James K. Boyce wrote a fascinating opinion piece ("Get ready to make tough choices") about climate change for the Philadelphia Inquirer last week. (Boyce is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network. He also presented a webinar for PennFuture several years ago on the positive economics of a cap-and-dividend approach to climate legislation.)
Professor Boyce is not the first to point out that it's now too late to prevent many of the harmful effects of climate change, so society must start making the difficult decisions now around how to adapt to climate change: Building sea walls to prevent the tragedy of the next Hurricane Sandy or Typhoon Haiyan will be hugely expensive. Cooling centers and emergency services will be needed as well as water projects to help livestock survive the coming, intense droughts.
We certainly can't afford all of these things. So, which of these do we build? Which don't we build? How will we justify our choices to those who won't be protected?
Jim Boyce's research predicts that on our present course, world incomes will fall 25 percent across the board in the next 20 years as a result of climate disruption. Holy cow.
Here's the truly intriguing angle that Boyce then raises:
Who will be hurt more by the loss of so much income, the poorest Bangladeshi farmer or the wealthiest Manhattan real estate baron? The Bangladeshi making a dollar a day will have to get by on 75 cents a day. Hard to fathom. Terribly unjust.
The Manhattan one-percenter making $2,000 a day will have to "scrape by" on $1,500 a day. (Strike up tiny violins playing sad music.)
My indignation aligns entirely with the Bangladeshi's plight. And yet, the math shows that Mr. Got Rocks in NYC will lose 2,000 times more money ($500 versus 25 cents a day). Conventional economic wisdom treats every dollar equally, so the wealthy person's absolute loss is viewed as much more important than the dirt-poor farmer's loss.
Jim Boyce suggests a different calculus, one that is much fairer: let's value every person equally, as the Declaration of Independence suggests. Indeed, Article 1, Chapter 27 of Pennsylvania's Constitution guarantees that "the people have a right to clean air [and] clean water." The people, not the dollars, are what Americans hold dear in their deepest values.
Boyce ends his Inquirer piece as follows: "In the years ahead, climate change will confront the world with hard choices: whether to protect as many dollars as possible, or to protect as many people as we can."
I certainly hope we make the right choice. All lives matter.
Joy Bergey is PennFuture's federal policy director and is based in Philadelphia. She tweets @joybergey.
