by Jim Rose in environmentalism, politics - Australia, Public Choice Tags: Australian elections, expressive voting, global warming, Green vote

Global warming is part of a political theatre that is made up of the symbols we boo and cheer.

People gain pleasure, excitement and self-definition for cheering for particular parties and worthy causes in the same way as they cheer and boo for sports teams.

Geoffrey Brennan, in Climate Change: A Rational Choice Politics View, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, July 2009, argues that we will see many countries acting unilaterally to introduce carbon emission policies because expressive voters cheer for such policies.

Brennan argued that the nature of expressive concerns is such that significant reductions in real incomes are probably not politically sustainable in the long term. This suggested to him that much of the carbon reduction action will be limited to modest reductions of a largely token character.

There are many expressive voting concerns that politicians must balance to stay in office and the environment is but one of these. Once climate change policies start to actually become costly, expressive voting support for these policies will fall away.

Abbott’s big bad new tax rhetoric in the last two Australian elections split away the working class and lower-middle class Labor voters who worry more about bread and butter issues.

The inner city Green voters’ high incomes allow them to be more indulgent as to what they cheer and boo for at the ballot box. As a group, Green party voters have the highest average incomes. These high incomes act as a buffer against policies that are otherwise costly to them. But if you scratch an inner city Green voter’s superannuation entitlements, you will find a rather raw hip-pocket middle-class voter.

In Demand for Environmental Goods: Evidence from Voting Patterns on California Initiatives: Evidence, Journal of Law and Economics, April 1997, Matthew Kahn and John Matsusaka studied voting behaviour on 16 environmental ballot propositions to estimate the demand for environmental goods.

In most cases, rising incomes and price changes can explain most of the variation in voting; it is not essential to introduce non-economic concepts such as political ideologies.

An important price of environmental goods is reduced incomes in the construction, farming, forestry, and manufacturing industries.

Kahn has previously argued that the environmental movement should stop saying that half measures will work and the transition to a green economy will be easy and painless.

The Green parties where I have voted do not sell their message of a green economy and action on global warming as a cause requiring more blood, sweat and tears.

The collapse of the Green vote at the recent Australian federal and state elections demonstrates that many vote Green as a protest vote against the other parties and to feel good about themselves.

The Green vote takes a hammering once Green parties enter into power sharing deals with a government. Green policies are symbols and gestures, not something about half of their voters actually want to see passed into law on a large scale and start paying for in real money.