Environmentalism as "luxury good"
The relationship between unemployment and environmental concern is treated in a paper by professors Matthew E. Kahn and Matthew J. Kotchen.
We suggest that "environmentalism" isn't a "good" of any sort. It is not a commodity any more than the people who have environmental concern, none at all, or some, are commodities. Nor is the environmental a "good," a commodity, except in the self-regulated, free market ideology of the two economists. They seem to have gotten so carried away with themselves that they fail to note what's most obvious: that high employment is linked to environmental destruction; high unemployment usually means that less environmental destruction is going on.
We are enjoying unusually good air quality this summer in the north San Joaquin Valley. However, we are anticipating the construction and operation of the WalMart distribution center within the next year or two. It will mean many, many trucks in town, which will permanently worsen our air quality, but a lot of jobs for construction and operation of the facility. With unemployment in Merced at Great Depression levels and with foreclosure rates still rising and home prices still falling, it's not much of a choice. But the people making the choice aren't thinking about "environmentalism" as a "good." In fact, people in this Valley generally know that asthma and respiratory disease are equal opportunity illnesses that attack rich and poor, employed and unemployed, and their young children and elderly parents alike.
Sure, WalMart's and their vendors' trucks contribute to global warming. But nobody but the economists conceive of better air quality as a "luxury good." But that's not to say that some will not economically benefit from it. Medical researchers specializing in asthma and respiratory disease have in the Valley a great laboratory to study these illnesses and will no doubt be able to parlay the environmentally impacted population into grants, which will be a "luxury good" for the researchers. And, no doubt, the two multi-disciplinary environmental economists who wrote “Environmental Concern and the Business Cycle: The Chilling Effect of Recession” will be able to get corporate funds to further polish up their theory that humanity and our environment are commodities and produce more "luxury goods" for themselves. It just isn't going to make the theory any truer than it ever was.
Badlands Journal editorial board
3, 2010
New York Times
August Is Environmentalism a Luxury Good?
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/is-environmentalism-a-luxury-good/?emc=eta1
Add environmentalism to the long list of things the Great Recession may have successfully pulverized.
That is one implication of a new working paper titled “Environmental Concern and the Business Cycle: The Chilling Effect of Recession,” by Matthew E. Kahn at U.C.L.A and Matthew J. Kotchen at Yale. Using survey data, it finds that high unemployment rates are associated with less concern for the environment and greater skepticism about global warming.
From the study’s abstract:
[W]e find that an increase in a state’s unemployment rate decreases Google searches for “global warming” and increases searches for “unemployment,” and that the effect differs according to a state’s political ideology. From national surveys, we find that an increase in a state’s unemployment rate is associated with a decrease in the probability that residents think global warming is happening and reduced support for the U.S to target policies intended to mitigate global warming. Finally, in California, we find that an increase in a county’s unemployment rate is associated with a significant decrease in county residents choosing the environment as the most important policy issue.
No wonder the BP spill hasn’t galvanized as much support for a climate bill as many advocates had initially hoped. Perhaps the public reaction would have been different if the accident had occurred when the economy was booming.