Paul Krugman writes that the American response to the coronavirus does not bode well for the future. If Americans can't deal with COVID, how will they deal with climate change?
Awful as the pandemic outlook is, however, what worries me more is what our failed response says about prospects for dealing with a much bigger issue, one that poses an existential threat to civilization: climate change.
As many people have noted, climate change is an inherently difficult problem to tackle — not economically, but politically.
Right-wingers always claim that taking climate seriously would doom the economy, but the truth is that at this point the economics of climate action look remarkably benign. Spectacular progress in renewable energy technology makes it fairly easy to see how the economy can wean itself from fossil fuels. A recent analysis by the International Monetary Fund suggests that a “green infrastructure push” would, if anything, lead to faster economic growth over the next few decades.
But climate action remains very difficult politically given (a) the power of special interests and (b) the indirect link between costs and benefits.
The cost and the benefit of wearing a mask should be a no brainer. But millions of people still don't get it. What do we do when the costs and benefits aren't immediately apparent? The concept of pay now or pay more later seems to have disappeared:
Consider, for example, the problem posed by methane leaks from fracking wells. Better enforcement to limit these leaks would have huge benefits — but the benefits would be widely distributed across time and space. How do you get people in Texas to accept even a small rise in costs now when the payoff includes, say, a reduced probability of destructive storms a decade from now and half the world away?
After all, the consequences of irresponsible behavior during a pandemic are vastly more obvious and immediate than the costs of climate inaction. Gather a bunch of unmasked people indoors — say, in the Trump White House — and you’re likely to see a spike in infections just a few weeks later. This spike will take place in your own neighborhood, quite possibly affecting people you know.
Still, millions of people simply refuse to connect the dots. We face a very dark winter. But we face a much darker future.
Image: grist.org
6 comments:
Has the notion of "common good" lost much of its currency in more affluent societies? The answer to that will probably be seen, and felt, starkly in the near future, the coming decade or two. Our governments, with their neglect of worsening inequality, gradually undermine social cohesion as we drift into camps. Look at the mess this has wrought in the United States.
Yes, the pandemic has been a miners' canary that should alert us to looming menace in this era of emergency. A worrying sign that is being overlooked or worse can be seen in our failure to mobilize public opinion to meet the many challenges heading our way.
In America, poverty is taken as a sign of some moral failure. The poor are seen as the authors of their own misfortune in a nation that still imagines itself God's own "land of opportunity." That the US has lower social and economic mobility than Europe is not understood and I doubt many Americans would accept that reality. When the lower orders, Trump's "base" for example, feel the boot on their necks, they eagerly accept scapegoats to target their anger. I have yet to see any of the Gullibillies grasp that their leader and his Republican caucus just prior to the 2018 mid-terms gave a two trillion dollar tax break to the richest of the rich, including millions in relief for Trump companies. None of them seem to realize that, in 2021, working class Americans will see tax increases buried in the 2018 giveaway.
I'm convinced that, in most advanced countries, blue and white collar working classes have been conditioned, groomed, to embrace division. A breakdown in social cohesion doesn't help the country. It doesn't help the working classes. It does, however, do wonders for plutocracy. Set the plebs at each others' throats and the rich and powerful benefit enormously.
The four+ decades of neoliberalism witnessed the most massive transfer of unearned wealth in history out of the working classes and into the pockets of the oligarchs, major and minor.
We've been warned that future emergencies, similar in impact to the Covid pandemic, may arrive in a cascade. What then? We've already seen how vulnerable our health care systems, the best in human history, can be overwhelmed. We've seen how our vaunted super-economies can wither in the face of a wee virus. We have had a brutal look at the limits of our resilience. So what then is our response? What do our leaders plan for the future. Nothing more than returning to business as usual. A little greenwashing here and there, to be sure, but nothing to rock the boat. Biden may sincerely want to tackle climate change but he has a far greater hurdle to clear - congressional intransigence.
Intransigence has been codified, Mound. It's now illegal to rock the boat.
There are two kinds of climate change deniers. The most familiar are the ones that populate the GOP and our own Con party - the ones that straight up deny there's a problem. The less familiar ones populate the Dem and Lib parties - the ones that say "we get it," but do little or nothing to prove it. Biden and Trudeau both fall into this category. They understand that the house is on fire, but getting off the couch is too much effort.
This Dem/Lib group of deniers is actually worse because people assume they'll do something but they won't. Nobody mistakes the GOP/Cons for problem-solvers; the whole point of voting for them is to break things. It's the guys that say they'll fix the problem but do nothing who are dangerous. Their broken promises waste time and reduce the chance of saving ourselves. Covid is showing us in real-time how this works.
Cap
I agree that the are all kinds of climate skeptics, Cap. We'll see who Biden really is. The word today is that he'll embed climate change in all of his policies. We await the future.
We need to reach a position of world survival and other such commonalities rather than the 'I wish to be on the winning side"' attitude of our modern world.
The call to libertarianism runs deep, even amongst so called socialists.
Winning has become the mantra of our times.
Step back folks; you are destroying yourselves and your offspring.
Thus are the consequences of both overpopulation and global warming.
TB
The mania to win is driven by grotesque selfishness, TB. The idea is, "If I can't win, I'll ensure that no one can."
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