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TechnoratiGlobal Warming: The Rich Opt Out
Noted with interest: the very rich people are indifferent to climate change, global warming and the exhaustion of natural resources. Kyoto? What's that? The new report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? Never heard of it. The upcoming meeting of the world's energy ministers in Bali? Makes no difference to me. Where's my private jet?
The rich have decided to opt out of global warming and its effects. That's for the little people, as the following from the Wall Street Journal illustrates:
The American Southeast has been suffering from one of its worst droughts in years. But you wouldn't know it from looking at the emerald-green estates of Palm Beach.
There, despite water restrictions and low reservoirs, lush lawns and verdant hedges line the Florida island's biggest mansions, awaiting the start of the annual winter "season" after Thanksgiving.
Consider Nelson Peltz. The investor and food magnate's oceanfront estate, called Montsorrel, is among the island's biggest water consumers. His 13.8-acre spread, which combines two properties, used not quite 21 million gallons of water over the past 12 months--or about 57,000 gallons a day on average--at a cost of more than $50,000, according to records obtained from the local water utility.
The paper has calculated that the average little person's use is 54,000 gallons per year. Hence Peltz uses 352 times as many gallons of water as the wee people do. But isn't that fair, considering that he makes at least 352 times as much money as the rest of us?
In Atlanta, where drought conditions are yet more critical than in Florida, there were reports of other richies sloshing in H&sub2;0 as ordinary people watched their gardens dry up. One man in Atlanta, living alone in his mansion, where there are seven bathrooms, was recorded as using sixty times more water than his neighbors--this in a city that could run out of drinking water in three or four months.
The authorities, ever deferential to those who have too much already, are not inclined to make an example of such people. Yet the rich are held up to us as having achieved that ever more hackneyed American Dream, as the people we ought to emulate. If it ends up that they are the only people who have drinking water, not to mention full swimming pools, we ought to emulate 'em, and after we have finished emulatin' 'em, somebody go fetch a rope.
In any sane society Peltz would be charged a dollar for every gallon over 54,000, the average usage, which would work to a fine of more than $20 million. With guys like Peltz, even that sum may not be enough to get him to turn off the tap when he's finished shaving.
Peltz's behavior provides a clue to why the months and years pass by and nothing is done to save our environmental future from any number of not-yet-understood catastrophes. The rich have simply opted out. Obviously, they figure that with their corps of guards and gardeners, they will continue to have their own private environment--and, such being the case, there is certainly no reason to put restrictions on destructive practices.
Apparently, without their say-so we are not to do much of anything to save ourselves. Not only do they control the government on these matters but every time a proposal is made, they say no, it's bad for the economy, and if you go ahead with it we'll take your jobs away. Great. If we try to protect ourselves, our livelihoods are gone; if we don't, our children's lives are gone.
As we ponder that predicament, the American Meteorological Society is having kittens over the new 2007 data on the arctic and Greenland ice and glacier melts. The new numbers are worse than the models predicted, and the climatologists would be in a state of shock if they were given to such reactions.
Is Al Gore the only prominent, wealthy person on this planet to yowl, scream, shout and ring the tocsins of alarm? Yes, probably. The slogan of the hour is "Don't do something, just stand there."
Nicholas von Hoffman is the author of A Devil's Dictionary of Business, now in paperback. He is a Pulitzer Prize losing author of thirteen books, including Citizen Cohn, and a columnist for the New York Observer.
Copyright © 2007 The Nation
29 Comments so far
Show Allbbr-001 "NIMBY problems with windfarms." The only environmental problem with the proposed Cape Wind project is that the rich in Osterville and nearby enclaves don't want it in their environment. They even got Walter Cronkite to speak against it, and he doesn't even have to look at it, being perched over on the Edgartown side of Martha's Vineyard, but, hey, the rich "class" must stick together.
In other words, I agree with you.
Even rich folk who show environmental leadership (Gore, RFK Jr) live in mansions, fly in private jets, and have NIMBY problems with windfarms... "Purchasing green energy" is not a substitute for conservation.
It seems the rich half-expect and even welcome the idea of the world collapsing around them, and they expect their money to insulate them from the ensuing chaos. If Naomi Klein's thesis is correct, they might see social disintegration as an opportunity to construct the new social order of their dreams. Maybe not so new. Maybe something like 10th century Europe.
It's a new kind of survivalism. Instead of stocking up on canned goods and living in a cave, you should become a daytrader, make millions of dollars, build your luxury castle, and hunker down. I recently saw a commercial showing a couple who were looking to buy a TV for their "safe" room. That's where the family barracades itself in case of a home invasion, until the SWAT team arrives. You know, it could be hours, so shouldn't there be some kind of entertainment? You could watch yourself as a breaking story CNN.
Lucky Lefty ~
Do we hate the rich because we aren't them? Do we hate the rich because they hate us? I'm trying to understand just who these "rich" folks are, and why they are hated so much.
Are the "rich" everybody who can meet their own needs and don't stand in line for handouts? Uh oh, I just might be rich!
I'm just trying to understand the concept. I used to think I was poor and oppressed before I traveled the world and saw just how awful almost everybody else had it. There's scarcely a person in America who could be considered "poor" in my eyes today. I've seen poor up close and personal. Once you've seen the 10 year old children beating the crap out of the 5 year old children so they could swarm over the stinking garbage first and get the "good stuff" as it rolls out of the garbage truck, then you've seen poor.
If you've a place to sleep tonight that isn't out in the disease-infested mud, and you ate something at some point today, then you are not poor in my eyes. I had to really re-evaluate what I consider "rich" before I'd want to line them up for the blade, because I just might find myself in that line.
pdf
The oligarchy is a cancer on the planet.
Well, at least for once we get someone who is environmentally concerned pushing buttons. Or are only the neocons allowed to do this?
Yeah, let's push some buttons - some of their buttons for a change. For there to be any solution, we all need to do our own small part in helping; in this case it's helping to conserve water. So I don't feel the slightest bit of compassion for those who live in our communities who add to the problem, rather than showing some leadership and setting examples.
It's an attitude of, "I can afford it, and I don't give a damn about the rest of the community." If things go badly enough, the hoards will soon be at their gated communities taking a common good and necessity – water.
I read and read the posts here and I admit that I can offer no solutions other than hope that local districts impose fines on those who abuse and ignore a pending problem for all. No man is an island. The only solutions I have are that each of us that really cares, will do what they can in their local area and with the people they come into contact with. That's the best I can do to offer any solution. It all starts from the bottom up, and not vice versa.
We all live in the same house. When are we going to live in harmony in our house?
We can chose to maintain our richfilth in the style to which they've become accustomed til we all die of thirst, we can break their backs by putting them in chains with Roosevelt level taxation & re-regulation (produced the greatest level of wealth/power distribution in the history of our species), or we can just build a guillotine & whack off their heads.
We either get rid of the richfilth or we all die. It's them or us. It is that simple. I wish everything else here was.
Peace.
Peace.
Peace.
Nice "divide highlight article". Beautifully written to engage full passion of indignance on the them of this us and them issue. The conclusion? No solution, just venting, which with the impending thought policing will surely only harry this writers readers and not his quite obviously greatly affluent az. The guy gets paid by major media to incite emotion by writing. He seems to be far short on conveying solutions, a real hot talking finger pointer, if ever I read one.
The rich must also have a Plan B: fly to another planet when they're done with this one. Maybe that's why NASA's looking so hard for Earth-like planets in other solar systems. I thought it was just idle scientific curiosity, but maybe there's a practical motive.
Because they are drones and cowards. "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy, before he got rich and lost his soul, gave a pretty good insight on this.
Forget about the very rich. They have forgotten about us. They are going to die well anyway, so why should they care about the children and the future.
Also they make up such a small percentage of the total population. There is little signs of progress in green-house gas production, GGP yet, with the total world population, still rising, and per capita consumption and GGP, still rising. With resource constraint limits of one sort or another, total and per capita values may begin to fall, but not because of our restraint. Some switching to GGP friendly alternatives is offset by allowing others to have more, so totals still rise. Until the fossil fuel production and GGP is directly attacked with taxes, limits and suppressed forcefully, I expect no slowing of the rate of increase of GGP. Total world governments action so far has been absolutely ineffectual. Its not a question of comparing to 1990 levels for Kyoto protocol, when the world has not begun to reduce the yearly GGP acceleration.
Before Freud introduced the concept of the unconscious mind, Shakespeare gave the world the timeless Lady Macbeth who could not rest, even in her sleep, for she was haunted by the blood on her hands. Here is my karmic justice take on these creeps watering their lawns in the face of such a profound phase calling for conservation: They will be haunted by the countless thousands of faces of people starving for lack of water: water to drink and water to grow crops. Like Ebineezer Scrooge their sleepness nights will be filled with the visual replay of lives they helped to destroy in their quest for a greed that only fulfills narcissism at a surface level. "To the one much is given, much is expected."
Because greed turns them into idiots
In part perhaps.
This isn't that I know, this is just that it's complex.
For example, I've often thought that if you remove a person's raison d'etre, you threaten their purpose on the planet.
Insecurity of all sorts is a driving force in at least human nature it seems to me.
JaneM-the rain barrels are starting to show up in Atlanta. A recent rain gave some enough extra water to keep their gardens going for quite a while yet.
But if you are rich and you vote Democratic, doesn't that absolve you of all your sins? Just donate a small portion of your wealth to the Sierra Club, buy organic food and environmentally friendly cleaning products, and presto you are as green as the wads of cash in your wallet.
Because greed turns them into idiots
ezflyer,
I believe you've isolated a really strange aspect of the truth with that quote. Let's now get to why that is so.
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage."
John Kenneth Galbraith
rooth, I believe the Bush land-buy was in Paraguay. Here's a link I found: http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v76/__show_article/_a000076-000170.htm
Nicholas von Hoffman makes an excellent point that we haven't seen addressed enough yet when it comes to climate change, although we've seen it elsewhere. The rich are also opting out of disasters (costly private firefighting teams can save your house), the need for public police protection (gated communities and private security firms), public education (private schools and tutors), you name it. The few scraps of public services and infrastructure left are also being continually starved by tax cuts and underinvestment.
So much for the commons.
geoff29 asks: "Then what's the difference between a human created climate crisis, and the one that might occur in the grand scale of time? Provided time exists. It must. Doesn't it?"
The difference for humans and all species is the rate of change. With natural climate change, species have time to evolve or adapt. With human-created climate change, which is occurring in a mere handful of generations, evolutionary change is not possible. Hence the prediction of a large die-off of species, including homo sapiens.
Water in one little piece of wealthy overconsumption. They maintain, heat and cool, many houses. In the mountains of Colorado they heat their driveways, sidewalks and patios, at 10,000' and in the snow. When local ordinances try to tax the installation of these excesses, they have them installed after final inspections are done, and there are not enough inspectors to constantly reinspect. Water in Florida is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to possible "over average" taxes for excessive consumption of natural resources.
Water in one little piece of wealthy overconsumption. They maintain, heat and cool, many houses. In the mountains of Colorado they heat their driveways, sidewalks and patios, at 10,000' and in the snow. When local ordinances try to tax the installation of these excesses, they have then installed after final inspections are done, and there are not enough inspectors to constantly reinspect. Water in Florida is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to possible "over average" taxes for excessive consumption of natural resources.
Facing the prospect of a future world limited in terms of resources and hospitable environments, the predatory corporatists and other economic elites are trying to accelerate the rate at which they acquire wealth and power and at which the income distribution is polarized. That way they can create a wide gulf, that can provide clear separation, between the "deserving few" who get to take advantage of those remaining limited resources and hospitable environments and the "undeserving many," i.e. the "little people."
perhaps glide should exercise some curiosity himself. at 150 gallons a person a day, this works out exactly to 54750 gallons a year.the average usage in usa is 150 - 170 gallons a person a day.this can be confirmed in a internetsearch.asking proof for every sentence is a neat way of debunking the article and changing the subject.
Does anyone ever exercise the energy and curiosity of mind to question the accuracy or validity of the numbers these people throw around? "the average little person's use is 54,000 gallons per year". Prove it and don't give me "averages". It's all bunk!
also regarding that land in Patagonia was the adjacent us military base.
also bush owns land on the moon. My suggestion, is that we send him there with only the cloths on his back and a supply of food.
If he figures out the problem, well then he's saved.
seeing that in military jargon you take the laziest guy and give him the hardest possible job and that guy'll get the job done, bush'd probably just open the door and breath in that moon air.
Where are the mandatory composting toilets? Where are the rain barrels? Parts of Australia have been in a severe drought for many years and they are getting very creative about saving water. We could get ahead of the game by looking at what others are already doing. Why are we waiting so long to react?
I read some time ago that the Bush family has purchased a huge swath of land in Patagonia. Were there to be a conflagration, Patagonia seems a good place to be as it is a bit out of the mainstream of life, so to speak. What was also interesting - it was reported that under the land was a huge fresh water aquifer that belonged to the land. How convenient for the owners. I have not been able to establish the truth of this report. Any good investigative reporters out there who could?
As the world approaches the end, and the natural world becomes ever more inhospitable, might not human beings also devolve or digress in similar fashion as on the way toward moderate climates?
Oh, evolution isn't taught anymore. I forgot about that.
Then what's the difference between a human created climate crisis, and the one that might occur in the grand scale of time? Provided time exists. It must. Doesn't it?