What About the Social Aspect of Climater Change?


Recently, I happened to come across a reference to book titled, Where The the Air Stands Still.  I came across it while reading an article in The Nation  written with a focus on climate change and India.  That article is worth a read.  I say that even though it's substance was way out of for me considering that the "the climate change movement" looks a lot like the environmental and anti-war movements of past decades - mostly white and relatively affluent.  It's striking to me that in the United States social justice groups have joined forces with environmental groups on this set of issues.  That's striking because it's likely the case that those lower down the economic strata will be the last to reap any of the fruits of cultural and social changes required to get a handle on the problem of climate change.

Here are several examples.

1.The Citizens Utility Board (CUB), a legislatively mandated group advocating for residential consumers of utilities (in my view, primarily the low-income community) joined forces with environmental and renewable advocacy groups to push forward legislation that unfortunately will not achieve much CO2 reduction from electricity generation.  Nonetheless, CUB and a spectrum of environmental and renewable advocacy groups did join forces.

2. Washington State had a carbon tax ballot measure on this past November's election ballot.  While it went down to defeat by a 60/40 margin, here again, environmental groups, including the Sierra Club opposed it.  They joined forces with social justice groups to oppose it because it was designed to be revenue neutral, as is the one in British Columbia, the only carbon tax in existence in North America.

While there's an argument that those lower down on the economic food chain bear a disproportionalte share of the consequences of pollution, is that actually the case with CO2?  What seems likely to be the case is that those same folks will likely bear a disproportionalte share of the costs assocaited with combating climate change.

image courtesy of Andrew Grossman

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