> From: Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: boucher, epi and coal
> Max's defense of Boucher was not surprising. EPI has raised serious
> questions about the Clinton approach to global warming, from the
> perspective of the coal miners.
Let's try to be a little more precise here,
at least for a moment. Later on we'll get
a little messy.
Everybody at EPI is not of the same mind in
general, and on environmental issues this goes
double. I'm the resident smokestack baron on
these issues. Please reserve all your green
obloquy for me alone.
Rob Scott of EPI did a short paper on the subject
of cost estimates of anti-global warming
policies. Nowhere did he say that such costs
were sufficiently great to justify a neglect of
such policies. Even so, anybody who wants to
criticize that work ought to read it first.
You have to wander pretty far from the
topic of economics to argue that costs are
irrelevant. In fact, you have to believe that
the costs of any environmental damage are
infinite, as I pointed out in my previous post.
We've done a number of reports (all much
more elaborate than the above-mentioned
piece) which environmentalists find quite
congenial to their views. Three just came
out this past fall. Interested parties should
consult our web site (EPINET.ORG).
> . . .
> Here is a real and serious environmental problem. The corporations will
> make out with their emissions trading and the workers will be left in
If government gives away emissions permits, then clearly
corporations do not benefit as a group, since one firm's
sale is another's purchase. If the government sells them,
corporations are net losers in the aggregate. This does
not mean of course, that the trading scheme would
effectively address pollution, but that's not what you
were talking about either.
> the cold. I recall driving through W. Virginia during the 1960s, seeing
> coal miners on the porch with no alternatives. Their homes had no value
> since no alternative jobs existed. To move would entail a serious
> capital loss.
>
> [Think of Andrew Oswald's interesting note in the Journal of Economic
> Perspectives.]
>
> What would the miners have as an alternative? Yet, as they stand, the
> coal industry can self-rightously argue about their great concern for
> the welfare of their workers. In effect, they become the hostages for
> the anti-greens.
Yes, hostage to the anti-greens, and victims of the greens.
This isn't a simple matter of greens versus coal industry,
with workers hostage to the latter.
Environmentalism in the large is about raising the costs
of consumption that is most susceptible to taxation under
current circumstances. The rich will be able to shelter
their consumption to some extent, and beyond that consume
what they want in any event. They're rich, remember? Reduced
consumption also conduces to employment shrinkage, wage
stagnation, deflation, and right-wing populism, with all the
associated interests of Capital in play.
Associating environmental skepticism with the Right?
Uncovering specious links between Harvey and the
victim of tendentious posts known as Rethinking Marxism?
It is to laugh.
> . . .
Cheers,
MBS
===================================================
Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW
202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200
202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036
http://tap.epn.org/sawicky
Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views
of anyone associated with the Economic Policy
Institute other than this writer.
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