I'm all for a more realistic approach to climate policy, but at least pretend to engage with real-world research and policy rather than a bunch of convenient strawmen that support your pre-existing position.
"at least pretend to engage with real-world research and policy rather than a bunch of convenient strawmen that support your pre-existing position."
Oren's intellectual identity has gotten him to the point of being feted by the Vice President and Secretary of State--why would he start being an honest broker now?
Interesting that the great bogey man of these pages, China, is making the opposite bet. They don't just burn coal, they already dominate the green energy industries of the future. Like our burgeoning debt, with Don about to break his first term record, our partisan soaked myopia will leave this turd in our grandchildren's punch bowl as well. Here's hoping China shares their technology...
Yes I acknowledged that, they're building major new coal installations. Two things can be true at once. Find a non-partisan source you trust (ignoring the left and right fringes) and compare where both countries stand. The rest of the world will keep moving forward regardless of the outcome of inane US culture wars. We can choose to participate and out compete them, or cede the ground. Our choice.
For what its worth. I put this in Googles Gemini Deep Research: "But in the broader scheme of a century of economic, technological, and geopolitical changes and challenges, the gradual increase in global temperatures does not rank high. This is not my opinion, it is the conclusion of the climate models, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the analyses that attempt to translate these forecasts into economic impacts."
I would like you to assess the veracity of this statement.
This was the Executive Summary (the report was over 12 pages. It can easily be reproduced):
I. Executive Summary
The assertion that the gradual increase in global temperatures does not rank high among a century of economic, technological, and geopolitical changes and challenges, a view attributed to climate models, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and economic impact analyses, is the subject of this report. A rigorous, evidence-based examination of authoritative scientific and economic sources reveals that this statement is largely contradicted by the overwhelming body of available data.
Far from being a low-ranking concern, climate change is consistently identified as a systemic, high-ranking, and escalating threat with profound, often irreversible, economic, social, and environmental consequences. The IPCC, the leading international body for assessing climate change, issues "final warnings" about the rapidly closing window to avert catastrophic impacts and emphasizes that risks escalate with every increment of global warming. Economic analyses from institutions such as Swiss Re and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) project multi-trillion dollar losses, with some recent studies likening the potential economic damage to that of a "permanent war." Furthermore, global risk assessments, exemplified by the World Economic Forum's reports, consistently place environmental risks, including extreme weather events and critical Earth system changes, as dominant long-term concerns, which are increasingly manifesting as significant short-term crises. This comprehensive analysis demonstrates that the premise of the user's statement does not align with the conclusions of the very institutions it cites.
EVs are not good industrial policy but as your general argument goes spending a lot of money to replace something that works with something else that might work. They also move the pollution problem elsewhere to either hapless 3rd World countries or industrial economies that tolerate it for economic advantages to the working class.
I am glad the car is working for you. The issue is that when things break (especially electronic), spare parts may be extremely hard to come by. If you think as an EV as a computer or Iphone with wheels, no one has a 10 year old Iphone in use (often due to software updates).
For sure the market for spare parts will need to grow, but as the vehicle market shifts, it will - it'll be less changing water pumps and alternators and more changing chip components. So I take your point that I am at risk. But so is everyone owning an ICE car - take a look at the auto parts store shelves these days and talk to the workers. Then again, I live in CA.
I had a hybrid that lasted 17 years and was generally satisfactory. Indeed a better solution than all electric. Battery is a environmental problem when it dies though as well as an economic problem. I was lucky because Honda screwed up and the battery died 2 weeks before the warranty ran out instead of two weeks after. Price tag without warranty was $7000.
Bottom of the ocean is a good place for them. Supposedly, there's new battery tech coming which will pose less of a fire risk so another argument against rapid adoption.
Given that there is nothing more conservative than the conservation of the natural environment, the choice made by the new conservatives to alienate one of the their potential constituencies is a foolish one.
It reminds me of the Democratic Party alienating religious conservatives concerned about the poor over the issue of abortion.
Phrases like “unhinged,” and “disconnected from reality” spring to mind, followed by “virtue signalling” and “luxury belief”. Even saint Greta has moved on from climate activism.
My opinion: climate change is a manufactured crisis. I’ve lived through hysteria about a coming ice age, global warming, climate change, climate emergency, etc. predictions about mass disasters. All kinds of ‘the sky is falling’ hysteria. Each one involved a wildly expensive, “transformational” and gov’t centric ‘solution’ that was nothing of the sort.
Legitimate, credible studies show temps aren’t warming, storms aren’t getting worse, icebergs aren’t melting, and so on.
If you want to make the argument that cleaner air is good for everyone’s respiratory system I’m all in. Telling me that if I just pay more taxes the gov’t will alter our climate is bs.
And yet, many cling to the fanciful notion that this same government of federal bureaucrats can micromanage the global economy using the blunt, oft-discredited tool of tariffs:). They actually believe the federal government can bring old school factories back, much like some thought pay phones would prevail vis a vis cell phones. Recall Commerce Sec’y Howard Nutlick promising America an “army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws”. What a vision of the future. Yee hah. Good thing Don is the TACO prez.
This piece portrays climate change as a transactional proposition, one that must provide an almost immediate benefit from the investment in combatting carbon emissions. That's a false premise to say the least. The benefit to workers (and everyone else for that matter) is the prospect of enhanced quality of life for themselves and future generations. Reforming the world's carbon-based economies from the past hundred years will require substantial investments that will yield dividends that many of us may not live to see. Also, any high school essay writer can cherry-pick climate predictions to support their narrative, but the vast majority of scientific predictions on the gradual disaster of climate change have been accurate, and we're seeing the evidence unfold around the world. The longer we take to confront this pattern, the more it will take to fix it.
It takes political courage to tell voters that saving our planet will take investment and sacrifice. There won't be an immediate payoff for voters in meeting this challenge; so many voters are focused on making a better life for themselves and their families today -- the climate change threat (if they haven't been misled to dismiss it as folly) seems so far away. For the most part, conservative elected officials are pandering to these voters, promising to champion near-term payoffs without the costly investment in fighting climate change. For the sake of winning their next election, these politicians are kicking the climate disaster can down the road again.
One of the most noxious aspects of the climate alarmist propaganda is the self righteousness of their tone. It is particularly outrageous when these mostly urban dwellers lecture farmers and ranchers in Red states, when in fact these states have the cleanest water and air.
If the Green New Deal does as much for the “working class” as “globalization” (freedom) has, sign me up!
That’s the thing-Cass makes some good points but in the end he opposes freedom (“globalization”) too, and it’s freedom that has brought unprecedented prosperity to all classes, not substituting Trump-Cass state control (tariffs)for AOC-Klein state control (“Green New Deal”).
What a weird post from Oren. And he gives it away early on when he says he stopped writing about climate change in 2018. Really? 2018? That's seven years ago, a long time and a lot of politics ago. And he says he stopped because the claims of concerned people became too 'unmoored', and then proceeds to show us a couple of headlines where claims were completely opposite of one another, or somesuch.
So essentially Oren is saying that because we haven't been able to generate a completely clear picture of what the outcome of climate change will be, that is, the most fantastically complex phenomenon we've ever thrown at a computer, we should just ignore it. AND he's sure we can be absolutely clear--because there isn't a clear picture of outcomes--that the outcomes won't be too serious. It's not a crisis, it's just a 'challenge'. We just know that. Or rather Oren just knows that. No science or scientists need be referenced, it's just ok to cite a single UN climate report, which actually doesn't say what he pretends it does, while there are dozens of UN reports that are far more frantic in their assessments. But then again since scientists are overwhelmingly liberals, we know that their scientific judgement is distorted by politics. And look, they can't even figure out what this thing is going to look like that they insist we should be concerned about!
But oddly, Oren doesn't cite the many reports from international INSURANCE organizations, and international REAL ESTATE organizations that point out the simple, uncomplicated truth that our form of finance capitalism cannot survive on the present trajectory of extreme weather events (leaving out biodiversity and a host of other climate change dangers). You kind of don't need to have a Nobel in science or economics to get it. Just glimpsing the relationship between real estate, mortgages and insurance is good enough. Some of those reports are as close to 'freaking out' as somber organizations can go--and one suspects there are few Bolsheviks on their staffs. Let's see how what happens after the next major hurricane hits Florida this summer, or next. Because it's not if, but when. Places like Florida are simply the canary in the climate coal mine, although the data points accumulating every year everywhere bear out some of the worst predictions of climate scientists.
Because if you know anything about science and biology and complexity, you realize that the problem with climate change is precisely that you can't really say with certainty what is going to happen, because it's too (fucking) complex! That we all exist within--and are made up of--multiples of ecosystems that are interacting with one another and creating interacting bands of homeostasis at different levels. And when you threaten homeostasis, there is a certain point beyond which organisms simply break down, or mutate and shift altogether, and when everything is connected to everything else--which it is--you just don't know at what point X or Y happens. You just don't. But when you see, for example, extreme weather events happening more commonly, it's the beginning of a phase shift, which is going somewhere, but you actually don't know where. You can make reasonable guesses, but there is inherent uncertainty. But one thing we do know is that we're not going in the direction of more stability. And that has BIG implications, everywhere.
Unless of course, you're Oren, who simply knows it's not much of a problem because he thinks about it every seven years or so, and it really doesn't require that much grey matter after all.
Are you proposing a different way of addressing climate change, or are you just saying we should ignore it?
I ask because I think anyone that understands climate change would be critical of the policies proposed by Biden and the Democrats. It seems like there should be a possibility of addressing climate change with new deal style public works programs to build high speed rail, transmission lines, power plants, etc.
The damage that comes about because of climate change – hotter temperatures, more frequent tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and thunderstorms – hits all classes located in the areas of destruction. Yet it is the lower classes that suffer inordinately. They have less insurance or no insurance at all, and the capital loss represents a high proportion of their wealth than among those with higher incomes. Their lives are more devastated, they are less able to rent a hotel room or even a new residence until their new situation is completed. They are less able to cope with the loss.
The problem with climate change is that it is done in a capitalist economy where such costs are externalized and shifted to the public domain. Specific miscreants need no longer worry about paying for those costs since they are now external to the production process. Whether this is the heat generated by energy plants or fumes generated by car engines, these externalized pollutants are no longer part of the (profit = revenues – costs) equation that energizes capitalism. Who is going to pay these costs – I argue it is the lower class that inordinately pays for such costs – and how this is going to get done – beyond performative solutions – that require important thinking.
Your quote from The Once and Future Worker makes no sense; it’s too general and vague. Your hypothetical of “a neat little box sucked greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere” is silly and insulting.
Climate change is real, and it affects people, both rich and poor, but it hurts the poor more than the rich. Climate change policy may be an illusion or a deception, for as long as it doesn’t attack the root cause of the problem – capitalism – then it’s not going to really work. It will remain performative. The liberals aim for performance; the conservatives wish to sweep the problem under the rug. Either way, you’re right: it hasn’t resulted in a jot worth of difference in how the climate is changing.
There are plenty of things Hazlett gets wrong in that book (his chapter on protectionism could have been written by Ricardo and is clearly no longer accurate.) But his first 2 chapters are on "The Broken Window" and the "Blessing of Destruction": essentially the fallacy of war or disasters promoting employment.
Climate Change is akin to this fallacy. Breaking things just to rebuild them isn't productive. This is obvious, and yet in this area most liberals can't see it.
Most climate policy today is ideological theater—costly gestures with near-zero global impact, designed more to signal virtue than solve problems. It’s a luxury belief system: elites can afford the inefficiency, the rising costs, the disruption. The working class can’t. For them, it’s higher energy bills, fewer jobs, and more rules imposed from above. The tragedy isn’t climate inaction, but the delusion that symbolic action is progress. We’re wrecking livelihoods to “feel” like we’re saving the planet—when in reality, emissions keep rising and global players ignore us. It’s not policy. It’s performative lunatism disguised as moral urgency.
For a minute I thought you were describing Dons performative tariff policy. Gaslighting people in distress is his specialty. Meanwhile elites, especially the dear leader himself, pocket hundreds of millions. So much carnage so a few politicians "feel" like they are accomplishing Commerce Sec'y Howard Nutlick's vision : "The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones -- that kind of thing is going to come to America." Yippee! Can't wait...
Big week coming for the "new" right! Its leader is deploying troops on American streets to fight fellow Americans, (what could possibly go wrong) followed by the military parade honoring himself (here's hoping he goes full on North Korean with the big ole penile ICBM's). All on the heels of his slappy fight with Elon:) Isn't it time for a new Republican establishment, this one seems to be careening outta control. Good luck America...
I'm all for a more realistic approach to climate policy, but at least pretend to engage with real-world research and policy rather than a bunch of convenient strawmen that support your pre-existing position.
"at least pretend to engage with real-world research and policy rather than a bunch of convenient strawmen that support your pre-existing position."
Oren's intellectual identity has gotten him to the point of being feted by the Vice President and Secretary of State--why would he start being an honest broker now?
Interesting that the great bogey man of these pages, China, is making the opposite bet. They don't just burn coal, they already dominate the green energy industries of the future. Like our burgeoning debt, with Don about to break his first term record, our partisan soaked myopia will leave this turd in our grandchildren's punch bowl as well. Here's hoping China shares their technology...
Making the opposite bet? Coal plant construction in China reached a 10 year high in 2024.
Yes I acknowledged that, they're building major new coal installations. Two things can be true at once. Find a non-partisan source you trust (ignoring the left and right fringes) and compare where both countries stand. The rest of the world will keep moving forward regardless of the outcome of inane US culture wars. We can choose to participate and out compete them, or cede the ground. Our choice.
For what its worth. I put this in Googles Gemini Deep Research: "But in the broader scheme of a century of economic, technological, and geopolitical changes and challenges, the gradual increase in global temperatures does not rank high. This is not my opinion, it is the conclusion of the climate models, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the analyses that attempt to translate these forecasts into economic impacts."
I would like you to assess the veracity of this statement.
This was the Executive Summary (the report was over 12 pages. It can easily be reproduced):
I. Executive Summary
The assertion that the gradual increase in global temperatures does not rank high among a century of economic, technological, and geopolitical changes and challenges, a view attributed to climate models, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and economic impact analyses, is the subject of this report. A rigorous, evidence-based examination of authoritative scientific and economic sources reveals that this statement is largely contradicted by the overwhelming body of available data.
Far from being a low-ranking concern, climate change is consistently identified as a systemic, high-ranking, and escalating threat with profound, often irreversible, economic, social, and environmental consequences. The IPCC, the leading international body for assessing climate change, issues "final warnings" about the rapidly closing window to avert catastrophic impacts and emphasizes that risks escalate with every increment of global warming. Economic analyses from institutions such as Swiss Re and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) project multi-trillion dollar losses, with some recent studies likening the potential economic damage to that of a "permanent war." Furthermore, global risk assessments, exemplified by the World Economic Forum's reports, consistently place environmental risks, including extreme weather events and critical Earth system changes, as dominant long-term concerns, which are increasingly manifesting as significant short-term crises. This comprehensive analysis demonstrates that the premise of the user's statement does not align with the conclusions of the very institutions it cites.
EVs are not good industrial policy but as your general argument goes spending a lot of money to replace something that works with something else that might work. They also move the pollution problem elsewhere to either hapless 3rd World countries or industrial economies that tolerate it for economic advantages to the working class.
There is a good summary of the environmental advantages of hybrid/Plug In hybrids vs Full electric cars in these two articles. The engineering and math is really quite simple. This does not even account for the reality that EV cars will probably have a useful life of 7-10 years at best compared to Hybrid and ICE cars which now are 12-14 years. Note that Tesla bases their environmental claims on a 14 year life! https://www.thedrive.com/features/toyota-is-right-we-need-more-hybrid-cars-and-fewer-evs-heres-why and https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-vehicles-arent-taking-over-our-roads-as-fast-as-hype-artists-claim
My EV is 7 years and showing no signs of wear. Check back in a few years, but I'm clearly saving money on fuel and oil changes every year...
I am glad the car is working for you. The issue is that when things break (especially electronic), spare parts may be extremely hard to come by. If you think as an EV as a computer or Iphone with wheels, no one has a 10 year old Iphone in use (often due to software updates).
For sure the market for spare parts will need to grow, but as the vehicle market shifts, it will - it'll be less changing water pumps and alternators and more changing chip components. So I take your point that I am at risk. But so is everyone owning an ICE car - take a look at the auto parts store shelves these days and talk to the workers. Then again, I live in CA.
EVs are no better/no worse than fuel efficient ICEs. It’s as though nothing was improved…
I had a hybrid that lasted 17 years and was generally satisfactory. Indeed a better solution than all electric. Battery is a environmental problem when it dies though as well as an economic problem. I was lucky because Honda screwed up and the battery died 2 weeks before the warranty ran out instead of two weeks after. Price tag without warranty was $7000.
Another side effect is the incidence of major fires on the boats shipping them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qH1MjOSLeM.
Bottom of the ocean is a good place for them. Supposedly, there's new battery tech coming which will pose less of a fire risk so another argument against rapid adoption.
https://www.motor1.com/news/762063/toyota-says-hybrids-cleaner-evs/
Given that there is nothing more conservative than the conservation of the natural environment, the choice made by the new conservatives to alienate one of the their potential constituencies is a foolish one.
It reminds me of the Democratic Party alienating religious conservatives concerned about the poor over the issue of abortion.
Phrases like “unhinged,” and “disconnected from reality” spring to mind, followed by “virtue signalling” and “luxury belief”. Even saint Greta has moved on from climate activism.
You mean doublethink
No, Greta hasn’t. But nice try.
No she has. She supports the US backed genocide in Ukraine and not the one in Israel.
Walk. Chew gum.
You can do it, too.
My opinion: climate change is a manufactured crisis. I’ve lived through hysteria about a coming ice age, global warming, climate change, climate emergency, etc. predictions about mass disasters. All kinds of ‘the sky is falling’ hysteria. Each one involved a wildly expensive, “transformational” and gov’t centric ‘solution’ that was nothing of the sort.
Legitimate, credible studies show temps aren’t warming, storms aren’t getting worse, icebergs aren’t melting, and so on.
If you want to make the argument that cleaner air is good for everyone’s respiratory system I’m all in. Telling me that if I just pay more taxes the gov’t will alter our climate is bs.
I think the climate is incredibly difficult to model as there are tons of variables that we don't understand completely.
And yet, many cling to the fanciful notion that this same government of federal bureaucrats can micromanage the global economy using the blunt, oft-discredited tool of tariffs:). They actually believe the federal government can bring old school factories back, much like some thought pay phones would prevail vis a vis cell phones. Recall Commerce Sec’y Howard Nutlick promising America an “army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws”. What a vision of the future. Yee hah. Good thing Don is the TACO prez.
This piece portrays climate change as a transactional proposition, one that must provide an almost immediate benefit from the investment in combatting carbon emissions. That's a false premise to say the least. The benefit to workers (and everyone else for that matter) is the prospect of enhanced quality of life for themselves and future generations. Reforming the world's carbon-based economies from the past hundred years will require substantial investments that will yield dividends that many of us may not live to see. Also, any high school essay writer can cherry-pick climate predictions to support their narrative, but the vast majority of scientific predictions on the gradual disaster of climate change have been accurate, and we're seeing the evidence unfold around the world. The longer we take to confront this pattern, the more it will take to fix it.
It takes political courage to tell voters that saving our planet will take investment and sacrifice. There won't be an immediate payoff for voters in meeting this challenge; so many voters are focused on making a better life for themselves and their families today -- the climate change threat (if they haven't been misled to dismiss it as folly) seems so far away. For the most part, conservative elected officials are pandering to these voters, promising to champion near-term payoffs without the costly investment in fighting climate change. For the sake of winning their next election, these politicians are kicking the climate disaster can down the road again.
Again, how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere?
One of the most noxious aspects of the climate alarmist propaganda is the self righteousness of their tone. It is particularly outrageous when these mostly urban dwellers lecture farmers and ranchers in Red states, when in fact these states have the cleanest water and air.
If the Green New Deal does as much for the “working class” as “globalization” (freedom) has, sign me up!
That’s the thing-Cass makes some good points but in the end he opposes freedom (“globalization”) too, and it’s freedom that has brought unprecedented prosperity to all classes, not substituting Trump-Cass state control (tariffs)for AOC-Klein state control (“Green New Deal”).
What a weird post from Oren. And he gives it away early on when he says he stopped writing about climate change in 2018. Really? 2018? That's seven years ago, a long time and a lot of politics ago. And he says he stopped because the claims of concerned people became too 'unmoored', and then proceeds to show us a couple of headlines where claims were completely opposite of one another, or somesuch.
So essentially Oren is saying that because we haven't been able to generate a completely clear picture of what the outcome of climate change will be, that is, the most fantastically complex phenomenon we've ever thrown at a computer, we should just ignore it. AND he's sure we can be absolutely clear--because there isn't a clear picture of outcomes--that the outcomes won't be too serious. It's not a crisis, it's just a 'challenge'. We just know that. Or rather Oren just knows that. No science or scientists need be referenced, it's just ok to cite a single UN climate report, which actually doesn't say what he pretends it does, while there are dozens of UN reports that are far more frantic in their assessments. But then again since scientists are overwhelmingly liberals, we know that their scientific judgement is distorted by politics. And look, they can't even figure out what this thing is going to look like that they insist we should be concerned about!
But oddly, Oren doesn't cite the many reports from international INSURANCE organizations, and international REAL ESTATE organizations that point out the simple, uncomplicated truth that our form of finance capitalism cannot survive on the present trajectory of extreme weather events (leaving out biodiversity and a host of other climate change dangers). You kind of don't need to have a Nobel in science or economics to get it. Just glimpsing the relationship between real estate, mortgages and insurance is good enough. Some of those reports are as close to 'freaking out' as somber organizations can go--and one suspects there are few Bolsheviks on their staffs. Let's see how what happens after the next major hurricane hits Florida this summer, or next. Because it's not if, but when. Places like Florida are simply the canary in the climate coal mine, although the data points accumulating every year everywhere bear out some of the worst predictions of climate scientists.
Because if you know anything about science and biology and complexity, you realize that the problem with climate change is precisely that you can't really say with certainty what is going to happen, because it's too (fucking) complex! That we all exist within--and are made up of--multiples of ecosystems that are interacting with one another and creating interacting bands of homeostasis at different levels. And when you threaten homeostasis, there is a certain point beyond which organisms simply break down, or mutate and shift altogether, and when everything is connected to everything else--which it is--you just don't know at what point X or Y happens. You just don't. But when you see, for example, extreme weather events happening more commonly, it's the beginning of a phase shift, which is going somewhere, but you actually don't know where. You can make reasonable guesses, but there is inherent uncertainty. But one thing we do know is that we're not going in the direction of more stability. And that has BIG implications, everywhere.
Unless of course, you're Oren, who simply knows it's not much of a problem because he thinks about it every seven years or so, and it really doesn't require that much grey matter after all.
Are you proposing a different way of addressing climate change, or are you just saying we should ignore it?
I ask because I think anyone that understands climate change would be critical of the policies proposed by Biden and the Democrats. It seems like there should be a possibility of addressing climate change with new deal style public works programs to build high speed rail, transmission lines, power plants, etc.
Is that something you would support?
I guess if we don't have a planet to live on, it won't matter for anyone, rich or poor.
The damage that comes about because of climate change – hotter temperatures, more frequent tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and thunderstorms – hits all classes located in the areas of destruction. Yet it is the lower classes that suffer inordinately. They have less insurance or no insurance at all, and the capital loss represents a high proportion of their wealth than among those with higher incomes. Their lives are more devastated, they are less able to rent a hotel room or even a new residence until their new situation is completed. They are less able to cope with the loss.
The problem with climate change is that it is done in a capitalist economy where such costs are externalized and shifted to the public domain. Specific miscreants need no longer worry about paying for those costs since they are now external to the production process. Whether this is the heat generated by energy plants or fumes generated by car engines, these externalized pollutants are no longer part of the (profit = revenues – costs) equation that energizes capitalism. Who is going to pay these costs – I argue it is the lower class that inordinately pays for such costs – and how this is going to get done – beyond performative solutions – that require important thinking.
Your quote from The Once and Future Worker makes no sense; it’s too general and vague. Your hypothetical of “a neat little box sucked greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere” is silly and insulting.
Climate change is real, and it affects people, both rich and poor, but it hurts the poor more than the rich. Climate change policy may be an illusion or a deception, for as long as it doesn’t attack the root cause of the problem – capitalism – then it’s not going to really work. It will remain performative. The liberals aim for performance; the conservatives wish to sweep the problem under the rug. Either way, you’re right: it hasn’t resulted in a jot worth of difference in how the climate is changing.
I wish more people read Henry Hazlett's classic Economics in 1 Lesson.
https://fee.org/wp-content/uploads/ebooks/economics-in-one-lesson-pdf.pdf
There are plenty of things Hazlett gets wrong in that book (his chapter on protectionism could have been written by Ricardo and is clearly no longer accurate.) But his first 2 chapters are on "The Broken Window" and the "Blessing of Destruction": essentially the fallacy of war or disasters promoting employment.
Climate Change is akin to this fallacy. Breaking things just to rebuild them isn't productive. This is obvious, and yet in this area most liberals can't see it.
Most climate policy today is ideological theater—costly gestures with near-zero global impact, designed more to signal virtue than solve problems. It’s a luxury belief system: elites can afford the inefficiency, the rising costs, the disruption. The working class can’t. For them, it’s higher energy bills, fewer jobs, and more rules imposed from above. The tragedy isn’t climate inaction, but the delusion that symbolic action is progress. We’re wrecking livelihoods to “feel” like we’re saving the planet—when in reality, emissions keep rising and global players ignore us. It’s not policy. It’s performative lunatism disguised as moral urgency.
For a minute I thought you were describing Dons performative tariff policy. Gaslighting people in distress is his specialty. Meanwhile elites, especially the dear leader himself, pocket hundreds of millions. So much carnage so a few politicians "feel" like they are accomplishing Commerce Sec'y Howard Nutlick's vision : "The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones -- that kind of thing is going to come to America." Yippee! Can't wait...
Big week coming for the "new" right! Its leader is deploying troops on American streets to fight fellow Americans, (what could possibly go wrong) followed by the military parade honoring himself (here's hoping he goes full on North Korean with the big ole penile ICBM's). All on the heels of his slappy fight with Elon:) Isn't it time for a new Republican establishment, this one seems to be careening outta control. Good luck America...