Why climate change helps the rich — evidence of a nondoctrinaire kind

Although publications like Red Flag Magazine have long demonstrated that capitalism is entirely incapable by its very nature of ameliorating, let alone solving the climate crisis — and are perfectly effective even with deeply flawed and outdated geopolitical assumptions — Red Flag have now become truly open that the fight to prevent runaway climate change is purely and simply class struggle against the wealthy. In ‘Tropical Cyclone Alfred and the politics of ‘keeping politics out of it’’ and ‘Why Only Socialism Can Save Us from Climate Catastrophe’, alongside articles I could not find or were rewritten, Red Flag demonstrate that climate change is purely and simply class struggle on a global scale.

What is interesting is that Harvard University’s Branko Milanovic, Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson, so early as 2007, in their thesis ‘Measuring Ancient Inequality’, made a strong implication that the capitalist class does have much to gain from global warming.

‘Measuring Ancient Inequality’ is a study of inequality in preindustrial societies. The critical issue the thesis notes is how the presence of a “subsistence minimum” below which human survival is impossible creates an Inequality Possibility Frontier (abbreviated to IPF) at a Gini index that appears low by modern industrial standards. Hence, in these ancient societies, even if extraction by the ruling class was the maximum possible, it only permitted seemingly modest inequality before the majority could not survive.

The symbol ε is used for the proportion of the population belonging to the ruling class, and s is used for the substance minimum in 1990 US dollars. The initially assumed value for the subsistence minimum is $PPP 400 — a value based upon the work of Angus Maddison in The World Economy: Historical Statistics from 2003.

Discussing their results, Milanovic, Lindert and Williamson note on pages 15 and 16 that:

“If we used Maddison’s subsistence level of $400, then four estimated Ginis would be significantly greater than the maximum Gini (at their level of income) implied by the IPF: three of these are based on data from India, and the fourth is from Nueva España.[The 1752 Old Castille is also slightly above the IPF.] Recalling our definition of the IPF, these four cases can only be explained by one or more of these five possibilities: (i) a portion of the population cannot even afford the subsistence minimum, (ii) the actual ε is much smaller than the assumed ε=0.001, (iii) inequality within the rich classes is very large, (iv) our estimate of inequality is too high, and/or (v) the subsistence minimum is overestimated. We have already analyzed and dismissed the first three possibilities. The fourth possibility is unlikely: since our estimates of inequality are based only on a few classes, they are likely to be biased downwards, not upwards. The last possibility offers the more likely explanation. It could well be that the subsistence minimum was less than $PPP 400 for some societies. In particular, this is likely to be the case for subtropical or tropical regions where calorie, housing and clothing needs are considerably less than those in temperate climates....”

“If the IPF is drawn under the S=$300 assumption, it shifts the frontier upwards enough to encompass at or below it all our estimated inequalities, with the possible (and modest) exceptions of Moghul India and Nueva España.”

If we reverse what ‘Measuring Ancient Inequality’ says above about tropical and subtropical societies, we would logically conclude that in genuinely cold climates with extremely high food, shelter and clothing needs, subsistence minima might be substantially greater than $PPP 400. We would also conclude that in the hottest regions with the most minimal such demands, the subsistence minimum might be still lower than $PPP 300, although probably there is a lower limit no less than $PPP 200. ‘Measuring Ancient Inequality’ says nothing about how high or low subsistence minima could potentially be.

If the subsistence minimum were greater than $PPP 400, this would however be difficult to prove using the methods used by the thesis — although I do not rule out other methods. One would be required to prove inequality as sufficiently restricted relative to income that a higher requirement becomes probable, and even then there is always the possibility of lesser extraction above a lower minimum. No society in any climate colder than temperate oceanic Western Europe is analysed in ‘Measuring Ancient Inequality’, and partly for reasons I will discuss below, candidates for such are few. [China in 1880 would lie partially within climates likely to have subsistence minima above $PPP 400, but the average subsistence minimum for the whole society would be dominated by the hot southern regions — at least judging by the result of the thesis.]

The above facts acquire deep relevance in light of runaway global warming. Milanovic, Lindert and Williamson imply that a hotter and hotter world will, ipso facto, increase the profits of the capitalists by reducing the absolute minimum wage they are required to provide to workers. Thus, the international capitalist class not merely has zero incentive to ameliorate global warming, but has vast potential gains from making it as bad as possible and permitting lower wages and greater profits. The results also explain why, before runaway global warming began in about 1980, there was a rapid movement in many countries from cooler to hotter regions: capitalist classes were seeking areas where they could gain greater profits, and the lower subsistence minima in hotter regions fit this goal perfectly.

Another fact explained very clearly by ‘Measuring Ancient Inequality’ is why civilisations evolved predominantly in hot deserts. The establishment of a stratified society requires that a surplus be produced, and logically this surplus will initially be small. Thus, it would be critical for the development of a surplus that the society’s subsistence minimum be as low as possible. Hot deserts — especially as they are the most likely region after extremely high mountains to evolve animals with the hierarchical social structures required for domestication — are ideal as the would-be elite is required to give such limited wages. Even more dramatically, the absence of even one origin of civilisation or even of crop agriculture in any latitude beyond the subtropics — European agriculture came via migration from the Middle East — suggests very low subsistence minima were critical for the evolution of stratified societies.