People will pay some amount for climate goals — but only so much
By Roger Pielke Jr.
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In late 2009, Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in the U.K. argued that a “planned recession” would be necessary in the U.K. to reduce emissions in response to the threat of climate change. In practice, this would mean that “the building of new airports, petrol cars and dirty coal-fired power stations will have to be halted in the U.K. until new technology provides an alternative to burning fossil fuels.”
Similarly, in a comment with more symbolic than substantive importance, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), argued that restaurants should no longer serve ice water, as an illustration of how we need to change our lifestyles.
Such calls for sacrifice are a fixture in debates over responding to climate change.
Climate policy, they say, requires sacrifice, as economic growth and environmental progress are necessarily incompatible with one another. This perspective has even been built into the scenarios of the IPCC. However, experience shows quite clearly that when environmental and economic objectives are placed into opposition with one another in public or political forums, the economic goals win out. I call this the iron law of climate policy. Opinion polls show that the public is indeed willing to pay some amount for attaining environmental goals, just as it is with respect to other societal goals. However, the public has its limits as to how much it is willing to pay.