Is Union Reform Partisan?

Advocates of public sector union reform have long been accused of playing partisan politics, but the data suggests it is the unions, not the reformers, who are political partisans. According to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research group tracking money in U.S. politics, just the top 20 labor unions over the past 20 years have spent over $500 million on federal election campaigns, and 95% of that spending went to Democrats.

This data is compiled by OpenSecrets.org on their webpage “Labor: Long-Term Contribution Trends.” On the chart below the blue bars represent labor union contributions to Democrats, and the red bars represent labor union contributions to Republicans. They show the total reported political contributions for the last eleven two-year election cycles through 2010.  The red bars are scarcely visible.

The next table, which extracts data from the OpenSecrets webpage “Heavy Hitters: Top All Time Donors” (below) shows the top 20 labor union’s political contributions to each party for the same 22 year period. Among most of the major labor unions, the contributions are nearly 100% to Democrats. Overall, 95% of political contributions by labor unions have gone to Democrats, and only 5% to Republicans.


One can argue as to whether or not the agenda and policies of Democrats and Republicans are the cause or the effect of political contributions. But there can be no doubt that the overwhelming preference of organized labor is to contribute to Democrats. Their agenda, as reflected in their political giving, is explicitly partisan.

Because unions are, presumably, grassroots organizations supported by their members, the extent to which unions practice partisan politics becomes a regulatory issue. After all, unless literally 95% of union memberships are comprised of registered Democrats, how can unions, who purport to represent their members, justify allocating 95% of their political spending to Democrats? Could it be because unions are not grassroots organizations, but instead are special interests who have managed to carve out a unique niche in American politics? Should unions have the right to demand an employer fire any employee who doesn’t want to join their ranks? In 28 states, that is the law. Should unions be able to use membership dues in any manner they wish, even if they contribute the money to politicians and causes that are not representative of their memberships?

With public sector unions, the unique ability of unions to compel membership and compel political contributions is compounded because their partisanship violates the principle that government organizations should be politically neutral. Is it appropriate for government workers who police us, protect us, regulate us, rescue us, care for us, and teach our children, to also tell us how to vote? Is it appropriate for public sector unions to spend overwhelming amounts of money on political campaigns to elect the people who they will then negotiate with for pay and benefits? Should public sector unions even be allowed to exist, much less involve themselves in politics, if the government entity they bargain with can simply raise taxes to cover the costs of their negotiated increases to pay, benefits, and headcount? Because in the private sector, at least union negotiators know that if their demands become too costly, the company will go out of business.

It is not partisan to ask these questions when the unions, especially public sector unions, engage in partisan politics. They do this often in defiance of their members own political preferences. In the case of public sector unions, their partisan politics violates the ideal of a politically neutral government workforce, and is not subject to the discipline of the market. It is not partisan to explore reforms that may address these issues.

Unions and the American Worker

A great irony of American politics is that the agenda of the left, especially big labor, causes more economic harm than good to the average American worker. Explaining this irony is not easy, but a contributor to the Washington Times, Doug Ross, did a pretty good job yesterday in his guest column entitled “Union members should know their leaders are betraying them.”

Ross gets to the heart of the matter as he connects the money from union dues to support for big government bureaucracies whose current agenda is to curb economic growth while flooding the nation with cheap labor:

“When you get your next paycheck, take a minute to calculate how much money is going to union dues (say, for example, $90). Multiply that by the number of pay periods per year (say, 26). The total (in this example, nearly $2,500) is going to line the pockets of the union bosses who will give your money exclusively to one political party, Democrats.

Your money — the product of your labor, of your finite time on Earth spent working — is being stolen and funneled to the same political party bent on destroying you. The EPA is destroying jobs. The Department of the Interior is destroying jobs. The Department of Labor’s open borders advocacy is destroying jobs.

All of these immense bureaucracies, which you pay for with your taxes (more money stolen from you) are targeting union workers, America’s backbone. And these gigantic government regulatory bodies are doing so with the full knowledge and assistance of the union bosses who support Democrats.”

Not every premise Ross advances is necessarily correct. After all, Republicans have long demonstrated their willingness to be co-equals with Democrats in their subservience to big government, big labor, and big business. And open immigration would not be nearly so problematic if immigrants today weren’t entering a welfare state, where unionized public school teachers brainwash their children to embrace socialist ideology.

Ultimately what Ross is getting at is a corporatist collusion at the heart of union power. Despite common perceptions, big labor doesn’t hurt big business nearly as much as they hurt entrepreneurs who are the emerging competitors to big business. Big business often benefits when companies unionize, because their smaller competitors can’t handle the extra costs. Similarly, big business generally benefits from government regulations, such as new environmental regulations that are often overkill, because smaller competitors can’t afford to comply.

Perhaps the biggest irony of all is how unions now urge Americans to blame “Wall Street” for the economic hardships affecting working families. Because the relationship of big labor to big finance exemplifies the most corrupt example of corporatist collusion of all. At a time when the U.S. Federal Government is borrowing money at a composite rate of well under 1.0%, public employee pension funds pour hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars each year into Wall Street brokerages, under the fiction that these trillion dollar funds can earn 7.75%. This is a con job of epic proportions, and until the axis of big labor and big finance is broken by abolishing taxpayer-funded, high-risk, multi-trillion dollar Wall Street administered pension funds that promise high returns and high payments in perpetuity to unionized government workers, taxpayers will be on the hook to cover an awful spread.

The last stronghold of labor unions is the public sector, where unions have indeed helped workers, but only public sector workers. The average total compensation for a unionized public sector worker – including costs for current and future benefits – is now twice that of the average private sector worker. The projected total retirement pension payments per year to public sector workers, who comprise less than 20% of the American workforce, are now projected to be more than the total projected social security payments to the other 80% of Americans.

With an agenda that only empowers monopolistic forces, big labor, big government, big business and big finance, the politics of labor unions essentially favor the same sort of political economy that was strangling competition and hurting the American worker back during the era of “trusts” in the 1890’s. The rise of the Tea Parties, which now has mushroomed into a generalized revulsion of the self-serving, taxpayer-funded power of public sector unions, is part of a seismic shift in American politics that will hopefully carry the same transformative force as the trust-busting movement of a century ago.

Calculating Public Worker Pension Payments

A realistic way to gauge the fairness and financial sustainability of retirement benefits for government workers is to compare how much per year in pensions we will be paying our retired population of government workers compared to how much per year we will be paying in social security to our retired population of private sector workers. Using California as an example, here’s where such an analysis takes us.

Pensions and social security are both tied to how much workers earn prior to retirement. The average California state or local government worker earns $68,500 per year, based on data from U.S. Census Bureau data which can be found on the following tables “U.S. Census Bureau 2008 Public Employment Data Local Governments California,” and “U.S. Census Bureau 2008 Public Employment Data State Government California.” The average California private sector worker earns $46,500 per year, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics “May 2009 California Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates.” The average social security benefit for an average wage earner can be found on the “U.S. Social Security Estimated Retirement Payments Chart.” It shows that a person earning $46,500 per year can expect to receive a social security benefit of about $15,000 per year starting at age 66.

Retirement pension benefits for state and local non-safety public employees in California typically range between 2.0% and 2.5% times years worked, times their final salary. Based on this formula, people employed by the University of California, for example, as can be seen on the “University Retirement Plan” (ref. page 13), will receive between 60% (30 years, age 55) and 75% (30 years, age 60) of the average of their final three years salary in retirement. For public safety employees, who comprise approximately 15% of the state and local public sector workforce in California, pension benefits typically are calculated based on 3.0%, times years worked, times their final salary. Overall, it is typical for California’s state and local government workers currently retiring after 30 years to receive about two-thirds of their final salary in pension benefits, or $45,600 per year.

To calculate the cost to Californians of paying government workers, on average, a pension that is literally triple what the average private sector worker collects from social security, one must also take into account the differing projections of worker to retiree ratios. The ratio of government workers to government retirees is on-track to be 1-1, i.e., one worker for each retiree, whereas the ratio of active private sector workers to retired social security recipients is unlikely to ever dip below 2-1. This is because government workers typically work from ages 25 to 55, then retire for 30 years, and private sector workers typically work from ages 25 to 65, then retire for 20 years. An examination of projected age distributions in America for 2030, as documented on the U.S. Census Bureau’s International Database, indicates the United States is destined to have an even streamed age distribution, i.e., about 20 million citizens in each five year age group, which makes these calculations much easier.

Notwithstanding investment returns, if there is only one active government worker – working 30 years – for every retired government worker – retired for 30 years, and if the average government pensioner receives a pension equivalent to two-thirds of what they made when they worked, then funding government worker pensions would require each government worker to contribute an amount equal to 66% of their salary towards supporting the retirees. By contrast, if at least two private sector workers – who work for 40 years and are retired for half that time – are employed for each one who is retired, and if the average private sector retiree receives a social security benefit equal to one-third of what they made when they worked, then adequately funding social security would require each private sector worker to contribute an amount equal to only 16% of their salary towards supporting the retirees. This reasoning holds enormous implications when assessing the relative long-term viability of government worker pensions vs. social security.

So how much will California’s taxpayers be spending, in aggregate, to make pension payments to their retired government workers, compared to how much they will spend to make social security payments to their private sector retirees?

To make this projection, multiply the average amount of the government worker pensions by the estimated number of retired government workers, and compare that to the average amount of the social security benefit multiplied by the estimated number of retired private sector workers. To estimate California’s projected population of retired government workers, simply use the same number as their working population, 2.4 million, since on average they work 30 years and are retired 30 years. To estimate California’s projected population of retired private sector workers, similarly, just take the population of active private sector workers, 12.2, and divide by two, since on average they work 40 years and are retired 20 years. Data for these working populations can be found from the California Employment Development Dept., Labor Market Trends 2009.

Using these assumptions, the projected number of retired social security recipients in California is 6.1 million, and the amount they will collect in aggregate in social security is $95 billion per year. The the projected number of retired government workers in California is 2.4 million, and the amount they will collect in aggregate in pensions is $110 billion per year. This is an astonishing projection. It indicates that the government will be spending more, in total dollars per year, to pay pensions to retired government workers, than it will be spending, in total dollars per year, to provide social security to retired private sector workers who are nearly three times as numerous. These facts speak for themselves. It is left to each voter and policymaker to determine for themselves whether or not this disparity in retirement security between government workers and private sector workers is either fair or financially sustainable.

The Cost of Government Pensions

Earlier this week the Sacramento Bee hosted a chat on the topic “Should States Rethink Collective Bargaining.” In addition to journalists from the Bee, participants included Steve Greenhut, editor of CalWatchdog.org, and Art Pulaski, the chief officer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.

During the hour-long discussion, the topic of public sector pensions came up a few times, and Mr. Pulaski stated that the average pension collected by retired state workers in California are not much more than social security. Referencing the chat log, he said:

“ArtPulaskiCLF:
the average state worker gets a pension of $24,000 and often without social security. Not lavish by any means
Tuesday March 8, 2011 12:48 ArtPulaskiCLF”

This is a profoundly misleading statement. When Pulaski, and others who share his perspective on these issues, use numbers this low, they are reporting an average that includes everyone on the CalPERS retirement rolls, even people who have barely vested their retirement benefit by only working five years for the state. Furthermore, this average includes part-time workers, and it includes long-time retirees who left the workforce before base pay and pension formulas had been increased significantly – and unsustainably – as they have in the last 10-15 years during the economic bubbles.

A more realistic way to gauge the fairness and financial sustainability of state worker pensions is to reference the average pension for currently retiring state workers who have logged 30 years of full-time work for the government. Using data from CalPERS annual report for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2010, entitled “Shaping our Future,” (ref. page 151) the average pension for a state employee enrolled in CalPERS who retired last year after 30 years of service is $66,828 per year.

This amount, far in excess of the “$24,000″ claim by Pulaski, is based on data provided by CalPERS, and is further evidenced by evaluating the typical pension benefit formulas currently granted government workers in California. People employed by the University of California, for example, as can be seen on the “University Retirement Plan” (ref. page 13), will receive between 60% (30 years, age 55) and 75% (30 years, age 60) of the average of their final three years salary in retirement. Benefits for state and local public employees in California typically range between 2.0% and 2.5% times years worked, times their final salary.

For public safety employees, who comprise approximately 15% of the state and local public sector workforce in California, pension benefits typically are calculated based on 3.0%, times years worked, times their final salary. The labor agreement between Sacramento County and their firefighter union provides a representative example. (Ref. “Agreement between Sacramento Fire Fighters Union and City of Sacramento,” page 55.) For information on all bargaining units and their pensions in the City of Sacramento, refer to the links on their “City of Sacramento Labor Agreements” page. You will see that in the city of Sacramento, whose worker benefits are quite typical of the cities and counties in California, it is typical for workers currently retiring after 30 years to receive about two-thirds of their final salary in pension benefits.

To really understand what this means, it is necessary to come up with two additional estimates, (1) the average base salary for a government worker in California – which allows one to estimate the average pension of a retired government worker – and (2) the number of retired government workers. This allows one to calculate how much money is disbursed each year to pay retirement pensions to retired government workers. This amount, in-turn, can be compared to how much is being disbursed each year to pay retired private sector workers who collect social security.

Using California as an example, and using conservative assumptions (because the CalPERS data already noted suggests the average career pension to be far higher than $46K per year), the following table illustrates how much the average government worker makes per year both while working and during retirement, and compares it to how much the average private sector worker makes both while working and during retirement. These figures dramatically illustrate the disparity between government worker compensation and private sector worker compensation. On average, government workers collect a base salary that is nearly 50% more than private sector workers during their active careers, then collect over three times as much through their pensions in retirement than retired private sector workers collect from social security. In fact, the average government worker’s retirement pension is equivalent to the average private sector worker’s base wages while still working!

The amounts presented in the above table are fairly easily calculated using core data that any reader is invited to verify for themselves. The average California state and local government worker wage of $68,500 per year is derived from U.S. Census Bureau data which can be found on the following tables “U.S. Census Bureau 2008 Public Employment Data Local Governments California,” and “U.S. Census Bureau 2008 Public Employment Data State Government California.” The average California private sector worker wage of $46,500 per year can be found from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics “May 2009 California Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates.” The average social security benefit for an average wage earner can be found on the “U.S. Social Security Estimated Retirement Payments Chart.”

The cost to Californians of paying government workers, on average, a pension that is literally triple what the average private sector worker collects from social security is compounded by the fact that the ratio of government workers to government retirees is on-track to be 1-1, i.e., one worker for each retiree, whereas the ratio of active private sector workers to retired social security recipients is unlikely to ever dip below 2-1. This is because government workers typically work from ages 25 to 55, then retire for 30 years, and private sector workers typically work from ages 25 to 65, then retire for 20 years. An examination of projected age distributions in America for 2030, as documented on the U.S. Census Bureau’s International Database, indicates the United States is destined to have an even streamed age distribution, i.e., about 20 million citizens in each five year age group, which makes these calculations much easier. This disparity is illustrated in the table below:

What the above table demonstrates is the following: Notwithstanding investment returns, if there is only one active government worker – working 30 years – for every retired government worker – retired for 30 years, and if the average government pensioner receives a pension equivalent to two-thirds of what they made when they worked, then funding government worker pensions would require each government worker to contribute an amount equal to 66% of their salary towards supporting the retirees. By contrast, if at least two private sector workers – who work for 40 years and are retired for half that time – are employed for each one who is retired, and if the average private sector retiree receives a social security benefit equal to one-third of what they made when they worked, then adequately funding social security would require each private sector worker to contribute an amount equal to only 16% of their salary towards supporting the retirees. This reasoning holds enormous implications when assessing the relative long-term viability of government worker pensions vs. social security.

Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the inequity of California’s government worker pensions averaging literally the same amount as what the average private sector worker earns while actively working is illustrated in the next table. The calculations are based on multiplying the average amount of the government worker pensions by the estimated number of retired government workers, and comparing that to the average amount of the social security benefit multiplied by the estimated number of retired private sector workers. To estimate California’s projected population of retired government workers, simply use the same number as their working population, 2.4 million, since on average they work 30 years and are retired 30 years. To estimate California’s projected population of retired private sector workers, similarly, just take the population of active private sector workers, 12.2, and divide by two, since on average they work 40 years and are retired 20 years. Data for these working populations can be found from the California Employment Development Dept., Labor Market Trends 2009.

On the above table, the green columns represent the projected number of retired social security recipients in California, 6.1 million, and the amount they will collect in aggregate in social security, $95 billion per year. The blue columns represent the projected number of retired government workers in California, 2.4 million, and the amount they will collect in aggregate in pensions, $110 billion per year. This is an astonishing projection. It indicates that the government will be spending more, in total dollars per year, to pay pensions to retired government workers, than it will be spending, in total dollars per year, to provide social security to retired private sector workers who are nearly three times as numerous.

To the extent these extravagant benefits have been approved by compliant politicians on behalf of government workers in other states, what these figures illuminate for California can be extrapolated to apply across the United States. To suggest that Wall Street pension fund investments are going to be able to make up for this disparity, and therefore somehow mitigate the burden this disparity places on taxpayers, is not only extremely debatable – because the high returns that pension funds delivered over the past 30+ years were driven by an unsustainable expansion of debt – but also specious. Because if Wall Street investments are the panacea, set to rescue taxpayers from the burden of supporting retired government workers, why are spokespersons for government worker unions blaming Wall Street at the same time as they fail to recognize that their pension funds are Wall Street?

If government worker pensions, whose solvency is currently guaranteed by taxpayers, are to be gambled on Wall Street, why isn’t the social security fund also gambled on Wall Street? Why do taxpayers bear the downside of the Wall Street manipulated economic meltdown not only for themselves and their own individual investments, but also take the hit and make up the difference for the government workers and their pension funds? Anyone representing government worker unions who claims Wall Street is both the problem and the answer should seriously examine their premises. And anyone who suggests government worker pensions are not extravagant, or do not place a crippling burden on taxpayers and government budgets, is not confronting the facts.

Trumka’s False Choice

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But when the imitator inverts the meaning of the phrase they’re imitating, clarification is called for. Such is the case with the esteemed Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, who has penned an essay in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Scott Walker’s False Choice.”

According to Trumka, Wisconsin’s embattled governor Scott Walker has presented the following false choice to the unionized public employees in that state, “if you want to keep your job, give up your rights, if you want to keep your rights, you’re going to get laid off.” But what if it isn’t Governor Walker, but Richard Trumka, who is presenting a false choice to America?

Back in 2009, a courageous reformer in San Diego, California, councilmember Carl DeMaio, was already talking about the false choice that powerful labor unions in that city were presenting to voters. In an April 2009 press release from DeMaio’s office entitled “City Makes Progress with Labor Contracts,” DeMaio had this to say about the choices facing voters:

“City taxpayers have long been presented with the false choice that we must either raise taxes or suffer severe cuts in citizen services.  Today’s action reflects my long-held belief that the better path to solving the city’s financial problems is to make our city government more efficient by reducing labor costs to sustainable levels in line with our local labor market.”

By extension, the false choice that public sector unions were presenting voters in San Diego is the same false choice public sector unions across the United States are presenting voters and politicians who are coming to terms with crippling government deficits.

Trumka, echoing the refrain heard from labor leaders across America these days, claims that “when adjusted for education, experience and training, the data show that public-sector workers are paid less than their private-sector counterparts.” There may be a few places left in America where Trumka’s statement is true, but not in California.

When a U.C. Berkeley study was released in October 2010 entitled “The Truth about Public Employees in California: They are Neither Overpaid nor Overcompensated,” they didn’t disclose anywhere in their report how much the average state or local government employee actually makes in California. If the “normalizing factors” such as education, experience and training are so significant, why hide the number? When our institute went ahead and looked at the same data, in our report last month entitled “What Percent of California’s State AND Local Budgets Are Employee Compensation?” we found that the average state or local government worker in California collects annual total compensation of $106,000 per year. By contrast, using Bureau of Labor Statistics (ref. May 2009 State Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates California) the average private sector worker in California earns total compensation of $57,000 per year – at most, since the BLS data excludes part-time and self-employed workers. Mr. Trumka is invited to check these statistics for himself, and explain why public sector workers are entitled to collect nearly twice as much from their government employers as the taxpayers who must cover those costs.

When labor leaders point out the reality of wage stagnation and the formation of a super-rich elite, they have a point, but they are tragically incorrect as to the cause and the cure for these realities. Tragic, because their arguments carry powerful emotional weight, which, combined with their unparalleled ability to launch taxpayer funded, union purchased media campaigns, has allowed them to dominate elections by presenting their version of the “false choice” for the last several decades. Incorrect, because it is the unions themselves who have exempted public sector workers from the inevitability of globalization, which imposed the burden of higher taxes on the rest of America’s workers who still had to adapt, and because it is public sector union pension funds who have been Wall Street’s willing accomplices, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars per year of taxpayer’s money into Wall Street brokerages so they could gamble with the economic future of the world.

To the extent America’s super-rich made their money on Wall Street, perhaps Trumka is right to criticize them. But the solution is to stop using government unions as Wall Street’s collection agent, and instead put government pensions onto a sustainable, pay-as-you-go footing, where returns on investment are limited to the rate one might earn from a U.S. treasury bill. This, in-turn, will necessitate lowering government employee pension benefits to something somewhat better than social security, but nothing more. And the solution to government deficits is to lower government employee salaries and benefits, which constitute about 80% of most government budgets.

This is the real choice facing American voters. End the partnership of government unions and Wall Street and stop paying government workers nearly twice as much as private sector workers, or continue to engage in deficit spending until the American economy implodes. If American’s make the right choice, it will require refuting the agenda of government unions. But the upside will be fewer Wall Street billionaires to serve as bogeymen for labor leaders, and lower taxes – and hence a higher standard of living – for all American workers.

Redefining Environmentalism

The “Breakthrough Institute,” was founded in 2003 by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of “The Death of Environmentalism” and Break Through, and aspires to be “a paradigm-shifting think tank committed to modernizing liberal thought for the 21st Century.” Last week Nordhaus and Shellenberger delivered a lecture at Yale University that provided myth-shattering explanations for recent failures of the environmental movement. Equally significant, and very encouraging, is that in their lecture, Shellenberger and Nordhaus also set forth principles for redefining and revitalizing environmentalism that are realistic and thoughtful. The full text of their remarks, entitled “The Long Death of Environmentalism” are posted on their website.

Here is the problem with environmentalism according to Nordhaus and Shellenberger:

“Today, environmental efforts to address climate change and build a green economy lie in ruins. The United States Congress this summer once again rejected climate legislation that even had it succeeded would have had virtually no impact upon U.S. carbon emissions over the coming decade. The magnitude and consequence of this defeat are poorly understood outside of Washington. Greens had the best opportunity in a generation — a Democratic White House and large Democratic majorities in Congress. But they banked everything on a single bill and walked away with nothing — or rather worse than nothing, since today environmental credibility with lawmakers of both parties is today at an all-time low. Meanwhile, green stimulus investments ended up creating very few jobs. Those that it did create were low-wage and temporary custodial jobs — not the high-wage manufacturing jobs that created the black middle-class after World War II. And today, the clean tech sector– the darling of high tech VC’s at the height of the green bubble– is in a state of collapse as stimulus funds expire, large public deficits threaten clean energy subsidies both here and abroad, and Wall Street firms short clean tech stocks.”

Whether or not you agree with all of Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s premises – such as the big one, that anthropogenic CO2 is truly destined to cause catastrophic climate change, their take on what has happened to environmentalism is not only accurate, but a refreshing burst of candor and clarity coming from the heart of the environmentalist community. For example, they acknowledge that the overwhelming preponderance of media spending came from the climate change alarmists, and not from the climate change deniers:

“In the wake of the crash, environmentalists pointed their finger at the usual bogeymen. They claimed that the problem has been that fossil fuel interests have massively outspent underdog environmental groups, funding skeptics to mislead the public and duping the media into giving too much credence to skeptical views about climate change. In reality, the environmental lobby massively outspent its opponents. In just the last two years, by our rough estimate environmental organizations and philanthropies spent somewhere north of $1 billion dollars advocating for climate action. In contrast, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Exxon-Mobil, the Koch Brothers, Big Coal, and the various other well publicized opponents of environmental action might have spent, when all was said and done, a small fraction of that. Indeed, much of the U.S. energy industry, including the largest utilities, helped write and lobbied for U.S. climate legislation.”

Equally refreshing is the admission by Nordhaus and Shellenberger that “green jobs” and “clean technology” are typically drains on economic productivity, not engines of economic growth:

“Many greens concluded was that they needed to reframe global warming as an economic opportunity, not an ecological crisis. And so carbon caps and the soft energy path were repackaged as economic and jobs policy despite little evidence those policies would, on balance, create jobs. In fact, most credible economic models of proposed cap and trade policies, including those produced by government agencies, predicted the opposite.”

Nordhaus and Shellenberger go on to basically accuse environmentalists, climate alarmists in particular, of discrediting not only the broader environmental movement, but the entire clean technology movement, because they oversold clean technology as the panacea for both environmental and economic challenges – when in fact, certainly in the short run, it was neither:

“Efforts to reframe climate policy as economic policy ended up discrediting what had been a broadly popular agenda to invest in developing new energy technologies by rendering it indistinguishable from the profoundly polarizing climate debate. ”

What makes Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s perspective very interesting and potentially very important is the fact they are arguing these points as individuals with impeccable environmentalist and liberal credentials. The fact they recognize these sobering realities that constrain both environmentalism and clean technology make their conclusions worthy of a careful read. Here is a summary of the twelve points Nordhaus and Shellenberger believe should inform a revitalized, reinvented environmentalism:

Twelve Theses for a Post-Environmental Movement – by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
(the text here is abbreviated by the editor, and the reader is encouraged to read the complete version on the Breakthrough Institute’s website)

“(1) More, better or louder climate science will not drive the transformation of the global energy economy. The resources necessary to make such a transformation will not be forthcoming in pursuit of climate benefits that are uncertain and far off in the future… our understanding of how that warming impacts the climate system at regional and local scales will become harder to characterize, not easier.

(2) Stop trying to scare the American public.

(3) The most successful actions will not be justified for environmental reasons [they will be justified for reasons of national security or for economic reasons]. We should put shared solutions at the center of our politics, not our view of the science.

(4) We will not solve global warming through behavior changes… much of the world already lives in dense cities – more and more of us every day… and as they do they will use vastly more energy and resources, not less.

(5) Stop treating climate change as if it were a traditional pollution problem.

(6) We will not regulate or price our way to a clean energy economy. Regulatory and pricing solutions tend to succeed when we have good, low cost alternatives to the activities which we are attempting to discourage or eliminate.

(7) The so-called ‘soft energy path’ is a dead end. For centuries, the global economy has used ever more energy, even as it has used energy ever more efficiently and renewable energy. Renewables still cost vastly more than fossil based energy.

(8) We will not internalize the full costs of fossil fuels, even if we are able to agree upon what they actually are [the calculations are too subjective]. The degree that we do internalize the cost of carbon will be determined by the tolerance within specific political economies for policies that increase energy costs.

(9) We need to make clean energy technologies much cheaper in order to decarbonize the global energy economy.

(10) We have to get over our suspicion of technology, especially nuclear power.

(11) We need to embrace again the role of the state as a direct provider of public goods. Think of a transformative technologies developed over the past century is the result of government investing in those technologies at a scale that private firms simply cannot replicate.”

(12) Big is beautiful. The rising economies of the developing world will continue to develop whether we want them to or not. The solution to the ecological crises wrought by modernity, technology, and progress will be more modernity, technology, and progress. The solutions to the ecological challenges faced by a planet of 6 billion going on 9 billion will be large central station power technologies that can meet the energy needs of billions of people increasingly living in dense mega-cities, industrial scale agriculture, desalinization and other technologies for gardening planet Earth that might allow us not only to pull back from forests and other threatened ecosystems but also to create new ones.”

For a libertarian leaning fiscal conservative who is 99% convinced anthropogenic CO2 will not cause catastrophic climate change, yet embraces good government, energy security, and reasonable environmental policies, these twelve theses from Nordhaus and Shellenberger are most encouraging. They provide a basis for a genuine dialog between Republicans and Democrats, one that might yield genuine progress towards environmental sustainability combined with sustainable economics.