Press Is the Enemy of Climate
It’s easier to tell a story of good vs. evil than to understand the science.
There are lessons in the media’s psychiatric moment last week over the newly published U.S. National Climate Assessment.
Let’s give the New York Times credit. It was braver than just about every other news organization when it said, in its lead sentence, the “damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.”
Let’s give the New York Times credit. It was braver than just about every other news organization when it said, in its lead sentence, the “damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.”
I can’t figure out where the Times got
this, but it’s the difference between, say, 2% and 1.86% annual growth
over the next 82 years and happens to be about right. How does this
justify the dire adjectives it was swathed in? It doesn’t. I suspect
that’s why every other news report, including the Journal’s, relied on
adjectives alone rather than giving numbers—because the numbers just
aren’t that alarming.
What does the National Climate Assessment actually say? In 2090 the U.S. will experience annual climate-related costs of $500 billion. Notice that $500 billion, to echo a widespread misinterpretation of the Times report, is not 10% even of today’s economy (it’s 2.5%). It’s 10% of 1971’s economy.
Steven Koonin, a former Obama administration official and physicist, made a similar point
last week on these pages. He calculates that, after climate costs and
modest assumptions about growth, 2090’s economy would still be 3.8 times
larger than today’s. If so, $500 billion in annual costs would amount
to just 0.6% of GDP. Understand too that many costs enumerated in the
report are not detractors from gross domestic product but contributors
to it. Building a sea wall adds to GDP. Constructing a house to
withstand 2090’s weather adds to GDP. Weirder still, I saw not one news report that ventured to say
what the expected temperature would be in 2090. Maybe that’s because
doing so would reveal that these relatively bearable costs arise under a
worst-case scenario for emissions, known as RCP 8.5, which would
further undercut the media’s hysterical adjectives. This is a shame
because all such studies, including the new U.S. assessment, show that
the biggest threat to climate is a lack of prosperity.In fact, RCP 8.5 is a model of emissions under conditions of
economic stagnation. Trade, technology, global wealth and global per
capita income stagnate. Demographic transitions to slower population
growth don’t occur. Fracking is essentially uninvented. Countries burn
impossible amounts of coal because that’s the only resource they have
access to.Notice how important these assumptions are. It’s a mouthful, but here’s what
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says: “The
second-to-lowest RCP” [with about half the emissions of RCP 8.5] is
“consistent with a baseline scenario that assumes a global development
that focuses on technological improvements and a shift to service
industries but does not aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a goal in itself” (emphasis added).That is, a fast-growing world is greener even if it’s not trying to cut carbon.Unfortunately the environmentalist left has only itself to
blame for the developed world’s (not including the U.S.) wholesale
flight in the wrong direction. In France, the target of the rioters may
be a new fuel tax, implemented by the government as a gesture of climate
virtue. But as every news account tells us, what really is bringing
them into the streets is 30 years of slow growth and chronic joblessness
caused by towering taxes and antibusiness regulation.Put aside scientific uncertainties, which we haven’t talked
about. The clear lesson of last week’s U.S. government report and every
other official assessment is that climate change is not the end of the
world. We can handle the cost and we can also handle the cost of
avoiding a portion of climate change through sensible tax policy. (It
should not be necessary at this point to rehearse the case for a carbon
tax that is simultaneously pro-growth and anti-carbon.)Unfortunately the U.S. media have become a positive hindrance
to public understanding. Consider that systemization of banality known
as Axios. Last week it told its presumably politically engaged
readership that the way to “be smart” about climate change is to
understand that “In climate science, one side is the scientific
consensus, and the other is a small but vocal faction of people trying
to fight it.”In other words, reduce everything to a binary question of
believers vs. deniers, good guys vs. bad guys. Here’s the sad truth:
This narrative is mostly an invention of journalists for their own
convenience. It relieves them of having to understand a complicated
subject.I’m not trying to be funny. Over the past 15 or 20 years, the
climate beat has been handed over to reporter-activists who’ve decided
that climate science is impenetrable but at least nobody ever got fired
for exaggerating the risks of climate change.Their ignorant crisis-babble is why electorates everywhere now
believe climate and prosperity are necessarily at odds. Every study,
including the U.S. government’s latest, shows the opposite: Continued
prosperity is essential to mitigating the risks of climate change.
What does the National Climate Assessment actually say? In 2090 the U.S. will experience annual climate-related costs of $500 billion. Notice that $500 billion, to echo a widespread misinterpretation of the Times report, is not 10% even of today’s economy (it’s 2.5%). It’s 10% of 1971’s economy.
Steven Koonin, a former Obama administration official and physicist, made a similar point
last week on these pages. He calculates that, after climate costs and
modest assumptions about growth, 2090’s economy would still be 3.8 times
larger than today’s. If so, $500 billion in annual costs would amount
to just 0.6% of GDP. Understand too that many costs enumerated in the
report are not detractors from gross domestic product but contributors
to it. Building a sea wall adds to GDP. Constructing a house to
withstand 2090’s weather adds to GDP. Weirder still, I saw not one news report that ventured to say
what the expected temperature would be in 2090. Maybe that’s because
doing so would reveal that these relatively bearable costs arise under a
worst-case scenario for emissions, known as RCP 8.5, which would
further undercut the media’s hysterical adjectives. This is a shame
because all such studies, including the new U.S. assessment, show that
the biggest threat to climate is a lack of prosperity.In fact, RCP 8.5 is a model of emissions under conditions of
economic stagnation. Trade, technology, global wealth and global per
capita income stagnate. Demographic transitions to slower population
growth don’t occur. Fracking is essentially uninvented. Countries burn
impossible amounts of coal because that’s the only resource they have
access to.Notice how important these assumptions are. It’s a mouthful, but here’s what
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says: “The
second-to-lowest RCP” [with about half the emissions of RCP 8.5] is
“consistent with a baseline scenario that assumes a global development
that focuses on technological improvements and a shift to service
industries but does not aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a goal in itself” (emphasis added).That is, a fast-growing world is greener even if it’s not trying to cut carbon.Unfortunately the environmentalist left has only itself to
blame for the developed world’s (not including the U.S.) wholesale
flight in the wrong direction. In France, the target of the rioters may
be a new fuel tax, implemented by the government as a gesture of climate
virtue. But as every news account tells us, what really is bringing
them into the streets is 30 years of slow growth and chronic joblessness
caused by towering taxes and antibusiness regulation.Put aside scientific uncertainties, which we haven’t talked
about. The clear lesson of last week’s U.S. government report and every
other official assessment is that climate change is not the end of the
world. We can handle the cost and we can also handle the cost of
avoiding a portion of climate change through sensible tax policy. (It
should not be necessary at this point to rehearse the case for a carbon
tax that is simultaneously pro-growth and anti-carbon.)Unfortunately the U.S. media have become a positive hindrance
to public understanding. Consider that systemization of banality known
as Axios. Last week it told its presumably politically engaged
readership that the way to “be smart” about climate change is to
understand that “In climate science, one side is the scientific
consensus, and the other is a small but vocal faction of people trying
to fight it.”In other words, reduce everything to a binary question of
believers vs. deniers, good guys vs. bad guys. Here’s the sad truth:
This narrative is mostly an invention of journalists for their own
convenience. It relieves them of having to understand a complicated
subject.I’m not trying to be funny. Over the past 15 or 20 years, the
climate beat has been handed over to reporter-activists who’ve decided
that climate science is impenetrable but at least nobody ever got fired
for exaggerating the risks of climate change.Their ignorant crisis-babble is why electorates everywhere now
believe climate and prosperity are necessarily at odds. Every study,
including the U.S. government’s latest, shows the opposite: Continued
prosperity is essential to mitigating the risks of climate change.
No comments:
Post a Comment