Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Greenberg, who owns and operates the Bear Bookshop in Marlboro and has been an energy activist for roughly 35 years.
Jeff Dardozzi’s commentary “Carbon dioxide — the effluent of wealth” claims that “mainstream media and the dominant institutions of our society” wrongly suggest that “we all share equally in the responsibility for the climate crisis, and therefore we must all equally share in the burden of mitigating it.”
His rebuttal suggests that the richest people in the world produce far more carbon than the poorest, but he simply ignores two facts: namely, that Americans are (among) the richest people in the world and that mainstream media are addressed at American audiences. Median global per capita income, according to Gallup data, is $9,733 while in the U.S., it’s $15,480, higher than every other country but the Scandinavian countries and Luxemburg.
Dardozzi is right: We don’t all share equally in the burden of mitigating climate change, because billions of Africans, Asians and Latin Americans do extremely little to add to it. They simply don’t have the resources either individually or collectively. But we do. It follows that the inhabitants of the richest countries – including ours – and of rapidly developing poorer countries must lead the way by doing more than just an equal share, because they produce more than their “fair” share of the problem.
Dardozzi’s distinction between wealth production and consumption adds no useful insight: ultimately, wealth is produced in order to be consumed.
For over a century, industrial societies decreased poverty and grew their middle classes by increasing energy consumption in a more or less one-to one ratio. But now the world must reverse that trend, because it is destroying our climate. Rich countries need to find ways to maintain living standards while using less energy, and poorer countries must find ways to end poverty without repeating historical mistakes.
I absolutely agree that unequal wealth and income distribution are major problems that we must also confront as a nation and as a state. In seeking environmental solutions, it makes perfect sense to demand that those with an unequal share of the wealth and income bear an unequally greater share of the burden of combating climate change.
Fortunately, there is no dearth of ways that we can cut emissions while improving the lives of those among us with the scantest resources. For example, buildings are a major source of carbon emissions. Weatherizing and insulating don’t just improve energy efficiency, they make buildings more comfortable to live in. For those who can’t afford to improve their buildings, we should draw on the wealth of those who can. Remember: we all share this planet.
Just as we can’t fight a pandemic by vaccinating only the wealthy and expect the virus to respect our social distinctions, so too we can’t fight a global environmental threat by retreating to our own little corners and pretending that the rest of the planet is on its own. We all need to do our share, however and wherever we can.
