> Cheap mass transportation means that working class people have more use
> values. If you distort market pricing to represent a guesstimate of
> the 'costs of environmental damage' then you will price certain
> consumer goods out of the reach of the working class. Regardless of
> the merits of the environmentalist case, raising prices is not
> progressive, and it implies that the problem is that consumers just
> don't get it.
This is more banker than communist, I'd say. If the theorists of climate change are right - and, given the stakes, it's prudent to assume they are - then the spatial layout of the U.S. (among many other places and things) is unsustainable, because it endangers life itself. The working class isn't going to be better off if the Gulf Stream shifts and Western Europe acquires the climate of Siberia and New York City is under several feet of water. This is a problem facing humanity as a whole, and if consumers "just don't get it," well they're going to have to.
Doug