The movement to combat climate change is shockingly selfish, counterproductive, and sometimes even stupid. And I’m not just referring to protesters dumping powder on a case containing the Constitution or sticking pictures to the glass over Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” I mean that the actions they advocate undermine the very goals they espouse.
Besides restricting people’s freedom and increasing their cost of living, climate activists’ ideological “purity” undercuts their own goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating a more just and equitable world.
While that may surprise some climate activists, it is perfectly clear to everyone else.
Climate activists like to portray themselves as high-minded, thinking about future generations and the planet. They are the ones willing to courageously support “climate transition” and to make the hard decisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by stalling economic growth. Yet they willfully ignore the consequences of their efforts because they have a different agenda.
The current climate mitigation agenda — subsidizing solar panels, wind farms, electric vehicles, and unqualified restrictions on the use of coal, gas, and oil — works against itself when it comes to reducing global emissions. And it ignores poor people and makes their lives more difficult while enriching its most influential advocates: bankers, asset managers, corporate executives, well-paid bureaucrats, and high-end consultants.
Fossil fuel restrictions and renewable energy mandates in European countries and in the U.S. do little to reduce global emissions. Emissions may decline in countries that generate more electricity from solar panels and wind turbines, but the price of energy rises. Therefore, energy-intensive industries migrate to countries like China, which have cheaper energy but use more fossil fuels and less sophisticated carbon collection technology. So, while Western activists feel good about themselves, global emissions actually increase.
Furthermore, most solar panel and electric vehicle battery manufacturing, which also generates significant greenhouse gas emissions, takes place in China. As a result, China already produces over one quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions annually.
Or consider the Biden administration’s recent moratorium on permits for LNG exports. Wealthy climate activists like members of the Rockefeller family have poured millions of dollars into organizations to lobby for less fossil fuel use. But LNG burns much cleaner than oil and coal. European countries that lose access to U.S. LNG will burn more coal to generate power, increasing rather than decreasing global emissions.
The administration and climate activists ignore these dynamics. Or perhaps they don’t care and simply want to punish Texas, where many new LNG terminals were going to be built, for standing up to their green agenda.
Everyone acknowledges that the “climate transition” to net zero in 2050 will be enormously expensive — $275 trillion by one estimate. But that number only includes explicit spending on infrastructure, renewable energy, and carbon capture. People around the world will also have to pay higher prices for everything. Reduced economic growth will be another significant economic cost.
But who pays for this climate transition? Saying “everyone” is true but misleading. Policies that increase the cost of energy make everything more expensive: cars, clothes, food, utilities, and so on.
That may not affect wealthy elites much, but it certainly makes the life of the middle class and the poor more difficult. These arguments are even more relevant for developing countries where people live in conditions most climate activists can’t even fathom. Imagine telling someone they shouldn’t have a refrigerator or running water because it will increase carbon emissions. Now imagine telling hundreds of millions of people that. That’s the result, if not the intent, of climate activism.
So much for equity and fairness.
There are two types of climate activists: those operating on a secret self-enriching agenda and their naïve but passionate followers. When they push net zero goals, some seek feelings of moral purity while many others seek lucrative positions or contracts. But people in developing countries want jobs, food, and economic development, not costly self-serving virtue-signaling from Westerners.
It’s time for disingenuous climate activists to stop pretending they are after the common good. And it’s time for the others to wake up and recognize the hypocrisy.
Paul Mueller, PhD, is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.