Sustainability: climate policy at the expense of the poor

In the American capital Washington, leaf blowers powered by gasoline engines have been banned since the beginning of this year.

The ban is the result of the initiative of a well-known journalist and a group of angry citizens.

The city council voted unanimously for the ban.

There are very good reasons for the decision.

The devices are loud, they pollute the air and contribute to global warming with their exhaust gases.

However, they are also important tools for the often Hispanic immigrants who supplement their income by clearing the leaves of better residential areas.

The decision to buy new battery-powered devices for hundreds of dollars as well as 20 to 30 battery packs for daily work forces you to do so.

Because such a battery blower just has air for around 20 minutes.

One can approve of the specific decision in favor of the ban and still be bothered by a general pattern.

Political decisions, which can generally be summarized under the heading of climate policy, often put people with low incomes at a disadvantage.

For example, like other countries, the United States has been promoting the purchase of electric cars for several years, which are considered more climate-friendly than fuel-powered vehicles. Evaluations of previous subsidy programs show one thing above all: They mainly benefit the top 20 percent, who usually keep the electric cars as less-used second or third vehicles.

A gigantic upward redistribution program

There may be arguments in favor of such programs. For the gardener, however, who from now on blows away the leaves under parked Teslas in a climate-friendly way, none of this remains. Even the Build Back Better program is nothing more than an empty promise in this regard. It tries to compensate for the social imbalance by promising e-car buyers checks if they cannot fully enjoy the tax incentives due to a lack of income. But if the law gets through at all, it will certainly be in a much slimmed-down form.

In the meantime, in the democratically governed climate model country California, the poor households are already helping to finance the solar roofs of the households, which are usually much richer.

They also bear the costs of the transmission networks.

Because of a special clause, the energy suppliers take the surplus solar power from homeowners at artificial maximum prices and then pass the costs on to all households.

The subsidy has persisted, although the cost of solar panels has fallen dramatically since government subsidies began.

The program is similar to the German energy transition, which is one of the largest redistribution programs from bottom to top in the post-war period.

Such policies are all the more difficult to accept if they boost energy prices without coming closer to climate targets. California is not only similar to Germany in that it expects its citizens to have above-average electricity costs in order to use the proceeds to drive the expansion of renewable energy. The federal state also resembles Germany in the idiocy of giving further impetus to the rise in prices by withdrawing from climate-friendly nuclear energy.

If there is no broad support for climate policy in the United States, it is also due to this politically-dictated division of labor, in which low-wage earners bear the greater burden of change. They are also disturbed by urban elite rhetoric that demonizes their conventional lifestyles. It may help slow global warming marginally if leaf blowers also drive buses or cargo bikes more often than pick-up trucks and if their diet is vegan. But it also has to fit into the money and time budgets of people who have a harder time making ends meet or who have other priorities for other good reasons.

In poor countries, from which the West wants to dissuade coal, gas and nuclear power unrestrained, global warming is further back on the political agenda than in rich countries where basic needs are met.

This has to be respected as well as the desire for advancement to more prosperity.

Instead, they hear a warning from the saturated metropolises of the West that we must all leave the eternal logic of growth behind us.

It is the appeals of large energy consumers who emitted more greenhouse gases in January than Africans all year round.

But at least they drive a Tesla.