If This Is Economic Success...

The refrain heard most often from paleoconservatives with regards to taking serious steps to curb our dependence on fossil fuels and to reduce greenhouse emeissions is, that such measures will "threaten our economic well-being." Even today among so-called liberals the fear of change in carbon-burning behaviors will be blamed for the next economic downturn run rampant among Democrats who are jittery about even their meek efforts thus far.

Congress is debating a carbon cap-and-trade plan. But even as they do, knock-kneed Democrats such as Lieberman and Warner are conspiring to cripple the legislation by offering "emergency offramps to protect the economy if costs for cutting carbon dioxide rise too high."

Any legislation designed to prevent any disruptive effects on existing business practices (by usefully penalizing those slowest to change) can by definition have no serious effect on reducing carbon emissions.

And lets talk about this economy we are taking such great pains to preserve in its current, pristine state. An economy where the middle-class dream is quickly slipping away for the great majority of Americans. As this Chicago Tribune story makes clear, those who have good jobs must keep them at all costs because they are the last ones. Our country, which no longer actually manufactures much of anything is rapidly becoming one of rich and poor with those left in the middle desperately trying to avoid the drop.

As Brad DeLong pointed out in a useful video post a few months ago the gap between the richest and the poorest in this country is now as high as it was in the Gilded Age of the 1890's and of the Roaring Twenties just before the Great Depression.



In the graph below, supplied by DeLong, the triangular and black trend line shows the top 1% income bracket. As usual, click on the image for a larger view.

In the meantime, here in Iowa the largest economic development announcements in the last year are: a Google data center in Council Bluffs (new economy) and a number of wind-power related initiatives.

It is an inexorable law of both nature and of economics that when an economic or environmental niche opens up, there will be a surge of new entrants to exploit it. Only the fecklessness of our leaders -- and the fear their petro-economy contributors inspire in them -- hold us back from an economic renewal based upon the manufacturing and adoption of sustainable technologies in our society.