Climate change

The costs of not dealing with climate change are, of course, much higher than the costs of dealing with it. We know this because, as climate campaigners keep telling us, climate change is going to set the world alight and unleash mad tempests which are going to wreak destruction on the global economy. Not a few of them have been trying to prove this by parroting a paper by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research published in the journal Nature in 2024 which concluded that a rise of 8.5 Celsius in global temperatures by 2100 will shrink the economy by 62 percent.

Finally, thankfully, the global warming craze is dying out. To paraphrase Monty Python, the climate parrot may still be nailed to its perch at the recent COP summit in Belém, Brazil – or at Harvard and on CNN – but elsewhere it’s dead. It’s gone to meet its maker, kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. By failing to pledge a cut in fossil fuels, COP achieved less than nothing, the venue caught fire, the air-conditioning malfunctioned – and delegates were told on arrival not to flush toilet paper.

In between votes to legitimize the world’s worst regimes and condemn the world’s only Jewish state, the United Nations has found the time to introduce itself as a global governmental structure with the power to levy taxes on every inhabitant of Earth.   No, really.  The UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) is of the opinion that it can impose duties on the carbon emissions of ships to the tune of between $100 and $380 per metric ton. All of the revenue generated would be paid out to the UN’s “Net Zero Fund,” which would be used to “reward low-emission ships,” or pick winners and losers.

For decades, the picture of Earth’s future – as laid out by journalists and climate scientists alike – has been bleak. By 2070 we will see famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us, melted icecaps, flooding, extreme hurricanes and ever-present tropical storms. "Vast swathes" of the planet will be inhospitable for human life. And Greta Thunberg, in her late sixties, will wear a gas mask as she sits on the steps of Swedish Parliament with a cardboard sign declaring, "I told you so." Advocates have poured gasoline on the climate-alarmism fire earnestly, backed by reports declaring, "There really is no serious scientific debate remaining about climate change.

If one were looking for dismal assessments of the Trump administration’s contributions to the vitality of American intellectual inquiry, the editorial eructations of Holden Thorp would likely be at the top of the list.   Thorp is the editor-in-chief of Science, the weekly journal of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This makes him one of the most influential figures in the academy and in American science as a whole. Few weeks go by without an editorial from Thorp denouncing the havoc wrought by Trump. The May 8 issue is mildly titled, “The New Reality for American Academe,” but the mildness ends there.

As the Church of England faces an exodus of parishioners, some of its more inventive clerics have rushed to embrace EDM as a new medium to draw young people back to their faith. “Our 90s-themed silent disco will be appropriate to and respectful of the cathedral,” curiously insisted the Very Reverend David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, to much derision over that sacred space’s conversion into a party zone for 3,000 revelers in 2024.

A decade ago, when I first started contributing to the New York Times’s annual “52 Places to Go” list, the top user comments were about the destinations: Why was Calcutta chosen but not Chattanooga? This year, in a sign of the times, the most popular comments suggest that we should all just stay home to save the planet. The climate-obsessed among us are falling out of love with travel, particularly with the idea of exploring far-off places where your carbon footprint is greater. If their movement gains steam they won’t save the world, but they might well wreck the global economy and deprive themselves and others of much-needed perspectives and experiences that make the world a better place.

It’s chic to look down on big trucks and their drivers. Former president Donald Trump’s photo op with truckers in 2017 was immediately lampooned on social media and by liberal journalists. It would be fitting, then, if the trucking industry provides the example that kills the push to rapidly move developed economies to “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions. The fact is that any serious attempt to make Western economies “net zero” will be costly, technologically difficult and extremely disruptive to our way of life. Nothing captures these inconvenient truths better than the effort to force the electrification of the trucking industry. Trucks are to the modern economy what the circulatory system is to the body.