The whole planet contributes to global warming, but the world's poor are facing the consequences.
Despite a massive heat wave in the US Capital, few commentators are making the links with global warming [EPA]
Millions of people across the US East Coast are sweltering in near
record temperatures. In the Washington area, tens of thousands have been
dealing with the heat without air conditioning or power due to a storm
the prior weekend. The remarkable part of this story is that almost no
one is talking about global warming.
Of course, no specific
weather event can be directly tied to global warming, just as any
individual person's heart attack cannot be directly attributed to the
fact that they don't exercise and are 50 pounds (22.6 kgs) overweight. In
both cases it is a question of probabilities. And the fact that
greenhouse gas emissions are raising the planet's temperature
substantially increases the probability that we will get long stretches
of extraordinary heat like the one that hit the Midwest and Northeast
over the last 10 days.
These costs are likely to be considerable. Hundreds of thousands of people had to discard food in their refrigerators and freezers as a result of the power outages. Many gathered their family together and went to stay with friends or spend time in a hotel. There were likely hundreds of thousands of days of lost work.
Putting it all together, we are easily talking about tens of millions and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars of damage caused by just this one weather event. And that doesn't even count the threat to life and health to the sick and elderly people who had to endure intense heat without air conditioning.
The right will be yelling about the $500m that the government is at risk of losing on its loan guarantee to Solyndra (a green energy company) long after we all are dead; yet we have an enormous tragedy in front of our eyes that is attributable to our failure to take serious steps to stem global warming and everyone is too polite to say anything. Does anyone wonder why the right seems to be winning?
There are a couple of other points about this story that are worth
noting. First, some people were much better situated to protect
themselves from this heat wave. It's not clear whether wealthier
neighborhoods were more likely to escape the power outages than poorer
areas. (Many rich people live on tree-lined streets and have above
ground power lines.)
However, there is no doubt that a person
with money in the bank and an extensive line of credit in a credit card
is better able to find a hotel room in which to keep their family cool
for a few days than a person who is living paycheck to paycheck or
perhaps is unemployed due to the downturn.
This is what the impact of
global warming will look like on a world scale.
Those who are
relatively wealthy will likely be able to shield themselves from many of
the worst effects of global warming. They will not be victims of
monsoons and flooding like hundreds of millions of people in Bangladesh
and elsewhere in south Asia. Nor will they be victims of drought who are
unable to produce enough food to survive, like tens of millions of
farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. While no one may be able to escape the
negative effects of global warming completely, the bulk of the suffering
will no doubt be experienced by the world's poor.
This raises a
final point, which should be obvious but somehow is largely ignored in
the public debate. Restrictions on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that
are intended to limit global warming have nothing to do with restricting
the market. These restrictions are about enforcing the rule of law and
preventing some people from harming others with their actions.
In
this way, restrictions on GHG are similar to the laws that prohibit me
from dumping my sewage on my neighbour's lawn. The opponents of these
restrictions don't give a damn about free markets. Opponents of
restrictions on GHG emissions are arguing for the right to dump sewage
on their neighbours' lawn. Their argument is that the United States is a
big powerful country so we can do whatever we want to the rest of the
world and no one can stop us.
That may or may not prove true in
the decades ahead as China surpasses the United States as an economic
power and other countries continue to gain on us. But no one should
mistake the position that we are strong enough to do whatever we want in
the world, without regard to the consequences, for a principled
commitment to a free market. The global warming deniers are committed to
free dumping, not free markets.