Map of Coming Climate Doom

Via Paul Kedrosky, the British risk analysis firm Maplecroft tries to assess relative vulnerability to climate shocks. More northerly ones and also richer ones are viewed as less exposed, and the assumption here seems to be that the Dutch have the resources and engineering chops to build as many seawalls as necessary to keep their towns from drowning:

In light of continuing discussion over the Koch Brothers' allegedly selfless devotion to the principle that fossil fuel companies should be allowed to wreck the planet without regulation in the name of free markets, it's worth pondering this. Presumably "I should be allowed to murder this Bangladeshi man and steal his money for profit" is not a free market position. Presumably "I should be allowed to steal this Bangladeshi man's land and sell it for profit" is not a free market position. Nor is "I should be allowed to have my cattle eat this Bangladeshi man's grass and then sell it for profit" a free market position. I don't think "I should be allowed to cut costs by dumping the toxic waste byproducts from my family on this Bangladeshi man's agricultural land" makes a ton of sense as a free market position.

Which is just to say the fact that current "free market" orthodoxy holds that in a properly functioning market business executives have an untrammeled right to pollute the world's commonly owned air supply without paying any compensation is a reflection of the political and intellectual influence of pollution interests' money. A world in which the financiers of rightwing politics were abstractly interested in property rights and classical liberalism would be one in which the right was demanding carbon taxes.