Borrowed Futures: The Federal Debt and Climate Change The Federal Debt and Climate Change Walk Into a Bar. Our Grandkids Pick Up the Tab!
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash Both the federal debt and climate change share a peculiar trait. They are almost invisible, right up until they are not. One day the bond market panics or Miami begins scheduling scuba lessons, and everyone suddenly acts shocked. Until then, both problems remain politely ignored. They are the civic equivalent of a suspicious lump under the national carpet. We just keep stepping over it, humming loudly, and calling it freedom.
The resemblance between these two crises is not physical. One lives in spreadsheets and Treasury auctions. The other lives in the chemistry of the atmosphere. But psychologically they are nearly identical. Both represent a habit of modern civilization that is as comfortable as it is dangerous. We borrow from the future in order to live pleasantly today, assuming our children will handle the bill.
It is a charming assumption.
Our children and grandchildren may have other ideas.
The Economic and Physical Parallels
The national debt is what happens when Congress spends like a drunk at Costco and then holds a press conference about fiscal discipline. The United States now carries federal debt measured in the tens of trillions of dollars. The exact number changes by the hour, usually in the upward direction. We borrow to sustain tax cuts, subsidies, programs and lifestyles that no voter wants to pay for directly.
Some politicians assure us that economic growth will solve everything. Growth is treated like a mythical creature. It will gallop in someday, pay off the credit card, mow the lawn, and possibly babysit the kids.
Climate change follows the same pattern. Some deny the problem entirely. Others admit it but promise that future technology will fix everything. Meanwhile we keep burning fossil fuels as if the atmosphere were an infinite landfill for carbon dioxide. The logic is oddly familiar. “Yes, the cancer is spreading, but relax. I’ve ordered some shark cartilage pills from the internet.”
Both problems compound over time. Debt grows through interest. Climate change grows as we continue to burn fossil fuels. Every year of delay makes both larger and harder to fix.
The atmosphere, it turns out, is basically the planet’s credit card.
And we’ve been treating it like a Christmas shopping spree.
To be fair, the two crises are not identical. Governments can sometimes inflate or restructure debt. Financial systems allow refinancing, renegotiation and the occasional creative accounting maneuver. The atmosphere is much less cooperative. It does not accept refinancing.
Carbon dioxide stays where it is.
Nature is terrible at paperwork but excellent at physics and chemistry.
The Political Dynamics of Denial
Politicians have almost no incentive to tell the truth about either problem.
In politics, honesty is like sunscreen. It is clearly beneficial but applied sparingly.
Any politician who says “we need pain now for stability later” will quickly discover that voters prefer someone who promises dessert immediately and vegetables sometime in the distant future. Ideally after retirement.
As a result, the political system performs elaborate rituals around both crises.
Debt ceiling debates appear every few years like seasonal theater. Members of Congress declare their deep concern about fiscal responsibility. After several dramatic speeches and a few late night cable news appearances, the ceiling is raised. The national credit card is renewed. Everyone goes home feeling heroic.
Climate summits follow a similar script. Leaders gather in attractive cities, issue inspiring declarations about the year 2050, and promise that action will begin shortly after the next election cycle. The photographs look excellent. The atmosphere remains unimpressed.
Meanwhile lobbyists perform their traditional civic duty. Fossil fuel companies finance skepticism about climate science. Wealthy donors fund campaigns for fiscal responsibility that somehow always involve cutting taxes for wealthy donors.
The result is a strange bipartisan illusion. One side often denies the scale of the problem. The other side acknowledges it but schedules the solution far enough in the future to avoid upsetting voters today.
Voters are not innocent in this arrangement.
We want cheap gasoline, low taxes, high services, stable retirement benefits and a clear conscience about the planet. This combination is about as realistic as ordering a triple cheeseburger that also lowers cholesterol.
In short, we want the benefits of discipline without the inconvenience of actually being disciplined.
The Generational Ethics
Strip away the economic language and the climate science, and both problems reduce to something surprisingly simple.
They are forms of intergenerational theft.
Climate change steals environmental stability from future generations. Federal debt shifts financial obligations onto future taxpayers. In both cases, the present generation enjoys the benefits while the next generation receives the invoice.
Economists politely call this discounting the future.
Psychologists call it denial.
A theologian might call it sin, although many of them arrive at church in very large SUVs, so we will leave theology out of it.
Our grandchildren will inherit the results of these choices. They will face a world that will be both warmer and financially constrained. Their options may involve some combination of adaptation, higher taxes and uncomfortable questions about what their grandparents were thinking.
Their main question will probably be simple.
“What exactly were you people doing all day?”
The honest answer may be “streaming television and arguing on social media.”
The Illusion of Infinite Growth
Modern civilization runs on a powerful belief. The belief is that growth will continue indefinitely and that growth will solve most problems.
Debt projections assume that economic output will grow faster than interest payments forever. Climate policy often assumes that energy use can continue expanding without destabilizing the planetary system.
Both assumptions contain a strong dose of magical thinking.
You cannot expand infinitely within a finite system. Eventually something pushes back. In physics this is called a limit. In economics it is called a crisis. In politics it is called someone else’s problem.
The phrase “sustainable growth” sometimes sounds like an alcoholic promising to pursue “sustainable drinking.” The issue is not moderation. The issue is the underlying premise.
The planet has boundaries. The economy has constraints. Graphs cannot rise forever unless they are drawn by motivational speakers.
Solutions That Make Perfect Sense and Therefore Will Not Happen
The frustrating part is that both crises have fairly straightforward solutions, assuming we can first get past the professional naysayers who believe cutting taxes will solve the debt and the climate is behaving exactly as it always has.
Reducing the debt would involve some mixture of higher revenue, restrained spending and long term fiscal planning. This would likely require raising some taxes, adjusting some programs and abandoning the political tradition of promising everything while paying for nothing.
Addressing climate change would involve pricing carbon dioxide emissions, accelerating the transition to low carbon energy, improving efficiency and investing heavily in clean technology.
None of these solutions are mysterious.
They simply require telling voters two words that are politically radioactive.
Sacrifice.Now.
Those two words have destroyed more political careers than scandal, corruption and awkward karaoke videos combined.
Politicians survive by offering immediate rewards while postponing consequences. The vegetables will be served eventually. Probably by the next administration.
The Era of Creative and Slightly Desperate Solutions
When serious problems meet long term denial, the human imagination becomes extremely creative.
In climate discussions, proposals occasionally appear that sound like they were developed during a late-night science fiction marathon.
Some researchers propose launching massive mirrors into space to reflect sunlight. This is sometimes described as solar radiation management. It could also be described as putting sunglasses on the planet.
Other ideas involve fertilizing the oceans with iron to stimulate plankton growth, which might absorb carbon dioxide. This is a strategy that could also be described as “feeding the ocean vitamins and hoping for the best.”
Another proposal involves injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere to mimic volcanic eruptions and cool the planet. It might work. It might also revive acid rain, proving once again that humanity excels at solving problems by inventing new ones.
Then there is the popular plan to colonize Mars, which is essentially the cosmic equivalent of moving to a cheaper neighborhood when your house catches fire.
Fiscal policy has its own creative moments.
At one point economists seriously discussed minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin and depositing it at the central bank. This sounds like a plot device from a children’s cartoon but was proposed by serious people wearing suits.
Other proposals include printing large amounts of money and hoping inflation politely oversleeps, cutting taxes again in the belief that the eleventh attempt will finally work, or selling naming rights to national landmarks.
Welcome to the Taco Bell Grand Canyon.
Desperation breeds creativity.
Unfortunately it also breeds magical thinking.
A Philosophical Interlude
Political philosophers would probably find this situation fascinating, if slightly alarming.
The philosopher John Rawls proposed the famous “veil of ignorance” thought experiment. Imagine designing a society without knowing which generation you will belong to.
Behind that veil, no rational person would choose to inherit a planet that is both financially strained and environmentally unstable.
Yet that is exactly the world we are constructing.
The psychiatrist and philosopher Viktor Frankl argued that despair is suffering without meaning. Our modern predicament has a strange twist. We experience anxiety about these problems while simultaneously refusing to address them seriously.
It is suffering with very little follow through.
Meanwhile the economic historian Carlo M. Cipolla once proposed several basic laws of human stupidity. One of them states that people frequently underestimate the number of individuals capable of causing harm without benefiting themselves.
This insight unfortunately remains evergreen.
A Pattern in Civilizations
Historians often note that civilizations approaching periods of difficulty begin consuming their future resources.
The Roman Empire gradually debased its currency to finance spending. Easter Island famously cut down its last trees. Many societies overuse soil, water, forests or financial stability during their late stages of expansion.
Modern civilization appears determined to experiment with several of these strategies simultaneously.
We are running a fascinating experiment in planetary management.
The control group may not survive.
The Shared Psychological Root
Both the debt crisis and the climate crisis arise from the same underlying belief:We assume that personal benefit can somehow be separated from collective consequences.
Debt says, “I can spend without paying.”
Climate change says, “I can burn without consequences.”
Both statements contain a comforting optimism. They also contain a certain resemblance to the reasoning used by teenagers borrowing their parents’ car.
Optimism can be a powerful force for progress.
It can also be the narcotic of decline.
Civilizations rarely collapse because they lack intelligence. They collapse because intelligence is frequently redirected toward explaining why the obvious problem is not really a problem.
Conclusion
Federal debt and climate change are the twin ledgers of modern civilization. One records our financial obligations. The other records our atmospheric emissions. Both compound quietly. Both remain politically inconvenient. Both grow larger the longer we postpone action.
The solutions are not primarily technical. They are moral.
A humanist perspective begins with a simple idea: the future matters because people matter. Debt and climate change are not abstract policy debates. They are choices about the world our children and grandchildren will inherit. Humanism asks us to treat the future with the same moral seriousness we expect from the past.
The laws of thermodynamics cannot be negotiated, and neither can compound interest. Both punish delay.
Spend what we can afford.
Burn what the planet can absorb.
Neither principle polls particularly well.
Future generations may not care whether we called it a deficit or emissions. They will simply inherit the consequences.
If our age leaves behind a monument, it may not resemble a statue or a skyscraper.
It may simply be a warning sign.
Half submerged, slightly foreclosed, and gently bobbing in rising water.
It will read:
Caution.
Contents of civilization may have shifted during transit.