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20 May 2013updated 12 Oct 2023 10:12am

The best way to fix the long term is with more short-termism

People don't like thinking about hard problems while the economy is a mess.

By Alex Hern

Just in case you aren’t convinced that things tend to get worse before they get more worse, here’s another example of why it’s incumbent on us to solve the short-term problems in the short term because, not despite, of the long-term problems plaguing us.

The Washington Post‘s Brad Plumber writes about building the support needed to tackle climate change:

A new study finds that U.S. senators are far less likely to take green votes when the unemployment rate in their state is high…

Grant Jacobsen of the University of Oregon took a look at the voting records of 296 senators between 1976 and 2008. He then checked the local unemployment rate in each senator’s state, and matched them up to the “green scores” that were given to each senator by the League of Conservation Voters.

The result? “A one point increase in the [state] unemployment rate leads to a statistically significant 0.48 point decline in the LCV score of the average senator.”

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Doubtless politicians – particularly right-wing politicians – wouldn’t agree that Making Tough Choices about climate change is the same as Making Tough Choices about what we’re used to euphemistically referring too as “much needed structural reforms”, but they are. In both cases, the move would be unpopular, painful for a number of entrenched interests, and probably necessary in the long term – but the idea that we ought to take difficult steps in the middle of the biggest recession Britain has ever seen, and then start fixing the recession, is madness.

Of course, the problems with fixing climate change in the middle of a recession aren’t identical to the proposals to cut employment protections, corporate tax rates and financial regulations. For one thing, there’s a chance that efforts to reduce the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere might actually do what they’re intended to do, while the evidence that businesses are just straining at the bit to give us perpetual 3 per cent growth were it not for those pesky unfair dismissal laws is slim.

But also, of course, many efforts to fight climate change are also ones which would end the damaging austerity keeping us in this economic crisis in the first place. So while politically, we may have to solve the short term problem – and end the depression – before we can move on to fixing the climate, economically, they’re one and the same.

Still, what we should take away from this is that something which can end the depression is something which should be done. It doesn’t matter if it’s “kicking the can down the road” – once that can is kicked, we can start thinking about the long term solutions which might eliminate the can altogether, or maybe power it with wind, or solar energy. (That metaphor ran away from me somewhat)

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