The July 18 issue of the New York Times featured two front page articles about the already devastating impacts of climate change. One was written by Somini Sengupta about the deadly heat and flood events of the summer and the other by Christopher Flavelle, Patricia Mazzei and Giulia Heyward about the insurance crisis in coastal states.
Together, these stories reinforce the inescapable truth that our fates are intertwined and we need to act together now for the future of humanity and our evolutionary legacy. The climate crisis and its financial consequences are in part a result of the fundamental restructuring of the perspective on government responsibility and the economy in the 1980s.
We speak here not as economists, but as individuals who have lived through the shift from an expectation of corporate responsibility to itself and its employees, to an era where corporate responsibility is primarily to the generation of profit for its investors and board. The days of investing in the promise of a company’s ingenuity shifted to investment in algorithms that lead to profit by any means.
Employees have been encouraged to participate in this game rather than depending on a company pension or, heaven forbid, social security to fund their retirement years. Government has been portrayed as inept, inefficient and burdensome. The acceptance of the mirage that unfettered capitalism would let the market drive investment and innovation to achieve the ultimate good meant that the public largely believed that deregulation of utilities, and growing influence of global companies like pharmaceuticals, fossil fuel, real estate and media companies served the public good.
Much of the middle and upper classes now have retirement portfolios that are built on investments in unscrupulous corporations.
Enter climate change. Although the problem was widely recognized in the scientific community by the 1970’s, similarly to corporate battles over seat belts, tobacco, lead in gasoline, and more, the fossil fuel companies engaged in the well-documented playbook of intentional denial and the undermining of information which they knew to be true.
Now, as the results of climate change are straining the entire financial system, each of us whose retirement portfolios (401Ks and pensions) are invested in financial markets faces the consequences of the delayed action that fossil fuel lobbyists demanded. Insurance companies cannot afford to insure real estate in coastal areas, in fire-prone areas, in drought-prone areas, in flood-prone areas (all of which will increase in extent in the future). Re-insurers who insure the insurers are backing away. Banks who hold mortgages for uninsurable and uninhabitable properties will be under strain.
Who will manage this catastrophic financial disaster? Most likely the much-maligned government entities that have been characterized as inefficient, and starved of resources via tax evasion for years. And we the taxpayers will be forced to pay for the results of political inaction due to “Big Oil’s” obfuscation and misinformation campaigns about the causes of climate change.
And for those of us concerned about inequities built into our economic system, we know that communities of color will bear the brunt of the crisis. Who lives in low-lying flood prone areas? Where is the toxic fossil fuel infrastructure that poisons the air and water? The racial disparities in wealth and access to housing mean that climate and energy burdens fall heavily on the poor, the Indigenous and people of color. And these are the people least able to recover from financial burdens due to disasters, rising insurance rates and declining real estate values.
The environment justice issues of the destruction of earth’s systems that support us (fisheries, pollinators, forests, glaciers…) are not even considered in our economic system.
It’s time for all of us to take responsibility for the social good; to stop worrying about our own bottom line and think about creating a future that sustains life. That means taking actions such as divesting from fossil fuel investments in our portfolios, investing in alternative technologies, demanding an end to fossil fuel infrastructure investment including pipelines, LNG terminals, peaker plants; and implementation of a carbon tax (without options for laughably bloated offset claims). We also need to force fossil fuel companies to pay for damage they have caused and from which they have profited.
This will require political action such as pressuring lawmakers to do the right thing, as well as electing legislators and officials who will take necessary climate mitigation actions. These include taking a hard line with fossil fuel companies and investor-owned utilities. We urge South Hadley to oppose the Peabody Peaker plant. We urge Northampton, Amherst and Easthampton to push for electrification of the grid, a carbon tax, district heating where feasible, and adoption of net-zero building codes at the state level.
There is a long list and we need to have all hands on deck. Find out more at mothersoutfront.org/events/ Let’s do this for all of our sakes.
Denise Lello is a member of Mothers Out Front, Northampton chapter. She co-authored this column with members Tina Cornell, Rei Matsushita, Vernon Fath and Sarah Partan.