...This alarmism is not only false but morally unjust. It leads us to make poor decisions based on fear, when the world not only has gotten better, but will be even better over the century.
...The UN Climate Panel’s middle-of-the-road estimate for the end of the century is that we will be even better off. There will be virtually no one left in extreme poverty, everyone will be much better educated, and the average income per person in the world will be 450 percent of what it is today. Yet, because climate is a real challenge, it will leave us less well off. Based on three decades of studies, the UN and the world’s only Nobel climate economist estimate global warming will reduce the 21st century welfare increase from 450 percent to “only” 434 percent of today’s income.
Clearly, this is a problem. But a 3.6 percent reduction by the end of the century is not an existential threat. Resorting to panic and hysteria is unlikely to help. Indeed, one of the UN Climate Panel authors warned against this: “We risk turning off the public with extremist talk that is not carefully supported by the science.”
...Spending 16 percent of a nation’s income to solve a smaller part of a 3.6 percent problem is bad policy. Moreover, it is unlikely to happen. We need smarter solutions.
Climate economic studies convincingly show that one of the best investments to fix climate in the medium run is to invest heavily in green R&D. Because research is cheap, we can explore many avenues, from better renewables and battery storage, to carbon capture and fusion, fission, carbon-neutral oil-producing algae, and more. If we can innovate on the price of green energy down below that of fossil fuels, everyone will switch — not just well-meaning rich people, but also most Chinese, Indians and Africans. The models show that each dollar invested in green energy R&D will avoid eleven dollars of climate damage.
It’s imperative that we shift our focus to such smart efforts — efforts that have been shown throughout history to work. We should tackle climate smartly, and also make sure that a monomaniacal focus on climate change doesn’t crowd out urgent investments in the many other, crucially important issues of health, education, jobs and nutrition.