Climate justice conundrum

January 31, 2020 by Fred Allebach

First World wealthy consumers are the prime drivers of the climate crisis. Even average Americans are at the top of the list of causing disproportionately negative climate impacts. “Climate justice” is about ensuring that those at lower economic rungs don’t end up paying the costs that should legitimately be borne by those causing all the trouble.

 To mitigate our bona fide climate emergency, a fundamental rearrangement of the economy is called for. The economy needs to be fairer and less polluting. Conspicuous consumption based on dirty energy needs to stop. Problem: the big guys have power, and will cling to the business as usual (BAU) that gives them that power. Everyone is locked into BAU inertia. It is not clear how to start or manage a fundamental economic shake-up without unfairly impacting all the little guys. 

Speaking of power, status quo, and BAU, Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse, Why Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, said, “the wealthy… buy themselves the privilege of dying last.”

In many ways, necessary climate remedies inevitably rely on a dark, implicit assumption: the little guys die first. Since there really is no pragmatic plan or way to refigure the dominant and entrenched capitalist economy, (because no one who has all the power has ever willingly given it up), climate activists’ plan is to put Draconian screws to everyone, in whatever ways possible, in an effort to dial back greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This is like a flat tax, and does exactly what climate justice says not to do, make the little guys pay a disproportionate cost. Example: who can afford an electric car or truck? 

So, what’s the plan? Who’s going to save the world and do it justly? Who has the guts and power to take down Wall Street, and all the Baby Boomers’ unethical retirement investments? How will little guys be protected? Have little guys ever been protected? They are already under water. Well, as times get more difficult, people with advantages become less empathetic, less charitable. Things are not looking good for climate justice and the little guys.   

I get the sense that relatively well-off climate activists are cold-heartedly willing, in an overpopulation dynamics sense, to not forcefully address climate justice issues, and are willing to throw the working class under the bus. This is seen as necessary to save the world. The climate crisis and Anthropocene extinctions are, afterall, shockingly disturbing. Whether or not climate activists actually or explicitly harbor these sentiments, the reality is highly likely that the working classes will get thrown under the bus anyway. 

We’re like deer on an island with no predators. We’ve had a population breakout, and now we are heading for a classic J-curve crash. Asking people who are adapted to and evolved for in-group / out-group fighting, and for individual selfishness, to somehow transcend all that and get to S-curve sustainability, is too rational and reasonable for anyone to actually do. 

The most likely scenario, due to current world political gridlock, is that the dominant classes, both liberal and conservative, will hold on to power, trying to keep on with BAU for as long as possible, and that the little guys will increasingly pay the costs.

As we proceed with local climate planning, one trajectory is to make the tourism industry account for and mitigate its transportation GHG impacts. This, again, is asking those with all the cards to give them up; they won’t do it willingly. And as collateral damage, the working class will increasingly be out of jobs, in an area of extreme rents, costs, and inflation. The effect will be to externalize Sonoma County’s equity issues. Externalizing costs amounts to funny math and is not sustainable. You can’t toss out the equity leg of the sustainability triple bottom line and then claim sustainability.

This is the Bay Area sustainability conundrum: how to deal with climate justice in an already fundamentally unjust and inequitable area dependent on high levels of transportation GHGs?   

My fight-or-flight feeling here is that if the workers are going to get thrown under the bus, if steerage passengers will never get a chance to get on a lifeboat, they should endeavor to take the whole ship down with them. In a prisoner’s dilemma like this, fair is fair. There is no incentive to help those who don’t help you.

A better alternative is for climate activists to take climate justice more seriously, go after the big guys, make them pay, and not advocate for policies that throw the little guys away. This may require less severe prescriptions to BAU, and that we all go down together.