Wall Street Journal: Let Poor Freeze to Stop Global Warming

Tip 'o the hat to RFK Action Front for catching this one:

In response to Democrats in the Senate trying to add home heating subsidies for poor families to the economic stimulus bill, the Wall Street Journal editors wrote:

As for home heating subsidies, these encourage greater energy use, especially in the Northeast, which depends on oil more than natural gas. This is thus more of a stimulus to foreign oil exporters than to the U.S. economy. Think of it as one more subsidy to add carbon to the atmosphere, notwithstanding the usual global warming grandstanding.

I like the way Toby Rogers summarized the WSJ position on the RFK Action Front:

The Wall Street Journal editorial board is a leading global warming denier and has consistently opposed the Kyoto Protocol and any other efforts to mitigate this potentially apocalyptic problem. But with their editorial on February 8th, it seems they've found a plan to combat global warming that they actually like -- namely, letting the poor freeze to death. So, according to the WSJ -- investing in green energy technologies = bad, regulating power plants = bad, allowing the poor to freeze to death (especially those freaks in the Northeast who heat their homes during the winter) = good for the environment and a plan they can really get behind.

•  tips, flames, rants n/t

  by NBBooks on Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 07:49:27 AM PDT

  •  Sent to KO! eom

    by 0hio on Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 09:23:25 AM PDT

•  How appropriate on Malthus's birthday

  Malthus, godfather of Reaganism, originally argued (essentially) that we're all much better off when the poor just die -- that way they stop consuming so many scarce resources.  Therefore, we certainly shouldn't have any social insurance programs to help the poor...

  by Minerva on Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 07:53:39 AM PDT

•  The poor are so wasteful

  If given the chance, they might turn the thermostat up form 40 degrees to 60! We can't have such wastefulness!

  by marina on Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 07:55:47 AM PDT

•  If I understand correctly,

  the WSJ and its ideological kin look forward to a world where poverty has been abolished because all menial or semiskilled labor is performed by autonomous machines. So the poorest people will be the technicians, and mechanics do make a decent income, if they're good mechanics.

  Of course, countries with a less intensively developed energy and transport infrastructure couldn't build this kind of paradise. We've built other machines to take care of them, sitting atop long-range missiles...

  by Shaviv on Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 07:55:53 AM PDT

•  Not suprising ...

  coming from the WSJ ... they also published that article yesterday ... about the banks/mortgage companies wanting a Gov't bailout ... I didn't know Wall Street had so many Bernie Sanders fans   ;-)

  by Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle on Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 07:56:17 AM PDT

•  Ironically

  It's the poor who use less carbon.  If you really wanted to stop global warming, you'd want to go after us... The developed nations, the ones who use it all.    Tank our economies,  etc...
  Oh, wait, that's what's happening.

  by arvo on Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 08:03:16 AM PDT

  •  Your sig line is right on!

    I wrote in a diary a few days ago:

    just like after World War Two, we are sitting on top of a powder keg of pent-up demand. But this time the pent-up demand is for a green economy. Just think of what needs to be built:

    Every single car and truck in the United States needs to be replaced with hybrids or super fuel-efficient vehicles (see a picture of the Aptera further down-thread).

    A replacement for the entire system of gasoline delivery and distribution.

    Almost the entirety of the U.S. housing stock needs to be replaced or retrofitted with green technology.

    Same with commercial buildings, especially skyscrapers built in the 1950s to 1990s, which is almost all the core downtowns. Tear `em down and start over again, make them user friendly and environmentally neutral.

    Urban mass transit rail systems. New York City has the most dense network, and it is only half as dense as what you find in Tokyo, London. Paris, Moscow. Cities like Miami and Phoenix, which are now in the top ten urban areas in the U.S. don't have ANY mass transit rail, or have a single line with one or two dozen stations.

    Passenger rail with its own rights of way. How many people know Amtrak has to run on rails owned and maintained by the freight railroads? In the northeast corridor, from Washington DC to Boston, we really should build this entirely underground. One long tunnel from DC to Boston.

    The entire grid for electricity generation and distribution needs to be almost entirely replaced.

    Is the "free market" going to get all this done? Of course not. The "free market" and the banking and financial system at this point have become addicted to quick profits in the range of 10% to 40%. You simply cannot get industrial projects done under those conditions. So, we can choose to try and keep the present system going. If you are a bond trader or a broker or a manager at a bank or hedge fund, that is what you are probably inclined to choose. But there is an alternative. We can instead choose to begin replacing the past, replacing the fossil fuel economy and the hot-money financial shell games, and begin building the future.  We can either choose to save Wall Street, or we can choose to save the future.

    
    Yep, it gets 240 miles per gallon - umm, that's 102 kilometers per litre. Here's some links to learn more:
    http://blog.wired.com/...
    http://www.wired.com/...

    by NBBooks on Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 08:36:48 AM PDT

    •  Lot of Work To Do

      A lot of work.  Next president's gonna have his or her hands full.  So will the rest of us.

      by arvo on Thu Feb 14, 2008 at 08:56:55 AM PDT

•  Thanks for the hat tip!

  Hi NBBooks!  I'm delighted to read this post and read your other diary entries.  You're doing great work.  Thanks for the link to my post on the WSJ editorial!

  Yeah the WSJ editorial was truly bizarre.  If someone is genuinely concerned about global warming, then a sensible editorial would recommend investing in solar, wind, or other alternative technologies (which actually would have been a smart thing to put into the economic stimulus bill).  The WSJ only jumped at the chance to make an environmental argument when they saw it as an opportunity to make life even more miserable for poor people.

  by RFK Action Front on Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 12:54:34 PM PDT