If you worry about the impact of climate mitigation on the poor ...

CBPP launches a climate equity program 5

You'll be glad to know The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has launched a major climate program whose goals are to ensure that:

  • the increased energy prices that are an essential part of climate-change legislation do not drive more households into poverty or make poor households poorer; and
  • climate-change legislation generates sufficient revenue both to protect low-income households and to address other needs related to the fight against global warming, so that it does not increase the deficit.

CBPP is a great group. But they need to understand that a central strategy for fighting the impact of higher energy prices on low-income consumers is an aggressive energy efficiency strategy to keep overall bills from rising, which I don't see in their work so far.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

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  1. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 11:43 am
    30 Oct 2007

    Poor People Like Heat

    Global Warming will reduce the poor people's dependency on energy, and thus make them richer.
    That is why Al Gore wants to prevent Global Warming.
    Global Warming has helped the poor since Dickens.

    John Bailo


    Sutext:

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  2. Jonas Posted 1:15 am
    31 Oct 2007

    Loool!!Common guys, you must really begin to start to get a grip.
    High energy prices are already killing people. They are catastrophic for LDCs. The science is incredibly clear and robust on this. Where to start? This is so ultra-basic.
    Maybe just one pointer: there is a strict correlation between the IEA's 'Energy Development Index' and the 'Human Development Index'. Schoolbook material.
    But of course, you simply mean that dead people do not feel the pinch. Agreed.
    That way, hunger is good for the poor too. Because dead people don't feel hungry.
    This is too funny!

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  3. Jonas Posted 1:19 am
    31 Oct 2007

    Ooops, read that too quick, sorryApologies, I read things too quick.  The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities launched a project to ensure that high energy prices don't drive the poor into deeper poverty.
    I thought it said: "high energy prices do not drive the poor into deeper poverty". That would have been ridiculous.
    So, apologies. This is a very good project, and exactly what we need.
    Because abundant and cheap energy is the sine qua non for poverty alleviation and development.

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  4. MCollins Posted 2:07 am
    31 Oct 2007

    Making energy affordable"Increased energy prices...are an essential part of climate-change legislation": The price of oil has nowhere to go but up, regardless of the soothing sounds emanated by our administration, and charging more for energy derived from fossil fuels is hardly even a band-aid to the core problem. The only way to keep the cost of energy at a reasonable level for homeowners--let alone for people living in subsidized housing, or for the nonprofits running shelters--is to get the ball rolling on widely implemented renewable energy policies so that by the time the real oil crunch hits, we'll have alternatives already in place.

    Editor, http://www.getsolar.com

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  5. ffletcher Posted 4:06 pm
    31 Oct 2007

    Shortages and RationingWhile markets work as long as supply and demand are within the linear operating range of supply and demand.  I fear that if supplies are short enough that reality will result in a rationing reaction.
    I do not yet believe that Americans wll stand by and let people reach that depth of desparation simply because the poor can not find the money to pay the price for a product that has been driven to outrageously high level in order to send a price signal to the masses.
    I think that the power of potentially limiting power or water is under-rated or has been largely ignored.  I see no reason to continue to feed power and water to those who chose to be inefficient dispite their ability to pay.
    We all must, especially those whith sufficient resources, must practice efficiency and energy conservation.  

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