By J.Andrew Hoerner
Climate change plays favorites. Not by malice or calculation, but without question. This is the lesson of hurricane Katrina. Global warming makes the entire climate system more energetic. As the planet heats up, you see more extreme events of every kind—rainstorms, droughts, hurricanes and tornados, forest fires, and heat waves of deadly intensity. Warming is forecast to cause massive species loss and the death of traditional lifestyles that are closely allied with nature, from the Arctic tundra to the tropics. The 10 hottest years in history have all occurred in the last decade and a half. Global warming and the greenhouse gases that cause it are already outside the bounds of the last 600,000 years of earth history, and the further we move into uncharted territory, the more likely we are to see sudden, drastic, and unpredictable changes in the basic climate pattern of the world.And who pays the greatest price for this climatic destruction? Blacks, Latinos, low-income households, and indigenous peoples. They are communities who cannot afford air conditioning to combat heat waves or property insurance to cover against hurricane and tornado damage; people who spend the most on basic necessities and who have no access to health care when tropical diseases become more widespread. While it’s true that “working people everywhere” are increasingly being affected by the same problems, the reality is that specific communities are still the first and the hardest to be hit.
Yes, but it will not be easy.
Global warming is an unavoidable by-product of burning all fossil
fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas; and unlike past pollutants, these
cannot be filtered out, except at tremendous cost. To halt global
warming, we would have to stop using fossil fuels completely for the
next 40 years. This will require a complete redesign of our entire
energy system and the replacement of fossil fuels with plant biomass
and power from the sun, wind, and tides.
With sufficient effort, we should be able to halt further warming and
begin a return to the pre-warming state within the lifetime of those
now being born. Global warming will continue to worsen under any
realistic policy scenario during our lifetimes. The climate system is
huge, and has immense inertia. It took more than a century for a
serious warming trend to start and it will take at least another
century for it to stop. Famines and other disasters caused by climate
change can only be ameliorated with the help of strong international
organizations, backed by genuinely committed industrial nations.
When Race Matters in Global Warming
Research shows that Blacks in the U.S., while at greater risk from the
problems of global warming, are less responsible for it than Whites.
The emission of greenhouse gases from the consumption of all goods is
20 percent lower for Blacks than for non-Hispanic white households,
primarily because lower average income causes lower average purchases
of energy.
At the same time, Blacks at all income levels
appear to spend a greater proportion of their total household budget on
energy. This is especially true for households at the bottom 10 percent
of the income scale, which spend 60 percent more of their budget on
energy. Some evidence suggests that higher home energy use—mainly for
heating—is a consequence of poor quality housing.
Latinos also spend a higher proportion of
their budget on energy than non-Hispanic whites at all levels,
especially at the lower end of the scale. However, home energy use for
Latino households is more similar to that of whites, while motor fuel
expenditure is considerably higher.
All Justice is Climate Justice
We believe that all struggles for economic justice—the right to a
decent education and affordable healthcare for all, the right to a
living wage or better unemployment and Social Security benefits, the
fight to build stronger unions and worker rights organizations—are also
struggles to reduce the harmful effects of global warming. We are
convinced that global warming will multiply the effects of existing
injustices and the only way to avoid disaster for our communities and
our nation, is through policies that reflect solidarity among all
working people.
Extensive economic modeling within the U.S.
has shown that policies that hurt the economy hurt the vulnerable
communities first and most, while policies that help the economy also
help these very communities most. This is best illustrated by trends in
unemployment: Blacks closely track whites, but at about twice the
amplitude, and are helped more when unemployment goes down.
What is the difference between policies that weaken the economy and those that strengthen it? Just a few key decisions.
“Polluters Pay” vs. Corporate Welfare
Ultimately, we are going to pay more for gasoline and other
fossil-based fuels. Fossil energy, especially oil and gas, will be more
expensive, because it is running out. And it should be more expensive,
because of its harmful effects. But we do have an important choice: we
can pay that higher price to ourselves, in the form of pollution costs
that finance programs to save energy, manage the transition to new
clean sources of power, and provide assistance to households and
companies that are most affected. Or we can pay the same money to OPEC
and the big energy companies.
There are basically three ways to limit
greenhouse gas emissions using market incentives. Under the first two
systems, fossil fuel producers are required to have a permit for each
ton of carbon dioxide released into the air by their fuels. The
existing system issues free permits based on how much a company has
polluted in the past. Under this system, consumers pay higher fuel
prices to the companies that pollute the most. The alternative to this
system is to auction the permits to the polluters, so the higher fuel
prices will actually have the effect of going to the government for
public use. A third system is to have pollution fees or taxes, which
would have nearly the same economic effect as auctioned permits.
Some environmental justice advocates believe
that the real problem lies with permit trading—a view that’s confirmed
by our study. Trading systems, such as RECLAIM in Los Angeles, and the
offset market under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism,
have been severely corrupted and abused.
Trading permits per se does not appear to
affect the economic outcome as much as the system of giving away
permits to historic polluters. If the polluter is made to pay for the
permit at an auction or through taxes and fees, and the funds are used
wisely, the entire economy can benefit.
Energy Efficiency: The Other 20 Percent Solution
When it comes to environmentally sound economics, offsetting the energy
burden goes hand-in-hand with promoting energy efficiency. Although
poorer households spend a higher percentage of their income on energy,
they still spend less in absolute terms. So, it is possible to fully
offset the average energy burden on the bottom 40 percent of all
households (through programs like the earned income tax credit) with
only 20 percent of the revenues from a permit fee or tax on global
warming pollution.
In addition, it is possible to fully offset
the burden of a global warming pollution charge on all households by
investing a small portion of the revenue on energy efficiency measures,
which would have people spending less on energy, even when prices go
up. A review of the literature suggests that on average, one can offset
all of the additional energy costs by investing only 20 percent of the
revenues in energy efficiency.
In effect, then, the average burden on
low-income households is offset twice—through direct credits and
through energy efficiency. The net result is a strengthening of local
economies through the transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars to
communities that have been historically affected by environmentally
irresponsible policy, with 60 percent of the revenues still left over
for other public spending.
When Emissions Follow Trade, Equity Happens
In putting a climate policy in place, there is always the risk of
driving energy-intensive production out of state. And since global
warming pollution has the same effect, regardless of where it is
generated, a state or nation with a policy can hurt its own economy
without getting any environmental benefit. Environmentalists call this
problem “leakage.”
One solution would be to treat the emissions as if they were following
the goods. Importers would be required to pay a pollution fee or buy
emissions permits, just as if the goods were produced in state, and
exporters would get a rebate for permit costs or emission charges
associated with the exports.
This policy, sometimes called border
adjustment, is a feature of consumption taxes, like the excise and
sales taxes, and is allowed under the GATT/WTO rules. It completely
eliminates the incentive to move production out of state, thus saving
local jobs, preserving competitiveness, and from an environmental point
of view, ending “leakage.”
Next Steps: What’s to be Done?
We can safely say that low-income, non-white communities, while not
primarily responsible for the pollutants that cause climate change,
certainly bear the brunt of its effects. Some of the costs to these
communities can be offset by revenues from pollution permit charges and
pollution tariffs on imports, and investment in energy-efficient and
clean energy technologies. However, to put in place some of these
policies for climate justice, we would first have to spell out a
comprehensive political program. The following list of obvious next
steps is a start in that direction:
Endnotes
This article is based on three detailed analyses done by Redefining Progress, one of which is an unreleased study on climate impacts on Latinos.
You
can read the other studies online: African Americans And Climate
Change: An Unequal Burden, a report prepared for the Congressional
Black Caucus Foundation
http://www.rprogress.org/newpubs/2004/CBCF_REPORT_F.pdf;
Climate Change In California: Health, Economic and Equity Impacts, a report prepared for the California Air Resources Board. http://www.rprogress.org/newpubs/2006/CARB_Full_0306.pdf
Andrew Hoerner is director of research for Redefining Progress (www.rprogress.org).
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Getting Ready for Change: Green Economics and Climate Justice | Vol. 13 No. 1 | Summer 2006 | Credits