No. of Recommendations: 4
There are 2 kinds of consequences.
The haves suffer a financial impact. We must pay more for things that are, let's face it, unattainable luxuries for the have-nots. Many of us will have to do without those niceties/luxuries.
How will we exist without our Keurig coffee pods, DeLonghi espresso machines and dual-fuel pizza oven? What will life be like if mid-winter fruit imported from South America to North America triples in price?
How will wealthy Chicagoans survive without fresh Hawaiian papaya?You can't fight climate change with policies that only affect niceties/luxuries. That's the core problem.
Sure, there
are low-hanging fruit. You can make people give up incandescent bulbs in favor of LED's, and (correctly IMHO) dismiss folks' annoyance at giving up the "richness" or "warmth" of the old bulbs as a First World Problem. But those things are greenwashing policies - utterly irrelevant to solving the problem.
To
actually effect change, you need policies that really bite. Things that drive up the cost of core necessities (electricity, heating, transport). Things that meaningfully effect public allocation of funds (money goes to transit instead of highways, making it harder to live outside of dense urban areas). Really damaging certain industries and sectors. Or, as described in a recent Politico.eu profile of the architect of Europe's green policy:
THE ARCHITECT OF EUROPE’S GREEN REVOLUTION knew he was unleashing dislocation and suffering across the Continent. He knew that, because half a century ago his family and practically everybody they knew had their lives turned upside down by the same kind of industrial upheaval he himself has now loosed across the European Union.
As the European commissioner in charge of the wrenching transformation the bloc must undergo to meet its climate ambitions, Frans Timmermans has spoken often about the fate of the former Dutch coal town where he spent part of his early life. In his telling, Heerlen is a cautionary tale, a warning of the dangers for communities when not enough is done to cushion them from change.https://www.politico.eu/article/does-the-architect...Greens do themselves no favors by pretending that actually,
meaningfully fighting climate change involves nothing more than denying luxuries and niceties to rich people, rather than also involving "dislocation and suffering" for poor people.
