Willful Endangerment

Cracks are starting to show in the municipal bond market as it pertains to climate change. Previously these markets seemed like they weren’t paying attention, but the Los Angeles area fires seemed to have changed that calculus.

Previous disasters led to write downs because of a loss of property tax revenue due to damage, but the climate impacts and future disaster potentials are now real and are likely to factor in. Utilities are now at high risk for climate based ratings also because of their liability in causing some of these disasters such as fires.

Keep in mind the municipal bond markets as we’ve mentioned before are the way we build infrastructure, build cities, and are a relatively safe investment vehicle for retirement funds and individual investors. If they go away or make it more expensive to invest in our cities, we can’t build out of some of our thorniest problems.

But this is in contrast to what Republicans currently want to do related to climate change. As the bond markets are starting to wake up, the US government is entering an Ambien induced slumber.

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin is moving to have the government overturn the 2009 endangerment finding which led to the ability of the agency to regulate emissions on account of their harms to the planet. As mentioned in Politico, “Removing [the endangerment finding] would relieve EPA of having to regulate climate pollution from sources such as power plants, oil and gas infrastructure, and vehicles. It would also erect barriers for future administrations that try to enact climate rules.”

The six gasses regulated by the finding include CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfer, two types of fluorocarbons, and nitrogen trifluoride.

From a transportation perspective, this continues the all out assault on the idea that mobility should be designed for the many instead of the few and perpetuates the idea that it’s OK if the most vulnerable are impacted by our choices. We continue to see these fights bleed into the state and local levels as legislatures try to take away cities ability to build tailored infrastructure and mayoral races become contested over bike and bus lanes.

The public health impacts of these gasses as expelled through vehicle exhaust and energy extraction are many and the benefits of opening up our roads and rails to more pollution are few. I’d rather not see this play out to it’s logical conclusion. The bond ratings agencies and insurance companies are starting to get it from their actuarial models, why not those currently in power?