First of all the very phrase “Climate Change” is a bit odd in the way it is deployed. No one sane would argue that climate doesn’t change. Almost no one argues against the fact that what humans do is one of the causes of changes to climate. However, in actual usage, the phrase has come to mean by usage and association “Catastrophic Climate Change”. This is quite a bit different. Different people believe or seem to believe that not only is catastrophic climate change coming but that it is coming really really soon. Some quote figures of mere years before complete catastrophe.
Oddly though an examination of the actual scientific opinion on the subject is quite varied as to how much of a catastrophe is likely, by when, and even the likely shape of the catastrophe. Different learned opinion on the subject comes to very different conclusions. I remember back in the seventies when the claimed coming catastrophe was an Ice Age. I remember when it was loudly claimed and in major media that vast starvation and resource depletion would do us in within a few decades. The point is over-dramatic pronouncements around climate catastrophe are not new and are quite often wrong.
It becomes very important to have the actual arguments for catastrophic climate change clearly expressed and massively debated. It is worrisome when debate about “Catastrophic Climate Change” is dismissed as if one were debating whether climate changes at all. In recent years we have seen an increase in academic and intellectual shouting down and shaming. But there can be no real science or consensus or liberal democratic society without open and earnest debate and examination of ideas as to to their merits and demerits.
This becomes even more crucially important when there is an international steam roller of government and international policy being enforced. It is as if just a hand wave at “climate change” which is taken as “catastrophic climate change” is enough reason to do whatever – even things that are quite extreme such as shutting down energy abundance or shutting down a lot of agriculture production.
It has been part of climate related environmentalism since the 70s, particularly in the Club of Rome “Limits to Growth” and its offshoots including the WEF to presume that human flourishing of ALL of humanity is actually “the problem”. It was assumed that if everyone had the standard of living of say, the EU, that that would lead to the destruction of the planet. So the ugly underbelly of realpolitik has included keeping much of the underdeveloped and developing world from actually developing. You can see the same effect in the drumbeat of over-population claims.
All of this ignores the very human characteristics of major innovation changing the assumptions of the models about actual costs of human flourishing. The models assume not much changes in technology and practices or in human desire for more children. This is a large part of why the models have failed to adequately predict what really happens for decades.
What is the attraction of models that make it acceptable to deny human beings the real possibility of flourishing? It certainly empowers the “tough-minded” seers of the “truth” to impose their will and ideas on the rest of us. It certainly protects the position of many already established elites relative to others and especially in the less developed parts of the world. It provides a bludgeon to beat down anything truly innovative that potentially overturns the basis for their relative position.
In the face of pushes to spin tens of trillions worldwide to move away from fossil fuels and especially to renewables it is crucial the argument is airtight that we have to do this or else. It cannot be just assumed. It will not do to simply shout down those that question it. Per-capita energy consumption is directly correlated to human flourishing. Anything that seriously destabilizes energy supplies is a real danger to humanity. We MUST know exactly what is required and exactly what consequences we are courting. I do not believe this is what is being done today.
So what is the real game that is afoot? If it was really about limiting CO2 in energy production and use wouldn’t we be clearing the path and the huge anti-nuclear power hysteria to build out clean modern fail-safe nuclear plants. Very few major climate catastrophe voices are pushing for this. But it is the most obvious dependable path to abundant to human flourishing energy availability. Curious, isn’t it?