5 thoughts on “A Cross-Post on Free Markets and Climate Change Adaptation”

  1. Interesting piece. This paragraph seemed odd:
    “It is important to note the emphasis on individual liberty and individual choice here. Individuals, not government, will make the best choices for themselves, recognizing the constraints and challenges that climate variability is posing. If a person has more resources and money, then he or she will have more strategies to cope with climate change. Free market growth is a major adaptation strategy. Richer people can migrate to safer areas, live in better quality housing, and afford more self-protection investments such as air conditioning, better foods, and better medical care.”

    I notice a common conservative assumption: people will make better decisions than government. This assumes that A)they will, and B)they can. Yet the following sentence assumes a devastating caveat, largely demolishing the previous assumption: one’s “strategies” are determined by their resources and money. In other words, the richer you are, the more choice you have.

    I’m not sure anyone would disagree with this. In fact, this is as good an argument for more government as exists. Because, following the same logic, people with less resources and money will have fewer strategies to cope with climate change. Heck - let’s just broaden that to environmental pollution generally (a larger philosophical point would broaden it - a basically Marxist point - to include life in general. But I digress). So we see all the environmental degradation that correlates with income - airports, freeways, lead paint, etc. These are things that - rather than ameliorating - are actually *enforced* by free markets.

    Thus, one’s moral worth is tied to their capacity to produce capital. You’re either OK with that or you’re not. But you can’t pretend to care about the poor and see markets as their savior as well. Sure, the tide might rise, but it will always be a slope, one side of which will mean living in the filth of others.

    1. I agree Eli: it seems as if the conclusions these folk draw are always along the lines of: the rich will be fine, and nary a mention of the rest. I guess they won’t matter in a warmer world. Because by then the nerds will have invented robots to do all our labor.

  2. Dr. Kahn’s whole argument consists of channeling Pangloss and Marie Antoinette. Markets create the best of all possible worlds, and if that isn’t true for some people, well, there’s always cake.

    Market economies - and our market-oriented political economy - have so far utterly failed to reckon with climate change at all.

    Markets aren’t equipped to deal with some kinds of problems - the pricing of externalities, for example. If you can’t acknowledge the existence of that problem - or if you hand-wave it away via Pangloss - then you’re going to have a hard time talking sensibly about climate change.

  3. “Markets aren’t equipped to deal with some kinds of problems – the pricing of externalities, for example. If you can’t acknowledge the existence of that problem – or if you hand-wave it away via Pangloss – then you’re going to have a hard time talking sensibly about climate change.”

    I have to admit, I’m glad that Kahn at least acknowledges the existence of that problem, unlike some. As for the Panglossian perspective he then takes — well, I just keep coming back to “motivated reasoning.” He doesn’t like government (beyond the night-watchman), so he has to come up with SOME reason to say “gov can’t do anything helpful here.” With that motivation in hand, he (surprise, surprise) comes up with a “reason”ing that he is comfortable with.

  4. Actually we have a new form of waving away here in New Mexico. In the waning days of the Richardson administration, cap-and-trade rules on carbon emissions were enacted. Governor Martinez is working to repeal those rules. One of the primary arguments for repeal: “No single State can solve the CO2 problem.”

    I’m not quite sure how the conclusion, “Therefore, we should do nothing but to continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere,” follows.

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