Lifeboat Capitalism
Some burn, some drown, and some make money either way.
The phrase “women and children first” may sound unforgivably patriarchal today, but the rule expressed a noble purpose when it was coined. Namely, “In a disaster situation, we will not let the strong save themselves at the expense of everyone else.” When the ship is going down, gentlemanly manners go out the window. That’s why you need to make a rule about these things. Everyone, no matter how nice, will be seized with the urge to jump into the lifeboat when death comes calling.
There are basically two ways that we can go on climate change. Either we will allow the rich to save themselves and abandon everyone else, or we will make rules to ensure that everyone receives fair consideration as disasters mount. In the absence of strong rules, the first option will happen by default. Not so much because the rich are monsters, but because human nature in our society is to save yourself and your own loved ones, and as disasters intensify, this tendency multiplied by an entire nation will manifest itself as rich people desperately bidding up the price of salvation until it is not affordable for anyone else. This is easy to understand. We have time to make better rules now. If we don’t bother to make better arrangements, to take government action to ensure that all lives are valued, nobody can say that we didn’t see the consequences coming.
Los Angeles is burning. A rich part of Los Angeles is burning, among others. Awful, devastating. Many people are, right now, losing their homes. First people must get safe. When the fires go out, eventually, they will tally their losses, and decide whether to rebuild, and where. These are the immediate decisions and the medium term decisions and they will be made by individuals. Collectively, we have a longer term (though not too much longer) decision to make. That decision is: Are we going to do climate change together, or separately? This is a choice for all of us, philosophically, but in a practical sense this is a choice for the government. The results of the choice will be stark, for all of us. Inaction is, by default, a choice to do this separately.
And we know what that will look like, don’t we? It will look like rich people paying any price for private firefighters to save their mansions, as all around them burn. It will look like rich people wrangling government bailouts for their washed-away beach houses, as poor people inland languish in the muck. It looks like large swaths of America becoming uninsurable and then being left to only the very rich, who are willing to take the risk, and the very poor, who can’t afford to do anything else. It looks like climate refugees crowding our streets. Refugees from poorer countries, and then, also, refugees from our own country. Refugees from the islands and then refugees from the global south and then, not long after, refugees from Altadena and Asheville and Cedar Key. It looks like wealthier people building walls around their safe land and then writing checks to politicians who will tell the panicked middle class people that the poor people are coming to take their place. We can either work to build more lifeboats, and to make humane rules about who gets on them, or we can just let the strong people toss the weaker people into the water and sail away. Either by action or by inaction, our government is going to effectively choose one or the other.
It’s unfortunate that we are right now striding into a period in which the people most opposed to the humane collective path are going to run the government. The fire in the Pacific Palisades has doubtlessly burned up the mansion of some of those who held fundraisers to help to usher in our little brutal new era. Two days ago, our outgoing president signed an order banning offshore oil drilling across most of America’s coastlines. Yesterday, at about the same time that the fierce California winds were whipping up the fire that is still eating through the golden city, the incoming president said of the drilling ban, “It’s ridiculous. I’ll unban it immediately.” America, poised to burn, poised to drown, poised to blow away in storms fueled by carbon emissions, chose as its leader the “Drill, baby drill!” guy. What can you say? I certainly don’t think the fact-based world should shrug and allow these people—people who lie to the public in order to make short term money that will do incalculable long term damage to the lives of the people they are lying to—to get away with it. The brazenness of it all is really something. Los Angeles, burning, apocalyptic, as the next prez vows to drill more oil, to the golf claps of his party members, and the approval of the donors who will make enough money on that drilling to buy themselves estates far away from the Malibu beach houses they just lost. This is villainy in action. We should never stop naming that. Pulling America onto the right path is going to require making the villains very, very famous.
If the term “crime against humanity” has any meaning, it must apply to very wealthy people who—knowing that their actions are causing a climate change crisis that will devastate future generations and destroy hundreds of millions of lives—chose not to stop those actions, but instead to undertake a systematic campaign of lies and propaganda in order to continue making themselves money. Is there anything, really, more contemptible than this? The fossil fuel industry and its campaign of climate denial is no better than the tobacco industry and its campaign to quash public recognition of the dangers of smoking. They are both killers. The fossil fuel industry is much worse, in terms of human damage. Even more detestable are the politicians who aligned themselves with that denial, for the paltry price of campaign donations. We continue to plunge headlong into the inferno, as the cities burn. To call for more drilling, as the fire is still burning! It is amazing.
Either you allow a few people to get very rich and let them hire their own private protection and build their mansions on hills or on stilts or behind big walls, and buy themselves estates in New Zealand to escape to, and rockets to blast off in if necessary—or, or, you take the other path. You say, "all humans are together on this planet and we are all equal and we will face this collectively and we will take care of the most vulnerable first and we will demand the most sacrifice from those who have the most to give.” It is a stunning thing that the first choice has somehow become the default, the legal and most likely path for the world’s richest nation, and the second choice has become an object of mockery, something to be dismissed as utopian. This is a good time to stop and pause for a moment and take in how absurd the American movie has gotten. The con man incoming president vowing to Drill Baby Drill as smirking politicians laugh and cheer and California’s grandest city burns. Don’t worry, the tax cut is coming! It will be enough to build a new mansion! And hire armed guards to protect it! The American dream, a lovely thing to behold.
There is the all-encompassing question of evolving our entire world to try to head off the progress of climate change, but we do not need to solve the entire crisis in every conversation. At this moment, it is enough to say, “we need to make some reasonable rules about how we are going to get everyone through the disasters, because we are all in this together.” This low bar, I promise, is too much to expect from the federal government that is set to come to power. We will watch them hand out oil drilling permits and pass bills to protect gas stoves and swagger around in big trucks and pose in campaign ads with guns and banners that say “Come and Take It” and go on hunting trips with lobbyists from the American Petroleum Institute. These are the villains. There they are. They will help your house burn down and send cops to crack your head if you get angry about it and then ask you to vote for them. They have a lifeboat. You can’t get on. They’re sure they will get away with it.
More
Related reading: Insurance Politics at the End of the World; The Insurance Apocalypse Conversation America Won’t Have; The Heat Death of the American Frontier; Now We Will Get What We Asked For.
An excellent book to buy and read today is “Breathing Fire” by Jaime Lowe, which tells the story of female inmate firefighters in California—and, by extension, the story of the entire social and racial and climate crisis that we all see playing out today. She also wrote this prescient 2021 story about the fire danger of Topanga Canyon.
You are reading How Things Work. This is an independent publication. It has no ads, no corporate sponsors, and no paywall. I am only able to maintain this site thanks to the support of readers like you who choose, voluntarily, to become paid subscribers. I think that independent media is only going to be more important as we move through the political environment of the next several years. If you agree, consider taking a moment to become a paid subscriber yourself. It’s not too expensive. Either way, thank you for reading.
As everyone here knows, Exxon knew about global warming in 1977 at least (and if you haven't watched AOC's master-class in committee interviews, you should (It's all of 1minute 23 seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGVW9vJ773k).
The thing is, with massive data collections and computers with unimaginable power, we can trace just about every cent made by fossil fuel companies from 1977 forward. No one blinks at the proposition that the Sacklers should have to disgorge the profits from OxyContin to undo the harm it caused.
Why shouldn't the same approach be applied to fossil fuel companies?
Regarding the incoming government, I give you Murphy's original quote: "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in disaster, then someone will do it that way."