It looks like 'environment' and 'Climate Change' are about to go on my social fixer filters. Guys, Climate Change is real. I used to be a skeptic. I had reasons to be skeptical given that many politicians have utilized Climate Change for things that have less to do with the environment and more to do with wealth redistribution and grabbing more money from taxpayers. The Paris Accord was far from perfect, and I don't actually care if Trump leaves it...so long as he plans to put something better out there to help push us to a sustainable energy policy.
But while you can be skeptical of politicians, you can't ignore evidence in your face, or the earnestness with which scientists are appealing to you to see reason. Yes, politicians might be trying to take advantage of the moment for their own economic goals that doesn't mean you throw up your hands and pretend there isn't a real problem. Climate Change is an existential threat. Whether it is in 15 years of 350 years, it will kill us. And if you don't think it is an existential threat, you are going to be much less interested in doing anything about it.
Well, a nation that just elected a man who thinks 'exercise drains your fixed energy' and there is a 'question about vaccines' and 'Climate Change was invented by the Chinese' unfortunately cannot be trusted to act rationally about the environment in the market.
The free market is wonderful. It will fix nearly any economic problem you have. It won't fix stupidity. It won't fix willful ignorance. It won't choose the moral path if an easier, more comfortable path exists. And for that reason, the free market alone cannot deal with Climate Change.
Advocates of the free market need to be mindful that while our economic theory corrects recessions, depressions, monopolies, and encourages upward mobility, less poverty, and price reduction, it has nothing to do with acting morally or preemptively on disaster. Now, I know what 'purists' will say. They will argue, if we use this 'morality' argument in relation to the environment, we can use it for anything. Not really. Most problems people seek to fix by meddling in the market are not existential crises. Moreover, most of their 'fixes' actually don't work as well as the market self-corrects. But the safety of our planet, our clean air, our water - these are things that are existential risks.
When a company does something that puts another person's existence in jeopardy, that's a violation of the NAP. That violation cannot be ignored in the name of 'the free market'. There is an understanding that the 'free market' cannot violate the civil liberties of someone else. Normally these disputes are handled via unions, sometimes labor laws. But in the case of the environment, who is the representative of the community's air, water, and interest of existence to a company? Maybe, you argue, people just won't shop there. That would be nice. But when Big Carbon is actively lining the pockets of people in Washington and elsewhere to promote archaic energy, that option doesn't exist. Perhaps, we could argue that in a real free market this 'shop elsewhere' scenario could work. But the threat is real, imminent and we are not even close to our free market utopia, yet. We don't have time to wait for a Libertarian majority to correct the cronyism in our system to see how people will react in a truly free market. Not when the Doomsday Clock is counting down.
We need to incentivize clean, renewable energy. We need to do it now, not when we are 20-50 years out from extinction. And to do that, we are going to have to realize that Climate Change is an existential threat and change our behavior accordingly. This isn't a blank check to the government. Government is just one teeny, tiny part of the solution. But if your best take away from leaving the Paris Accords is anything other than, 'Okay, so what will our solution be to the problem be,' then you are why we can't just 'leave it up to the market'.
