When a single study targets both climate change AND income inequality, how could the leftists at MSNBC not pounce? That’s what happened Friday afternoon, as MSNBC’s Chris Jansing Reports hosted the author of a new study that claimed the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans were “super emitters” to blame for much of the world-destroying climate change the network spends much of its day fretting about.
But the study didn’t actually look at the habits of the ultra-rich, to see if their vehicles or their private jets spewed the most carbon into the atmosphere. Instead, it determined that, because the rich own such a large segment of the U.S. economy, their investments were responsible for those emissions.
Thus, as author Jared Starr told Jansing, his study suggests targeting the rich with any new taxes to fund government efforts to fix the climate:
I think we need the right economic incentives in place so that creating carbon pollution just isn’t profitable. As long as it’s profitable, it’s going to happen. And that’s as the story that you had just before about the extreme weather events, those are going to keep happening because we keep producing these greenhouse gas emissions, and as long as it’s profitable to do so, I assume that people will keep doing it. I think we need to change the economics of that.
His study makes the same point explicitly: Because heavy taxes on carbon products have been politically unpopular because they hurt everyday consumers, the results provide an excuse for taxes that are targeted at just the top incomes: “While consumer-facing carbon taxes have struggled to move from proposal to law in the U.S. an investment-based carbon tax may be more equitable, politically palatable, and equally justifiable.”
In a Thursday Washington Post piece about the same study, an economist also laid bare the next step in the climate activist agenda:
French economist Lucas Chancel, who has studied global carbon emission inequalities but was not involved in the study, said the next step is to seriously talk about stopping investments in the fossil fuel sector, unless those industries radically transform themselves.
“All Americans contribute to climate change, but clearly not in the same way,” said Chancel. “Without policies such as regulations or taxes on very polluting investments, it’s unlikely that wealthy individuals making a lot of money from fossil fuel investments will stop investing in them.”
MSNBC’s Jansing was certainly pleased with what she heard. “This is such an important and revelatory study,” she told Starr at the end.
Of course, she never challenged the harm that might result if industries or economic sectors were targeted solely based on their carbon emissions, without contemplating the social benefits those companies provide to our health, safety, standard of living, etc.
Here’s a video excerpt of the segment, which aired at about 1:40pm ET on Friday, August 18, followed by the full transcript (click expand). And, if you're wondering, this foreshadowing of future liberal attempts to take more of your tax dollars was sponsored by Liberty Mutual.
CHRIS JANSING: There is strong scientific evidence that these intensifying hurricanes are the result of climate change. As one writer put it, ‘warm air is hurricane food.’ And a new study shows the warming planet is doing something else too, exacerbating the stark divide between those who benefit most from fossil fuels and those who are most burdened by its effects. It concludes that the richest 10% of U.S. households account for 40% of U.S. climate emissions. The lead author of that study, Jared Starr from the University of Massachusetts Amherst joins me now. Thanks so much for being here. I know we’re all familiar with income inequality, but tell me how does that tie into carbon inequality?
JARED STARR: Hi, Chris, thanks for having me on. We’re really pleased to share our work today. So we looked at the emissions associated with income. So, we, typically I think, a lot of people often think about carbon emissions associated with things that you buy, and so sort of consumption-based lens. With this study we wanted to understand how the generation of income produces emissions, and so we looked at all sorts of sources of income, looked at people’s wages. We looked at investment income, and we got a pretty startling result in the end about how unequal this distribution of emissions is when you look at how it’s connected to the production of income in American society.
JANSING: Let me talk about one aspect of it. The folks you call ‘super emitters’ who are those with extremely high overall greenhouse gas emissions corresponding to the very richest, about 1/10 of 1% of households. How and maybe if you know the answer to this, why?
STARR: Well, it comes down to largely the fact of just how unequal the income distribution is. And so here we’re looking at the emissions associated with the production of income and so that 0.1%, that top 0.1% of the income distribution just captures so much income and wealth that the amount of emissions that are required to produce that income is quite staggering. And so we often think about — I said earlier the sort of consumption-based lens, and we think about companies produce things for consumers, and so the consumer’s responsible for the emissions used to produce that.
But if you think about why companies actually exist, they exist to create value for shareholders, and so the way that they create that value is by producing these goods and services. And to do that they produce emissions, and so ultimately these emissions are really being generated to create this value for shareholders and when you look at that top 0.1% of the income distribution, they’re getting a lot of income from wage, but they’re actually getting the majority of it from ownership of assets, things like stocks and bonds.
JANSING: You have a website where you aim to connect the general public to scientific information, and it’s arguable that — this summer specifically — the extreme weather that millions have endured might be communication enough to push for change. We know, for example, when you’re talking about this income inequality that the richer you are, also, right, the more powerful, the better connected, that may be part of this equation. But for the average American, Jared, what are they not doing that you think they could do to spark action on climate change? Because I know you must get this question all the time.
STARR: Yeah, sure. So I don’t want to come here and say that as consumers we bear zero responsibility. I’m not going to absolve us from any responsibility in the role that we play as consumers. But as consumers, we often have limited choice about the sort of decisions that we can make, we’re constrained by things like time, the amount of money we have, the sort of products that are available to us. And so we’re quite limited in that sense. If you are in a position where you can make lower carbon choices, that’s great, and you should do that, and so that’s something that all of us can do.
But with this study we wanted to look at that income piece, so one way that we exist in the world is through the things that we buy. Another way that we exist in the world is through the companies that we earn wages from and sort of investment decisions that we make. So if you’re, let’s say, sort of haven’t paid attention to your 401(k) Account and you’re passively invest in an index, you might want to decide to switch some of that into a more sustainable fund that isn’t so — that isn’t reaping profits from fossil fuel intensive activities. You can make better consumption choices. You can also make choices related to certain investments that you make in life, but again, because of this staggering, this absolutely staggering difference in the footprint of the really top income Americans.
I think there’s a lot of responsibility there in terms of putting pressure in the right place to provide incentives for those people, those investors, the people on the boards of companies, the people that are executives of companies, I think we need the right economic incentives in place so that creating carbon pollution just isn’t profitable. As long as it’s profitable, it’s going to happen. And that’s as the story that you had just before about the extreme weather events, those are going to keep happening because we keep producing these greenhouse gas emissions, and as long as it’s profitable to do so, I assume that people will keep doing it. I think we need to change the economics of that.
JANSING: This is such an important and revelatory study, Jared Starr, thank you so much for coming on the program to talk about it. Appreciate it.
