Stephen Moore, a fixture on Fox News for all things economic, and a one time advisor to President Trump, has written a brilliant piece on the real cost of “climate change” as expressed through government largesse. (To be clear, his “fixture” status on Fox News means nothing to me as we pulled the plug on cable after they called Arizona in November of 2020. I mention it merely because that’s where lots of people know him from.)
He begins:
Environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg recently calculated that across the globe, governments have spent at least $16 trillion feeding the climate change industrial complex.
Just to add some perspective, if you spent $1 every second for 16 trillion seconds, it would take you 507,357 years — a half billion years — to do it. For further perspective, a half a billion years ago, our neanderthal ancestors were roaming the earth with giant wooly mammoths and they had just discovered how to make fire. One wonders if we’d even survive as a species long enough to spend it all. That’s how big that number is.
He goes on:
And for what?
Arguably, not a single life has been or will be saved by this shameful and colossal misallocation of human resources. The war on safe and abundant fossil fuels has cost countless lives in poor countries and made those countries poorer by blocking affordable energy.
Since the global warming crusade started some 30 years ago, the temperature of the planet has not been altered by one-tenth of a degree — as even the alarmists will admit.
In other words, $16 trillion has been spent — a lot of people got very, very rich off the government largesse — but there is not a penny of measurable payoff.
But it’s much worse than that. In economics there is a concept called opportunity cost: What could we have done with $16 trillion to make the world better off?
He goes on to list any number of things we could have done with that money. Lifted untold millions out of poverty, provided the most barren places on earth with water and power so those peoples could live some semblance of modern life, cured cancer and who knows what other diseases plaguing mankind. On and on and on. He continues with what I believe is the most important statement of the entire piece:
For this reason, it is important that we identify the green “climate change” derangement syndrome as perhaps the most inhumane political movement in history.
Amen.
I heartily recommend you read the entire thing. Here’s another link.