Disaster and Distribution

Given that coal and oil companies aren't run by idiots, it's clear that they're not going to make arguments of the form "we shouldn't act to ward off preventable environmental disaster because that would be bad for our shareholders and executives." Instead, polluting energy firms are going to ride on to the scene as apostles of class warfare, condemning carbon pricing, congestion fees, energy efficiency mandates, and everything else under the sun as an undue burden on the poor.

As readers know, I think that argument is often factual off-base. But at other times it has some real truth to it. If you make energy more expensive to use, this will inconvenience everyone to some extent, but it'll be much less of a problem for more prosperous people. But what this analysis leaves out is that the price of inaction will also fall hardest on people of modest means. If changing weather patterns make food more expensive, then burden falls hardest on the poor. If natural disasters destroy people's homes, then it'll be hardest for the poor to rebuild. If water shortages lead to scarcity and black markets, it's the rich who'll be able to get what they need. This is the general virtue of having a lot of money -- it can be exchanged for tangible items of value. Consequently, the downside impact of any widespread change will be hardest on those who have little of it. But that's not a reason to never change our policies if the status quo is going to lead to even worse outcomes. You're not ultimately doing the poor any good by condemning them to live in a world of climate catastrophe.

Comments

Breaking: World Destroyed -- Lower Classes Hardest Hit

Posted by southpaw | April 14, 2008 11:24 AM

Don't many proposals for gas taxes and so on include rebates for lower-income taxpayers? If that's the case, then it should be made clear that whatever burden they may face will be temporary, even as their behavior is changing.

Posted by Brian | April 14, 2008 11:45 AM

Pirate: "Captain, I know we usually bury the treasure, but this time why don't we use it to buy things? You know, things we like."
Captain shoots Pirate.
Other pirates dig faster.

Posted by aleks | April 14, 2008 11:55 AM

I would hesistate to lump oil and coal companies together. The U.S. has tremendous coal reserves and coal is still fundamentally cheap, and so what I think you will see U.S. coal companies do is argue that if the government implements measures to reduce carbon emissions, they should get subsidies for making coal a "cleaner" technology (I'm not saying that will be worth it, but I think that is what they will argue). Also, I think coal producers will ultimately be fine with things like congestion pricing: there are not a lot of coal-powered cars, and to the extent public transit is operated with electricity, that just expands the market for coal.

Posted by DTM | April 14, 2008 11:56 AM

"If natural disasters destroy people's homes, then it'll be hardest for the poor to rebuild"

You sure about that? A few months ago, I was in Chennai, India, in a poor part of town that was destroyed by the tsunami. Not that you could easily tell. It had been completely rebuilt, and I suspect it had been rebuilt in about a week. The houses were made from corrugated sheet metal lashed to bamboo poles. You could tell that the pieces of corrugated sheet metal had been mixed and matched on the rebuild because of the weathering patterns. Basically, the tsunami had left a pile of debris that was of similar quality to the material that had originally been used to construct the houses. People obviously had different sheets on their houses than they had before, but they basically had the same house. And it was still built from scavenged material. And I cannot imagine that any of those houses took more than a day or two to rebuild. The tsunami may have even provided some extra material.

There poor will mainly be hurt by food shortages, not housing issues. And the really poor, who don't have houses, won't have any housing problem at all. When you have nothing, you really do have nothing to lose.

Posted by fostert | April 14, 2008 11:58 AM

Kickass post.

Posted by dr. zeuss | April 14, 2008 12:05 PM

Awaiting inevitable tiresome comment from Petey about Matt's socioeconomic background.

Posted by Dilan Esper | April 14, 2008 12:14 PM

The regessivity of carbon taxes are pretty easily dealt with via instituting a floor before FICA taxes kick in. Well, easy in the economic sense, that is. When a large element of a political coalition has built around the notion that the primary function of national government is to transfer wealth from young, poorer people, to old, richer people, it becomes politically difficult.

Posted by Will Allen | April 14, 2008 12:27 PM

Matthew, that is what is known as taking the longer view, and that's just silly when making a political argument.

Posted by Bill | April 14, 2008 12:28 PM

The big problem is that people like Matt don't really have any concept how how most people live their lives. Time and time again, matt has opposed egalitarianism. He has opposed college for every American. He champions all manner of extra taxes that will fall overwhelmingly on the poor. He champions free trade agreements that fill the pockets of people like him and cost the jobs of people like me. Matt is mostly right about this, but it's hard to ignore everything else he's said. It really does paint a picture of someone who doesn't want people of his class to ever face competition from the people in the lower classes, and he sure as hell doesn't want to face the kind of competition that the people in the lower classes do.

I don't usually like to agree with Petey, but he's right on this. Matt's background is a big part of why he takes the positions he does. You can't just ignore that any more than you can ignore the fact that white people very often have no clue what we're talking about when it comes to race, and men often have no clue when it comes to women. Class works the same exact way. Sometimes he really does seem like the 'limousine liberal' straw-man brought to life.

Posted by soullite | April 14, 2008 12:29 PM

soullite, how does your rant relate to the post it's under?

Posted by Bill | April 14, 2008 12:39 PM

While I await completion of the roller coaster from town to my house (which ingeniously favors gravity over carbon emissions) I'd like to make another suggestion: pneumatic tubes.

Some people think video conferencing is the future but even with smellovision I would be able to share the delicious French bread I made last night only with the yocals. A vast, underground network of pneumatic tubes criss-crossing the land would change all that.

Posted by Linus | April 14, 2008 12:55 PM

Re Matthew's comment "You're not ultimately doing the poor any good by condemning them to live in a world of climate catastrophe "
-------------
So what? The poor don't provide any campaign donations.

And when they are fucked -- a la Katrina -- you simple disperse them ..er.. excuse me, "evacuate them" --to the four winds.

The Romans showed the way with the Diaspora of the Jews. Noisy fuckers can't organize politically or make demonstrations if they're scattered across the continent.

Poor Matthew -- he doesn't see the "Big Picture" --the "Meta Policy".

Population control.

hee hee

Posted by Don Williams | April 14, 2008 1:04 PM

Matt's background is a big part of why he takes the positions he does. ... Sometimes he really does seem like the 'limousine liberal' straw-man brought to life.

Not that I think this whole line of diatribe is ultimately very worthwhile, but how much do you even know factually about Matt's socioeconomic background? Lots of loose talk about alleged trust funds doesn't add up to much except, well, a straw Matt of your own imagining.

Posted by Ryan | April 14, 2008 1:07 PM

If a Katrina victim and her child cries in West Texas, does anyone hear her?

Our poor citizens don't die from Republican policies -- they simply go to the Great Grayhound Terminal in the sky.

Posted by Don Williams | April 14, 2008 1:09 PM

Linus,

Pneumatic tubes were actually a losing technology (for the most part--they still have limited usages) precisely because they are so energy-intensive over any significant distance.

Unfortunately, that leaves us only with the energy and environmental efficiencies of things like trains and electric or hybrid cars. Fortunately, those efficiencies are potentially quite large.

Posted by DTM | April 14, 2008 1:15 PM

Not that I think this whole line of diatribe is ultimately very worthwhile, but how much do you even know factually about Matt's socioeconomic background?

Well, I've spent zero time investigating Matt's "class background", but didn't he and his sibling(s) grow up on the Upper East/West Side and attend the Dalton School?

What's the current price of a "family size" apartment on the Upper East/West Side? What's the current annual tuition at the Dalton School?

Anyone who bothers tracking down this info will probably confirm Petey's claims.

Also, Matt majored in Philosophy in college. What's the typical "class background" of philosophy majors?

Posted by RKU | April 14, 2008 1:25 PM

While it's important to consider the distributional impacts of environmental policy, too many people seem to ignore the revenue raising capability of things like taxes and (auctioned) permits. Unless the government burns that money, or funds another stupid war with it, that revenue can be used to ease those distributional impacts. Ignoring that side of the equation and focusing on just the tax is misleading or dishonest.

Posted by TheF79 | April 14, 2008 1:25 PM

The problem is that arguments about regressivity or not are secondary to the primary question: should we address global warming via direct regulation or must we cloak it all behind something that assumes that market solutions are inherently better.

A debate that starts from the position 'cap and trade' vs 'carbon tax' concedes too much to the free market theorists who gave us this mess in the first place. I find it a little distressing that many younger progressives have simply been assimilated into the Reaganist Borg and implicitly accepted that every form of command and control is not only Stalinist but inefficient to boot. Well not always and not at all times. The original Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were not set up as some sort of assemblage of market based incentives, instead they took the form of 'Thou shall not, or else'. And they worked, or at least a lot better than the laissez-faire system that made LA air unbreathable and the Cayahoga River flammable. (People who complain about smog today mostly could not comprehend what it was like in the late sixties and early seventies in Southern California. I remember flying in to the LA Basin and just seeing a bowl of brown air and later sailing into port on my Navy ship and running into that same wall of brown and yellow smog starting miles from shore.)

The way to control carbon emissions is to establish limits and then enforce them with real penalties. Of course corporate America will whine, and cry crocodile tears about job losses, that is what they do. They is what they have ALWAYS done in reaction to regulation from seat belts to crash standards to DDT bans to air bags. It is ALWAYS too expensive, it ALWAYS is going to kill jobs, it is NEVER about the incidental fact that it might crimp profits over the short run. That would suggest that executives were more focused on quarterly earnings reporting than the overall national or world interest and God knows THAT is not the case (though personally I think the old Guy is napping on this one).

I admire what Clinton and Clintonism managed to get done in the face of great obstacles but Third Way Triangulation was always at some level surrender of New Deal principles in favor of a new orthodoxy built around Reaganism. Well frankly it is time for us to open a can of FDR Whoopass on corporate America and stop getting the vapors over accusations of 'socialism' and tributes to the 'magic of markets'. Instead we seem to be starting from the premise 'should we incentivize the producers or punish the consumers'. That is simply not the right frame.

The wealthiest countries in Europe got there through embracing Social Democracy as for the most part did this country from 1948 to 1980. Then for a lot of people things just stalled as we started uttering prayers to St. Miltie while kneeling in the direction of Chicago. Well I suggest it is time to throw the money changers out of the Temple. Again. After all WWJD if installed as Economics Czar? I suspect He would resemble the Economics Minister of Sweden more than the Distinguished Holder of Whatever Chair at the U of Chicago GSB.

But! But! That is redistribution!! Gosh it might even rise to the level of 'tax and spend'!!! Yeah. Welcome to my world, the one where middle class outcomes were possible for working class people. Lots of things sucked in the 50's, 60's and 70's there was nothing funny about segregation and red hunts and 'duck and cover' and inner city riots or Vietnam, but all of those were things we were struggling to get beyond and on which on balance we were making progress and much of that stemming from a rejection of the simplistic 'greed is good' thinking of the fictional Gordon Gecko. Somehow from there we have devolved to the point where Pragmatic 'Greatest Good' arguments are tantamount to espousing communism. Well no, it may be time to embrace an older path, in fact maybe we can just retitle it the 'Old Deal'.

Posted by Bruce Webb | April 14, 2008 1:26 PM

"You're not ultimately doing the poor any good by condemning them to live in a world of climate catastrophe."

Right: if you open up ANWR or offshore coastal areas to oil exploration (and create hundreds of thousands of high-paying blue collar jobs in the process) the poor in Appalachia are going to suffer monsoons just like the poor do in Bangladesh.

The problem here isn't Matt's socioeconomic background, but his (typical for pundits) education background focussed on the humanities. A healthy dose of hard science classes might have given him the confidence to be skeptical about hysterical claims of "climate catastrophe" caused by extracting oil, natural gas, or coal.

Posted by Fred | April 14, 2008 1:37 PM

Re RKU's comment "Also, Matt majored in Philosophy in college. What's the typical "class background" of philosophy majors?"
--------------
Hmmm. Actually, that would be a very nice question to ask Socrates if he was still around.

I seem to recall that Plato's mother was a sister of Charmides and niece of Critias --two of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens who set up an oligarchy.
Sounds like a Neocon group.

Although "The Thirty Tyrants" would be a cool name for Matthew's House of Bloggers.

Posted by Don Williams | April 14, 2008 1:44 PM

Here's a short blurb on the Thirty Tyrants. Definitely a Neocon group --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Tyrants

Of course, it's possible that Matthew is a Neocon himself -- an aristocratic agent provocateur sent to burrow into the plebian Progressive movement so that he can betray it at an opportune moment.

Who do you think sabotaged the John Kerry Party of Pheasant Hunting Populists in 2004?

Posted by Don Williams | April 14, 2008 1:57 PM

Re Bruce Webb's comment "I find it a little distressing that many younger progressives have simply been assimilated into the Reaganist Borg and implicitly accepted that every form of command and control is not only Stalinist but inefficient to boot. "
--------------
Which is especially hilarious since much of Reagan's "Economy" was huge defence contracts parceled out politically in a manner indistinguishable from the Soviet Politburo dividing up the spoils.

Sustained by the Great Helmsman signing off on roughly $4 Trillion of debt on our national credit card. A defence budget that was over 7 percent of GDP --at a time when the second and third largest economies (Japan and Germany) were only spending 1 and 3 percent on defense. Even though they were mere miles from the Evil Empire.

Of course, in his previous life Reagan was an unsuccessful B-Grade movie actor who extolled the virtues of the military while hiding out in the propaganda studios of Hollywood during WWII.

Who extolled the virtues of US "Freedom" -- while snitching to the FBI on his fellow citizens like a grubby Commie Commissar.

Who extolled the virtues of "free enterprise" while making his living being the in-house propagandist /whore for General Electric. Any guess on which corporation made out like bandits on Reagan's defence contracts?
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE3DA113DF934A15754C0A966958260

Posted by Don Williams | April 14, 2008 2:17 PM

Bruce Webb, whenever I see a blog comment that long, I just scroll on past it.

Posted by Bill | April 14, 2008 2:21 PM

Re Fred

"A healthy dose of hard science classes might have given him the confidence to be skeptical about hysterical claims of "climate catastrophe" caused by extracting oil, natural gas, or coal."

Since Mr. Fredi is evidently a global climate change denier, would he be so kind as to elucidate us on his background in the hard sciences. Given his inability, in a previous thread to understand the difference between dust caused nuclear winter and greenhouse gas caused global warming, he doesn't appear to have much.

Posted by SLC | April 14, 2008 2:23 PM

"Since Mr. Fredi is evidently a global climate change denier, would he be so kind as to elucidate us on his background in the hard sciences."

First, I'm not a denier of climate change -- the earth's climate had changed plenty over the centuries and millennia and will continue to change. I just don't buy the argument that this change will be necessarily catastrophic, and I think this alarmism is largely politically and ideologically motivated.

Second, feel free to post a link to the threat where you claim I showed an inability to understand the difference between nuclear winter and global warming scenarios.

As for my "background in the hard sciences", I have an undergraduate degree in environmental sciences, the core curriculum of which included courses in general math, physics, chemistry, and biology in addition to courses with specific environmental sciences courses.

Posted by Fred | April 14, 2008 2:39 PM

For those who may be unaware of the global warming denialist prevarications, attached is a link to a web site that responds to their lies.

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

Posted by SLC | April 14, 2008 2:39 PM

The poor not only bear the brunt of the effects of global warming, they also pay 4 $ a gallon here and now because the Bush policies have driven up demand when demand should have been reduced.

Posted by Hans B | April 14, 2008 5:00 PM

I don't get it, Bruce Webb. If we were talking about something highly dangerous in small concentrations like mercury or arsenic, then standards-based regulation seems like it could be the best approach, but in this case we're largely dealing with massive emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like methane, where the gases in question don't do much harm at the local level or harm the health of people who inhale them, but they contribute to a big global-scale problem. This seems like a circumstance in which the more market-based approaches -- achieving the same quantitative reduction at a lower cost, or achieving greater quantitative reduction at the same cost, by getting those with the lowest marginal costs of abatement to abate first -- are more appropriate. If there's something I'm missing, tell me, but I don't really understand your specific argument as to why standards-based regulation would be more appropriate in this particular context.

Posted by Julian Elson | April 14, 2008 5:28 PM

Re: they also pay 4 $ a gallon here and now because the Bush policies have driven up demand when demand should have been reduced.

Huh? That's illogical: $4/gal gas is not driving up demand, it's suppressing it. You can however blame Bush for crimping supply due to the Iraq misadventure.

Posted by JonF | April 14, 2008 6:02 PM

Bruce, if you post a comment that long, you best care to elaborate. I hate Reagan as much as the next guy, but I don't understand how market based incentives that establish real caps are less effective than the proposed alternative. I would appreciate it if you would explain a little further how your proposal would work.

Posted by I just want to learn | April 14, 2008 6:19 PM

Re Fred

"First, I'm not a denier of climate change -- the earth's climate had changed plenty over the centuries and millennia and will continue to change. I just don't buy the argument that this change will be necessarily catastrophic, and I think this alarmism is largely politically and ideologically motivated."

But of course the deniers are not politically and ideologically motivated. Anybody who thinks that the shills for Exxon are not politically and ideologically motivated is either ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked (but I don't want to consider that). The hard fact is that the overwhelming preponderance of scientific conclusions relative to global climate change is that it is happening and it ain't good. So those of us on the sidelines have the choice of listening to the preponderance of expert opinion or listening to the Fred Singers of the world. Since Fred Singer has a rather checkered record of denialism (he has denied the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer and the connection between CFCs and ozone depletion in the past), I prefer to listen to scientists with less checkered records.

Posted by SLC | April 14, 2008 6:30 PM

"Pneumatic tubes were actually a losing technology (for the most part--they still have limited usages) precisely because they are so energy-intensive over any significant distance."

What about roller coasters?

Posted by Linus | April 14, 2008 7:04 PM

The Romans showed the way with the Diaspora of the Jews. Noisy fuckers can't organize politically or make demonstrations if they're scattered across the continent.

To be petty, the Assyrians did this first - that's where the other ten tribes were lost.

Posted by Senescent | April 14, 2008 7:36 PM

JonF, I didn't say $4 gas was driving up demand, but that higher demand led to higher prices. That's not illogical, it's basic economics. If the US in 2000 had engaged in energy economy, and even more so if it had taken leadership on the issue to bring demand down globally, oil would still be at 30 $ a barrel. Consumers are paying doubly for over-consumption of energy, first because of the quantity consumed much of which is wasted, and second because their increased demand drives prices higher. And oil producers are earning doubly for the same reasons.

So when people say that poor people will be hit if something is done to combat global warming, my reaction is to say huh? They're not being hit now? If their cars are more efficient and gas prices are lower, they will on the contrary have more money in their pockets.

Posted by Hans B | April 14, 2008 8:17 PM