The heart of the matter

Everything comes down to whether fighting climate change will hurt ordinary voters

Posted by David Roberts at 4:52 PM on 12 Nov 2007

Read more about: politics | climate | climate change mitigation

Many, many, many, many people have criticized the astonishingly stupid headline on last Tuesday's front-page Washington Post story: "Climate Is a Risky Issue for Democrats." The Republican base still clings to denial of plain reality, the Republican leadership is openly in hock to fossil-fuel companies, media coverage of climate has never been more intense, fighting climate change polls off the charts, especially among young people, and polls show that people trust Democrats over Republicans to take care of the issue.

In the calcified, beclotted mind of a WaPo editor, that means Democrats are at risk. The village elders can't help it -- they're just habituated to writing about Dems like a bullied little dweeb at school:

Good Grades a Risky Issue for Little Johnny
Academic achievement raises pantsing fears

But the headline wasn't the real problem. The real problem is current conventional wisdom, which the piece faithfully reflects. Reigning CW goes like this:

There is a one-to-one correlation between reducing CO2 emissions and increasing energy prices; lower CO2 a notch, raise energy prices a notch;
thus, the more "serious" a candidate is on climate change, the more they implicitly or explicitly intend to jack up voters' bills;
while fighting climate change is trendy and popular now, support will quickly vanish when energy prices start going up.

The important thing to note is that if No. 1 is correct, 2 and 3 really do follow. If fighting global warming just means imposing pain on voters, candidates who want to fight global warming are screwed.

Everything hinges on showing the public that No. 1 is false: that the net benefits of fighting climate change will exceed the costs.

I can't put that strongly enough. All the hysterical, quasi-theological arguments around this issue, all the FUD, all the tangents and misdirections and rancor, they all come down to that: people think tackling climate change means pain.

If we can change enough minds about that, the rest of the arguments will be rendered moot. If we can't, all else is for naught. More on this later.

For story: The heart of the matter
12 Comments | Post a Comment

unfortunately

The village elders can't help it -- they're just habituated to writing about Dems like a bullied little dweeb at school:

The democrats act like this is true themselves. See the recent capitulation on the renewable energy tax credit. I mean, what's up with that?

by GreenEngineer at 5:23 PM on 12 Nov 2007

Yes and no....

I agree with your essential point but there are a few subtleties:

There may be some pain in the short-term but not long-term- this requires a more nuanced position
Many people are willing to sacrifice for the public good so we just need good leadership- if Bush on 9/12 had told us that we need $5 gasoline in order to stop funding terrorist-petrol states and also to help combat global warming it may actually have worked- it will be harder now but not impossible- the security angle is key
Even if fighting global warming is done so well that it doesn't entail much upfront costs it will require change, and to many people change is akin to pain- they like the status quo

J.S.

I teach environmental economics and blog at www.voicesofreason.info.

by Jason D Scorse at 7:26 PM on 12 Nov 2007

David, you're sounding like N&S!

The trouble is, nobody can yet prove "the net benefits of fighting climate change will exceed the costs". The Stern review came close, as did IPCC AR4-WG3 - but in both cases the results depend greatly on how you estimate costs of damages to people in developing nations which the average American probably doesn't care that much about anyway. Ignoring the direct benefits of combating global warming, there are almost certainly (although some studies indicate otherwise) net real costs of attacking the problem.

I do believe as you do that the benefits (greatly) outweigh the costs, but the argument is moral, not economic. Can it truthfully be made in the current American political climate? I don't see much hope...

by apsmith at 7:47 PM on 12 Nov 2007

Interesting post

This needs a lot of elaboration.

Some abatements clearly will cost money. Much of that cost will be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher energy costs.

Are you saying either of these things?

Instituting an 80%-reduction-by-2050 cap-and-trade program will not cause energy prices to increase.
Energy prices wouldn't go up by more the more aggressive the 2050 cap-and-trade target.

It seems to me that both of these statements are flatly false.

In my view the more tenable argument is: yes, this will cost consumers a lot of money, but we'll use tax revenue to help those who get whomped most severely by higher energy prices.

by kayser at 10:03 PM on 12 Nov 2007

Plus

Oh, plus, you are probably partly saying that in the sufficiently long term, abatement costs are negative. That's a great point but don't underestimate how much it will smack of sophistry to tell 100 million voters that their energy prices "are not really going up, because think how much lower your externalities are!"

The point is a good and subtle one, but it will not convince the masses. When people think of energy prices they are thinking of the literal cost, not some relatively inchoate future costs to people they probably don't know.

by kayser at 10:18 PM on 12 Nov 2007

Without rain in Dixie....

there's going to be a distinct shortage of republican voters come November 2008.

Nobody has to believe in Climate Change because climate change believes in them just fine.

As to the cost; given another few rounds of natural disasters on the scale of the Dixie drought, Katrina, the Greensburg Kansas tornado and whatever sure to come disasters we will get in coming years I think people will pay.

What's happening to the arctic ice cap is probably a sign that we have passed the "tipping point" and are headed over the waterfall (minus the water in Dixie). Give us a few years and climate deniers will be as welcome as white nazis.

Look to Australian politics where the populace is galloping ahead of the politicians on Global Warming awareness. Of course that could have something to do with the fires and lack of water in their rivers.

Anybody who thinks the US is going to get a normal winter followed by a "normal" crop year next summer is living in a well. Things are going from strange to stranger real soon.

Put the Carbon Back

by Pangolin at 1:31 AM on 13 Nov 2007

without climate, no economy

It staggers me that the task of convincing climate sceptics is still as hard as ever. With out an enviroment there is no economy, so what is the point of asking how much it will cost the economy to get it functioning on a green basis.
Do they really not understand that no economy without an enviroment is as fundamental as no drink without water and no breathe without air. Right now in many parts of Australia it is forbidden to use water for anything other than drinking and personal washing for the eighth year in a row and the rain out look ain't gettin better.

I am an older student studying house design because I want to try and make a differance in that area and I was recently confronted by the comment in referance to Schwartzies efforts to force green building codes in California. that "we can't afford to wait around for lefty tree huggers to come up with solutions to the crisis".

I mean where the f... do people like that get off. When will righty tree chippers get the point that has been made for a hundred and fifty years or more by 'lefty tree huggers' that if we keep down this path of rampant consumption and no accounting for pollution it will end in ruin. Native Americans said it and now 99% of bona fide scientist say it.

'Lefty tree huggers'(whatever that means) have to throw off the perjoratives and reclaim the moral AND economic high ground. Every day that the climate crisis draws nearer its penultimate conclusion for us, the moral and economic perogative draws closer together until finally it will be realised that it is one and the same thing and was all along since time immemorial.

For righty tree chippers I suspect it will be far to late and it'll be written on all thier epitaths "why didn't you warn us?". On the odd lefty tree huggers' will be written "we told you so" because most of them will have given up memorialising themselves.
Righties seem to think everyone is out to get them and the lefties seem to think that everyone knows they care about them.Oh the shame, the shame.

Communication gets me down.... by the way, it's niether an economic problem or a moral problem. it's a fundamental religious problem bound up in a ridiculous notion of personal salvation that excludes from ones consciousness, the obviously more and more real reality that we are all on this planet together and not one of us is going to slip out the back door quietly un-noticed while all our childrens children suffer the horrendous consequences of thier forebears blinkered and selfish stupidity.

by simon seasons at 3:01 AM on 13 Nov 2007

Ask Again Later

When the hard times really start hitting home. People's attitudes about sacrifice and short term pain may be entirely different a year or two from now. Doing with less when you have some cushion will feel a lot different than doing with less when it feels like a sign of even less to come.

by justlou at 4:56 AM on 13 Nov 2007

willfully ignoring environmental security.........

Every day the news is filled with politicians adamantly and relentlessly expressing their overriding concerns for NATIONAL SECURITY and ECONOMIC SECURITY. When will the time come when they give equal time to discussing humanity's need for ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY?

There can be no such thing as a healthy global economy or secure nation-states if pernicious, human-driven climate change results in the Earth becoming unfit for human habitation by our children and coming generations.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

by stevenearlsalmony at 9:58 AM on 13 Nov 2007

It is all so surreal

We need a lot more urban lifestyles with smaller, super energy efficient homes and cars with double today's gas mileage. Can an F-250 pickup get 50 MPG? No. Can home owners afford to reduce the energy consumption of McMansions? No. Can we continue to expand urban sprawl and commute 2 hours a day in cars? No. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. These are nothing but cultural fads and will all have to change.

High mileage cars are cool. Super energy efficient homes are cool. Urban lifestyles with short commutes are cool. Energy costs have nowhere to go but up. To stay comfortable and warm we will need to keep pace with efficiency gains. A McMansion in the suburbs is not a need any more than a Hummer or Escalade is. They are passing status fads.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 6:36 PM on 13 Nov 2007

leadership

We need is real leadership and I don't see it in the front running presidential candidates. This article presumes that the Democrats running for president will actually follow through on their promises but prices will only rise dramatically if the new president makes radical changes and that is not going to happen. We will all be disappointed by their lack of substantial action but glad that Bush is gone and glad he wasn't replaced by Romney. I make myself sick but I am going to vote for the Democrat next November even though I have little faith in them. A Democratic candidate could have fresh turds coming out of both ears and look good because he/she will be compared to Bush or Mitt Romney.

by hikerreese at 12:25 AM on 14 Nov 2007

Examine data of human population dynamics

IMAGINE for a moment that we are looking at an ocean wave, watching it move toward the shore where it crashes finally at our feet. The wave is moving toward us; however, at the same time, there are many molecules in the wave that are moving in the opposite direction, against the tide. If we observe that the propagation of the human species worldwide is like the wave and the reproduction numbers of individuals or certain countries are like the molecules, it may be inaccurate for the latter to be looked at as if it tells us something meaningful about the former.

Abundant research indicates that most countries in Western Europe, among many other countries globally, have recently shown a decline in their rates of human population growth. These geographically localized data need not blind us to the fact that the absolute global human population numbers are skyrocketing. The world's human population is like the wave; the individual or localized reproduction numbers are like the molecules.

Perhaps a "scope of observation" problem is presented to everyone who wants to adequately understand the dynamics of human population numbers.

Choosing a scope of observation is a forced choice, like choosing to look at either the forest or the trees, at either the human species (the wave) data or reproduction (molecular) data. Data regarding propagation of absolute global human population numbers is the former while individual or localized reproduction numbers are the latter.

From this vantage point, at least one global challenge looming before humanity in our time could be a species propagation problem. Take note that global propagation numbers do not vary with the reproduction data. That is to say, global human propagation data and the evidence of reproduction numbers of individuals in many places, may be pointing in different directions. The propagation data are represented by the wave; the reproduction data are represented by the molecules moving against the tide.

In the year 1900 world's human population was approximately 1.2 to 1.6 billion people. With the explosive growth of the global human population over the 20th century in mind (despite two world wars, ubiquitous local conflicts, famine, pestilence, disease, poverty, and other events resulting in great loss of life), what might the world look like in so short a period of time as 43 years from now? How many people will be on the planet at that time? The UN Population has recently made its annual re-determination that the world's human population will reach 9.2 billion people around 2050, and then somehow level off. No explanation is given for how this leveling-off process is to occur.

Whatever the number of human beings on Earth at the end of the 21st century, the size of the human population on Earth could have potentially adverse impacts on the number of the world's surviving species, on the rate of dissipation of Earth's resources, and on the basic characteristics of global ecosystems.

For too long a time human population growth has been comfortably viewed by politicians, economists and demographers as somehow outside the course of nature. The potential causes of global human population growth have seemed to them so complex, obscure, or numerous that a strategy to address the problems posed by the unbridled growth of the human species has been assumed to be unknowable. Their preternatural, insufficiently scientific grasp of human population dynamics has lead to widely varied forecasts of global population growth. Some forecasting data indicate the end to human population growth soon. Other data suggest the rapid and continuous increase of human numbers through Century XXI and beyond.

Recent scientific evidence from Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel appear to indicate that the governing dynamics of absolute global human population numbers are indeed knowable, as a natural phenomenon. According to their research, the population dynamics of human organisms is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other organisms.

To suggest, as many politicians, economists and demographers have been doing, that understanding the dynamics of human population numbers does not matter, that the human population problem is not about numbers, or that human population dynamics have so dizzying an array of variables as not to be suitable for scientific investigation, seems not quite right.

Always,

Steve

by stevenearlsalmony at 6:38 AM on 14 Nov 2007

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