By Charles Lane, Published The Straits Times, 13 Dec 2018
This year, California recorded its deadliest wildfire in state history. The combined intensity and duration of the Atlantic and eastern Pacific oceans' tropical storms and hurricanes reached a new recorded high. Worldwide carbon dioxide emissions are projected to break another record this year.
It's time to take a clear-eyed look at the science behind these developments - the political science. The data shows that, for all the evidence that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous, and despite wide public acceptance of those propositions, people in the United States do not necessarily want to stop climate change, in the sense of being willing to pay the cost - which is the only sense that really matters.
"The public's level of concern about climate change has not risen meaningfully over the past two decades and addressing the problem with government action ranks among one of the lowest priorities for Americans," according to a comprehensive review of public opinion literature published last year by associate professors Patrick Egan of New York University and Megan Mullin of Duke University.
In a series of open-ended Gallup surveys this year asking Americans to name the "most important problem facing the country", environmental issues never scored above 3 per cent.
Even before the recent riots against French President Emmanuel Macron's climate change-related fuel tax hike in France, there was a quieter backlash of sorts in the US: Anti-fossil fuel referendums lost in Colorado, Washington and Arizona during last month's election.
Undoubtedly, there have been well-funded efforts to sow climate change scepticism in recent decades, as Prof Egan and Prof Mullin note.
US President Donald Trump is now amplifying that message. This could not have helped the climate change movement, even if scholars have yet to identify a "causal link" between such campaigns and individual attitudes, according to Prof Egan and Prof Mullin.
Of course, the climate change movement was not exactly silent during recent history.
What's crucial, after accounting for the battle between the movement and its opponents, is the inherent nature of climate change as a political issue: It requires voters to accept "upfront costs that, if successful, will stave off never-to-be experienced long-term damage - policy for which election-oriented politicians can easily foresee receiving blame instead of credit", Prof Egan and Prof Mullin note.
Slashing carbon emissions is a cause that "has no core constituency with a concentrated interest in policy change", while "a majority of people benefit from arrangements that cause" climate change.
The US, with its multiple veto points for various regional and economic interests, tends to postpone dealing with long-range crises even more than most democracies, as its failure to shore up the solvency of federal entitlement programmes shows.
Climate change and environmentalism more broadly have gotten caught up in the partisan polarisation corroding US politics, with support for "green" policy increasingly a badge of Democratic Party loyalty, and opposition to it defining what it means to be Republican.
A Pew Research Centre study this year found that the public ranked climate change 18th out of 19 possible top priorities for the Congress and Mr Trump, with 46 per cent choosing it. However, this was an average that included 68 per cent of Democrats and only 18 per cent of Republicans.
Democratic concern does not necessarily translate into support for specific, costly policies, however. Washington, a deep blue state, rejected a state-level carbon tax in a 2016 initiative and did so again this year, by large margins each time.
The most politically feasible climate change proposals, Prof Egan told me in an e-mail, may be those which "address the problem in a more piecemeal and, thus, less visible fashion", such as raising automobile fuel economy standards, or, at the state level, requiring that a minimum share of energy come from low-emission renewable sources.
It didn't work in Arizona, where 69 per cent of voters, obviously including Democrats and independents, opposed a measure this year that would have required utilities to derive 50 per cent of electricity from renewables by 2030.
In California, though, voters this year did retain the state's 12 US cent per gallon gas tax increase, which was enacted last year, possibly because Governor Jerry Brown defended it as a way to pay for better highways, not to fight climate change.
Mr Macron might not be facing violence in the streets now if he had packaged his tax hike as something other than a climate change measure, or if he had proposed to rebate the revenue collected, as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has done with his new carbon tax.
Either way, the larger point - the inconvenient truth, you might say - remains. It's not easy to persuade citizens of a democracy to accept real financial sacrifice in the here and now, for the sake of a diffuse benefit in the future.
Another of 2018's lessons, therefore, is that the climate change movement faces a democratic deficit. It must either overcome that deficit or fail.
WASHINGTON POST
This year, California recorded its deadliest wildfire in state history. The combined intensity and duration of the Atlantic and eastern Pacific oceans' tropical storms and hurricanes reached a new recorded high. Worldwide carbon dioxide emissions are projected to break another record this year.
It's time to take a clear-eyed look at the science behind these developments - the political science. The data shows that, for all the evidence that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous, and despite wide public acceptance of those propositions, people in the United States do not necessarily want to stop climate change, in the sense of being willing to pay the cost - which is the only sense that really matters.
"The public's level of concern about climate change has not risen meaningfully over the past two decades and addressing the problem with government action ranks among one of the lowest priorities for Americans," according to a comprehensive review of public opinion literature published last year by associate professors Patrick Egan of New York University and Megan Mullin of Duke University.
In a series of open-ended Gallup surveys this year asking Americans to name the "most important problem facing the country", environmental issues never scored above 3 per cent.
Even before the recent riots against French President Emmanuel Macron's climate change-related fuel tax hike in France, there was a quieter backlash of sorts in the US: Anti-fossil fuel referendums lost in Colorado, Washington and Arizona during last month's election.
Undoubtedly, there have been well-funded efforts to sow climate change scepticism in recent decades, as Prof Egan and Prof Mullin note.
US President Donald Trump is now amplifying that message. This could not have helped the climate change movement, even if scholars have yet to identify a "causal link" between such campaigns and individual attitudes, according to Prof Egan and Prof Mullin.
Of course, the climate change movement was not exactly silent during recent history.
What's crucial, after accounting for the battle between the movement and its opponents, is the inherent nature of climate change as a political issue: It requires voters to accept "upfront costs that, if successful, will stave off never-to-be experienced long-term damage - policy for which election-oriented politicians can easily foresee receiving blame instead of credit", Prof Egan and Prof Mullin note.
Slashing carbon emissions is a cause that "has no core constituency with a concentrated interest in policy change", while "a majority of people benefit from arrangements that cause" climate change.
The US, with its multiple veto points for various regional and economic interests, tends to postpone dealing with long-range crises even more than most democracies, as its failure to shore up the solvency of federal entitlement programmes shows.
Climate change and environmentalism more broadly have gotten caught up in the partisan polarisation corroding US politics, with support for "green" policy increasingly a badge of Democratic Party loyalty, and opposition to it defining what it means to be Republican.
A Pew Research Centre study this year found that the public ranked climate change 18th out of 19 possible top priorities for the Congress and Mr Trump, with 46 per cent choosing it. However, this was an average that included 68 per cent of Democrats and only 18 per cent of Republicans.
Democratic concern does not necessarily translate into support for specific, costly policies, however. Washington, a deep blue state, rejected a state-level carbon tax in a 2016 initiative and did so again this year, by large margins each time.
The most politically feasible climate change proposals, Prof Egan told me in an e-mail, may be those which "address the problem in a more piecemeal and, thus, less visible fashion", such as raising automobile fuel economy standards, or, at the state level, requiring that a minimum share of energy come from low-emission renewable sources.
It didn't work in Arizona, where 69 per cent of voters, obviously including Democrats and independents, opposed a measure this year that would have required utilities to derive 50 per cent of electricity from renewables by 2030.
In California, though, voters this year did retain the state's 12 US cent per gallon gas tax increase, which was enacted last year, possibly because Governor Jerry Brown defended it as a way to pay for better highways, not to fight climate change.
Mr Macron might not be facing violence in the streets now if he had packaged his tax hike as something other than a climate change measure, or if he had proposed to rebate the revenue collected, as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has done with his new carbon tax.
Either way, the larger point - the inconvenient truth, you might say - remains. It's not easy to persuade citizens of a democracy to accept real financial sacrifice in the here and now, for the sake of a diffuse benefit in the future.
Another of 2018's lessons, therefore, is that the climate change movement faces a democratic deficit. It must either overcome that deficit or fail.
WASHINGTON POST
Anti-Macron protests: Leading France appears to be an impossible job
Macron looks likely to go down as the latest French president to abandon reforms in the face of street protests.
By Gideon Rachman, Published The Straits Times, 12 Dec 2018
Like most important politicians, Mr Emmanuel Macron is a polarising figure.
So Macron-haters have seized upon the unrest in Paris to argue that the French President stands revealed as a massively flawed leader - remote, arrogant and pushing an outdated neoliberal agenda. By contrast, Macron-lovers insist that their hero can ride out his current troubles and still be a transformative president.
Neither verdict is convincing. Mr Macron is indeed an impressive figure. He has correctly identified the need for structural reforms of the French economy and has bravely made the case for internationalism. But the bleak truth is that the President is gravely wounded by the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests, the accompanying violence - and the panic-driven U-turns in government policy.
Indeed the events of the past week are likely to be a turning point that will neuter the Macron presidency and prevent it delivering on its early promise.
To understand why that is the case, you need to examine three key aspects of the Macron agenda: internal economic reform, deeper European integration and global governance. These three ideas are interdependent.
The idea was that if Mr Macron could demonstrate his ability to change France, he would convince Germany to accept decisive steps towards a genuine European economic government.
A reformed, strengthened European Union could then push back against the resurgent forces of nationalism, visible from Washington to Beijing. If Mr Macron's domestic agenda runs into trouble, his international agenda is likely to fail as well. That is precisely what is happening.
The Macron loyalists are right to point out that their man has already notched up real achievements. He has pushed through changes to the rigid French labour markets, which should make it easier to create jobs. And he won an important victory against the powerful railway unions. But the sense of momentum created by these reforms has now been destroyed.
The Macron government has had to reverse its increase in fuel taxes. And the President is likely to promise further sweeteners to appease the demonstrators.
More significant, important reforms that were planned for the future - to the pension and health systems - now look much less likely to happen. As a result, efforts to reduce the size of the French state, restore order to government finances and reinvigorate economic growth look much less achievable.
Instead, Mr Macron looks likely to go down as just the latest French president to abandon reforms in the face of street protests. The essential French contradiction - the demand for lower taxes and better public services - will remain unresolved. Indeed, things could get a lot worse.
Protests and street violence have the potential to rumble on for months, creating a sense of permanent crisis. Even if France's cities calm down quickly, the risk that Mr Macron could be succeeded by a president of the far-right or far-left has clearly increased.
Faced with these developments in France, Germany is highly unlikely to commit to the kind of ambitious EU reforms outlined by Mr Macron.
A decade of economic crises in southern Europe has left German politicians highly suspicious of anything that looks like a "transfer union" that might see German taxpayers permanently subsidising welfare in less solvent EU nations.
A dynamic and successful Macron-led France might have overcome this German scepticism (which is shared by the Netherlands and much of northern Europe) - and helped propel the euro zone towards the "economic government" that the French are arguing for. But events on the streets of Paris will confirm German prejudices that the French state is unreformable.
In truth, even before the gilets jaunes uprising, Franco-German relations were deteriorating, with the German government increasingly irritated by what it regarded as empty grandstanding by Mr Macron; the French government is dismayed by what it regards as a lack of vision and generosity in Berlin.
All of this matters globally. Mr Macron has moved boldly to position himself as the "anti-Trump" - and the world's leading spokesman for international cooperation. He has vocally defended the Paris climate accord, which the US has abandoned. Indeed, his commitment to action on climate change lay behind the ill-fated fuel tax.
At the recent Paris peace conference, Mr Macron also pointedly denounced nationalism - just days after Mr Donald Trump had declared himself a nationalist. The US President is now revelling in Mr Macron's discomfort and wrote on Twitter, gloating: "Protests and riots all over France." He claimed implausibly that the crowds were chanting: "We want Trump."
But Mr Trump is fortunate to be in the White House, not the Elysee. Leading France looks increasingly like an impossible job. Successive presidents, with different styles, have ended up despised by the public. Mr Nicolas Sarkozy was denounced as too "bling"; Mr Francois Hollande was denounced as too ordinary; now Mr Macron is too haughty.
If Mr Macron had been able to break this dismal cycle, his international credibility would have soared. He could have emerged as the global champion of liberal values - such a champion is sorely needed. Now, however, it seems highly unlikely that Mr Macron can save the world. He will be lucky if he can save his own presidency.
FINANCIAL TIMES
Macron looks likely to go down as the latest French president to abandon reforms in the face of street protests.
By Gideon Rachman, Published The Straits Times, 12 Dec 2018
Like most important politicians, Mr Emmanuel Macron is a polarising figure.
So Macron-haters have seized upon the unrest in Paris to argue that the French President stands revealed as a massively flawed leader - remote, arrogant and pushing an outdated neoliberal agenda. By contrast, Macron-lovers insist that their hero can ride out his current troubles and still be a transformative president.
Neither verdict is convincing. Mr Macron is indeed an impressive figure. He has correctly identified the need for structural reforms of the French economy and has bravely made the case for internationalism. But the bleak truth is that the President is gravely wounded by the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests, the accompanying violence - and the panic-driven U-turns in government policy.
Indeed the events of the past week are likely to be a turning point that will neuter the Macron presidency and prevent it delivering on its early promise.
To understand why that is the case, you need to examine three key aspects of the Macron agenda: internal economic reform, deeper European integration and global governance. These three ideas are interdependent.
The idea was that if Mr Macron could demonstrate his ability to change France, he would convince Germany to accept decisive steps towards a genuine European economic government.
A reformed, strengthened European Union could then push back against the resurgent forces of nationalism, visible from Washington to Beijing. If Mr Macron's domestic agenda runs into trouble, his international agenda is likely to fail as well. That is precisely what is happening.
The Macron loyalists are right to point out that their man has already notched up real achievements. He has pushed through changes to the rigid French labour markets, which should make it easier to create jobs. And he won an important victory against the powerful railway unions. But the sense of momentum created by these reforms has now been destroyed.
The Macron government has had to reverse its increase in fuel taxes. And the President is likely to promise further sweeteners to appease the demonstrators.
More significant, important reforms that were planned for the future - to the pension and health systems - now look much less likely to happen. As a result, efforts to reduce the size of the French state, restore order to government finances and reinvigorate economic growth look much less achievable.
Instead, Mr Macron looks likely to go down as just the latest French president to abandon reforms in the face of street protests. The essential French contradiction - the demand for lower taxes and better public services - will remain unresolved. Indeed, things could get a lot worse.
Protests and street violence have the potential to rumble on for months, creating a sense of permanent crisis. Even if France's cities calm down quickly, the risk that Mr Macron could be succeeded by a president of the far-right or far-left has clearly increased.
Faced with these developments in France, Germany is highly unlikely to commit to the kind of ambitious EU reforms outlined by Mr Macron.
A decade of economic crises in southern Europe has left German politicians highly suspicious of anything that looks like a "transfer union" that might see German taxpayers permanently subsidising welfare in less solvent EU nations.
A dynamic and successful Macron-led France might have overcome this German scepticism (which is shared by the Netherlands and much of northern Europe) - and helped propel the euro zone towards the "economic government" that the French are arguing for. But events on the streets of Paris will confirm German prejudices that the French state is unreformable.
In truth, even before the gilets jaunes uprising, Franco-German relations were deteriorating, with the German government increasingly irritated by what it regarded as empty grandstanding by Mr Macron; the French government is dismayed by what it regards as a lack of vision and generosity in Berlin.
All of this matters globally. Mr Macron has moved boldly to position himself as the "anti-Trump" - and the world's leading spokesman for international cooperation. He has vocally defended the Paris climate accord, which the US has abandoned. Indeed, his commitment to action on climate change lay behind the ill-fated fuel tax.
At the recent Paris peace conference, Mr Macron also pointedly denounced nationalism - just days after Mr Donald Trump had declared himself a nationalist. The US President is now revelling in Mr Macron's discomfort and wrote on Twitter, gloating: "Protests and riots all over France." He claimed implausibly that the crowds were chanting: "We want Trump."
But Mr Trump is fortunate to be in the White House, not the Elysee. Leading France looks increasingly like an impossible job. Successive presidents, with different styles, have ended up despised by the public. Mr Nicolas Sarkozy was denounced as too "bling"; Mr Francois Hollande was denounced as too ordinary; now Mr Macron is too haughty.
If Mr Macron had been able to break this dismal cycle, his international credibility would have soared. He could have emerged as the global champion of liberal values - such a champion is sorely needed. Now, however, it seems highly unlikely that Mr Macron can save the world. He will be lucky if he can save his own presidency.
FINANCIAL TIMES
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