Squabbling About Climate Policy Beneficiaries

Bjørn Lomborg argues at The New York Post that the backlash against economy-crippling "climate" policies isn't confined to the United States:

The main UN model shows that even if all rich countries were to cut their carbon emissions to zero, it would avert less than 0.2°F of projected warming by the end of the century, while imposing massive hits of up to 18% on rich-world GDP by 2050.

The ever-increasing cost of climate policy is one reason the rich world is cutting back in many other areas, including aid to the world's poorest.

That, in part, is why philanthropist Bill Gates has called for a strategic pivot on climate.

He has laid out three tough truths: Climate change is serious but "will not lead to humanity's demise"; temperature is not the best progress metric; and we should instead focus on boosting human welfare. [bold added]

That's the good news.

The bad news is that, here in the United States, the Trump administration, which deserves credit for backing off from many of these policies, discredits itself regarding other things on a daily basis and undermines its good policies with such economic snake oil as import taxes and partial nationalizations.

Whatever gains may be more than offset to begin with -- and Trump's unpopularity has the Democrats smelling blood.

Lomborg warns them and the rest of us that the Democrats returning to power will be a very bad thing with regard to these policies, unless Democrats rethink their support for them:

Yet Democratic politicians in the US -- from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vowed at COP30 to force the United States back into the Paris Agreement, to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who threatens a "nuclear option" if California's strict vehicle emission standards are revoked -- must recognize that aggressive climate mandates are courting a severe voter backlash.

This is no surprise. Many statist policies are known to drag down the economy, and yet are impossible to rescind. This problem Lomborg never really deals with, although Ayn Rand addressed the issue many times: These policies are enacted because most people see them as moral. For the same reason, opponents lose their nerve and never uproot them for fear of being seen as immoral.

Practically everyone agrees (wrongly) that morality demands sacrifice. On might argue that, at least Bill Gates types want humans to benefit from these sacrifices, but that is no challenge to the idea that it is okay for governments to steal from us and order us around.

On top of that, as Harry Binswanger recently pointed out, climate catastrophists already have a ready answer for Gates and his ilk:

[N]one of the predicted disasters have come to pass. All the warnings and the alarms about "the death of the planet" were wrong. None of the IPCC models were right in their predictions of what global temperatures were going to be.

More than that: climate has not changed in 100 years.

There's no obvious difference from 1925 in the weather of Paris, Albuquerque, Sydney, New York City, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, London, Tel Aviv ... you name it.

Some people are beginning to notice. Even some climate scientists. So what is the new line?

"See what we saved you from?!"

The discrepancy between how planet Earth is and what they claimed it would be is being sold as a victory for recycling, better smokestacks, and the Paris Accords. I kid you not.

Perhaps Gates would see through this argument, but many less-rigorous thinkers will be apt to think something like What difference will some vaccination program make to a country if it's all underwater in 20 years. Better play it safe.

An overall shift to making humans -- rather than "the environment" -- the alleged beneficiaries of the welfare state might be preferable if it actually happened, in the same sense that a skinned knee is usually preferable to getting cut on the wrist.

And I say usually because it leaves unchallenged the altruist-collectivist ideas that make improper government possible, and which make rational cost-benefit analyses impossible regardless of anyone's cognizance of costs.

Don't forget that while climate policies would be economically catastrophic, socialism/communism has killed over a hundred million. When sacrifice is the ideal, it is impossible to guess when the collectors will say when.

-- CAV

P.S. The last link contains a good example of cost-benefits analysis concerining climate policies.