantage of, and are leading the environmental fight. So it isn't just hikers and park visitors, and hasn't been for a while.
I truly think being from Maine may have hindered the author's appreciation of how the movement has changed.
Yes only rich people breathe and only rich people need to drink water and only rich people need functioning eco-systems.
1
I find it interesting to look at some of the comments and see GOP talking points being repeated about Democrats being the problem, because they fly so much, have big homes, etc. etc.
Let's keep some perspective here. There are Democrats who might be setting a better example, but also keep in mind they have to work with the systems we have now, not what we need or want, at least not yet. But they're headed in the right direction.
The Republican Party in contrast is going full-till to roll back existing environmental laws and policies. They are actively working to make things worse, not better. They've made rolling back 'burdensome regulations' and climate denial part of their brand. It's who they are now.
Please stop with the false equivalence. There is a critical difference here, and to pretend otherwise is worse than nonsense.
2
@Larry Roth, you say, "There are Democrats who might be setting a better example, but also keep in mind they have to work with the systems we have now, not what we need or want, at least not yet."
That may be, but we don't see those Democrats proposing that we get rid of those systems as harmful and propose others. What we see instead is a lot of propaganda about how "greening" and "sustainability" can be good for the economy, combined with solutions that hit the lower classes much harder than the upper classes. And we watch economists continue to promote both growth of the economy and growth of the population, and Democrats take their simplistic "solutions" and run with them. We watch a society turn more and more natalist, with a perverse preoccupation in all of our media on youth and childbirth. We watch academia become more and more elitist and less and less broadbased while we ask those elites for solutions they are never going to have to live. And Democrats are just fine with that.
Yes there is a false equivalence out there that says why care about who gets elected they're all just as evil. No you shouldn't take that and let Democrats who aren't really solving problems off the hook for picking simpleminded saleable quick fixes and running with them because really solving the problem can't be done without collective participation, collective effort, and yes, some collective sacrifice.
You cite a survey showing 0nly 44% of Americans say they"care a great deal about climate change ."
You cite that relative to the hypothesis that environmental concern is correlated with wealth and education. And France, also a wealthy and educated nation has a 79% figure for "caring about climate change. " You then go off and discuss what you suggest is the real explanation for the variance in the attitudes in the two countries: communication strategies and messaging to the people.
I believe you are incorrect. The differences between the two countries are certainly messaging but in the USA, it is the intense climate change denial messages from the fossil fuel industry, their propaganda and lies and denial of science, that go out to the public. That has been effective and that is why we see the differences in the two countries. The Main Stream Media helps the fossil fuel producers with this propaganda. Noam Chomsky calls that "Manufacturing Consent." That is the main stream media put out what the fossil fuel companies want put out in order to create the consent in the public for the climate denial.
Lies, propaganda and corruption. Good ole United States traits.
1
Income inequality and climate change share a common attribute - neither is sustainable. Unless these issues are tackled now, sooner or later, they will plunge our planet into chaos.
The Christian apocalypse predicts "end days" of horsemen and demons roaming the earth. If our world is indeed heading toward apocalyptic destruction, the reality is neither supernatural nor poetic: it will be from our own ignorance, greed, and hubris.
"Environmentalism" in the San Francisco Bay Area is mostly represented by $80k Teslas.
1
@Paulo, good, so enact legislation to fund bringing the price of a Tesla down, and to subsidize acquiring them for people who have to get to work. There are a lot of billionaires out there who's biggest contribution to the environment is that they don't believe in leaving anything but crumbs for the people who have to do the work to set the environment right.
Republicans and their deep pocket backers have been successful framing environmentalism as an elitist economic issue rather than public health. As a matter of opinion rather than facts. A conspiracy to hold poor people down.
Climate change marches along, fueled by inaccurate information and its ignorant believers. But when the hurricanes, fire storms and droughts get worse they will, of course, look to the federal government to bail them out. Prevention is a lot cheaper than reacting but don't try telling them that. Just add it to the bill for our children.
1
It is worth noting that California voters just soundly defeated an initiative to repeal the state's gas tax, which is the highest in the nation. The canard that environmental protection is for the rich is old and stale.
4
@David
California has been taxing the wealthy more fairly for far longer, decades actually, which has been reinvested into social services for the poor and also not spending the last 30 years demonizing environmentalism as red states and Republicans have been doing. Voters here, in general, are not as desperately poor as many in deep red states and have already been well-educated with the science of environmentalism. Thus, the fuel tax was a no-brainer to most Californians.
1
The Author has missed, if not reversed, the cause-and-effect here.
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Plenty of evidence shows that strong environmental law makes economies richer. It makes polluters to pay the cost of polluting, rather than sloughing that burden on everybody else as an implicit involuntary subsidy.
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By forcing cost internalization, it makes economies more efficient = more jobs = richer.
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Moreover, the biggest beneficiaries of internalisation of negative externalities are those who benefit most from broader, more egalitarian public services. It is a complex relationship, but, generally, it benefits the less well-off most.
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None of this is lost on the fossil fuel industries.
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That is why extremist right-wing political groups have no trouble finding funding to stir up hatred and prejudice - xenophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia - basic gut-level political motivators.
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These governments and industries stir up nationalist discord as policy, because the promotion of international discord speaks both to primal prejudice as a motivator of tribal behaviour.
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Further, nationalistic discord makes international co-operation difficult - and Climate Change cannot be solved without high-level international trust and cooperation.
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The success of the fossil fuel industry in preventing action on Climate Change is directly related to the magic ability to mobilise prejudice to convince poor white men to vote against their own economic interest.
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The author has reversed cause-and-effect.
@Richard Blaine, I am both more radical in my beliefs about the effects of climate change than the norm and more radical in the things I think need to be done to deal with it.
But the idea that this is all a big oil conspiracy and not that something is wrong with your climate change solution is wrong. There is pain and sacrifice in any real solution to climate change, not just some mythical economic wonderfulness chimera that big oil is keeping people from hearing about. It is not a right wing poor white men targeted conspiracy to bring up that pain, it is dealing with reality.
In the 1960s we heard over and over again about how much reform we would have to have and the difficulty over something called the wage-price spiral. I'm sure you've heard of it if you're really cognizant of economics like you seem.
We have a global consumption-population spiral, and like any other species from petrie dish size to global, a population too large eventually poisons its environment and dies. Your solution proposes another way of growing consumption to solve the climate change problem. It doesn't end the spiral, so humanity will be in a worse mess going forward.
Here's a little thing to consider: While lessening CO2 in the environment will with probability 1 cool the environment again, with probability also 1, it will not return to status quo ante.
The time when we could have fixed the environment without pain was gone decades ago. Honesty is the best way forward about it.
@ondelette
Ondelette:
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Take a look at where the GOP, the Conservatives in the UK, the Conservatives in Canada, and the Liberal-national party in Australia obtain their funding, and the so-called "third party" support they use to evade election spending laws.
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Take a look at where UKIP gets its funding. And FN. And AfD, and FB.
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Look at the efforts that Russia has made to overturn democratic institutions in western democracies.
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Take a look at where the NSDAP and the America Firsters got their money in the 1930's.
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Read "Private Empire" by Steve Coll.
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You don't need to look for conspiracies.
You merely need to look for facts.
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It's a matter of historical record.
@Richard Blaine, absolutely none of that proves that the consequences to everyone of adopting strategies that counteract climate change will be economically beneficial, and that saying they aren't to specific populations is some trash from the oil industry. That simply isn't true. There are no "facts" that "prove" that stopping climate change is economically a boon. That isn't an oil company plot, it's the truth.
Where we are at right now is that the climate will change to unacceptable levels without very draconian measures, and where we would be if we don't do those is that we will be in the position of passing the goal and trying to rachet back to it. But there are tipping points in there that guarantee that isn't the same thing as adopting the draconian measures.
So if people say that there isn't some economic wonderland at the end of the climate change activist rainbow, it isn't because they've succumbed to some lie from big oil. It's because it's the truth.
What a strange premise? The author obviously doesn’t get around or read about other cultures. In India, the best stewards of the environment are poor indigenous tribes and villagers who live in harmony with nature and believe it is their duty to protect their environment.
@Sunnysandiegan, and you presumably know how to have a world of 7 going on 9 billion people all living in harmony with nature? That solution went out when the world's population hit 2 billion in 1939.
It seems silly to use a country like Costa Rica as a model for environmental policies. From what I have read there is plenty of evidence to support both sides of the argument. The reporting has been "weak" at best and money being spent to buy another jet for Al Gore seems silly. Further to the point "all" the great weather experts point out we mere humans have very little to do with weather events or out come ! Instead of killing the coal industry , spend the money necessary to clean it up. The technology is there. Energy will not be denied ! I have yet to see any proof on climate change rather cause and effect. Much like a machine is safer with safety apparatus. Business always weighs the cost against the damage ! Time for real study and answers !
1
Cheap natural gas is killing coal. Cheap natural gas from fracking.
"So smart rollouts and messaging matter..." Translated; we didn't lie very well so we'll have to spin our pixie dust, er, ah, climate carbon tax better in the future so the proletariot take the bait. Just relax. And...do nothing. Yes! Why?! Because man made climate change is the same as the famous childrens story where the little baby chicken believes the sky is falling. Well, the sky is NOT falling and neither will repressive taxes on pixie dust, carbon, etc stop world climate change. Giving YOUR hard earned $$ to politicians who say THEY are going to change the climate is pure insanity. Sound, environmental policy is a must. Take the billions in climate research and build power plants in Haiti, parts of Africa. B then set aside millions of square miles of sensitive ecosystems. Stop the 'research' killing of whales. Make long line fishing and bottom trawling illegal. We have an abundance of sound environmental policies we can implement; affecting or effecting the worlds climate isn't one. So just relax and let's work at issues we can resolve.
1
Environmentalism isn't just for rich people but austerity is.
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There is no mention in this article of the fact that it's the working poor that must live in close vicinity to polluting factories; who must drink and bathe in lead-tainted water; who's schools and homes are infested with rats, roaches, and peeling lead paint. No one wants to live in these conditions. What is criminal is that the industry causing all this pollution—and the U.S. Military Industrial Complex is at the top of this list—isn't paying a dime to clean up after itself. What the Yellow Vests, and most working people are angry about is that the working class is being forced to pay to clean up this filth the commanders of industry leave behind. Meanwhile the wealthy get to live in homes—mansions—that have filtered air and water and are surrounded by luxury. All around the world U.S. corporations plunder natural resources, pollute the environment and outright bomb the homes of the working poor with abandon with no consequences for their actions. All they do is collect the money! Tax the rich, not working people!
73
@Bonnie Weinstein Weren't those "commanders of industry" also the ones that gave the poor jobs in the first place, gave them stuff to buy in the first place, and then they purchased those very products because they were priced right and useful to them?
You can blame business all you want, but it's customers who keep them in business and can make them rich. Your blame is maldirected.
1
@Bonnie Weinstein, I notice this is all written in a single paragraph. Did you do it on your cellphone?
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, villages are subjected to rape as a weapon of war, both men and women, to clear the land for resource mining for the tin and coltan that are needed to make new cellphones.
Corporations aren't the only people plundering the environment. People upgrading to the latest iPhone are as well. Unless you thought that your previous model was taken apart and all the solder, antenna, circuit board, and batteries were re-used as is in the next model, which I assure you they are not, or that a sapphire laminated screen to keep your phone from scratching isn't a highly exothermic manufacturing process that sucks down a lot of coal burning electricity.
2
Politicians no longer understand politics: if you want to put a tax on the gasoline most people use, put a tax on private planes few people use. Let the rich howl too.
4
The environment is important to more than affluent urbanites. Those in rural America who farm, hunt, fish, or just enjoy their natural surroundings are all concerned about environmental degradation and many bear witness to the changing climate. One learns this in talking with them, but one also learns they often do not related with political groups that are active in support of the environment or dealing with climate change. The challenge for environmental groups and the Democratic Party is to reach out and harness people who should be natural allies. It can and should be done.
2
There are 1 billion people living in abject poverty right now. The only known way for a country to go from that level poverty to the kind of life we all enjoy in the west involves using fossil fuels.
But we are told that we all have to sacrifice.
The elites are winning to sacrifice by:
* Driving a Prius
* Separating their trash into 3 colored bins
* ReTweeting every Climate Change Screed.
The elites want those living in poverty to as well:
* Don't use fossil fuels to grow your economy
* Give up hope of daughters and sons to get educated
* Continue to live without reliable drinking water or basic healthcare
The sad thing is the elites have the power to force sacrifice AND think they are virtuous while they chain people in unending suffering.
Nothing new under the sun. Welcome to human history.
1
@Tim
"There are 1 billion people living in abject poverty right now. The only known way for a country to go from that level poverty to the kind of life we all enjoy in the west involves using fossil fuels."
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Hogwash.
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The richest countries on Earth use far less energy per dollar of GDP than the poorest. In many of those countries, significant portions of that energy use involve renewables, the largest and most important being hydro.
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Costa Rica has no oil.
It has done remarkably well at developing a first-world existence while minimizing fossil fuel use.
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Switzerland has no oil, and it is the richest industrial economy.
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Ask yourself where you would rather live:
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Germany or Venezuela?
Switzerland or Indonesia?
Denmark or Equatorial Guinea?
France or the Sudan?
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Oil has not made the populations of Nigeria, Indonesia, Venezuela or Burma rich.
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In fact, it has corrupted their governments, destroyed the rule of law, and made their economies far poorer and far more unjust than if they had never discovered oil in the first place.
1
@Tim
If you're living in poverty, why are you pumping out daughters and sons? If you get better fuels to grow your economy, will you improve your quality of life or populate more to sink back to where you were?
Spoiler alert - the Prius driver isn't going to be starving from a drought , and will still be a terrible driver, so time to buckle up!
@Tim
If you're living in poverty, why are you pumping out daughters and sons? If you get better fuels to grow your economy, will you improve your quality of life or populate more to sink back to where you were?
Spoiler alert - the Prius driver isn't going to be starving from a drought, and will still be a terrible driver, so time to buckle up!
Rich or poor, public transport user or not, if you are Parisian, you choke on diesel fumes every time you step out your door. Many experts have posited that Parisians support the tax hike because we have public transportation options or because we are wealthier. Neither is true. We support the tax hike because we all know what it's like to have difficulty breathing.
3
@NousPoetikos But diesel was foisted on the people by politicians / environmentalists – it was to be part of the solution. Now it isn’t – as dictated by the same people who told us it was. And that doesn't even include the cheating by the European automakers.
I agree with you. The earlier diesel push was a fiasco. All the more reason for the government to take steps to redress the error as quickly as possible.
People don't care about the environment. Most of the purported concern is just virtue signalling by members of the social class which considers it obligatory to pretend that you care (and then it's hop on a plane to Italy or Thailand, the CO2 equivalent of some redneck driving his truck for 6 months).
Also, the global warming agenda it itself flawed as it rests on the implicit assumption that we just need to get greenhouse gas es under control - and the rest of what we do, all the deforestation, soil depletion, over-fishing, strip-mining, species eradication, and so on is all ok. The reality is that we are facing the consequences of a human project which is just too big. 7,000,000,000 people is too much. CO2 is just one part of our overweening domination of the natural world.
We talk about CO2 but do nothing. We don't dare talk about population at all. Whatever is coming is coming. We will see how bad it is.
Only a stable middle class has the time to take on issues like the environment. That is why the Kochs, the GOP and others have worked hard to destroy the stable jobs that used to support the middle class and help educate their children. When 47% or more of working Americans are working at jobs that give no benefits and are generally 0 hour contracts, there is no financial stability and the middle class is eroding quickly.
1
Fiji is for environmentalism, great.
Absolutley. Since we in the first world nations have all of our basic needs covered we have the luxury of thinking of such things ...... 100 years ago 90 % of the population lived a subsistance existance and today the reverse ...
1
The county where I reside provides, free of charge, recycle bins for household use.
These are great - and the number of plastic trash bags I use has significantly decreased.
Given this, at least some environment / conservation steps are available regardless of income level.
There are fundamental technology issues to be solved, foremost being electricity storage. We have wind and solar, but because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow locally, utilities must have generating capacity in the form of coal- or natural gas-fired plants to create enough electricity to satisfy the needs of the public when wind and solar are not generating power.
Installing a solar-powered, grid-tie system on your house is still $25,000.00 to $30,000.00 for a good system, and then you still must pay the utility a hefty fee to tie into its system for those days your solar-panel system (and others' systems) are not producing sufficient power--which, like it or not, makes sense.
Our nationwide grid is deficient and not able to readily shift electricity from one area of the country to another. Electricity is already very expensive for the average person, and when "environmentalists" talk of carbon taxes we know what that means--an extra tax which goes to the government to spend on whatever the legislature wants because the legislature will milk a purportedly earmarked, special-purpose tax and spend it on some other purpose if it wishes to, and eventually the legislature always does this. Just look at social security taxes funneled into the general fund, or the money from the cigarette lawsuits!
People could get behind this if there was a clear road map, but there isn't. Talk, talk, talk, taxes, taxes, taxes.
What is the plan, please???
2
Actually poor people probably help the environment in a way that rich people because they probably buy cars less frequently thereby using less resources and contributing to the destruction of the environment. Can you think of any single purchase that most of us make that uses that many resources?
The downside is when that old car is belching smoke out the tailpipe.
A badly maintained car can produce a horrendous amount of pollution.
Repairs are very expensive.
Would a tax like this be better received if some of the proceeds were used to assist in the cost of pollution-related repairs?
AOC's Green New Deal is the way to go. Instead of making rural folks pay more, city folks need to pay them indirectly by giving them jobs shoring up green infrastructure. It's not complicated; Macron's misstep could be a valuable learning moment for the rest of the world. Green must be seen as a growth opportunity, not a tax.
2
@purpledog yes, and as far as communication is concerned, the leaders of the Green New Deal need to fight every urge to be condescending and combative towards those who do not yet feel included in the movement
How does raising everyone's taxes actually solve the problem?
If the working class was offered the Carbon Dividend, if they actually EARNED money from carbon fees paid by polluters, then I suspect people would get on board with environmentalism very fast.
5
It's classic do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do. While the rest of us poor drudges dutifully schlep our recycling to the curb and earnestly forgo plastic lids and straws, the luminaries and elite (many of whom support the Paris climate accord) are flying about in their private jets, running their AC in their mansions at a comfortable temperature, and making sure their manicured lawns are lush and verdant. For once, I would just like to see those who tell us what to do actually do it themselves.
12
I find it interesting and dismaying that "environmentalism" is more and more equated with climate change. The environment was always, in my mind, all the non-human components of the planet that not only make life possible (including human life), but worth living, too.
While we are in a rising panic about climate change, the traditional environmental destroyers march on unabated: development, deforestation, overfishing - just the endless march of humanity into every remote corner of the planet.
And currently, our "solutions" to climate change only worsen that - more land conversion and more roads to stack wind and solar facilities on top of our existing fossil fuel infrastructure, which is also growing and will continue to (like it or not) for the foreseeable future.
Sigh.....
2
I feel so naive. I really thought EVERYONE wanted to preserve the earth.
But I have learned through this administration that there are people who are so wealthy they live in a literal bubble (perhaps a sealed urban tower) and thus do not care about the environment.
Living “paycheck to paycheck” (a bad thing? I like paychecks), being “working class” (also a lowly status? Even the wealthy people I know, doctors for example, work hard) I frankly need government to set some policies that make adopting cleaner energy unavoidable.
2
The biggest energy hogs are big box stores, supermarkets, malls and office buildings and other businesses. Not to forget 10,000+ sq ft homes. The amounts of energy used and wasted for the heating and cooling of these massive places and buildings are an enormous part of the problem.
3
The author is right that the truth about environmentalism and class inequality is complicated, but misses a lot of social science that shows how corporations hide the environmental and health impacts of their pollution from the people they most affect.
Whether it's a coal mine in West Virginia or an oil processing plant in South America, corporations fail to inform workers and surrounding communities of damage that hurts both the natural environment and the livelihoods of people...While Dr. Gross is right that identity politics and economic stability is important, so is the active work done by fossil fuel companies to obscure the connection between environmental degradation and asthma, cancer, homes disrupted by severe weather, and so on.
3
The question is not - "do poor people care about the environment?" The question is, "How does the environmental movement sideline poor communities and communities of color?". In the US, the people on the ground putting their bodies on the line are overwhelmingly black, brown, and poor people. Standing Rock, the Gulf of Mexico (Atchafalaya Basin), litigation over a bulk coal export terminal in Oakland. Big Green Orgs don't go into reservations. The Gulf Of Mexico is largely considered a sacrifice zone. The "environmental movement" needs to confront and understand their historical racism and bias towards poor communities and communities of color before anything substantial is achieved. Articles like this are part of the problem.
4
Anything in abundance makes itself cheap. Speaking in a wide context, if you overpopulate, you find yourself resorting to more destructive means of getting resources, and more vulnerable when the climate bubble or environmental policy eventually come over to snuff those means. It is in our interest to coax ourselves there sooner rather than later.
A solution is to use income taxes or wealth taxes to raise funds to redistribute to the working class families to offset some or all of the cost of the carbon tax. That would retain an incentive for the working class to participate in the solution without making those struggling families feel the whole cost was laid on them. Why this isn’t obvious is beyond me, and it is also a path forward for U.S. policy makers.
1
I am sure you know the odds of raising taxes in this country. Do you recall the Trump tax bill of last year. The average person is concerned about the next 30-90 days, not the next 30-90 years. Government or industry needs to develop a viable alternative to oil. And for the average person to care you need a climate event so unusual that the dangers of climate change can not be questioned.
I also know people are more inclined to accept paying taxes if they perceive it will benefit them.
"Environmentalism" as we understand it is part of the culture wars that are overwhelming the post-industrial West; fodder for divisive arguments.
"Conservation", on the other hand, used to be a bi-partisan, cross-cultural effort to preserve the beauty of Nature. Many different constituencies agreed for many different reasons, practical, cultural or spiritual.
But then along came the Grand Theory of Catastrophic Climate Change and now everyone is at each other's throats, calling each other names and, for the most part, not helping to preserve the beauty of Nature.
And (let's be honest) not really doing anything to prevent climate change, either.
Go figure!
3
Generally speaking, we could more heavily tax energy in ways that wouldn't hurt the poor and middle class much. Put higher taxes on large SUV's, large luxury cars, large homes. Sure, buy those things if you want them but realize you will have to pay more in taxes, which could be used to subsidize solar, wind and other clean energy sources. These taxes could also be used to subsidize public transit which would help non-rich people. There are many clever and creative ways to work this, but as long as big coal and big oil have a stranglehold on politicians the road ahead is tougher than it needs to be.
11
The author asks the wrong question.
The right question is:
Does environmentalism serve as a religion only for rich people?
7
One of the leading countries in successfully moving away from fossil fuels is Costa Rica, which though not monetarily wealthy does has a high literacy rate.
It appears that environmentalism is largely more for the literate and perhaps intellectual souls than the rich. Americans have many rich yet somewhat ignorant (and apparently selfish) people who care nothing about change, sacrifices and progressive energy solutions to mitigate the climate crisis.
Yet, we also evidently have a show of ignorance among some of the less wealthy Americans who vote against their interests by electing climate deniers. These are likely the people who will suffer most due to climate-related health issues (as well as material issues) and inadequate health care to deal with their problems. Additionally,as a result of #45's policies, the more rural hunting and fishing families will see further declines in healthy fauna that could be on their table. If they were better educated or more thoughtful, they would support a new "Green Deal" for all.
In this country, the only hope seems to be in our youth, rich and poor.
1
@Janice "...we also evidently have a show of ignorance among some of the less wealthy Americans who vote against their interests by electing climate deniers."
Hillary took far more money from the oil sector than Trump. She probably wouldn't have pandered to coal interests but she surely would've continued Obama's wretched "all of the above" energy policy which sanctioned the huge increase in domestic oil and gas extraction - in effect, speeding up climate change.
This issue is far too serious for petty partisanship - both parties are leading us to climate disaster. Gloating that our party will get us there slower is idiotic.
It isn't elites who will be the biggest losers with climate change. Lower economic levels will be hit far worse, directly by disasters (cheaper land in vulnerable areas, poorer construction) and indirectly by economics - rising taxes for disaster assistance, rising home insurance premiums, climbing costs for food due to droughts/famines and agricultural pestilence, clean water shortages, health care for heat-related conditions (blue collar work) and diseases (ticks, mosquito-borne, etc.), etc. Not to mention conflicts for dwindling resources, mass migrations of climate refugees, etc. Urban elites hiding out in gated communities aren't going to bear the brunt.
So yes, climate change IS a rich/poor issue, but not as it has been portrayed. The message should be: Pay now in climate change prevention or pay even more later. Don't expect elites to save you. They won't be hit as hard as we are. Addressing climate change is saving ourselves.
5
It isn't that the concern for our environment is an arena just for the rich. Many communities around the world are seeing the impacts on their environment and on the natural resources on which they depend. It is not a luxury but in many cases a question of life and death.
However, the majority of the solutions presented seem to be geared towards the rich as opposed to the public as a whole. While electric cars are still very much for the those with means, a carbon tax on gasoline has the most impact on those who can least afford it. This is not the way to achieve large-scale change while maintaining political stability.
3
Maybe my thinking is too simple, but here goes: It's about fairness and the impression that any changes in taxation and services are done equitably and with consideration. Example France: If the price of fuel for my car that is required to get around is hiked (public transit has been cut down, especially in the countryside), I will, of course, be especially incensed if I learn that the fuel for private jets is still much cheaper. Basically, the idea of saving the environment using "market-based solutions" often translates into mainly squeezing those who already struggle to make ends meet. Luckily for us living in a democracy, completely ignoring vox populi can be hard to do. Macron showed himself to be what he is: a skilled and intelligent technocrat who had (has?) little or no idea how the 40-50% on the bottom of the economic pyramid actually live. I hope he is a quick learner, or the next French president will be Marine Le Pen or another authoritarian right-wing populist.
11
In environmental issues, politics can use the carrot (subsidies for green technology, public construction of recharging stations, ...) or the stick (taxes on fuel and polluting cars, ...). Raising fuel taxes without earmarking the incoming money for green policies in France was too much of the stick. It was also a bit like "if they can't afford their fuel, let them drive Tesla", a joke that doesn't sit well since Marie Antoinette.
What is needed (not only in France) is a green policy that encourages and supports all groups in society.
8
So everyone cares about the environment. But only the rich or the existentially threatened are actually willing to take measures to protect it. One because they can afford to and because it gives them some social cachet, the other because they have to.
That leaves a huge chunk of humanity who realize the environment is important but who also realize their own livelihood and comfort matter and in the short term, money for goods and services here and now is the final consideration. Those concerns are in no way mutually exclusive and humans can't live every day projecting their actions down the road 50+ years.
The best option would be to ensure security and income for everyone and then impose taxes like these once rural infrastructure has been developed or their incomes have increased.
Gas taxes should be imposed as a "reward" for the government for hitting certain positive economic milestones. For example, between now and the imposition of these taxes, income should grow by this percentage. Or infrastructure investment by this %.
Taxes are all about reciprocity. People ancient and modern know this in their bones.
2
Global warming is very serious problem. Recently the NYTs has been reporting that global warming is worse than originally thought. The results over time could be catastrophic. The NYTs recently had an article on coal. Why is coal use still expanding even in countries that signed the Paris Accords. The answer is that people like the Koch Brothers can still make a handsome profit by it. And the Chinese use coal based electricity to help develop third world economies that will in turn boost China's geopolitical ambitions. Trump wins the presidency an with malicious pride bashes global warming warnings. Macron made a unilateral decision which provoked the yellow vests. Now he has moderated his position to relieve some of the sting of his regressive gas tax. In Poland, Polish coal miners have real political clout. The problem is that despite the dire warnings and abundant evidence that weather changes have happened and sea levels have risen, many people think that climate change is a parlor game played by experts.
5
If it weren't for propaganda campaigns by polluters, it would be very easy for the working class to see how environmentalism is very much for them because it's huge potential for job growth - unlike the dinosaur industries they're tricked into hanging on to.
7
@BF When you are already paying U.S.$7.00 a gallon for gasoline for a very small car (you don't see big black SUVs such as the car services use in NYC) in places like France, and there is no public transportation (or unreliable public transportation, like NYC, which is causing people to switch to Uber to get to work), and the government has just cut taxes for the rich and is raising taxes on pensioners and retirees, and then wants to put an additional tax on fuel you absolutely must buy, then all it takes is for one person to protest and you have thousands come out.
If gasoline were $7.00 per gallon in the U.S. (where I live it hovers between $1.90 and $1.99) people would riot. Americans, unfortunately the younger generation in particular, think it is their right to drive a Tahoe or giant Lexus or four-door Ford pickup and travel 300 to 400 miles per weekend to take their little kids to dance competitions or basketball tournaments. They don't remember the 1973 oil embargo.
1
But if we address inequality and facilitate a more even distribution of wealth, how with the wealthy be able to buy themselves out from under the worst effects of climate change?
4
I heard that when companies were asked if they would be willing to forgo private plane use, in favor of the environment, some refused to answer, and others said no. So, in reality, the idea of the environment, is only an idea. e President Obama talked a good talk, but didn't set an example of what he said he believed, as he and his family didn't limit their flying around the world, not just for necessary trips, but vacations several times a year as well. Those that really care about the environment, are those who have contact with the soil every day, and know what is necessary to maintain it. The human animal is only capable of living what is in its best interest. If it was truly interested in the environment, they wouldn't have more than two children, eat organic, no meat, have no carbon polluting vehicle, and not use any, etc. Do you really know anyone like that? Very few!
7
@MaryKayKlassen - Don't pick on Obama so much.
It's also the high priests of Climate Change: Al Gore lives in a 10,000sf mansion and drives an SUV. Leo DiCaprio famously flew in a private jet from the US to Europe to pick up an award and flew back the same day.
Every year or two, the IPCC meets in some resort and people fly in from all over the world at who knows what carbon footprint to talk about how much the Earth has warmed since the last meeting (which could be done via video conference).
My personal lifestyle is much more carbon-friendly, so I'm doing my part.
When the grand poo-bahs of Climate Change lead by example, I will follow.
That's a tough combination. Those who have contact with the soil every day usually live in places with little or no public transport so they need a vehicle to get around.
1
There are ideas that make sense but happen to be politically impossible. We need the equivalent of a very progressive carbon tax. Every person gets a free ration, thereafter the tax increases progressively to very high levels. For illustration purposes only, if we assume that the basic ration is burning 1.000 pounds of carbon, the second thousand would begin to pay tax; by the time you get to the tenth thousand you would be paying a large amount of tax, enough to deter and get you to switch to clean energy.
2
@SierramanCA - Economics matter. Where you live matters.
If you live in NYC, SFO or DC, you have excellent public transportation and can get to work in an office fine.
If you are a farmer in Kansas, or commute to work in LA, $10/gallon gasoline makes a difference in your lifestyle. You will not be able to live the way you do today.
2
This article misses the fact that it's the most rural, least prosperous people who actually bear the brunt of climate change. The war in Syria was triggered when farmers in rural areas fled to cities for help after a four year drought threw them into poverty and starvation. Same for the "migrant" caravan. Refugees from drought caused crop failures, a volcano in Guatemala that created dark skies for a LONG time and more crop failures, etc.
5
The great majority of human peoples are in favor of a better environment. The rub is who pays and how much. Now if you are just getting by and gasoline is taxed to $6.00 a gallon, an additional tax on that gasoline becomes a successful irritant even to the most ardent environmentalist. Are you going to tax the environmentalism out of the people? Affluent people flee France expressly to avoid the oppressive taxes of the state. This is democratic socialism's dark side that my friends on liberal left refuse to acknowledge. If the government keeps providing more, it needs more money. Forever. The heavily taxed French people are wise enough to know Justice Marshall's axiom: "The power to tax, is the power to destroy."
7
In France, the reaction is basically against a regressive tax. In the US, climate-change denial ['skepticism'] emanates from corporate-funded 'think'-tanks that have promoted an unholy ideology among religious conservatives -- that climate is the handiwork of God, and maybe even a harbinger of the much anticipated End Times.
The answer, both in France and the US, is to promote policies such as a carbon tax coupled with taxpayer rebate [all revenue redistributed] that are less regressive. And in the US, to encourage the brave evangelicals who are beginning to embrace a theology of stewardship of the Earth and its peoples, rather than a vainglorious Rapture.
13
I'll add that I doubt this issue can be handled by expecting individuals to make choices that damage their own short-term prospects if collectively those same choices aren't being forced on everyone else. I could stop flying for work, for instance, and live at a much lower income because of that. But if no one else is making the same sacrifice, my sacrifice does no real good, but hurts me a lot. If I know everyone is making a similar sacrifice, though, I would gladly comply. I'm not a hero who will fight the battle on my own. But I am a willing troop if others are joining me.
5
This headline itself and the tangled discussion really does not advance things in the state of the planet. The French are protesting taxes they cannot afford. Perhaps attention to the environment does take education for people to arrive at an overview of the planetary state, an ability to pay for their lives, and/or a mindset that sees man as part of nature. Environmentalists constantly stress the opportunity for jobs in building renewable energy sources, but instead leadership keeps on with coal mining, which must become a thing of the past because of the harm it does, and gas pipelines to everywhere which provides few jobs,with most workers imported from other states, after the line is built. The poorer nations are paying the price of environmental raping but richer nations are, and will be, paying too. Fix the taxes on the poor so they can live better and they will be right on the case with the environment.
2
The rich consume the most carbon energy by far. They have detatched houses, often more than one, low mileage vehicles, they fly and burn tons of fuel on boats, and they mow large, environmentally dead lawns.
And they use far more than their equal share of the world's resources and often their country's have won wars to control more their share of the world's resources.
26
The environment and economic justice are like China and America: at odds with each other but connected by mutual dependence. In order to get the underprivileged to feel like they have a stake in the outcome, you need to give them access to the very resources that are causing the problems.
This illustrates the difference between simply shifting priorities versus actually making things better. It's one thing to balance economic justice with the environment, and yet another to achieve economic justice without degrading the environment more. That requires a comfortable lifestyle with a smaller footprint, and that will require a massive redesign of the economy and the infrastructure. That, in turn, will break many golden rice bowls, because it will take power and leverage away from wealthy manipulators.
Are we there yet? Are we even headed in the right direction?
6
I think it's very difficult to get people to accept short-term pain for long-term gain (or the avoidance of long-term pain). Often this is rational, because the short-term pain is clear and definite while the long-term gain (or long-term pain) is often poorly defined and of indefinite probability.
The problem though is if the long-term pain turns out to be real and great, the ultimate cost could be devastating. I get the sense we won't be able to make the short-term sacrifices necessary to avoid potential environmental disaster in the long-term. Future generations will discover whether that inability to act was harmless, fatal, or something in-between. If it's fatal, they will curse us before they die.
4
This issue seems to be incorrectly framed on a rich/poor divide and is more of a classical economic policy proposal. , framed according to who benefits (from climate resilience) and who pays (money) paradigm. therefore its different. The yellow vest movement was not borne out of climate change skepticism, but a sense of unfairness that relatively less prosperous French are asked to pay disproportionately more to maintain standard of living.
Yes, brushing aside equity concerns and stakeholder involvement in climate policy is a cautionary tale. Climate change will not be solved on the backs of those who have not achieved prosperity if the well intentioned rich don't put their money and outsized carbon footprints, where their mouths are.
Of course all of this is more complicated as polluters are eager to flip this benefits-pays script to their benefit, messaging the nihilism of taking any action on climate in order to maximize their 'who benefits' (fewer polluting restraints = more money for industrialists) versus 'who pays' (human health, relocation, instability and other negative externalities.) This will ultimately leave everyone, rich or poor, worse off.
7
It's really simple. The French bourgeoisie revolted against regressive taxation. All the commentary that wealth disparity is the real villain, is RIGHT. Here and around the world, the wealthy and powerful have their way, and the rest of us overpay in huge proportion.
15
Where is the evidence that the wealthy care? Many wealthy don't seem to care enough to limit their impact - much more environmental damage is inflicted by their lifestyles (flying, multiple homes, large gas vehicles, extreme consumerism) than it is by the poor or lower middle classes. Moreover, the wealthiest and most powerful among us (I'm thinking of the Koch brothers, the oil industry and its lobbyists, trillionaires rocketing cars into space instead of using their absolutely excessive wealth to solve real environmental issues).
13
If environmentalism were a luxury, my Democratic city would have a Low Emission Zone, much better recycling, building codes to promote more insulation, separate safe bike lanes, plastic bag bans, etc. Just as in Europe.
The truth is that Americans left and right don’t really care about the environment. It’s a side effect of the Darwinian culture of money and greed, part of the uglification of America that culminated in the Trump presidency.
8
To deny climate change is an error; however to assume that increasing tax on fuel in France will slow down climate change is a stretch. Additionally the protests in France will/have achieved a kind of pay back which renders the additional fuel tax as nothing more than moving money from one pocket to another. Macron is getting an education he thought he already had.
6
I simply want to add my voice in support of this piece and say...
Yep.
It is imperative to fix the damage our society has done to climate. We will never get it done if we cannot take care of the less privileged of our society in the meantime - food, shelter, water, health care.
4
I truly fear for the future safety of the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the owners, board members and executives of the oil, natural gas, coal and pipeline companies and their sponsored political “leaders.”
As living conditions on our planet become unbearable due to the severe, relentless impacts of Climate Change, generations of devastated citizens around the world will ask: “Who is most directly responsible for this existential catastrophe?”
When these citizens look around, they will find many of the culpable carbon barons and carbon-sponsored politicians have already passed on to whatever afterlife awaits them. But the direct descendants of the carbon barons and the carbon-sponsored politicians will still be here. And there will be no escape – not even behind their gated communities – from the wrath of billions of incensed citizens on every continent.
For the carbon barons, it all comes down to one essential choice to be made right now: harvest their carbon assets and sacrifice their descendants – or – strand their carbon assets and save their descendants?
For the carbon-sponsored politicians, it also comes down to one essential choice to be made right now: continue to dither on Climate Change legislation and sacrifice their descendants – or – pass sweeping and meaningful Climate Change mitigation legislation and save their descendants?
The time on the clock is quickly running out...
3
As an urban dweller, I live in a studio apartment, take mass transit, fly twice a year, and recycle paper and cardboard. My carbon footprint is much smaller than a lot of people I know. But quite frankly as a single middle-aged gay man with no kids I feel somewhat apathetic about the whole thing. However, I am surprised that so many "family values" people aren't more concerned for their children and grandchildren's future. They should be most alarmed but are not.
6
I think the response to Macron’s tax would have been different if it had been paired with measures to compel the wealthy to do their part.
Air traffic is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. We need strict limits on the number of flights allowed. But you don’t see environmentalists proposing that—because they don’t want to fly less.
13
I continue to believe we are overlooking the most fundamental part of this argument: In the face of environmental armageddon the citizens of wealthy 1st world countries will have far more head room for survival than the citizens of poor 3rd world countries.
We already consume over 40 gallons of bottled water per person per year, voluntarily, while drinkable water flows from our taps. We throw away 40% of the food we produce. The best selling vehicles in the US are gigantic pickup trucks and SUV's. The front pages of the NYTimes Magazine are filled each week with offers for multi-million dollar high rise condos. So, yes, we can AFFORD to be environmentally conscious, even as our lifestyles describe something less than conscious. We have a lot of room to unwind all this, when the time comes.
But the most important thing we have is the means by which to deprive those with far less head room for survival of what they will need, to make sure we have what we need. I believe this subliminal sense of survivability informs the speed and urgency we apply to climate change and environmental disaster.
We don't behave as if the end is near because, for us, the end is nowhere near as close as it is for others.
14
@Jim so are you proposing that the USA should be the Nanny Country for earth. Correct?
Les gilets jaunes protested the gas tax because Macron's government had slashed taxes on the highest earners. These people aren't opposed to environmental measures, they're opposed to environmental measures that fall entirely on the backs of the poor.
18
@Carl Z. There is a problem and challenge with perceived fairness and equity. If everyone that makes big money is leaving a country due to their high income tax laws then it is reasonable to address that. That is a reasonable action to take- taxing fuel was a less intelligent action for Mackie - he's getting an education.
Sadly, I have to agree with the assessment that environmentally sound goods and services are pretty out of reach for the working class and the working poor: organic produce and meat is far more costly. Green design for homes, commercial buildings, and city planning comes at a premium and may not "pencil out" in a reasonable period of time. (The exception to this might be solar panels, but even then the initial outlay of cash for the average homeowner is expensive.) And electric cars--even Volkswagens--are about $10K more than their gas engine versions of the same model.
So the question then becomes, do we tax average citizens more to do the right thing on a societal level, or do we re-prioritize our government spending to subsidize these purchases to address the problem? Our defense budget, for example, is way out of proportion with other, more pressing needs. France might not have the luxury of re-distributing their defense budget toward green goals, but we certainly do.
7
@Sabrina Massive population control is pretty much what will have to happen. If we are going to ensure the survival of humanity and earth we will have to have less people, not more as the illegal immigrant proponents support. Green goals are merely a reflexive maneuver resulting from over-population. Its time that we became willing to discuss this.
@Dixon Duval I don't know how you do this when much of the world's religious adherents take a "be fruitful and multiply" approach to life. Do you outlaw religion? Do you put a cap on the number of children any couple can have? This has been tried in China and it didn't work out so well. It also caused female infanticide in large numbers.
I have been an environmental lawyer for about 40 years. I do not do defense work. Poor people who have trouble breathing the air in their neighborhoods and Republicans with polluted wells are the strongest "environmentalists" I know.
75
@D David Altman
Your comment fits with findings that almost all books published relating to climate change denial were published tied to conservative political think tanks without adequate peer review: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3787818/ ("Climate Change Denial Books and Conservative Think Tanks: Exploring the Connection," June 2013).
The people publishing those distorted reports are not interested in the poor or in Republicans with contaminated wells.
@D David Altman Thank you for your comment. I really don't understand how this got published. The idea that poor people don't "care" is so offensive.
9
It is extraordinarily difficult to get anything done when there are deep pocketed greedniks like the Koch brothers funding a constant barrage of anti science disinformation that is distributed in this country by the pure evil that is the Rupert Murdock media web. Yes, the messaging needs to be better, but there is a built-in advantage for the big lie that says to do nothing which is oh so easy when every day life gets in the way.
4
I think the error i your thesis is that Americans are well-educated, at least regarding climate change. Generally Americans are poorly educated in this area and are easily misled by false and misrepresented ideas, especially from the fossil fuel industry and its lackies
15
@Peter Impara
Yes. It is astonishing and depressing how many Americans are out of touch with the natural world (even rural people), products of our poor educations which ignore ecology except as an advanced specialty. Ecological observation ought to start early--the cradle is not too soon, kindergarten late but better than the nothing most receive.
@Peter Impara That's also when I stopped following the reasoning. I come from Europe and have been in the US for 3 years and if the best schools / universities are probably here, on average the majority of the Americans lack a decent education. Even worse, many of the uneducated ones still think they are smarter than the rest of the World, with the example coming from the very top, we just need to google images 'idiot' to find the role model here ;-)
2
The Environmental Justice movement has understood that inequality and environmental degradation are symptoms of the same problem for over 30 years. It makes me cringe to imagine how EJ leaders would react if they were to read the title of this opinion piece. Let's not forget that low income people have been leading the fight for decades.
As one example, here in Chicago petcoke has been poisoning the air, water and soil for decades. I heard a grandmother in Calumet talk about doctors finding arsenic, mercury & lead in her blood. NO ONE has every called Calumet a rich town. But the groups doing the most to get petcoke banned are people from affected areas. They've been taking up the fight where government and media have been apathetic.
The narrative that poor people are too down trodden to have environmental concerns and that leaders have only come from the affluent is a crazy double standard. For every rich activist, there are plenty of apathetic rich folks. For every poor activist, there are plenty of apathetic poor folks. But I'd wager the apathy is a lot higher on the rich side.
There is definitely a disconnect between affluent activists that see environmental catastrophe as something in the near future and activists already living on toxic land. I am part of the former. We urgently need a way to start building coalitions and we've made progress. But a big part of that has to be acknowledging that many of our best environmental leaders have not come from the privileged.
10
One fact that is rarely mentioned in this discussion is the level of taxation that the French driver already experiences in buying fuel for his car or truck. American tourists are always amazed at the price of fuel in Europe, where they make gasoline buyers cover the costs of the roads they drive on, the air quality problems caused by that driving, and probably other social ills caused by cars. The price of gas comes out to something like $8.00 per gallon.
Can you imagine gas at $8.00 per gallon in the U.S? The MAGA fans would be marching on the White House with pitchforks. And if someone threatened to raise fuel taxes--on top of the $8.00--they would see a very short political career.
As to the environmentalism of "poor people", one might look at Flint, Michigan. I suspect they'd prefer somewhat higher water taxes than to be lining up at dawn to collect water bottles from charitably minded donors, or to having their children poisoned with lead. Perhaps this is just another example of the old saw that "All politics [and pollution] is local."
6
The author says- "The United States, like France, is a prosperous country with a well-educated population. Yet according to a survey conducted this year by the Pew Research Center, only 44 percent of Americans say they care a great deal about climate change."
We must remember that "education" must not mean just school/college degrees. It must include quality of education imparted there.
USA literacy rate and quality of education has deteriorated drastically in last few decades. At least 14 percent (some source indicate it's more than 20 percent in 2017) of American adults are illiterate in all practical sense. The worse part is- influence of religion in American education system is worst among all 35 developed countries surveyed. As per latest data (2006)- about 38 percent of American college graduates "strongly believe that God created human beings in its present form". That's worst in our own recent history. These college graduates totally deny hard science of evolution. A large part of denial of man made climate change is also religious and many believe that man are not that powerful to affect God's creation and this world.
France, other west European and other developed countries including Japan and Australia are doing far better than USA in terms of quality of public education, religiosity of its citizens, and influence of religion in public education.
8
It's no mystery that all the things we admire about modern living, heat AC, mobility, electrified appliances, all require energy.
If you make energy less attainable for the masses you will impoverish their lives.
3
I grew up public-housing and food stamp-poor, and this reminds me of the push to buy local produce and 'free-range' meat and poultry. That comes off as incredibly arrogant and tone-deaf in the poorer sections of NYC. People struggling to buy even the cheapest chicken don't want to be lectured to about buying the organic stuff for +50% the price. I can't imagine what the reaction would have been if it had been mandated the way this gas tax was.
13
@Mario My 4 kids grew up food stamp poor and in subsidized housing. We had one old car, roommates, used clothes, used furniture..... but you better believe, as much as possible, I gave them free range chicken and local produce. I was lucky enough to be able to buy food in bulk at the local natural food store.
I wasn't paying for cable TV, haircuts, tobacco, alcohol and nutritionless overpackaged food. My kids had bike routes, baby sat.... and did what they could to earn money if they wanted sneakers that cost over $25. Lots of beans. Chicken once a week. No red meat. It's a matter of priorities (and knowledge and access to good food.)
2
1) What definition of "rich" is used by those who believe this is a niche issue? And do we have any information about whether those with higher incomes and who support environmental legislation actually behave as if climate change matters? Drive hybrids or plug-ins; keep their thermostats low in the winter and high in the summer, for example?
2)What roles do political affiliation, types of media consumption play in attitudes about environmental action?
2
The American press really has to stop repeating ad naseum that the gilets-jaunes is a push back against environmental goals. It's a push back against taxes, a protest about the ever increasing costs-of-living. It's also about the limits of the ability of the 5th Republic to gain support for political and economic change.
If you want to discuss the equity and environmentalism, by all means do so. But using France as a strawman is disingenuous. The situation in France is way more complicated than a simplistic interpretation that "the poor are against environmentalism".
15
@bcnj
The Gilets Jaunes protests are mostly about the favoring of the rich at the expense of everyone else in the society. One of their demands is to bring back the tax on the very highest earners, who are hoarding money offshore and consistently refusing to pay their fair share.
In general, most French people strongly support taxation that is dedicated to providing high quality services at a reasonable cost. In fact, they don't call such payments "taxation" ("les impots"). They have a separate word for it: "les cotisations sociales." I'm not sure how to translate that one, given that we usually pay insurance premiums and interest on credit cards and student loans instead.
1
Anti-environmentalism is a “movement” that is supported and promoted by a few extremely rich people, who profit enormously from pollution (i.e. the Kochs). Everyone else indirectly pays for their greed,in health costs,mitigation costs,and ongoing disaster.That’s a legitimate example of an “uncaring elite” versus “those who are struggling to get by”.
125
@Tim Hunter And lets not forget or omit mentioning that the the US military is the largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world protecting the "freedom" of the fossil fuel industry.
2
Nobody that I know in the environmental movement considers inequality a separate issue.
109
@Brian
At a 12 December public meeting in Santa Monica, at the Aero Theater, in a discussion of climate change and the effects on the public of Los Angeles, a panel member emphasized the "inequality" of environmental concern.
A Latina teenager, she suffered from asthma due to the refinery near her family apartment. She talked of her childhood illnesses. And now she will suffer from asthma for all her life.
When an activist from the Porter Ranch natural gas disaster voiced support for her efforts to clean the air of her community, she thanked him for his concern -- but commented his wealthy suburb received immediate media and political attention, while her immigrant community had suffered without attention for generations.
Inequality? Without a doubt, inequality plays a role in environmental awareness and political response.
In the years of my own childhood in the slums of the North East San Fernando Valley, prevailing winds concentrated the pollution of the region in our area. Afternoons went red with airborne filth. Visibility diminished to a hundred meters. Walking a block made my lungs ache.
Did my father, an often-unemployed contractor, commit time to environmental meetings? No. He worked every possible job to feed and clothe his family.
Environmental activists invested unnumbered thousands of hours at meetings to force California and Federal authorities to require catalytic converters and lead free gasoline.
I thank those "wealthy" "educated" "elitists."
19
@GreenUrbanIslands
Gosh, I wish I knew about that meeting at the Aero. I grew up and now, after decades away, again live right at the 5 mile border zone of the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas facility. I’ve also lived all over LA and at times in borderline-impoverished neighborhoods like near Downtown in the mid-80s and central Hollywood in the early 90s before hipsters and big money rediscovered and reclaimed those neighborhoods. So I’ve seen both sides of issue. I really hate this us-versus-them mentality peddled here. Without changing the fundamental economic power structure of the US economy, the rich are really the only hope in advancing environmental change and their new eco-lifestyles and ideas will eventually filter down to the rest of society.
I know the poor do care but because the rich have consistently voted over the last 40 years to redirect their wealth away from their fair share of taxes and profits needed to give the working poor living wages, access to top public schools, and health care, they can’t do anything about it. I don’t care about the premise of this opinion. Right now environmentalism is for the rich because they’ve rigged the economy to make it so. And thus, the rich totally owe it the world to work their tails off for environmentalism. In fact, they need to work even harder at it. Crack that whip!
The problems noted here are not caused by environmentalism. They are caused by joint neoliberal taylorizing of paychecks and corporate greed that has permeated our political system. The whole "protesting environmentalism" and "can't afford envronmentalism" is pure organic fertilizer. The real problem is austerity and shrinking paychecks funneling money to those who need it least. The rest is manipulation of memes.
16
There is at least one tax that would help the environment that would be paid for by the rich: taxing jet fuel.
It appears the EU actually provides for refunds on VATs paid for jet fuel for international travel. If taxing carbon is to be made political feasible, starting by taxing the jet set is certainly the way to go.
33
@Jim S. The jet set includes a whole lot of middle class people now. Weening them off of civil aviation will be a Herculean task, but I agree, it is necessary. Isn't that the point of a carbon tax; to raise the price so that people use less of it?
I have friends who claim to be environmentally conscious, but fly all over the place. I could regale them about this contradiction, but then I wouldn't have many friends.
7
If we tax jet fuel, give the proceeds to Amtrak. It's no good getting people out of airplanes of they're just going to drive instead. We need to expand our passenger rail system. And we need to use the system we have, when practical.
I particularly recommend the California Zephyr between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area. Beautiful trip through the Sierras and the Rockies.
1
Dr. Gross the sociologist. Hmmm. Comparing France to the US? Both well educated? Why don't you compare them on adherence to religious faith and belief in divine intervention? You're talking chalk and cheese. Respect for science? I find it amazing that such a discussion as this does not feature reflection on who is responsible for global warming and who isn't. It isn't the poor. The well off should be a lot more concerned and vastly more willing to shoulder personal responsibility.
5
It may be too late for this article. The failure of the environmental movement to address jobs for those left out of policy choices. Trump rode part of this discontent. And judging by the tenacity of those pushing the carbon tax and hitting rural and working class people hard, he will play this card over and over again.
This isn't someone else's job. If climate change is real then the solutions must share the pain and the rewards.
And, I find it no accident or requiring much thought to realize that Island nations would be on board for transfers of funds to help them cope with high seas!!! Their problems are addressed by carbon taxes in France which would have shipped part of those tax receipts to the islands. How about rebating the tax to French workers via higher pay checks?
@Monty Brown
If anyone had really listened to HRC during her campaign, one of her main proposals was job retraining for those who would be displaced by closing the coal mines, etc. Thousands of jobs would be created repairing our crumbling infrastructure. And there is certainly a way to help those who don't have access to decent public transportation. And many of those concerned about the environment and wildlife are those who depend on subsistence hunting, and there are many, to put food on their tables.
5
The UN has been aware of the problem of economic inequality and the effects of climate change for some time: https://unfccc.int/news/combination-of-climate-change-and-inequality-increasingly-drives-risk (14 June 2018). Those of us who are more economically affluent, who will be able to better mitigate some of the problems that are arising and will grow, must recognize that our inaction is stripping options from our children and grandchildren.
It is hardly a shock that issues surrounding climate change provoke a good bit of cognitive dissonance or international discord. Taking our cues from polls has its own problems: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=publicpolicyfacpub ("Climate Change Survey Measures; Exploring Perceived Bias and Question Interpretation," fall 2014).
There is little doubt that globalization has aggravated the problems of climate change: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1109341 ("Globalization, Climate Change, and Human Health," 4 April 2013) .
Throwing up our arms is not a serious option. The current administration here in the USA appears to be among the world's most destructive forces, among developed nations, with respect to working on solutions.
5
It's simple, tax the rich to fund climate action.
4
The Green New Deal, promoted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, deals with both issues. It is the most exciting idea to come out of government that I have heard about for decades. We desperately need this bold, new approach! I am calling my congressman and Nancy Pelosi today to ask them to really push this. Get it through the House and if the Republicans vote against it in the Senate, well, let them take the hit for those votes. We need strong action by the Democrats and we need it NOW!!
85
@Bette Andresen, I'm sorry, I don't think that will work. I read through the "specific proposals" of the Green New Deal on Wikipedia. There are things in there that are still not addressing the Yellow Vest problem -- e.g. directed tax on the oil and gas industries, which will inevitably be passed to consumers. There are also some very important things totally missing:
Consumerism needs to be addressed directly, and can no longer comprise 70% of our, or anyone else's economy. Population growth needs to end. And so-called sequestering of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses needs to happen.
There are two things that a global solution to climate change needs to deal with that no solutions currently want to talk about: 1) Our current version of an economy has to be tossed and a new one found. 2) Population growth has to be acknowledged as everyone's problem and ended.
Furthermore, the one thing that hasn't been addressed in either Dr. Gross's treatment or in the Green New Deal, is that a global solution needs to be globally reached and globally implemented. As long as you're proposing a slate for the little people to up or down vote, you're not doing that.
Look at the photo of the Katowice, what you see is countries and economic entities represented. What you should see is lifestyles and professions. That would be real participation. And that's what is needed is to allow the others to participate, not to figure out how to message to those you didn't ask for their input.
11
@ondelette No, it will be technological progress that solves climate change issues, not trying to go backwards or hope a "new economic system" can be developed, implemented and somehow fix climate change without destroying humanity, liberty and all the nations that today use a perfectly fine economic system if government would just stop being corrupt and focus on equal protection rather than implemented tyrannical "final solutions."
3
@Bette Andresen
Meth is exciting, bungee jumping is bold and eating laundry pods is new.
1
The problem is smug rich people pretending they are environmentalists and looking down on poor people who cut timber or work in coal mines for a living. The rich consume the vast majority of the resources and create the demand and look down on those who provide the supply of natural resources. Its like a drug addict in NYC looking down on a poppy farmer in Afghanistan or a cocoa farmer in Columbia for trying to survive in a war torn hellscape of our making. The gap between rich and poor is exploding. The rich are hoarding more and more wealth; wealth created from despoliation of the planet, including if your wealth comes from being a tech geek or a hedgefund manager who fancies himself an anticlimate change crusader. The wealthy caused climate change, have vastly too much already, and giving tax cuts to the rich and putting a regressive tax on energy is a policy that somehow poor people have to be antienvironmental to oppose. Eliminate income taxes for middle incomes down, eliminate sales taxes, eliminate property taxes on primary residences below the top quartile in value in any county, vastly increase income taxes on the wealthy, provide foods stamps to anyone that asserts a need (without proof) and THEN put the lower and middle classes' ONLY tax burden into a stiff carbon tax that is actually sufficient to modify behavior, rather than making people feel more overburdened in their miserable lives, but not stiff enough to change behavior in a such a car dependent society.
2
These conversations always get severely distorted when there is no discussion of the environmental justice movement. It is as if it never existed. Anyone with an awareness of the history of the environmental justice movement from the 1980s to today would not even pose the question "Is Environmentalism Just for Rich People?" It would seem like an absurd question from someone who has never really paid much attention to environmental issues and how they relate to the lives of the majority of people throughout the world. I realize that Dr. Gross is trying to confront some of the erroneous assumptions implied by the question with a more "complicated" understanding, but it still seems strange to do so by discussing an old misguided academic debate without ever even alluding to the environmental justice movement. You would think these kind of questions and commentaries would become a thing of the past, especially after the recent attention given to Flint and Standing Rock.
For information on the origins of the environmental justice movement, see: http://www.ucc.org/a_movement_is_born_environmental_justice_and_the_ucc
Rev. Dr. Brooks Berndt
Minister for Environmental Justice
United Church of Christ
9
How many poor people hike in Yellowstone? Grand Tetons? Grand Canyon? Zion? etc etc...My guess is probably zero.... So yes, the yapping about saving natural parks in Alaska, etc., is indeed for the wealthy, or upper middle class, as for the average american, we'll never go to these places, unless we live with a couple of hours drive.
1
@Joe I agree with your comment, Sir. That said, I know one "poor" and impoverished man; an "average American", who uses Yellowstone and other public parks to camp at. These spaces are the only relief available to him, as he meanders through our mental health system. He is my brother; a homeless, harmless, schizophrenic individual. He doesn't send pictures of the shelters he lives in, but forwards a plethora of photos of nature when he is on the road.
@Joe
Poor people who live too far away from the major national parks might never go there nowadays, but it used to be that they were go to places for middle class and working people who could take their families along with whatever tent or tarp they had, and camp, hike and swim in a pristine place. And the wildlife in these places does leave the parks and is available for subsistence hunters. Plus, there are many people who move to places like Idaho and Alaska which have lots of wilderness and take what ever jobs are available seasonally so they can hike, camp and hunt on public lands. They are definitely not for the rich who are more likely to be hanging out at places like Mar-a-Lago, Caribbean Islands or yachting in the Mediterranean.
1
Don’t blame poor and working class people for the wholesale sell-out of our planet and climate by greedy “educated” upper class corporatists.
4
Have just started reading Bruno Latour’s “Down to Earth - Politics in the New Climate Regime”. Interesting similarities between this commentary and Latour’s writing.
As usual The French get it.... the people, not the government. The Gas Tax is the new Bread Tax. Luckily for Macron and his ilk, The Guillotine has fallen out of favour.
If Climate Change Advocates like privilege Leo DiCaprio and others in the movement want the Plebs to pay for their boutique legislation, perhaps they should stop using private jets, giant yachts and huge SUV caravans (looking at you Mayor DeBlasio) as their usual mode of transportation. or multiple palatial dwellings. Tax the Carbon Footprints
So the solution to this is communication? In other words, not being so open about the cost and the tax? Trickery? Hidden taxes/legislation? I cannot believe you are advocating this.
10
and rich countries.
To borrow from popular culture, Climate Change is #RICHPEOPLEPROBLEMS
As grateful as I am that the author, and this newspaper finally recognizes that not all Climate Change is created equal, he/they miss a simple point. Most people will say they are for Climate Change.... until it affects their wallet, especially if they living paycheck to paycheck or worse.
Its the same old story. whether in France, Italy or The USA. The richer elite urbanists forcing their will over the poorer rural areas. And using Fiji, roughly the size of Connecticut to and whose population in less than half of Brooklyn to discredit this reasoning is laughable. This is something the NYT thankfully examined right after the 2016 election, but seems to have forgotten, or ignored ever since.
3
@Sara
Rich people can more easily move and afford to buy bottled water and organic food no matter how expensive. It is poor people who will suffer most when the water is not drinkable and the food is poisoned with bacteria as in the recent lettuce contamination.
As to Fiji, we were there the day after a tremendous storm devastated large parts of the Islands in winter of 2016 and killed a lot of people. Everyone was pitching in to help repair buildings and roads.
@Julie Carter very true. But if you can barely buy groceries every week for your family, a tax on Fossil Fuels can be the difference between eating healthy or at all.
People despise hypocrisy and will not rally around those who expect them to “do as I say, not as I do.” When wealthy environmentalists stop flying private jets, living in multiple mansions, and driving gas guzzling vehicles, perhaps the average citizen will warm up to their demands for paying higher fuel costs, riding bicycles, and sorting their garbage into an infinite number of piles.
7
Sorry...but no go. First the headline- this view I more often see espoused by privileged Whites who see the environmental movement couched in neighborhood trash pickup drives and not watering the lawns on Sunday. A pretty, White feel good love fest. But this is NOT what it truly is.
The reality is that climate change is the currently the largest driver of world-wide inequality. And while social justice pursuits and economic justice should NOT be divorced from environmental justice and activism- spare me your foolish arguments. Nature takes umbrage- continue on your foolish, empty words, spiritually ignorant path then take heed of the magnificent and cruel power of what you so scorn and bury with empty words- Nature and life itself.
3
The straw dog: Is environmentalism a boutique issue?
The question: does funny money trump common sense? (Yep irony and sarcasm are both rolled into that question. Teflon don is still in the WH...oh, speaking of teflon...)
2
This qualifies for the silliest topic of the week. Actually environmentalism is just for rich people. Just as as exercising, education, electric cars, and a generally stress-free life are.
EVERYONE resists change.
Almost everyone thinks others should bear the costs of reducing harmful environmental effects because: at the bottom of the economic heap, people are struggling to survive; there is great fear of losing ground; people aspire to lifestyles which involve a lot of environmental destruction and waste; and finally, the true costs of the products are never reflected in the prices paid,
Downstream costs of pollution are treated in general as an afterthought. Harm inflicted on other regions or countries far away are rarely understood as "your" problem. Manufacturing tech stuff in China is cheaper not just due to low labor costs, but because they can get away with murder, or at least poisoning.
Costs of clean up and preventing harm have to be included in manufacturing costs costs to protect the environment. It would cut into profits and dampen consumer spending.. but strict multination pacts and uniform enforcement might make it work. Will better educated voters consumers accept this? What are people willing to give up, in wealthy societies, so that others will survive? Given that what we see in countries where some are becoming rich is that - they are willing to exploit their resources, take the money and run ( to Canada, the US, ) And in our own country we are seeing deliberate dismantling of protections by those who stand to gain while - no matter what happens to climate, animals or other human beings.
1
Professor Gross's main argument, as I interpret it, focuses on the need to place the threat of global warming within the context of other problems confronting modern society. Economic inequality undermines any effort to deal with climate change both because it promotes harmful divisions within the body politic and because the policies adopted hurt the working class more than they do affluent members of society.
Thus the Republican tax cut of last year, along with the party's determination to cut Social Security and Medicare, not only defy economic logic. They also will convince lower-income voters that any plan to fight global warming that originates in Washington will place the main burden on the working class. Business leaders, whose political acumen remains an article of faith among GOP bigwigs, will have much to answer for when New Orleans disappears beneath the waves and the Midwest becomes a desert.
2
enironmentalism championed by the elite isn't unlike poaching say for elephants. the poachers care little for the fate of a species but care quite a lot for their own survival.
it's next to impossible to worry about something 50 years or so from now when you're starving or too poor to pay yet more taxes easily shouldered by wealthy urbanites.
3
Look, for years the French government has been working hard to figure out ways to raise taxes. It is unfortunate that this particular tax proposal was the one to break the camel's back! Given the choice, I am sure the French would trade paying this tax rather than other ludicrous taxes concocted by their government, because they do care about environment issues.
2
So cleaning up pollution is a luxury to the cancer victims of "cancer alley" in Louisiana? Will it be a luxury when global warming wreaks havoc with weather and crops, doubling the price of food? Is reducing our dependency on oil a luxury only for the rich if it prevents yet another Middle East war that would otherwise cost the lives of thousands of middle and lower class kids? This notion that environmentalism is a hobby for the rich is nonsense. The working poor need to understand that they benefit from this. The only debate we should be having is how to best fund these efforts. We should not be debating whether these efforts are necessary, or whether they benefit the poor, because those answers are "yes" and "yes."
6
Sadly, wealth can buy what we think will make us popular, be it nice clothes or whatever, or organic food. Now people claim to eat organic for the health benefits, which may be part, but a lot of it is trendy. Environmental protection was a key cornerstone of the organic food movement before big money swept in looking to make a buck on stoopid and desperate for approval rich folk. Someone has to protect us from ourselves, which is why so many enviro warriors go mad and end up burned out on drugs or in prison for monkey-wrenching. Crimes against the Earth are crimes against us all. Our life depends on all the other life. Rich people make money polluting, one more knife in the back of most everyone else.
1
Humans have a strong urge to survive but thus far most have have not been personally threatened by Climate Change. Most look at the fires in CA or the massive storms in Asia as far away, "one off" problems which didn't affect them so it's OK to ignore the evidence. In fact, many still listen to Trump and believe that all of the filth we pump into the air magically disappears. Why waste $$ on solar when they can use the same money to buy a new gas guzzling SUV.
Eventually, the evidence will become so powerful even the most brain dead will see the light but by that time we may have lost the opportunity to deploy technology to correct the problem.
When we're gone our books will survive and so the next species will have a head start.
2
Rich people have the power (perceived only which we need to rectify...). They buy land to preserve, although, I would argue they just want it all for themselves (ie national parks, estates, Turner buying half of Arizona or New Mexico). Then they decide they should give it to the people and the people destroy what used to be beautiful. People’s are the problem.
The environmental crisis is only a boutique issue in the US because our corporate media system has made it so. The most sophisticated communications and information technology ever devised is being used to keep most Americans ignorant about the things most important to their families and communities.
Consider the proven fact that ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and similar fossil fuel industries have spent millions on climate denial "messaging" over nearly three decades. And who is their P.R. mouthpiece for this campaign of disinformation? Corporate media! Or, for instance, how much prime-time TV is devoted to covering the "biodiversity crisis" -- so profound that scientists are calling it the "Sixth Extinction"? You'd think that something this momentous would deserve at least as much time as Donald's latest unhinged tweet. But you'd be wrong, according to programmers of the MSM (Mainstream Media.)
This kind of disinformation-mongering is a crime against humanity.
4
It is easy to support environmental causes from a lofty perch. One can drive a hybrid to award shows, donate a million or two to Greenpeace, while reclining back in a mansion located behind the walls of a gated community.
1
Simply put, people’s position on environment protection is shaped by two things they can relate to– how environmental damage affects their lives on a daily basis, and the more basic need to eke out a living. It’s only the rich who don’t have both of these problems haranguing them simultaneously.
The author said even poor countries with fragile environments are pro-conservation, but it will hardly make a difference if wealthier countries ain’t helping them out because they have to exploit their natural resources to survive. The urgency for action is still largely decided by developed countries. Now they are trying to spread the responsibility and blame to poorer countries because they are not the ones most affected. Case in point is the Montreal Protocol. The developed world was up in arms and willing to bankroll Asian countries to give up CFCs, just because the ozone hole lies in their part of sky near the North Pole. Where is that activism now? Climate change something they can afford to dither and take time. One can only wonder how much more good a proactive role of the West would’ve done to this global cause?
1
I live in a blue blue city , do people care about the environment ?
9% of total City garbage is recycled with our blue carts program !
Anecdotally if you drive the alleys of Chicago you can see higher compliance in recycling in the "progressive wards" and way less recycling in socially/ economically disadvantaged wards
“Mr. Inglehart anticipated that growing prosperity, rising education levels and increasingly dire environmental circumstances would translate into the further spread of environmental consciousness in the years to come.”
Inglehart’s “landmark” treatise was published in 1995, a time when class warfare and increasing inequality were well underway (though not yet in the corporate-media radar), which leaves me baffled that an academic could publish such Pollyanna?
Don't get confused by the straw man. These riots and the 'reason' for them are a perfect foil for indicting environmentalism for just the rich. If the social systems weren't broken and money were shared more equitably, the poor of the rural areas wouldn't have to protest over a small gasoline tax. They were suffering way before the proposed increase.
It is the poor who are disproportionally affected by climate change. Environmentalism will benefit all, but especially the poor. A few weeks ago the Time had an article about rich Americans buying homes in 'safe' areas to mitigate the dangers of climate change--but guess what? There are no safe areas.
Those near the bayous of Houston and southern Louisiana will suffer. Farmers is India will suffer, many thousands who have already committed suicide due to droughts. The in Bangladesh and California and China will suffer. The poor always suffer, and climate change will and is deepening their suffering.
Finally, Environmentalism isn't just for 'rich people,' no. It isn't even just for people. Homo sapiens are not the only living beings on the planet, though they are the only living beings who are leading to planetary disaster. ALL living beings will suffer. Let's at last get that though our heads.
4
It's the hypocrisy that the wealthy seem to have a lock on. While folks like farmers need to buy thousands of gallons of diesel to run their farms, carpenters need pickup trucks to haul tools to job sites, and less economically fortunate folks buy old cars that are simple to fix (e.g., not a hybrid, turbo, or some other fancy engine type), the wealthy enjoy second homes (and associated commutes), jet to exotic vacation destinations, and sip water that has been hauled in from distant parts the globe. And they have the audacity to sneer at the guy driving the pickup truck because, you know, THAT GUY needs to do his part to save the environment! (And the pickup driver may have voted for Trump, so another reason to demean him.)
Retired people are the ones with the most time. Pregnant women are sometimes, sometimes not working. Unemployed have time. Those in high school are asked to think critically. Drought drives wars in Syria during the Arab Spring. Drought in the huge continent of Africa. It is less organized than lawyers for BP, Exxon Mobile, the Koch brothers, who spend their time buying legislators, buying state appellate judges, buying regulations, writing the rules for climate meetings. They have a clear motive: profit. The people only have prophets. Regulations get watered down.
I have ALWAYS been environmentally conscious and have practiced what I have preached to the best of my ability. At different stages of my life I have been more or less financially able to make an impact, but make a significant I did.
It is incumbent upon ALL OF US to protect our future and the future of generations to come. REAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE due to our habits is happening, and we have known about it for decades. The ignorance of people like Donald Trump has not helped the cause - he denies everything that he does not like and supposedly has the funds to avoid immediate impact. That is the attitude of a narcissistic mad man.
Even the most impoverished of us has the ability to cause less impact upon our environment - less consumption of fossil fuels, less waste, less use of non-biodegradable materials, etc. Yes, in the absence of overwhelming public participation and corporate prudence, taxes must pay for change. This is reality.
If people do not want increased taxes to compensate for their environmental abuse, start practicing conservancy. It's a public issue any way you slice it, and applies to ALL of us.
2
I so agree with so much of what is said in this column. In my mind it's exactly why it is so important to support climate action in the form of a "carbon dividend" - a carbon tax whose proceeds immediately get paid back to the people on a per capita basis, making it a way of fighting income inequality as well as carbon emissions. People like Al Gore and John Kerrey (with their huge carbon footprints) would be hugely affected while poor people who simply can't afford to burn tons of carbon would get money in their pockets. It's a plan that has support from prominent republicans, and in my mind it is a total shame that elite environmentalists favor incomprehensible egghead approaches like cap and trade instead of something simple and understandable like a carbon dividend.
2
It seems the rich people support the cause more than the poor people. But in fact, due to their lifestyle, rich people produce much higher amounts of greenhouse gas. It is easy to declare yourself an environmentalist without living as one (private jets, big houses, yachts, Beyonce flying to a Billionaire's doaughter wedding in India....).
1
The author is a little too loose with terms. ‘Environmentalism’, ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ are used interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing. No doubt they do to many, but not everyone, maybe not most people. One can be concerned about ‘the environment’, meaning water and air pollution, and willing to fund efforts to address same but unwilling to sacrifice to support efforts to protect against ‘global warming’ (aka ‘man-made climate change’). These folks, rightly, see little connection between higher taxes (in the case of France) and ‘global warming’. It is not a rich v poor split, it is a split between those whose declared support for climate change/global warming policies comes with little or no financial cost (Fiji, for example), and those who are asked- expected?- to sacrifice. What is the saying that addresses this? Oh, yeah: “Talk is cheap”.
1
The elephant in the room in any discussion about climate change is commercial air travel. Imagine instead if Macron proposed a carbon tax on air travel. Frequent flier programs that incentivize flying more are insane.
Many proponents of climate change awareness are guilty of rationalizing their air travel carbon footprint; it is the “mote in their own eye” to paraphrase Jesus.
2
Most of the comments seem to be a form of class warfare. The notion that rural voters are unwitting dupes in all this because they can’t afford the innovations clean energy provides is baloney. Everyone up here drives a gas guzzling pick-up truck even if their jobs do not require it. Those trucks are a lot more expensive then a hybrid. The power company provides an option that for ten dollars a month one can invest in a solar awray they feature as a part of their commitment to generate power through wind, solar, and natural gas. Few people take them up on this.
No it’s not class warfare, it’s messaging, and the the Koch’s and their ilk (including republicans) have done a great job of subverting the new industry. People are lazy about change, ignorant about the planet’s environmental peril, and the government has been almost criminal in it’s refusal and/ or negligence in coming up with a Manhattan like project to transform our energy future. The potential for jobs, and a transformation of our society is there, we just refuse to embrace it. The future will belong to the innovators, not our anachronistic past.
3
The Yellow Vests reacted to the petrol tax as a false tax. The tax was presented to the public as an environmental initiative while it quickly became evident that only a small portion of the collected tax was earmarked for environmental initiatives.
The Yellow Vests were not being asked to be eco-conscious citizens, they were simply being taken for fools.
It didn't work.
1
Of course food, shelter and basics come first. The poor are limited in choices but they aren't stupid--and I've been poor. This is why governments must be involved. Infrastructure, public transportation, REAL recycling options, materials housing is made up and more--all these take more than the efforts of individuals. But the rich also don't want to pay the share of taxes required to fix these problems AND the inequality that is at the root of so much. Too many of them still want to believe they "earned" their status--and not on the backs of those who the better-off believe also "earned" their status of less-than-rich.
But the rich also don't feel the direct, immediate results of environmental problems because they have choices that most don't. All the anti-government rhetoric (from those in wide-ranging classes and political views) could do with some parsing over what ONLY government can do, given large-scale need, and what other entities might be able to do. But I don't see that conversation happening either.
The reason that only 44% of American's report "caring about climate change" is because of the relentless propaganda that we get from business, industry and of course our politicians.
What we are faced with is global warming. Climate change is a nebulous term that people confuse with normal changes in the weather. The emphasis on "normal" is intentional.
But the acceleration of global warming is anything but normal. Americans respond to the information we are given and much of that has underplayed the effects of global warming. Our politicians have also hidden the real costs with government bailouts that insulate those expenses from the average citizen.
Americans have accepted huge changes in their lives because of the so called threats of terrorism. But we've already lost far more lives to global warming than all the terrorist attacks from the last 25 years combined.
We can change IF the very real threats from global warming are given the same priority as the overstated threats of terrorism.
Global warming is already disrupting world food and water supplies which indirectly impact the American economy. And all predictions are that it's about to get worse.
If we tell the truth and offer solutions that we can this dichotomy between rich and poor over global warming will end. But the truth is that as with a progressive tax system, the right will be required to pay more.
1
"... environmentalism a boutique issue …"
No. It is an existential threat to all humanity. No amount of money is going to save anybody.
It really no longer matter what anyone thinks, it's all over folks.
This article is a distraction. Keep a laser focus on the manifold looming environmental disasters.
I’m wondering why the subject of over-population hasn’t been brought up here, especially with a burgeoning Chinese middle class in the process adopting a western lifestyle of overconsumption.
I understand the premise of this article. The concept is supported by the Maslow hierarchy of needs, etc.
Having said that, after decades of warning, continued denial of the existential threat we as a planet face with global warming is willful ignorance- regardless of one's economic situation.
In reality, rural people and poor people will be the first to be negatively impacted by climate change since they will have fewer options to mitigate these effects in their own lives.
Being rural and/or poor is no excuse for being ignorant.
Being middle class driving to work with an SUV gas guzzler is inexcusable especially when you are the only one in the car.
The bottom line is- all of us can and should do better.
1
There should be no tax increases because of climate change. That's just nonsense.
What kind of a question is this- ask the rich to give up their mansions, private jets, multiple cars and globe travel and their vast consumption and see who cares more!
“Environmentalism was part of a larger “postmaterialist” mind-set“
Yes, but at the same time, those at the extrem other end of the scale, those actually living off the land, see the importance of environmental processes close up and husband them accordingly.
As to our “postmaterialist” society, cap and trade systems are better than tax based ones.
1
Environmentalism is a new religion for the all-knowing do-gooders. Humans' disregard of their environment is sawing the branch on sits on or shooting oneself in the foot.
May I be forgiven for applying to life the Second Law of thermodynamics: the more people there are on Earth, the greater are the changes in the environment -- alas, most of the changes for the worse.
It seems to me that "environmentalism" here is just an excuse for a revolt against more taxes, regardless of the real need to pay to further and achieve social goals. We see this in my state - a barrage of campaign literature threatening gloom and doom if we raised taxes by the price of a latte a week on our well being to pay for Medicaid expansion. Or any taxes for any thing in general. This was a tax revolt dressed up in anti-environmental clothing.
One of the ways we might change the dynamic is change the language. As an example, clean drinking water is an environmental issue. If we finance improvements in water systems by general obligation bonds, we have to increase taxes to pay back the bonds - so environmental issues raise taxes, as in France. If we use revenue bonds instead, the customers' water bills go up because of inflation but there is no impact on taxes, even though we're still paying more.
The word makes the cause an easy target. The real problem is that the very wealthy are draining the treasury and converting from human workers to robots, all the while screaming "it's the environmentalists, stupid".
What an absurd thought. It is the rich who are accelerating the calamity that climate change is going to wreak on all of us in the not too distant future.
The classification of question is too restricted in scope to impact our societies. I would be interested to rephrase it and ask- Is democracy, specifically American form of it, just for rich people?
It's so disturbing that a plain and simple criminal like Trump is still outside jail and can easily became the president of this country, which pride itself as the most free with best democracy in the world.
I'm confident that Trump is not alone in American corporate and political world. Many are like Trump while some are worse, far worse. Yet American laws, that our politicians and many "patriotic" but ignorant citizens boast about, hardly can touch such people. Trump is getting such attention only because he became the president and infuriated so many otherwise powerful people. But it's safe to say that our core democratic institutions totally failed to ensure justice and prosecute such criminals when they were committing grave crimes.
The laws of the land seem to be written or enforced, probably both, in a deliberate way that favor such rich criminals. That's the biggest challenge for our law makers to address if they want American democracy to survive and people to keep trusting our core institutions and rule of law.
1
It's um, about the way this is being imposed by the moneyed elites.
The rich Liberals, with their multiple gigantic homes, the luxury cars, the private jets just love to lecture others about what others should be doing.
Their lecturing is their contribution to the effort, except I'm not sure all the hot air is good for the environment.
3
This is NOT satire - it's actual news from the latest UN Climate Change charade in Poland:
1. "A group wearing polar bear costumes was expelled from the march after suggesting that fossil fuels should be replaced by nuclear power.."
2. Then there was a Task Force linking illegal migrants to climate change - in inimitable UN-speech.
"The Task Force aims to strengthen systematic data collection and monitoring of displacement-related impacts to feed into comprehensive needs and risk assessments for planning. Finally, the Task Force works towards cultivating an actionable and constructive commitment to approaches and enhanced cooperation."
Translation:
1. We have no clue about CO2 generation or science generally.
2. #1 above notwithstanding we hope to shakedown $$$ from the developed world to line pockets of leaders of third world.
Truly inspiring.
"Support" for the environmental movement is a general sort of thing that people will answer yes to because they want to feel good about themselves; it's a form of virtue signalling. To really plumb the depth of that support you have to ask whether they are willing to pay $6 for a gallon of gas to support the environmental movement, as well as extra for their heating and air conditioning bills. That is where you will see cracks in the support, because our supposedly post-materialist society in fact has a majority of people who are very materialist indeed.
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More fundamentally, people look at climate change as the product of industrialization. Carbon emissions are literally the byproduct of an industrial capitalism that made a lot of people a lot of money. The working poor are not among those who have grown wealthy from industrial capitalism, and they believe (not unreasonably) that those who are wealthy after 200 years of industrial capitalism should pay the clean-up bills, not the poor. So support for the environment is broad but shallow among the working poor. They'd like to see the environment improved, and are conscious that there is a problem for them and for their children. But they can't afford to pay for solutions, and don't feel they should have to. The working poor are strongly in favor of remedies that fix the environment and are paid for by the rich, but not them. That is as true in France as the US.
This is misleading. If you look at the actual yellow vest demands it includes: "Promote the transport of goods by rail", "Tax on marine fuel oil and kerosene", and "Plan for improving insulation of housing". The issue is having a fuel tax people can't afford when they have no alternative form of transportation. France has failed to maintain an effective public transportation for rural areas. You need to build the infrastructure and change land-use patterns to allow for alternatives for carbon-emitting, which a tax alone doesn't do.
2
The fundamental problem is that an emergency conversion to completely new forms of power generation is impossible to achieve with purely free market techniques. This includes our often touted but socio-economically disastrous flirtation with various tax schemes. The only workable solutions will need to involve somehow nationalizing the energy industry and directly converting current jobs and investor dollars from petroleum based to zero carbon based over a roughly fifty year period. It’s time economists got creative in designing such a scheme, one with some retained capitalistic structural underpinnings to help drive speed and efficiency. Schemes based purely on taxation are not innovative and we should stop touting them as so. They are intellectually lazy and potentially even disastrous.
1
I hope everyone watches Greta Thunberg at the UN this week.
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/12/13/you_are_stealing_our_future_greta
Who cares about who deserves what, or how to ask a question so as not to offend. We must act together, and we must act now..
2
When the time-scale of a problem is long with respect to a human life-span, people do not react as well as they should, even if the lack of response will cause a catastrophe.
In the case of climate change, many people will not respond until they are significantly impacted. Due to the momentum of the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, climate will continue to change long after generation of these pollutants is decreased or even stopped. This is exacerbated in the US by the fact that the "leaders" in the US Government are all old and entrenched. we lost 8 years with the Bush administration, 8 more with Republican intransigence during the Obama administration, and at least 4 more years with Trump.
1
I think one of the problems is the way taxation works in France. There is no link between the money raised through taxes and its expenditure. Everything goes in one big pot.
From that point of view the gilets jaunes have a point: decreasing taxes on the rich and increasing taxes on fuel is suspect.
If the money raised with the fuel tax hike would have been attributed 1:1 to environmental investments, the gilets jaunes would have at least had to evaluate their own beliefs and values.
2
The heart breaking irony is that the low income people who are focused just on scrapping by and essentially do not have the resources either to worry about long term environmental consequences, or weather the economic hardship from environmental protections, are the same people most directly impacted by environmental problems, whether it be living in housing contaminated with lead or the areas most seriously impacted by climate change. Environmental protection needs to be tied to economic justice or it's just another example of a socialist program designed to help privileged people.
The only people I know with solar panels on their houses and battery operated cars are wealthy.
People with less can not afford Teslas and Priuses.
And those who rent don't have any solar or energy saving measures done on their rental units. Most landlords would never invest in bettering their properties. Inefficient heating and cooling, as well as no insulation improvements are common problems. Outdated appliances, energy inefficient hot water heaters and single pane windows, old leaky plumbing and poor heating systems are the norm in shoddy rentals.
7
@ML Try visiting Turkey. Every house has solar panels on the roof. There are a million excuses for complacency and inaction.
1
Do the wealthy really support the environment. We often drive cars less efficient than we need, live in houses much bigger than we need, travel for pleasure and buy many products we do not need. We could easily meet the Paris agreement targets if we really cared.
2
@James Kriebel
Personal consumption is a tiny fraction of pollution, the vast majority comes from industry.
And raising costs for industry means decreased economic health at best, and a contraction at worst.
The habits of consumers are a drop in the bucket, so yeah, that's why we don't care when people try to shame us for our lifestyle. Because we're informed about the scale and impact in the big picture.
@asdfj - who do you think "industry" is making all those products for? it's ALL personal consumption one way or another.
1
Well, duh! The conclusion of this article illustrates the uselessness of sociologists, professors, and their resource-consuming studies to tell us what we already know. Why would an individual who is on the wrong end of the inequality divide, having trouble making ends meet and covering basic necessities, prioritize climate change over their immediate well-being and survival? More common sense and less professors!
4
@Daisy - Yeah! We don't need no darn schoolin'! Wait, why did Amazon bypass Red America again?
Most of the rich got rich, or their fathers or grandfathers did, by paying their workforce as little as possible.
The rich are wed to an ever-expanding global economy and an ever-expanding global population who will buy the goods and services produced by the rich and provide the rich with cheap labour.
The rich like to eat out, have their homes and gardens remodelled, have nannies, au pairs, maids, janitors, cooks and chauffeurs take care of their chores. The rich expect to pay their domestic and workplace employees as little as possible.
The rich help to drive global population growth. Global population growth in turn drives increased competition over access to scant resources, including access to farmland, pastures, seas and rivers.
Global overpopulation leads to the destruction of tropical rainforests, the destruction of marine plants, desertification, the consumption of dirty fuels. Global overpopulation drives global warming and climate change alike.
The rich are not environmentalists. The rich despoil the planet.
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@Colenso
The rich also probably think they are rich enough to shield themselves from the terrible environmental degradation that seems to await us: Fortress-shelters with artificial weather and videos outside their windows showing lovely scenery to blank out the reality.
11
@Colenso You are quite right in noting that global population growth causes all kinds of problems including environmental problems. The weak link in your argument is here: “The rich help to drive global population growth.” Possibly this is true. However, there is a big difference between helping to drive population growth and driving population growth, and you conveniently skip over this difference.
6
@Colenso The vast majority of U.S. people are "rich" compared to the rest of the teeming world. Car, air-conditioning, refrigerator?
There are too man people and we need to look at both the overpopulated poor world and the over-consuming wealthier world. It goes far beyond fossil fuels or Teslas.
I personally don't hold much hope for recovery.
5
We can replace "environmentalism" with many other issues like - Immigration & supply of manpower (to industries, where large scale immigration allows employers to get cheaper and easily exploitable employees, when national supply vs demand logic requires wages to go up, which affect corporate profit); market economy or globalization (which almost always increases income and social inequality in most countries and deteriorating corporate governance with growing influence of money and political power among rich people); and many such issues.
In short, Is democracy just for rich people?
2
A lot of 'noble' concerns require a fat pocketbook and are quintessentially first world or Marie Antoinette problems.
Consider this. If everyone only ate organic food, Malthusian forces like famine and malnutrition would take over and forcibly reduce the world's population.
Fair trade laws sound laudable but if they were universally imposed on US imports, they would definitely raise prices (but not necessarily the incomes) of the poorest sections of the country's population.
Child labor is a social evil in many countries of the world but dictating to those countries using black and white western child labor laws (and nothing else) impoverishes the very children it is supposed to protect. These children now have to perform even more dangerous and lower paid jobs. Did you really think that not buying sneakers made by children would magically transport the child workers to a classroom? More likely the child now works in a company that meets local demand.
Idling laws. How righteous are the rich who on their way from Starbucks to home, will stop to lecture a cold huddled trucker or construction worker for warming up inside his idling truck on a cold January day. Instead of showing the freezing worker the relevant legal provision on your smartphone, why not buy him a hot chocolate.
At a minimum people must differentiate between real and imaginary issues and also be willing to PERSONALLY lower their obscenely high standard of living to pay for their environmental concerns.
2
This piece has provided a perfect platform for commenters to double down on the Trump voter-elitist Democrat narrative which was so cleverly been foisted upon us post-election.
The fact is that there are not huge swaths of poor whites who voted for Trump. Some truly are struggling, but people who voted for Trump are as a group significantly better off than non-voters and Democratic voters. The contrast is even greater when considering their cost of living, and their family's resources beyond just income.
Let's not forget about the huge numbers of struggling Americans in urban areas while we're thinking about the rural poor. Working class does not mean White. Working class is about income, or it should be. The poor and working class take care of infants and elders, keep offices running, drive buses, and ring up groceries. Some of them even have college degrees, and between their student loan debt and low wages can't afford an apartment that isn't shared with three others just like them. Many of the true working class rely on public transportation, made logistically more difficult due to competing land and financial resources allocated to transportation for the more affluent.
2
While affluence can be a significant and appreciated source of environmental conscience, financial support and call to action, it also is responsible for a great deal of environmental degradation.
Affluence also creates the desire for more of the same, so along with this comes overdevelopment, traffic congestion, resource exploitation and habitat destruction to name a few of the sordid negatives.
No one has to look very far to verify this. The narrative needs to be changed. We need to engage all citizens, governments and corporations of all countries and at all levels to assure income equality and a sense of shared responsibility in shaping a world of the future that sustains us all.
Our home is not rich. We brought in about $30,000 this year to support two adults. We struggle. But we are ardent environmentalists! We reduce waste, have the lowest home energy consumption in the neighborhood (per the power company), and have radically reduced meat consumption. We analyze food for its carbon footprint (including vegetables) and will be gardening more this spring. Someday we dream of affording solar panels.
We are two fifty-something, childless people in a small conservative town who are fighting to save the planet. Surely there are more of us out there!
5
@Bird lover - The best part is, your conservation efforts aren't just noble, they are financially SMART! Reducing power consumption saves money (something every industry knows), and getting more protein from non-meat sources is less expensive than just eating meat (and healthier, which reduces long term medical costs). So keep up the good work.
4
Inglehart's research is biased toward the middle class and wealthy because his concept of "environmentalism" is narrow and flawed, and because he has not taken environmental justice movements into consideration.
Environmental justice is a loose collection of movements focused on environmental threats to human survival and well-being. These are movements of Indigenous, peasant, and other marginalized people around the world. In the U.S., environmental justice is led by people of color and low-income whites living with toxic hazards imposed by others. Increasingly, environmental justice protests are focused on climate change, and the ways in which its deadly effects fall disproportionately upon marginalized people in poorer countries--who are least responsible for creating the problem through greenhouse gas emissions.
The idea that only the wealthy care about the environment is as outdated as the idea that "the environment" is pristine wilderness, when it is also farms, mining camps, drilling platforms and cities.
2
The yellow vest protests were the result of income and wealth inequality; and the apathy in America for environmentalism among all economic classes is also about income inequality. THe difference between the American and French policies is that the special interests that control our Congress have fostered policies that manipulate the working public. The critical difference between our countries is that at this time gas in the US is priced under $3.00 a gallon; the French pay over $8.00. We can well afford not only an increase of 50 cents a gallon but a tax that increases as the cost of gasoline fluctuates downward. But the “powers” that be (legislators and their fossil fuel and plutocrat benefactors) know that an increase in the gas tax would impact American workers just as it does in France. Few metropolitan areas have adequate mass transit; workers are dependent on the cars to commute to work, often from one low paying job to another before they get home at night.
CHeap foreign imports (which Trump due to his ignorance is threatening) and cheap gas is part of a strategy to allow income and wealth inequality to thrive in this country ; the rich benefit from massive tax cuts and the the working stiffs get cheap gas and electronics. The American worker and the French yellow vester share similar economic status; American plutocrats have learned to manage the masses more effectively, thus far preventing violent protests. Costly environmentalism would prompt protests here.
3
Carbon tax should be levied on all homes, cars, increasing with size of CO2 emissions.Fossil fuel companies should have to pay a tax on their earnings, which should be distributed in a way that ameliorates the monetary pain for the poor and middle class. I fear we will continue on our path of self destruction and only the very wealthy will come out OK.
4
Tough issues affecting humanity, and an odious inequality based on economics is one of them. Although the poor have less time that the 'rich and affluent', with more existential worries (living from pay check to pay check... if employed, that is) to be concerned, all of us with an ounce of 'thought' and willingness to see what's happening with our environment, are concerned and want to contribute to control climate change. At the same time, it is mostly wealthy folks, lost in their arrogance, that seem to care only about the immediate satisfaction of making money...at Earth's expense, as prescribed by their god (Greed).
3
Trying to manage incoming freight train without brakes will not be easy in any aspect.
Let's put this way even climate change problem and its solutions may induce a war , not a world war scale but some serious war.
So no it is not easy to tackle with climate.
Also , regardless of what we do or not , what happened so far will affect us seriously too.
Look california burned down, some islands are already become inhabitable. this is going to break many of ours back.
The problem is the same as with immigration really. The rich want to virtue signal and talk about how we should all pitch in, but the changes they are seeking will have a negligible effect on them while significantly altering life for the working class. If they want to talk about combating climate change they need to do so in a progressive way not via trying to impose gas taxes on everyone including the poor while still flying around in their private jets.
6
The last paragraph says "Without a concerted effort to address inequality..."
A concerted effort to address inequality will have to be careful that it does not cause the people at the bottom to consume more fuel and produce more toxic waste. It's a Gordian knot; to get them on board, they need to feel more equal, but to feel more equal, they need access to the resources that are causing the problems. If they obtain that access without the consciousness and desire to use it more wisely, they will make the problems worse before they get better.
Good luck with that. I have no idea how to make that happen.
4
In America, as long as the rich are not exposed in any way to the effects of global warming, pollution, or lead in their water they will refuse to deal with the situation. Since many politicians are rich they don't have to deal with it. And they don't believe that they are in error in servicing their rich donors (some of whom are corporations, PACs, and dark money from the likes of the Koch Brothers, etc.) over their constituents.
The problem with American politicians is the cost of running for an office is beyond their means unless they receive contributions for their campaign and they are willing to toe the line to get those contributions. Environmentalism is not a favorite topic unless it's being bashed. I can't think of one corporation in the last 20 years that has admitted it's contributed to environmental degradation or global warming. But they do advertise constantly about how much they care about the environment to make us think they do.
Ironically, caring about the environment, creating the technologies to clean it up, and working to find better ways to feed the planet will provide the jobs of the future. Those "job killing" regulations Trump is rolling back were put there to protect us and future generations. Rolling them back is a mistake. Business does not know what's best for citizens, only what's best for its pocketbook.
13
Professor Gross,
Your essay opens an important question that must be addressed, if we are to make progress resolving the global warming challenge that is becoming more evident. I have focused on this question of how we can best evolve the global society away from fossil energy to sustainable, non-fossil energy sources. My findings are that a technology that can create very cheap electricity must be developed. With very cheap electricity about, 2 cents per kilowatt hour, it would create a new economic index for the world that would permit people to improve their quality of life and health. We would be able to desalinate water to meet the needs of the coming 11 Billion population, power all our industrial and home energy needs for goods, cooling and heating, the hundreds of energy serfs that have been invented including our social communications systems like TV programming and personal communications, and the electric-powered logistics, agriculture, and personal transport vehicles, including synthesizing jet fuel from air and water. Finally, with cheap electricity we can develop a new global utility to scrub the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and then sequester the stuff in the Earth's rocks.
Cheap electricity can be created with a system of Maglev launched, space based solar energy, thin-film, satellites that will collect the energy then convert it to low-density microwave energy to beam to antennae on Earth for distribution. See Spaceship Earth by James Powell.
1
@james jordan - No need for space age tech. Just put solar panels on the countless suburban roofs across America.
@Jim
Please do the calculations for 10 Billion people at about half of the total energy that we use per capita in the U.S., I think you will discover as I did that there is not enough space even for new solar roofed homes and buildings. But I strongly believe in solar rooftops and home battery storage. The goal though is to produce electricity much cheaper than coal. Powell's scheme is the only system that I know that can produce at 2 cents per kwhr. Solar roof tops plus a good batter or grid storage will help a lot but the price is still not that competitive. Space Solar launched with Maglev (less than 1% of conventional rocket cost) beams power 24/7, creating power at 4 times the rooftop units.
www.magneticglide.com
Many of the results of the studies cited here are no-brainers, but the observation that "Yet in many of today’s capitalist democracies, class and status resentments, fostered by rampant inequality and whipped up by opportunistic politicians, have developed to such an extent that issues like the environment that affect everyone are increasingly seen through the lens of group conflict and partisan struggle." is the most important, because this is how the fossil fuel industry has obscured and attenuated the necessary response to the problem. Of course the poor will suffer the most from losing conveniences like cheap gasoline and heating fuel, and the rich will cry about the higher taxes but pay them anyway, because private jets and limos are how they roll. The Market cannot be the primary mover and agent of change for environmental sustainability, because capitalism is based on and depends on unlimited growth fueled by unlimited resources......which is a blatantly false premise.
6
A change to efficiency, conservation and renewable energy sources as our priority will not only help slow climate change but create more jobs in a shorter period of time than the archaic and dirty fossil fuel empires. But even more so, will help decentralize the political and economic power they gained, lessen the reasons for wars like in the Middle East and also create more democratic nations as petro-states tend to be much more autocratic. Hey, better than NATO next to Russia the best way to get Putin out is to encircle them with clean energy nations! So yes, messaging is important but you have a world wide financial and corporate Oilgharcy to override that messaging. Goota fight them every second.
1
Some leaps in this article. The fact that people of relatively low wealth living on islands close to sea level are very concerned about the environment doesn't "stand Inglehart's finding on its head". There are bound to be number of relevant variables, and controlling for things like imminent inundation would be important in researching the hypothesis on income and environmentalism.
Toward the end, things seem to go quickly toward a conclusion that the yellow vest demonstrations were "never really about the environment in the first place" and its all about inequality and politics. But "the environment" isn't just one issue; it includes both the consequences of doing nothing and the consequences of what you do, and that then becomes part of what is bugging the masses. Raising taxes differentially on the diesel fuel that less well-off people depend on was probably not a good idea.
2
There is a strange, underlying attitude among too many urban-based environmentalists that people living in rural areas somehow aren't supposed to be there. That it's unnatural and wrong and harmful to have anyone living outside of an urban metro. That it's natural and right and environmentally friendly to live in a huge concentration of other humans in a large urban area, and that rural residents are simply backwards, stubborn and need to be "gently starved out" for the best and highest of moral reasons. (Sounds like "Indian removal" to me) That urban areas aren't, in and of themselves, unnatural environmental catastrophes that have compromised and crushed the Earth.
3
Interesting questions raised in the comments about personal sacrifice and climate change. What would policies with proportional sacrifices, based on income, look like? The comment from Paris notes that policies created to deal with climate change have been disproportionately burdensome on the poor. It is certainly still the case that the rich pollute (the richest 10% of people produce half of the world's climate-harming fossil-fuel emissions) considerably more than the bottom 50% of the world's population.
2
Not only would I tend to agree with the last paragraph here, but I would point out the French protests come with a background over the last year of considerable tax cuts for wealthier French citizens, which helped to starve public services, particularly outside the larger cities, of needed revenue, and it is this that many had in their heads when they reacted to the transportation tax increases, which are rather regressive. In my opinion, the press has not spotlighted that nearly enough, and had defaulted to the idea that the protests prove taxes for climate change mitigation have no constituency; that's an extremely parochial view.
One other point, more to the general idea of the column--there has to be MUCH more communication as to the idea that industries and technologies to help slow climate change can very well be part of the fight to reduce economic inequality as well--there are many decently paying blue-collar opportunities in green energy, though governments may have to take more responsibility for training and re-training in these areas, as it seems corporations have no interest in such in-house training anymore.
4
The inequality mentioned in the last line is not only about income; it's also about environmental liabilities. It's poor communities and countries where the dirty water gets dumped, where the toxic waste is buried, where hazardous industrial processes are outsourced by rich countries and corporations, where the landscape is chewed up to get at underground minerals. These communities pay the price and get none of the benefits. I guarantee you that they are intensely interested in these environmental issues.
8
Like the economic affects of global trade, the financial class disparities in access to quality education and health care and the lack of affordable housing and employment paying a living wage we find that environmental concerns are dramatically different depending on your financial position in our stratified society.
For poverty stricken communities its about local pollution, waste and toxic industries placed on your doorstep. Its about lead in your drinking water and chemicals in your yard. Its also about the ability to work, raise a family and retain a modicum of dignity. Do you really believe that people who make a living in coal country want to sicken and die from their jobs?
I’m a committed environmentalist but can’t help noticing that many of the well off in my local community deeply care about climate change while ignoring the often toxic and unaffordable housing that the lower middle class and poor live in. Meanwhile they as the investor class own, profit by and at best poorly maintain those properties while promoting public funds for more green space and parks while complaining about the cost of nannies and lawn care.
Is it any wonder that environmentalism is perceived as a wealthy persons affectation rather than a necessity for all our welfare? We need to care about and address climate change but the economic consequences cannot be piled on the shoulders of the working class while the wealthy and the well off continue to live their very comfortable lives.
3
I'd like to see a follow-up article with specific examples of how people save money cleaning up their (environmental) act and their lives are BETTER - to reframe the notion that helping our planet is for the rich or the selfless martyrs.
Here's my contribution: My Rav 4 hybrid cost 15 thousand dollars less, gets almost 2x better mileage and handles way better than my old Connecticut-mom Volvo that needed $10,000 worth of service a few weeks after the 5 year warranty was up. The Rav has tighter steering, far better alignment, and it's so blissfully quiet, sometimes I have to wait a few minutes for a squirrel to eat an acorn before he/she deigns to get off the street in front of me. AND the cute hybrid logo gets me some cool cred with the kids (the cool that I promptly lose when I sing "I love my Rav doot doot doot!") I'm nuts, but it's the first time I've loved a car that wasn't my dad's old Saab turbo.
Of course I can do a lot more, but wouldn't things be a little easier if everyone drove a car that used HALF the gas?
3
@common sense advocate - The solar panels covering my roof that I leased from Solar City with no money down have reduced my monthly electrical bill by more than 10% (even when accounting for the amortized monthly cost of the panels). It was a no-brainer. Solar panels aren't for the rich, they're for the smart and frugal.
1
@Jim - thank you for adding to the list - I always thought there was a down payment on home solar panels!
1
Here's what I've learned from 30 years of working in the environmental field. Two important components of raising environmental consciousness are 1) how the problem and issues are communicated -- that is, presented in factual terms that people can easily understand within the context of their lives -- and 2) general education, both within school systems and efforts to reach adults. Presented in this way, there is solid public support for environmentalism. Even people who are struggling every day to pay their bills support clean water and unpolluted air because they understand the importance to their lives.
Also critical to success is having good dedicated leadership. President Obama provided a good example of the latter in his approach to climate change. His leadership, both political and moral, on the world stage was critical to the Paris Climate Accord and his dedication through clean energy policies had put this country on a track to make real change in addressing climate change.
The reversals by our current administration and obfuscating Republicans in Congress and the willful ignorance of Donald Trump is nothing short of tragic. We need leaders who will act on the interests of all people and will pressure corporations to be accountable to more than just profits.
5
"Is Environmentalism Just for Rich People?" Are the rich immune to air pollution? Will the rich escape climate change? Will the rich escape the strife(war) that develops out of massive, worldwide food shortages? Ultimately, we are all in the same boat. The rich may be able to avoid the inevitable, longer, but the day will come when they will join the poor in early graves...
We can't solve our environmental issues by raising taxes. And of course the business of taxes never hits each person equitably. And America needs leadership with a longer term vision. One that is willing to invest now to secure a safer and better long term future. One that looks to take a leadership role in the technology, development, and deployment of renewable energy. A world leadership position. Sadly, right now we have a President who couldn't care less about this subject. And our legislators lack the coordinated courage to do the right thing.
Interesting argument. However as far as I am concerned environmentalism is an elitist concern. I wonder how the delegates to the climate conference in Poland going on at this moment got there? I imagine all of them arrived by a means of transportation that spewed greenhouse gases. Also I image most of the delegates hail from the elite class. So there they are in Poland sitting around and deciding how to impose fines upon so-called polluters. After they are done and self-congratulated themselves, they will climb back into their big gas-guzzling Benz's, drive off to the airport, and board their private jets, and return to their homes, leaving behind a noxious carbon footprint. They will expect the normal people, like the Yellow Vests in France, to pay ever increasing taxes. But will they stop driving their gas-guzzlers and fly around in their private jets? I seriously doubt it. Environmentalism is an example of the liberal contradiction of "do as I say, not as I do." Until they play by the rules they impose on others, then the battle against climate change is a joke. Thank you.
13
@Southern Boy - When a multi-million-gallon coal ash impoundment near you collapses and kills your favorite fishing river and contaminates your drinking water, you'll utter the words that every conservative finds themselves muttering sooner or later; "Damn, those liberals were right..."
2
@Southern Boy can I sell you a nice used car - or here, (dangles fishhook). You have bought into a framing of environmentalism brought to you by those who profit most from shrinking your paychecks and from destroying your world.
2
@Multimodalmama,
No, this has been apparent to me for the last 40 years. The working classes do not have time for environmentalism, they are too busy doing actual work. Maybe you should open your eyes, take a look around.
1
It takes one of a million Chinese factories about 1 second to emit as much CO2 as I will driving for a lifetime. Choosing a car based on emissions, for me, is a symbolic gesture. I therefore do not partake. I am concerned about climate change, but symbolic gestures by some do-gooders is a waste of time.
6
When the answer to an environmental issue is a higher gas tax in order to discourage driving: the wealthy will not let higher gas prices cut into their driving or flying, forcing those already struggling to pay more or drive less.
I think most people want clean air, water and protection from climate change. But who is shouldering the cause?
9
The question is who pays for cleaning up the environment. The working class, or the corporations who own and control the huge technologies that cause the problem. Political elites, so close to economic elites, want the burden to fall on those least responsible. If we continue down this path expect more social rebellions.
18
People in rural areas in the US, where low mpg trucks and large annual mileage totals are common, can easily avoid any new fuel taxes by changing vehicles. Dumping an 18 mpg truck for a 45 mpg hybrid sedan could result in thousands saved on fuel per year.
How will they move heavy objects? With one pickup truck per family, not one per household member.
2
@Djt It looks like there are tough, macho-looking electric trucks that are powerful enough to tow boats and trailers coming before too long, but not from major auto manufacturers. No one driving one of those babies would be accused of being a snowflake.
@Djt: Right, but how many cows or bales of hay can you get ina Prius? We need some good hybrid (or electric) TRUCKS.
@Djt: Right, but how many cows or bales of hay can you get ina Prius? We need some good hybrid (or electric) TRUCKS.
It doesn't matter, much, that each family member has a car or if they share just one... if they each drive the same amount. 25K a year burns the same amount of resources whether 1 car is used to burn them or 5.
In my own case, I have 3 cars which I use for different purposes. One is my daily driver, a car (a BMW), which I drive about 7K miles a year. I also have an older, well-maintained SUV, which I use to take trash and recycling to our transfer station, and in the winter when I need 4WD. I drive that vehicle 2-3K miles a year. I also have an antique car, which is a hobby car, which I usually drive less than 1K miles a year.. I have 3 cars, but I STILL drive only 10K miles a year, which is less than most people...
Until caring for the environment includes action-steps that don't involve buying boutique solutions (i.e. expensive clothing, food, or products that are environmentally friendly), the environmental movement is dead in the water. Barbara Kingsolver's book, Flight Behavior, summed this up in a powerful scene that I remember several years later. The protagonist, Dellarobia, a lower-income woman, is being told by a researcher all of the ways she can save the environment - don't fly as much, not buying bottled water, bring your own Tupperware to restaurants. However, she has never flown, doesn't eat out in restaurants, and doesn't buy bottled water. There is a disconnect.
My main concern about the environmental movement and climate change are that they are being boiled down into little action steps that are only applicable to a certain population and probably aren't that helpful. I don't have any solutions. It's just frustrating.
3
@KAO Your frustration and observations are right on, but the solutions are available. They have to be on a much larger scale, like shutting all coal fired plants, eliminating palm oil as a fuel, transferring to mass transit instead of individual cars (ride a bike!), eating local foods instead of exotics from halfway around the world, etc. There's a lot of literature out there about the solutions that will turn things around, but first we have to exhibit the will to conquer this, and that takes education first.
There is a difference between environmentalism and sustainability. One cares for the environment- a good thing- and the other has a much broader scope that incorporates environmentalism and (_____).
Al Gore has done a lot to push the word on climate change, but jetting around and living in an outsized house does not lend credibility to his cause and just gives fuel to people who already doubt him. The same is true for celebrities living in energy hogging homes or apartments and hopping around on jets while telling everyone that we have to do more to help the environment and combat climate change.
Corporations are plenty gusty as well. Long globalist supply chains leave behind a massive carbon footprint compared to regionalized or localized production. Apple likes to wrap itself in a green image, but ships parts from all over the world to China for assembly and then flies your iPhone to market on cargo jets. I say that as a shareholder and as someone typing this on a Macintosh produced in China.
Globalism as we have known it has to go to be replaced by a more localized economy that is far friendlier to our planetary home and all who live here. And all who will live here when we are gone.
4
@David Gregory: They say "live the world you want," but that only works to a limited degree. Yes, it sets a good example, but too may will ignore it. What we really need are CODIFIED environmental regulations, i.e. LAW. If every new vehicle is required to get 45 or 65 mpg, then EVERYONE will use cars like that. That will have much more effect than just a few of us setting good examples. Far more efficient vehicles are in fact possible, and have been for at least half a century; we simply need to make people choose them.
A carbon tax would go a long way toward enforcing fuel efficiency, the problem being that that discriminates against lower income people. If the law required ALL new vehicles to get high mileage, then the rich would have to comply, as well as the poor.
1
@David Gregory Great comment! Yes, buy local! Local, small farms, using regenerative agricultural techniques would be a great help in sequestering carbon. And rooftop solar, where the local community produced its own electricity with each home becoming a clean energy producer, feeding any excess back into the grid. There are answers, and they are local, which is why the powers that run the world will not consider them. And no one needs a 5,000 square foot home. If you live in one you cannot call yourself an environmentalist. Live simply so other species can simply live!
1
Since at this time the wealthy are very wealthy, yes they should be paying an inordinate amount of their share compared to the average worker. If the wealth had been shared a little better it would be less a burden all the way around.
I feel as a society we've been lost since the late sixties, all downhill, man.
6
When people can't pay their bills, they need to take care of that before worrying about global warming. It's like a case of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: get to work and pay your rent to avoid the immediate consequence of being unemployed and homeless. Worry about global warming later.
The answers have to come from the top and the bottom. The people in the middle and at the bottom need a comfortable lifestyle that uses far less fuel, and that requires a different sort of infrastructure and a different set of expectations. The people in charge need to figure out how to make the infrastructure happen, and sell it to the bottom and middle. (The wealthy need to do their part too, but they're not the subject of this particular article).
Many lives will be disrupted and many rice bowls broken to make this happen. The alternative is more draconian measures combined with continued environmental degradation.
Can we collectively wake up without being doused by a bucket of cold water?
2
The seemingly lower concern over global warming in the US, a wealthy, educated country (44%) is really only a reflection of the people who are members of the Republican Party. They are, for the most part, the only large group who disagrees with the scientific community even though they have no scientific basis or training.
Which is simply a reflection of which legislators receive money from the fossil fuels industry
3
The solution is to put everything we've got into making environmentally sustainable living a reality for everyone. Right now our solutions are expensive. Putting a diesel tax on people who can hardly afford it isn't the answer because it's punitive. This is where public sector investment needs to come into play. We need a roadmap for making green technology not just eco-friendly, but economically preferable, and we need to do it immediately. This will happen as fossil fuels dwindle but if we wait for the market-driven curve to enforce it, too much collateral damage will be done.
We need strong, visionary leadership that sees unlimited, sustainable energy for the human race, and we need it now.
1
combating global warming is going to take more than raising fuel taxes in Europe which are already very high. there's a big difference between combating smoking by raising taxes and raising taxes on fuel which people in rural areas really must use.
this really is a bit of a red herring and there certainly is a much larger picture.
4
As the Yellow Vests reminded everyone, there is an ecotax on gas for cars that people of modest means have to use every day, but there are no taxes on kerosene for airplanes that upper middle class and rich people burn without an afterthought when they decide to fly to NYC for a short "fun" trip. As a matter of fact, greenhouse effect emissions for international travel are not included into France's carbon footprint.
32
While I care passionately about the environment and act on a daily basis to reduce my footprint, when I'm lost in the woods and it's getting dark I'm focused on survival. Maslow's hierarchy. When you're living paycheck to paycheck and worrying how you're going to pay the rent and buy food and get your kid to the doctor of course you don't worry about climate change. There's only so much people can deal with at once. This does not mean these people don't want their children and grandchildren to live in a world that's still livable.
43
There is one huge omission in this discussion of environmentalism and who supports it, especially in the case of the US.
Greed.
If an educated/affluent US population supports environmentalism at lower levels than the rest of the world, look to the Republican Party and the power of money in our politics and our media. That's the "Rich" we need to talk about.
The GOP and right wing media funded by oligarchs with a strangle hold on our political system made environmentalism a swear word. They spent decades telling people environmentalism kills jobs, raises the costs, stifles innovation, etc.
It's part of the antipathy they have for strong government that works for the public good, instead of as a wealth transfer machine to make the rich richer.
The oil industry worked behind the scenes to make the Trump roll-back of auto emission standards go even farther than the car makers wanted. Ditto for the sudden assault on electric vehicles, solar power, wind, and anything else that threatens fossil fuels.
If fossil fuels stay in the ground, trillions of dollars of 'wealth' vanishes and some very rich people will be inconvenienced. Buying politicians and media outlets is a cheap investment against that.
Environmental justice is economic justice - we can't address climate change without addressing the inequality that has been growing alongside it for decades.
"Your money or your life" isn't a joke anymore. The rich have their money. That's all that matters to them.
7
What environmentalism is "for" is a different question than who supports it politically. Viewing our environmental problem as just one of many interest group challenges for political leaders seriously underestimates the stakes.
Take a breath and hold it and ask yourself how many plants we can pave over. There is no planet B and this one isn't very big.
All other things being equal, everyone benefits from a healthy environment, including all members of future generations - who depend upon the present generation changing course and halting the ruination of the world. Other species depend on this too. As Bill McKibben says, bears are like golden retrievers now - their future depends on us.
But all other things are not equal, and therefore political preferences vary.
Those with more immediate concerns cannot be faulted for focusing on those concerns or objecting to rising costs for essential goods that they already cannot afford.
Therefore, the more fortunate among us have a responsibility, even a duty, to solve the problems of excessive rates of resource consumption, waste production, and other environmental problems - solutions that are both acceptable and fair to those who are less well off. (If not fair then they won't be acceptable, and if not acceptable, then they won't happen.) But this is not rocket science. For example, it is possible to create a carbon tax that is not regressive by altering other taxes, subsidies, or transfer programs at the same time.
1
Frog in the pot of slowly warming water. By the time we realize it is too hot, it is too late.
I will continue to do my best (LED bulbs, solar, ride sharing, reduce meat intake, voting for hopefully responsible politicians), but likely we are a lost cause. Accepting that is how I cope with the inevitable.
6
@Mike
I am with you in that I think the cake is already in the oven and all we can do is arrange the seating when the cake is served up. The time to act was quite some time ago and greed for in the way.
I do what I can and have made my home as efficient as possible and drive the most efficient ICE compact available as EVs are not suitable for a primary car where I live, etc. But as I drive down the highway, all I see are massive SUVs with one or two people onboard, huge pickups with empty beds, more huge houses for empty nesters or smaller families, and every mom or dad picking up their kid from school rather than let them ride the bus or walk.
Yes, I went there.
@Mike We aren't even trying yet. I'm 60. My parents' general survived the depression, won WWII, and made serious (though obviously inadequate) progress on civil and gender rights. My generation hasn't accomplished squat - mostly just tried to get richer - in dollars.
Transitioning a technological society to a truly sustainable path (one that doesn't depends on burning through resources, killing off other species, and polluting our surroundings ) has never been done before. The need was not even widely perceived 50 or 60 years ago. It's not going to happen overnight, but there is still plenty to lose. It's way to early to throw up hands.
Heck, natural ecosystems do this all the time - use resources sustainably and create no material wastes - and we are supposed to be smarter than those other species.
If enough people start to see environmental damage as a matter of right and wrong things could change fast. Check out Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac, especially his essay Land Ethic (if you aren't already familiar with it).
1
The environmental issue can not be considered as piece meal policy issues, it is a life style issue. Urban and rich people are willing to maintain their life style and support environmentalism which is not a acceptable proposition. The first item that should be on the environmentalism is the carbon foot print and developed countries need to reduce significant way the per ca-pita carbon foot print. This will mean life style change, more natural fiber in the diet, reduced living space in the house, simplification of diets, public transportation, natural fabric in the garments, less use of fertilizer and water in the agriculture. and finally the population, without focusing on the major culprits, developed countries government one pointedly focused on fossil fuel. Focus on renewable energy is right, but trying to disturb market forces is not correct. Fossil fuel will decline once renewable becomes economically competitive. Elites in developed world is trying to con the game without any sacrifice.
2
@KB: Perhaps the definition of being wealthy means you don't have to sacrifice (partly sarcasm, partly true)
I suppose I'm well off by some measures, although I live in a place where my level of wealth doesn't go very far. I've switched to LED bulbs, turn the temperature down, and drive a Prius. I also have to endure nagging from my wife, who wants to fly to Europe, and then to Hawaii. We could afford it, but I know better. Civil aviation is one of the most C02 intensive things we do. I'd starve if I didn't buy stuff wrapped in plastic, and I'd go broke if I didn't drive to work. Because of the layout here, public transit is a joke; everybody needs to go every which direction because nothing is centralized.
Poor me? No way. What complaints I have are minor. Poor Earth. Yes. I'm doing what I can. I'll do more when I figure out what it is and how to do it. Meanwhile, some of my contemporaries drive SUVs and fly all over the world. They fit your description of urban people who say they care but don't act like it.
Wrong question. The right question is: "Who should pay?" The frustration, the anger, the revolt, is in response to the accurate perception that "the 1%" do not pay a fair amount of taxes relative to their wealth.
It's apparent that The New York Times does not want to examine environmental and social justice issues from this perspective. The reasons why are obvious to anyone who is paying attention.
14
@Craig Anderson: It's not just the taxes, it's the lifestyle as well. Social justice would require the truly wealthy to live in smaller homes, drive more efficient cars, and take fewer airplane flights. I don't see it happening. Everyone else is right to be frustrated at their "let them eat cake" attitude.
They will also resist any change that might damage their portfolios. Our economy runs on over packaging, over production, and cheap but manipulated fuel. Changing that will require that the wealthy do more than just shrink their C02 footprint.
3
@Craig Anderson Isn't this editorial about that exact question?
@Craig Anderson
The greenhouse gasses causing climate change are the byproduct of 200 years of industrial capitalism. The answer to "Who should pay?" is anyone with wealth today -- all of today's wealth is the direct or indirect product of those 200 years of growth. We should be taxing wealth to pay for the remediation of environmental problems. All wealth, not just the current polluters. Everyone who owns property, equities, wealth of any kind.
1
If environmentalism is perceived as “just for rich people” one significant reason for that may be the tone-deaf messaging coming from the environmental community.
Though it’s changing slowly, most of the messaging from these groups emphasizes the benefits of sound environmental practices on the health of wildlife and protection of natural resources, like air and water.
Ironically, although those of us in the environmental community implicitly understand that those same benefits will also be enjoyed by our fellow humans, the inadvertent message conveyed by environmental groups is that plants and animals are more important than humans.
I work with a number of non-profits and continue to urge them to connect the dots for their constituents and, as marketing guru Seth Godin advises: “Tell me a story with me in it.”
18
As with many issues, to make environmentalism viable to average people, leadership is needed. Federal and state governments need to work together and we need to see leadership from our elected officials. Everybody laughed at Jimmy Carter when as president he had the thermostats turned down in the White House and suggested that staff wear sweaters. He was ahead of his time. The more we see this kind of behavior from public officials, the less funny and more acceptable it will become. We also need to see leadership from celebrities and social media influencers. Talking about saving the environment and then going home to a 7,000 sq. ft. house is counterproductive. And, when it's not the only 7,000 sq. ft. house you own, you have lost all influence. Unless and until environmentalism becomes a way of life to be emulated and admired, regular people will not get on board.
7
To effectively address global warming, habitat and wild life loss, we must address root causes. Technologically solving green house gas emissions will not by itself solve environmental degradation. Our global population is growing by 220,000 humans a day (80 million a year). The impact of this growth on our natural resources, GHGs, loss of arable land, etc. is just plain staggering.
By focusing on education, woman empowerment and voluntary birth control in developing countries, more draconian, controversial measures can be avoided.
10
I recall when I was growing up in Connecticut in the 1980s and my high school girlfriend's father, a construction worker, had a bumper sticker on his car that said, "When you're hungry and out of work, EAT AN ENVIRONMENTALIST!"
@Rich Connelly - Maybe she should have eaten her dad, he sounds like was rich in IRON-y. Ok, I had to work too hard for that one, but my point is that high environmental standards are usually a boon to the construction industry, not a detriment. Your friend's dad was ill-informed.
1
So the conclusion of those studies comes down to, "it depends." Leadership and shaping the narrative are everything. We need leaders who will say, over and over again, "Our well-being rests upon the health of our planet. Just as our personal quality-of-life is dependent on our bodies being in good health, our societies will falter if we don't make the health of our natural environment our top priority."
BUT the last sentence of Gross' essay is undeniably true: "Without a concerted effort to address inequality — which some in the environmental movement consider someone else’s department — the bold policy changes needed to slow global warming risk never getting off the ground."
People who are struggling to get their basic needs met day to day, though they may care, are not going to get on board with environmental action until they have more stability. Ideally, environmental action can help boost prosperity by providing good jobs in the "green" sector, and poor people will see their own quality-of-life positively affected when they are living free from pollution. (Flint, MI, anyone?)
2
No doubt the wealthy have means and methods to mitigate the weaker initial catastrophes of the oncoming cataclysm but what is approaching is nothing like anything humankind and current life on this planet has faced before. Humans have deceived themselves for thousands of years that they somehow are separate from other life forms which can be useful but in no way measure tto the same importance of humans. Only lately are we recognizing how deeply humans are imbedded in the vast matrix of living things and have ripped apart that living continuum disastrously. Our own bodies contain several times more alien than human cells and when that immense interwoven textile of all life is destroyed, humans vanish with it and human wealth is just smoke and mirrors. Either all of us furiously join most powerfully to confront this gathering fury or this planet becomes merely a rock lost in the immensities of sterility with, perhaps, some unknown future which has nothing to do with us.
4
The word "environmentalism" suggests that there are some people who don't need the environment in order to live. It is a word that sets some people up to believe they can step aside of being responsible for their surroundings. Education is the reason people become aware of the environment. I know plenty of Americans with far more money than I have who don't understand or care to understand a thing about the environment because it might inconvenience their lifestyle. Conversely, if you are starving and watching your children starve, you're not going to worry about the environment.
3
There are very big economic players in the Carbon industry who are actively shaping opinion. They employ lots of people, they have large scale projects all over the world. They dine with politicians and spread money around. They advertise on both main stream and social media.
We have been through this before with the tobacco industry.
We need progressive taxation on Carbon so we can redistribute the lost investment in a progressive manner.
France is using regressive taxes and doesn't have a plan to progressively balance the disruption. They are playing into the hands of the big carbon producers.
6
The middle class and poor suffer the most from environmental pollution. The children poisoned in Flint did not attend fancy private schools or vacation in Switzerland. When a child dies from asthma as the result of pollution who suffers? It is not only the privileged who worry about pollution, but what comes first, paying more for gasoline or paying the rent? Politicians practice "kicking the can down the road" management at the hand of wealthy benefactors and lobbyists, the Republican Party a perfect example. Those of privilege in the industrialized world do very little to protect the planet, but it will be people living in lower class neighborhoods who will suffer the effects of rising waters, mega fires, and filthy air. There would be little need to protest rising gas prices anywhere if there were true 21st century methods of transport in "great" cities like Paris, New York and Beijing. Instead, workers sit in gridlock, bound to obsolete methods of transportation that they must use to get to work, while elected officials continue to do too little, too late. They ask those with little to give what little they have. Industrial nations have enough money to make changes to their infrastructure and protect the planet, but consider how New York politicians cripples it roads with unmanageable gridlock rather than instituting positive measures for the environment and the paycheck.
6
Environmentalists can't afford to ignore the whole panoply of economic issues, not just income inequality, for our environmental troubles are built into the DNA of industrial capitalism, which has one narrow concept of nature--"resource"--one imperative--"growth"--and one M.O.--externalization of costs. Climate change, species extinction, air and water pollution, soil depletion--and yes, income inequality: these are not isolated but the systemic economic problems.
Technical efficiency and the reduction of costs to increase shareholder profit drive both the externalization of costs (i.e. our "environmental" problems) and the automation that continues to destroy jobs. The GOP use environmentalism as yet another wedge issue to distract us from this systemic reality. pitting "the tree huggers" against "jobs." We should not let them.
Dr. Gross's suggestion--that the environmental movement tweak its messaging to appeal to those economically marginalized in capitalism's latest wave of "creative destruction"--is weak tea, too tame to meet the threats we face. It can't remain a hot button issue, balkanized into "causes" ranging from climate change to hoot owl survival. It should dissolve and reconstitute itself under a unified Green political party with a platform that addresses the fundamental conflict between capitalism and the survival of our species. The "environment"--the Earth--doesn't need our help; it will survive just fine without us.
2
I understand the author’s numbers, but it certainly doesn’t jibe with what I’ve seen in real life. Namely, the ones who have the most time to protest energy projects (gas wells, pipelines, electric transmission lines, etc) are wealthier liberals (or wealthy conservatives whose land may be impacted with a new right-of-way).
One area that the environmental left has ignored is the ratepayer. Broadly announcing that “everyone is willing to pay 30 percent more for renewable energy” is an argument that falls on deaf ears to a single mom of three just getting by (and you saw that in the Yellow Vest protests). There’s also the issue of “co-opting” the poor for an environmental justice cause that can tend to rankle. Many landowners are more than willing to accept a payment to allow drilling or another energy project on their land. They don’t need to be called “traitors”. The environmental community doesn’t show up check in hand and say, “we’ll buy your drilling rights and set them aside”. Rather, it’s “you are a sellout”. Some other time, we can talk about Hilary Clinton announcing to coal miners in West Virginia they won’t have jobs any more, then wondering how she lost West Virginia.
3
@Mark H. I am struck by how successful corporate propaganda has been in creating this myth that environmeally friendly practices are more expensive. Usually they’re not. What they can be is less profitable. However, for the people who get to avoid costly illnesses and death, they’re a giant cost savers. Similarly, renewable electricity is now cheaper than fossil fuel generation. Period. Entrenched corporate interests however are successfully defend their profits with basically lies and as interesting as the notion of buying drinking rights are, in many cases, that’s illegal and if you don’t use the drilling or grazing rights you simply lose them because again the law is stacked in favor of corporate interests.
Ultimately it is a question of who has a moral conscience and who does not.
2
@Mark H - that single mom of three should be driving a Rav4 hybrid and using half the gas. She'll save a lot of money. Yes, some environmentalists' recommendations are painful, but others just make good thrifty sense.
1
@common sense advocate I just bet she can't afford a Rav4 hybrid. See how this works?
What needs to be put across to people is that vital environmental efforts are also a boon to the economy. Installation of solar tiles, for example, brings work to many: not only those who install them but those who sell them - and these can then power electric automobiles. So many opportunities. It always amazes me that anybody prefers to be under the ground, away from the sun's vitamin D, than up on the roof (it was a first here in Hove - and perhaps around the world - when I quoted Gerry Goffin's wonderful lyric at a Planning Committee meeting).
1
If Dr Gross had stretched his boundaries he would find that Abraham Maslow , the psychologist, identified this phenomenon a long time ago. Its called the hierarchy of needs. When you are trying to feed and shelter your family you dont have the time to be concerned about climate change and species loss.
3
A recent non-scientific but nonetheless instructive survey by the Daily Caller, asked 31 wealthy, progressive organizations if there should be a ban on private planes. Not surprisingly, only 2 organizations commented, and they were non-committal. The other 29 preferred not to answer. The feeling that climate change is more Gentry Left virtue signaling than actual mortal threat is validated by such news. I will take climate change much more seriously when Al Gore gives up his private jet, and his massive house in Tennessee. Until then, climate change to me is just another power grab by an already too powerful liberal elite.
29
We're literally already seeing the changes of climate change now. The drought that precipitated the Syrian civil war, the now annual wildfires in California, two of the most devastating hurricanes in modern history in the same season. It's not a power grab, it's happening all around you.
1
@Achilles
It sounds like you pay less attention to the science, preferring to look for examples of hypocrisy. The fact that 29 of the 31 organizations did not respond, and the 2 who did were "non-committal," may signify that they did not recognize the source of the survey, and were concerned with how their responses might be used, and, possibly, distorted. If so, this is likely more indicative of caution than hypocrisy. However, there is no shortage of hypocrisy in our society, so knock yourself out looking for it, but you ignore science at your (and our) peril.
2
@Achilles
Definitely some hypocrisy, but we should not ignore sound science because some of the preachers are hypocritical in their actions.
2
There's gulf between between environmentalism and environmental protection and remediation. Environmentalism tends to be controlled by nonprofits ranging from local groups focussed on one issue that interests them to international (Big Green) NGOs like WWF, NRDC, EDF, etc. Environmental protection and remediation is a business that generates around $350 billion a year in the US and roughly $1 trillion worldwide. This could be anything from waste management to environmental law. I'd argue that the later group is far more important and more effective.
For instance, if the power went out at one of the big green group's Manhattan headquarters for a week or two, there wouldn't be much to be concerned about. If the local waste cartage union went on strike and garbage piled up in the streets for weeks on end, everyone in the area would notice.
One problem is these two groups don't really communicate with one another, even though environmental nonprofits get their nonprofits status by offering communication initiatives.
Another problem with environmentalism is greenwashing. That whole natural gas bridge or "beyond coal" thing ended up reducing coal emissions, but is forever increasing emissions from shale gas, shale oil, shale gas liquids, shale gas liquids feedstock for petrochemicals, etc. I get pragmatism. I don't get is putting pragmatism on the market for a big donation.
4
This excellent article demonstrates why policies such as the proposed Green New Deal — which attacks both inequality and environmental degradation — are so critical to the success of protecting the environment. When people are living on the edge, they don’t have the luxury of thinking 10 years ahead. They are thinking only of making it to Friday. Environmentalists must understand this and propose workable employment and transportation alternatives to people affected by changes designed to protect the environment, and these alternatives must be available before the changes are implemented. They must also fight inequality. Otherwise, yellow vest protests will stop needed environmental protections from being implemented before it’s too late.
30
Inequality is one aspect of the problem. The other is that too often, environmentalists use shaming to advance their goals. Poorer people have become inured and resentful rather than compliant.
I live in a slightly poor rural county surrounded by much poorer rural counties. There is one large employer, located in my county. Because it's more expensive to live here, the employees with the lowest-paying jobs tend to live in other counties, the farthest from the employer. They drive terrible old cars and spend far too much of their income on gas.
A proposal for a new gas tax would infuriate them. A few cents more per gallon is the difference between, say, being able to buy a slightly better car next year or trying to keep the old one going. And a car is crucial to their ability to keep their jobs.
Years ago I was on a committee that tried to set up Park & Ride at our county's borders, with rush-hour shuttle buses to the major employer. The sole promotional tactic was guilt. It went down in flames. Everyone concluded that "Park & Ride won't work here."
They weren't listening to the target audience. A survey showed the primary reason people didn't want P&R was concern about reaching their cars quickly if, for example, they needed to pick up a sick child from school. Providing rides to the P&R lot on an as-needed basis could have gone a long way toward making P&R a success.
More listening, less lecturing, and you might start to get somewhere with lower-income rural citizens.
78
The Yellow Vests are not about pro- or anti-environmentalism. France is headed by a man who campaigned from the Left, but his cuts on taxes for the wealthy - because he says it will stimulate investment - and increases for the poor show him to be a Supply Sider nonpareil.
It's all about the money, not air quality.
13
@Alan Chaprack Macron didn't campaign from the left. But he was to the left of Marie Le Pen. The French would never have voted for Macron under normal circumstances. And he is finding out their displeasure with his policies...
1
Environmental consciousness might fall within the political purview of wealthy elites, but environmental degradation hits the poor the worst.
Who is most damaged by droughts, extreme heat, floods, tornadoes, rising seas, hurricanes and climate-related storms and pests? Those who cannot escape these things, that's who.
2
Energy is as necessary for human activity as food and water is for human life. And, unlike food and water, our need for energy increases even if our population does not. These are the facts.
The conflict between this existential needs for energy and for maintaining a liveable environment is inherent to a choice to meet our energy need by technologies that foul our planet. Unless and until we are able to meet our energy needs using clean renewable sources we are on a path to global deterioration. This is the challenge for technolgy development, taught by physical science.
Meeting this challenge will require the efforts of economists, political leaders, moral leaders, and sociologists. However we get there, the clock is ticking for all, the affluent and the poor. The degree to which our planet will deteriorate in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren is tied to how successful we will be in eliminating our reliance on fossil fuels. This ought to be the goal of all
We should not confound the rhetoric and debates that surround climate change with the fight for a clean environment.It falls victim to the current political obfuscation tactics. And data that "44 percent of Americans say they care a great deal about climate change" is not so bad given that it is such a long term and abstract social issue.
Lead in our water, dead, dying dolphins and fish, red tides, toxic products, air pollution red alerts in our neighborhoods are much more real and tangible to all Americans and should be our focus. While I believe we should be addressing the larger long term consequences for the future that is not where the discussion should be for rich and for poor.
The EPA is systematically being defanged under this administration because the argument is about whether or not last winter was the warmest ever. Let's get the debate back to the basics,the healthfulness of the products we use, the quality of the air and water in all our communities the lives and livelihoods that can be saved by careful community regulation.
And if the privileged have more time, we should get out on the streets and demand it for all.
4
Very wealthy households do not have a significant impact on total carbon. Wealthy countries do. That means everyone in the country will have to change his lifestyle to meet this requirements. Taxing carbon and giving money back to the masses is not going to change any behaviors. If I get a carbon dividend check from the government, I can easily attach it to my higher energy costs and continue my lifestyle. People know how to rationalize and do algebra when it comes to living, eating traveling. You will simply slosh trillions around the country with minimal impact to carbon usage.
1
Gas taxes are regressive and are thus a terrible choice for growing a multi-class environmental movement. Environmentalists must make common cause with social justice advocates and push for progressive income taxes to fund environmental measures to not alienate lower income people. Or go for Universal basic income so that people can afford life's basics and then think more clearly about civic issues.
10
Well said daughter! Many workers, especially in rural areas struggle to fuel their commutes as it is. In cities, the high cost of traffic and parking tickets can be particularly oppressive to those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder.
2
This is a complex issue and I’m glad to see it addressed by the Times. Whether wealthy elites support these policies also depends on what side of their toast is buttered as we see in the case of the oil companies seeking a lowering of automobile mileage standards.
2
This is "What's wrong with Kansas" all over again. It's actually quite strange that the affluent care more about the environment. I'm affluent. I have nothing to worry about. I can protect my house against floods, and if it's impossible I could easily buy a new one in a safer zone (despite prices having gone up there). I can afford air conditioning to protect me against the heat waves, and I could pay the higher energy price to run that air conditioning. When I'm old I won't have any problem to afford a luxury rest home that will always maintain a nice environment for me. These are things that I can do but non-affluent people in the country I live (Belgium) or in other countries (think Bangladesh) will not be able to do. They will truly suffer from climate change and they will make the thousands of deads that are statistically predicted. Honestly, I will never suffer (it will maybe only be marginally more expensive to maintain my easy life, but that will be peanuts). Thus so strange that I care more about climate change than the people who will truly suffer from it. It’s probably the Maslow's hierarchy of needs (my immediate needs are satisfied so I can concentrate on longer term, while people facing immediate needs focus only on these). But it’s still short-sightedness. It’s like people from New York asking for more redistribution that will profit mainly people from Kansas, while people from Kansas, looking only at their immediate tax bill, ask for less.
6
I think that a tax that is higher in dense urban areas with good public transport and lower in rural areas would have made more sense. There's no reason why they could not have set a higher tax in Paris than in the rural provinces.
8
I live in a well-to-do neighborhood. I buy most of my food from local organic farmers (I realize this is a rare privilege), not unsustainable, highly packaged factory food. I recycle everything I can, and buy appliances that I continue to be able to repair, not replace (my Bunn coffee maker is 15 years old). I have a fuel efficient vehicle driven less than 8000 miles a year, and my spouse works at home and hardly drives anywhere. I replaced my HVAC with the most efficient models. I am trying to do even more to make my home more energy efficient. However, my neighbors can't follow the simplest recycling rules, put out multiple cans of garbage, drive huge SUVs, and leave too many lights on all night for fear of burglaries (even though my town has little crime).
Really, until everyone is hip deep in garbage and sewage and cannot breathe the air, nobody of any economic means really cares. If it costs them time or tax dollars, it's too much effort for them. Fuel, mass-produced food and waste disposal are cheap enough - there are no penalties for mass consumption. I hope the next civilization to evolve will have more foresight, intelligence, and common sense.
3
@Just Live Well In the 17th century, and even later, the overriding social concern of the time was that the world was filled with sin. Mankind would be judged, and judged harshly. Whole wars were fought over whether or not this group or people or that were fighting sin hard enough, following the right book. People who were not conforming to the right practices were actually seen as not fighting sin hard enough or even bringing sin into the world.
Today, nobody cares much about sin. The War on Sin has failed. And the world didn't end. We're all still concerned with murder, rape, abuses and thefts; we just think of them differently and try different solutions. We no longer see them as part of a great, world-ending sin complex. In other words, Sin continued to happen, yet the world did not end.
I see a lot of parallels here between how the 17th century mind thought of the global threat of Sin, and how the 21st century mind sees current ills. The framework of how we think about it will change, and we will probably deal with individual problems in more enlightened ways, after a different set of explanatory framework(s).
1
A big part of the problem, as you suggest, is politics and spin. All public issues, including the environment, are to greater or lesser degrees economic issues. Like anything else, climate change does and will affect poor people more than rich. The fact that no one is suggesting that Exxon and the companies that have spent decades and fortunes deliberately misleading the public and bribing the debates should have to pay for the consequences of their actions on the climate reflects how politics works. Many (certainly not all) poor people in Appalachia align themselves with the coal companies & the politics that their grandparents and great-grandparents fought and often died battling for basic safety and living wages; they ignore their living neighbors poisoned & driven off their land by coal, all in order to blame poverty on distant scapegoats. That sort of politics gives poor people a cheap sort of relief from their frustrations, but it's immensely profitable for others
1
By their very nature, humans require a LOT of energy. Humans do more than just eat, reproduce, and die. There are few (save a few indigenous isolated populations living in tropical climates) who are willing to be cold in winter, hot in summer, stay local, forage for food, weave clothes from plant fibers, and give up all but feet to get around. Forget attending concerts, museums or getting an education. No medical procedures except poultices. All require energy. LOTS of energy. Make large businesses pay for energy needs of society, the energy itself and the increased cost of making energy use green? They pass on the costs or go to countries less punitive to their success. The poor pay for the lifestyles of the un-poor.
The solution to the global warming problem is simple but impossible to achieve - reduce the population of humans so our energy needs are what the earth can tolerate. We have instinct that promotes reproducing, and innate animal desire for warmth, shelter, security, etc, all requiring increased GDP, working against us.
As a scientist I know the EARTG will survive this - the earth has had mass extinctions before & will again. Barring a meteor or catastrophic volcano, the next mass extinction will likely be anthropogenic. The earth will shake us off like a dog shakes off fleas. Then it will recover, moving toward the next mass extinction (terminating when the sun cools).
5
"The fact that the French public is sympathetic to the cause of the Yellow Vests but also concerned about the climate shows that the protests were never really about the environment in the first place."
Increasing the tax on gasoline is a very limited, indirect environmental move -- one that puts a burden on the least able to afford it. It's in line with a theory of market strategies, where the government supposedly can't just pass laws, but uses taxes to nudge people in a chosen direction. I haven't heard anything about any Yellow Vest people defending a petroleum-based economy, or being out there objecting to climate science -- they are out there protesting a specific tax, and then protesting an economy in which working people can't stretch their income to the end of the month.
4
People instinctively know the lowered standard of living they're asked to accept won't have any bearing on the climate.
Population reduction is the only way to get where you say you want to go. It's also the most humane thing we can do as a species. We could have your post materialistic world if we could control our most basic drive. Of course it's naive but also true.
12
I'm not flying or taking cruises around the world to beach island paradises where everything is imported. I didn't decide to send manufacturing jobs to nations with no emission standards. I didn't decide products should be easily breakable junk to encourage buying. I am not the problem.
'Globalization' may have uplifted some of the world's poor, but it's also a runaway freight train to the apocalypse. I certainly didn't profit over it, but I'll be paying for it; we all will be paying for it.
12
@James Tell me you don't buy foreign-produced clothing, food imported from anywhere and that the computer you are using to send this message is made of wood and plants sourced locally.
1
@John Burrett
James's point is that he has not been presented with the choice of buying locally-produced food, clothing, and electronics. Nor has he been consulted about the very short life of most electronics and appliances. The choice to avoid all of these items has been removed from the market, and not by James or people like him.
It is interesting to me that Macron tried to manipulate the French populace using the very same techniques you just did in your post, by chiding and belittling those his policies harmed. That lasted all of eighteen months. How it still persists, and persuades anyone, in the English-speaking world is a mystery.
Without one-world government "the bold policy changes needed to slow global warming risk will never get off the ground." So, unless you people are willing to launch World War III to "save the planet," you'd best start working on solutions to deal with the effects of climate change rather than continuing to believe you can stop it by making life harder for working people. And no, warmer global temperatures will not be the end of the world. The earth, during the comparatively brief history of human existence, has been both warmer and cooler than it is today. We will adapt and survive, just as we always have. If you rich city dwellers really want to save the human species, better to direct your efforts toward the development of an asteroid shield. Just ask the dinosaurs.
3
@Southern Man
It's been warmer and cooler in human existence, yes. Not in human civilization. That's not a trivial distinction. A stable climate and civilization are unlikely to be a coincidence.
1
This is a great discussion - needs to happen more and more - thank you.
Reality is that economics matter more than anything.
We are spinning out of control because we are too successful as a species and are growing too fast. Resources unfortunately are not scarce enough to curb consumption and governments can’t stop subsistence survival tactics like burning animal waste and polluting companies.
We need to stop growing - which would stop development, population growth, and land decimation. The thought we in the US can grow while the developing world lifts itself out of poverty without destruction of the environment is a folly.
Let’s think of profitable zero growth models that force governments to curb spending and companies to focus on dividends to enrich people vs chasing the growth at the expense of the world. Let’s work on root causes - birth control and focusing on the poor in every country given offspring is inversely correlated with wealth up until the 1% point.
Unfortunately no economic policy will fix a future unknown decimation until it gets here. Never has and never will. The unknown liability on government balance sheets are large, but too unknown to rally the population to sacrifice now for later.
So I would focus on poverty and birth rates.
6
Perhaps it's not about who is environmental-minded and who is not. Maybe it's about Macron's strategy. A fuel tax is regressive, disproportionately impacting those who cannot afford it. Neither will it change the inelastic behavior of the well-off. A carbon tax always sounds good in theory but reducing GHGs is going to take affordable clean technology.
3
@Bruce Hill
Wasn't the problem in France that is $6.00 already? The taxes were not revenue neutral either.
The US could achieve the same carbon reductions by replacing CAFE standards, renewable fuel subsidies and the Clean Power Plan for $21 per ton of a revenue neutral carbon tax by 2025. $36 by 2030. That translates to $0.21 and $0.36 at the pump. I got those are numbers from a talk by Christopher Knittel of the Sloan School at MIT.
Paraphrasing, he says you can look at those numbers 2 ways. It's not that expensive to save carbon. Or we're not doing very much to save carbon now.
There are a lot of US coal plants that could be replaced by renewables for less than the cost of operation now. Just about all of them could be by 2030. A carbon price would make it a no- brainer.
I don't believe renewables get the world to zero carbon, but they're getting cheap enough to help stop digging the hole.
1
We have created created quite the trap for ourselves with fossil fuel dependency, and escape, if we manage it, will be the biggest Houdini act in human history.
As others here have pointed out, education is necessary. But much of our policy education comes from our leaders, whom we elect. That chicken-and-egg problem is part of the trap.
For all the reasons enumerated in this article, a fee-and-dividend approach to reducing fossil fuel consumption may be our best hope. Sharing the revenue from a carbon fee with everyone will actually benefit the poorest while encouraging all to reduce their fossil fuel consumption.
Learn about and urge your elected officials to support this approach. The Citizens' Climate Lobby at citizensclimatelobby.org offers information and advice on helping to create a bipartisan effort.
There is not a lot of time to waste in debating whose ox will be gored. If we fool around much longer, the answer will be "everyone's".
4
Prospects for environmentalism worldwide?
Environmental hope largely exists among only the more wealthy, highly educated, independent and creative thinking human beings in the world, meaning regardless of anyone else's concerns such concerns are likely to be realized only among high caliber, quality human beings.
Left wings around the world are typically associated with the environmental movement, and while it is true right wings with their entrenchment in religion, big business, nationalism, military expenditure seem unlikely candidates for environmental concern, one would have to be delusional to believe environmental success is compatible with anything approaching socialism not to mention communism because obviously these movements are primarily about uplifting millions upon millions of the poor and downtrodden over any environmental concern and in fact these movements often seem to want to bring high functioning humanity to its knees what with the loose tossing around of the word "privilege", as in "privilege must be overcome", and certainly left wings seem able to find privilege almost anywhere they feel offended, which means how exactly are brains not to mention behavior to be arrived at by which the environment can be preserved?
I really do not believe there is a route to environmental salvation except the wildly hopeful one of technological advancement and miraculous behavior reform of humanity or the more likely route of an elite humanity tyrannizing the public.
2
Yesterday the NYT published a column by John Kerry wagging his finger at us plebes for not pushing climate change legislation more aggressively. This coming after press reports say he was in India for the wedding of a billionaire's daughter. If he flew by private jet then his carbon foot print was gigantic this month. A few years ago Kerry tried to scuttle a wind farm being built off the coast of Cape Cod because it would spoil his view. Robert Kennedy, Jr., whose family's Kennedy Compound was within sight of the proposed wind farm, wrote an essay for this paper stating his support for wind power in general, but opposing this project. Kerry represents a class of elites that are the poster boys for the term NIMBY. When push comes to shove they really aren't going to make any personal sacrifices. The GOP is disingenuous when they deny climate science, but lets be honest the Democrats are even more disingenuous when they deny the cost. Americans in every major poll say again & again they don't want to pay more for energy. They want & expect transportation to be as a cheap as possible. GOP is simply reflecting that reality. If we were simply forced to generate power through only clean methods at this point, there would be rolling brown-outs & power curfews like there are in 3rd world countries. The American public won't stand for this under any circumstances. While many people are in favor of alternatives, they also want those alternatives to not compromise their lifestyle.
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@Bill Brown
Please keep the focus on the message, not the messenger.
Using hypocritical people as an excuse to avoid taking action is also hypocritical, for both deniers and those who know.
Lifestyle changes are coming, it is coming to everyone including Americans, either voluntarily or forced by nature.
23
@Bill Brown I live in an upper middle class suburb of Chicago. Our home is 100% powered by wind brought to us by a contract negociated with the provder through Com Ed. It can and is being done!
15
@Bill Brown So in your view, there aren't any NIMBY Republicans? That is my takeaway from the false equivalencies in the supposition that Democrats are more disingenuous than the Republicans as an argument for your support of truly short sighted thinking.
8
Complex, indeed. There is an idea touted in US called environmental justice. Basically it holds that society needs to correct past wrongs that placed more environmental hazards near poorer communities. Of course the truth is that the poor settled in more polluted areas because these were the places they could afford to live. It was once called “the other side of the tracks.” In a developed country with rule of law we have been able to hold polluters accountable. The principle of polluter pays is universally recognized. Upstream polluters are responsible for damages to downstream communities. A similar concept was at the core of the UNFCCC. The developed world was responsible for most of the post industrial revolution spike in GHGs. Therefore the financial burden of reducing emissions should fall more on them and they should pay developing countries to avoid the same path toward development. But that just logic ultimately was rejected because there is no global enforcement, no global justice. Climate changes cannot be managed by countries that place themselves above the survival of the species. Earth First.
7
'“No evidence” that people became less attuned to climate change when their economic prospects dwindled after the 2008 financial crisis': how many people lost food, clothing, and shelter due to the crash? One thing ignored in this piece is any notion of equity. How much should the average person feel obliged to forego for the sake of the environment, when the ultra wealthy fly around in private jets, and other nations spew filth into the atmosphere and into the water and earth? How much burden should the average person bear to make up for other nation's shortfalls? How much discomfort? It cannot be that no one appreciates this issue of equity, so why is it ignored? And no, "inequality" in the "social justice" arena, is not the root cause of the problem. That's hyper reductive: the bottom line is: some don't care, in a wholesale, national way; some do; and some spew eco-jargon and fly private, always.
16
"France is wealthy and well educated"
But like many other former industrialized countries, i.e. the United States, many rural areas are hurting from lack of factories. And no argument, food and shelter is first and foremost. What was missing in France with the gas tax increase was a lack of understanding what the impact was in rural areas with little or no public transportation system.
"Just For Rich People". Depends on what you mean by rich people, take it one step further and change people to country, then what? The top three CO2 polluters are China, the U.S., and the EU. They're also the three richest, so it would make sense they would be the ones to take the "big steps" in addressing the environmental nightmare we created.
Unfortunately our leadership in the U.S. is taking steps to reverse what was done in previous administrations to address climate change.
3
Scott Pruit is a hero among evangelicals who are praying for the End Times to start as soon as possible. For people on the coasts it is probably difficult to comprehend that there are people actively pray for the end of the world.
The 'Left Behind' series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins was wildly popular with Evangelicals who crave the Rapture and truly believe that the sooner Armageddon happens, the better.
For evangelicals, environmental mitigation is delaying the end times, and they really, want the world to end in their lifetime.
45
@UTBG - I’m left thinking you have had very little real interaction with “evangelicals”. I’ve never met one that fits your description. People are fascinated by the concept, but I think only a very isolated few (none of whom I’ve ever met) are wishing it to happen now.
1
Given the push pull between high minded big picture issues like environment and the more fundamental urgency of day to day survival, the sensible and compassionate takeaway here is not to use taxation (which is in effect a punishment) as the means to get the changes one seeks. The riots show that politics of principle without empathy are a social trigger. We need to remain vigilant about our planets future, we need to prepare for the changes that will come. But we need a more sensitive and inclusive approach. Near term and long term. So we can bring everyone along but not make life impossible for those struggling economically.
16
The privileged are the problem. They might throw some money occasionally at organizations working to save the polar bears or conserve forests but their own carbon footprints are huge. Multiple houses, investments in oil and gas, flying all over the place. It's hypocrisy.
We need a Green New Deal now addressing income inequality as well as Climate Change.
"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors." - Jonas Salk
227
@jay It's easy to put a target on a rich man's back, for it appeals to class resentment, but they are a symptom, not a cause, no? Our environmental problems are primarily structural, not personal, built in to industrial and monopoly capitalism.
19
@Chris Buczinsky Yes, of course our problems are structural. Exactly why we need a Green New Deal. And fast.
38
@jay
A lot more than just the rich trash the environment. Just look at all the gas -guzzlers on the road. Not all of them are owned by rich people. I know of several very wealthy people who set a very good example protecting the environment not only in their life styles but also the significant financial support for environmental causes.
Of course the people with the most money are generally the ones using most of the resources. If you can afford it, how about instead of buying that Tesla buy something like a Nissan Leaf or a Chevy Bolt and use the left over funds to put solar panels on your house>
8
Seems to me that the Inglehart hypothesis is enforced by the French and the American experiences. France is wealthy and has a sturdy societal safety net. But rural French people are stressed by global economic changes and the reduced subsidies for their local economies and so, even though they care about the environment, they are fighting for a way of life. Compared to the French, Americans, with a relatively frail social safety net (education, health, job security) are FAR more stressed. The "working class" in particular is not feeling the love and support of the system, and so fights to hold steady in a world that is not going its way. Voila.
5
The fact is that many if not most of the proposals to improve the environment are functionally equivalent to deeply regressive taxes. Examples abound. Bicycle lanes in Manhattan serve a tiny minority (count the bicycles you see on a five block stretch of say Columbus Ave, Maybe two or three versus hundreds of cars and trucks) who can afford rents within bicycle commuting distance. It is posited that people drive out of selfishness and perversity. Not so. Conduct serious surveys. People auto-commute from areas without adequate transport and there are many. (Before metrocards we called them three fare zones.)People carpool from these areas in wheezing used cars.Congesting pricing is notoriously that way until there is a freight tunnel from New Jersey to Brooklyn. The sad fact is that there is not an iota of real scientific evidence that these measures have the effect they are supposed to have.
8
@Bill H - it's expensive to be poor, and getting more so. But if we heavily tax the rich and use the money to build better public transportation we help the poor and the environment too. The key question is, are people poor because they are inferior, or because that's the only way some people can get rich? While tricky this issue is susceptible to empirical and logical investigation.
4
This is also a criticism of feminism and other social movements. To some extent, the fault lies with the movements themselves. There has to be more of an effort to reach out and consider the aspects of environmentalism that affect working people, and to spread the costs more equally. So far that effort is uneven.
1
In the past you had "limousine liberals" -- affluent people who supported tax increases for social welfare because it didn't affect their lifestyle, supported controversial integration plans because it wouldn't change the makeup of their luxury condo or their children's private school. The policies were the right choice, but they also didn't stand to alter the lives of the affluent at all, even if they turned out to be bad decisions.
If you were struggling middle class/blue collar, the equation was different -- tax increases hurt your lifestyle, integration felt like it would disrupt your neighborhood and your schools (which were your kids' only chance to get out). What were the "right" ideas were existential risks for you and your family if you were on the lower rungs economically.
Environmentalism is proving the same concept. Economic elites already living with good public transport, electric cars, and jobs totally divorced from material production don't face any risks from adopting restrictive environmental policies. The lower economic rungs see huge risks -- gas hikes they can't avoid because they need to drive to a job, a job that depends on low-cost energy or resource extraction, and the inevitable price increases across the board.
It's not that environmentalism is factually wrong, but for many people it feels like another round of "haves" who lose nothing telling people who "have less" being told they now have to have even less.
105
@Mobocracy Yes, but. Socio-economics do apply. But common ground could be found. It won't be easily reached because well-organized, well-funded and powerful political forces haver combined to keep us apart. "Divided, we fall" is their objective. It's working.
10
@Mobocracy - I don't disagree with you. But I have also lived or worked in poor (often very, very poor) rural areas and urban neighborhoods my entire life. And these were all areas with bad water (heavy metals, solvents, pesticide) and bad air. Yes, rising gas prices are especially hard on the poor--my family has been there for rioting over gas prices hikes. But poor people are also the ones who suffer the most when we don't have sound environmental policies.
42
@Mobocracy
And extend that to the developing world who aspire to live like us in the US and Europe.
6
This study doesn't seem to account for the spread of misinformation. Compared to France, we are less educated and have deeper regional divisions we're identified with... the less educated are more likely to be influenced by corporate propaganda. Add to that a motive to automatically reject what certain others are saying, and there you have it.
Plus there's always inertia, and from a neuroscience perspective, fear. For a human brain, global climate change has always been difficult to stare straight in the face. It means every single one of us has to change our habits.
13
@Barbara is right it's about "quality" education. If you want (most) people to be nice to others teach them to be nice...with a meaningful curriculum for 12 years of school. If you want people to be healthy and disease free, teach them to be healthy...with a meaningful curriculum for 12 years of school. If you want people to care about preserving Earth teach them to care about the environment with a meaningful curriculum for 12 years of school. If you want people who are selfish and have little empathy; are obese, diabetic, sedentary, disease prone; care little for the environment...simply maintain the very poor, unequal priority-challenged approach to educating humans that is in place now.
If you are having trouble getting enough food on the table to feed your children that becomes the overriding focus of your attention. If there is plenty of food on the table and the rent is paid you may focus on whether or not your children and their children will have breathable air and drinkable water as time goes by. This seems obvious. There really is a hierarchy of human needs.
One of the purposes of a democratic government is to look out for the well being of all it's citizens, their immediate needs (in the case of health care) and the long range threats to their well being (such as air pollution). Various governments carry out this purpose in varying degrees.
In the case of the United States the attention regulatory agencies paid to things such as air and water quality had been increasing in focus and safety along with other pro environmental issues until the election of the current administration. This administration denies the very process of scientific inquiry, puts all of it's attention on corporations ability to exploit resources regardless of the impact on the health of it's citizens and the long term environmental conditions of generations to come. This administration must be driven out of the people's houses. If it is not parents working for minimum wage to pay the rent are going to have to do the laboratory work it takes to know if the fish they catch in the stream behind their trailer are ok to feed to the kids. Vote blue.
20
The problem began when you called America a well-educated country. You sure about that? America does not have an educated society. America is a society of grifters and lazy people who are easily manipulated by the evil party: the Republicans.
166
@Mogwai
Conflating political affiliation and laziness is both silly and unproductive. America is filled with both hard working and lazy folks of all shapes, sizes, genders and political parties. I do think GOP orthodoxy with it's focus on individual rights and responsibilities by it's nature is less likely to support policies that might hurt individuals while for overall society providing benefits.
10
@Mogwai - that’s quite a dark picture you’ve painted. As I think about how the world must look through your eyes (so many grifters and evil people), I am saddened. Then I strive to think what you would think looking through my eyes, seeing so much good, and good people, in the USA, where I was born and still travel to frequently. I know your picture is incorrect, yet realize you probably feel the same about mine. How about we agree to accommodate and understand each other’s perspectives a bit more. Working together could be a great thing for all of us.
3
It's not just Republicans. It's the entire capitalist class
11
Consider your own life :
How much jet setting do you do ?
How much jet setting in private planes ?
What kind of mileage does your Ferrari or Lamborghini get ?
In your manufacturing process are you using acetone or ozone depleting chemicals ?
Of course you are not doing those things. You rake your lawn if you have one, you bag the leaves, you seperate your garbage and place your waste in the appropriate bags. You even drive a fuel efficent car and set your thermostat down when you are not home.
You are not the problem !
The hot shots flying in their private planes to receive environmental awards are the problems. If you own a 10,000 sf home you are part of the problem. All this nonsense they preach to us, the choir, and then "they" ( everyone knows who "they" are) suck up the resources of the Earth and spit out the wastes.
Don't feel guilty, it is not you.
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@Tom ,Retired Florida Junkman. Nonsense. This attitude plays right into the hands of the GOP. Step outside step outside America--and then you'll see that EVERY American, in a global context, is part of the problem, because it is systemic, not personal. Picking a rich boogeyman satisfies only the resentful, and keeps that system intact.
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@Tom ,Retired Florida Junkman
It's nice to not feel guilty because surely others are polluting, but consider this: According to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, in 2017 more than 51 billion kilometres (about 31 billion miles) have been flown by civil aircraft all over the world. Some of us (not just the others) are surely flying! We must acknowledge that we're all part of the problem in one way or another.
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That´s right. When you already have a car, a house, a health insurance, etc, you start to look out there for the things you cant manage, you are able to look to the future.
Poor people, and many under educated rich people, don´t have the skills to look beyond a couple of years...
And i think we are going to do a lot to change that, even if it´s too late.
Keep trying! We will follow!
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The US has a population brainwashed to believe the universe is run by a kindly God and the US is its favorite nation. It has been educated down to idiocy.
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@Steve Bolger
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"It has been educated down to idiocy."
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Indeed so. Google "idiot".
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Funny.
And true.
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So-called "climate change" which used to be "global warming" has nothing to do with pollution. That's why people don't care.
The climate has always changed. Greenland used to actually be green.
So, can one of you true believe climate change worshipers please tell me what the perfect climate temperature should be? Should it be what is was 40 years ago? 100 years ago? 100,000 years ago? Please let me know.
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@Jackie, you have it backwards. "Global Warming" was first used in a 1975 paper by geochemist Wallace Broecker of Columbia U., but "Climatic Change" was used way back in 1956 by physicist Gilbert Plass who published "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change". Since then, both terms have been used.
To your second point, there is of course no "perfect" temperature. But we human beings have a habit of building large concentrations of wealth and infrastructure near coastal areas, which are highly vulnerable to sea level change. In the past, if sea levels rose, animals could up and move, but humans can't (easily) move their cities inland.
Given this, why would we want to deliberately raise the earth's average temperature and inundate the coasts? I for one do not want to see today's current refugee problem magnified 10 or 100 times, and higher taxes to boot, to deal with such a massive displacement of population and concurrent economic damage. Better to solve the problem now before it becomes too serious. An ounce of prevention, and all that...
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Since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, human activity has begun to impact climate. The current period of climate change is sometimes called “global warming.”
Global warming is often associated with a runaway “greenhouse effect.” The greenhouse effect describes the process of certain gases (including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), fluorinated gases, and ozone) trapping solar radiation in a planet's lower atmosphere. Greenhouse gases let the sun’s light shine onto the Earth’s surface, but they trap the heat that reflects back up into the atmosphere. In this way, they act like the glass walls of a greenhouse.
The greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon and keeps Earth warm enough to sustain life. However, human activities that include burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate.
The current period of climate change has been extensively documented by rising temperatures, melting glaciers, and more intense weather phenomena.
Warmer ocean temperatures and warmer ambient air temperatures likely contributed to the fracturing of the ice shelf and the massive Antarctic ice sheet associated with it. Finally, both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly during the past several decades.
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@Jackie When I was in school, I was taught this, which I just googled to confirm:
Afraid that their enemies might pursue them, they sent word back to Norway that their island was actually an ice-land, but that another island — more distant, larger and indeed covered by ice — was inhabitable green-land. And so the green island became Iceland, and the icy island became Greenland.
Google "Greenland Iceland Vikings".
So apparently Greenland has never been green, at least back through the age of Viking longboats rowing along through the Atlantic to the New World.
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I have never made more than 25 K a year. I currently make less than 20 K. When I received an inheritance from an aunt who died, I used it to insulate my house and put on solar panels. I walk to work. I've stopped eating red meat and I rarely fly anywhere.
I have no investments in Wall Street. How could I not making a living wage?
My wealthy friends on Facebook (exclusively Democrats) fly multiple times a year and don't have solar panels. They're still eating red meat. I don't know if their houses are insulated or not. They most certainly have investments in Wall Street, most likely including in oil and gas.
Wealthy people might say they care about the "environment" but their own carbon footprints are huge. I don't have as small of a carbon footprint as someone in Bangladesh, but it is very small compared to my wealthy and comfortably middle class friends.
It galls me.
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@jay Jay, how about moving from being galled to being out loud and proud? The points you bring up are valid, and many don't get the correlation between personal choices and climate change. I encourage you to continue writing about you experiences and show yourself as an example of how we can all decrease our carbon footprint. A blog would go a long way, and it would be of benefit to everyone.
By the way, I'm a democrat, and I agree with the hypocrisy you point out--we're not all hopeless. Let's ALL figure out how to stem the disastrous effects of climate change. On this issue, there are no political parties--just people who need to get their stuff together, and fast.
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@jay
I have trouble understanding whether you are complaining about Democrats (who at least fight for environmental issues); your low wages (not making a living wage); wealth ( here you nailed both the wealthy and the Democrats); or the carbon footprint of comfortably middle class etc.
You apparently do a great job limiting your carbon footprint. However, reducing the world population is probably the best practical solution and though not noted in prior comments that plan has significant costs as "economic growth" will no longer be the case.
Good luck on the job front!
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@jay: You might want to pay more attention to your Facebook friends list. I bet if you looked around, you could find a few vegetarian Democrats, and a few wealthy people who use solar power. It sounds like you have made friends with some galling hypocrites indeed, but they aren't necessarily typical.
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As a long-term (30+ year) American expat in France, I would like to add a few observations. The rural and semi-urban roots of the "yellow vest" movement (it started a few towns away from mine, in a Paris suburb, with a petition from an online haircare-product saleswoman) reflect not an opposition to environmental practices and policies, but living conditions which make these particularly burdensome. Rural train service has been slashed. Mega-malls and supermarkets (accessible by car) are decimating small local businesses in villages (accessible on foot/by bike or bus). Public services (tax office, hospitals, post offices) also have closed, requiring driving greater distances to access them. Energy costs (from a nationalized network) have risen (the planned hike for January has been repealed). Both the immediate issues' connections to climate change, and the availability of affordable solutions for more sustainable living, must be communicated to the population which is not hostile to these concerns, but just overwhelmed as to how to (afford to) participate in addressing them.
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@Christensen
Thank you for putting the anger and the protests it generates in the proper context. It has been an oversimplification to the point of distortion to charcterize the protests as motivated by "anti-environmentalism."
Realistic awareness of the extreme danger to our own descendants of greenhouse gas accumulation is crucial for everyone. That understanding only can come when it is intelligently and skillfully delivered. National leaders (hopefully we will actually have one after 2020) may need to involve people from every walk of society in discussion about how best to make our environment safer. Consensus needs to be built from the bottom up, not imposed by edict from the top down. The public must feel, and know, that it is their collective will that is being expressed in means of curbing greenhouse gas accumulation. The need, they must be helped and encouraged to believe and understand, is theirs.
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