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Sept. 30, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
07:05
Climate Change or Climate Nonsense!
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So, you are pointing out that even if everything is followed according to the Paris Accords by, what is it, 2030 or 2040, 71% of all energy will still come from fossil fuels.
Is that correct?
Yeah, by 2040, even with the EU going much further than their Paris promises, we will still be getting 73% of our energy from fossil fuels.
So, it only adds to my suspicion that, for example, this $3.5 trillion American economy-crushing bill, which has so much of its money going to green energy, it is about something other than climate.
Do you have a suspicion, or do you agree with me?
Oh, look, I mean, if you look at the Green New Deal, both in the US and in Europe, it's a lot of other things bundled into climate.
That's absolutely true.
But I think it's also this wishful thinking that somehow, look, green ought to be cheaper, so let's make it cheaper by just throwing lots of money at it.
Of course, you can do that in rich countries for a while.
You can't keep doing it because taxpayers tend to get really upset when they have to keep paying.
But the real point, of course, is you're not going to get most poor countries to do this.
You're not going to get India or most of Africa, not even China, which is now a middle-income country, to actually spend lots of their resources on more expensive but less reliable energy.
So the real way we're going to fix this is only if you can innovate.
The price of green energy down below fossil fuels.
If we had cheap green energy, that could be nuclear, that could be fusion, it could be solar with very, very cheap batteries.
If we had cheaper than fossil fuels, everyone would switch and we wouldn't need a $3.5 trillion deal.
That's right.
So let me throw a few questions at you that are always posed.
But first, let me give you the big one or a big one.
I wrote a column a couple of months ago.
There was another hysterical piece in the New York Times about climate change.
And then I decided, I often do this, I read comments to articles.
I think that they're very illuminating.
And in the case of the New York Times, they're all New York Times subscribers, because you can't read the article if you're not a subscriber.
And many of them wrote, that's why I wrote my column on this, many of them wrote, That their parents and their adult children have decided not to have children.
And as much as they would like to have grandchildren, they are proud of their children for not bringing children into a world of such existential destruction as climate change.
What would you say to these people?
I'd say two things.
First of all, I understand why you think this way.
Look, we're flooded with stories every day in mainstream media telling us the world is about to collapse and global warming is making everything worse.
But it's not true, and that's the second point.
Look, global warming is a problem, but it's by no means the end of the world.
So just to give you a sense of proportion...
The latest UN climate panel report from 2018 to estimate what's the total cost of global warming finds that if we do nothing about climate change for the rest of the century, nothing at all, the total cost will be equivalent to 2.6% of global GDP. That's a problem, not the end of the world.
Just to give you a sense of proportion, we estimate, and this is again the UN, estimate that by the end of the century, the average person on the planet, We'll be 450% as rich as he or she is today.
Because of unmitigated global warming, we will only be 436% as rich.
Yes, that's a problem.
No, it's not something to get frustrated over, to think that the world is ending, or indeed to stop having children.
This is simply panic, unvarnished climate alarmism.
Okay, so you have given so much thought to this.
What is your theory as to what animates this panic?
Not in the reader of the New York Times, but in the New York Times.
Oh, for the New York Times, I think it's simply a question of saying, you know, if it bleeds, it leads.
catastrophic stories has always been much more fun and generate more subscription and more clicks and more interest than telling people, look, global warming is a slightly worse issue of the stuff that you already know a lot about.
But that's not going to get any.
All right.
So what about all the professors?
They're not bleeds at leads.
What animates them?
It's hard to know.
I think a lot of them are focused on their own little areas where, indeed, global warming will often create some bigger problems.
Take, for instance, sea level rise.
Sea levels rising, and if you do nothing, will mean more things will get flooded.
Miami is often brought up.
But, you know, there's a big story two years ago, also in the New York Times, about how most of southern Vietnam would be flooded.
But it's not like humanity hasn't fixed us before.
The simple point is to point to Holland.
Most of Holland is way below sea level, and they live fine.
And it's very cheap to adapt to.
And indeed, most of southern Vietnam, which they predicted would be underwater in 2050, is already underwater.
But people don't walk around in the scuba gear.
They have protected most of southern Vietnam.
Smartly.
And so the point here is we have many people who work in this are very honest and probably even terrified because they see sea levels rise and they say, but that's going to mean more flooding.
No, because humans are smart creatures.
We've fixed this for centuries.
We know how to do this very cheaply.
Read Bjorn Lomborg every week in the Wall Street Journal.
I will have him on.
I do have him on regularly, but I can't have him on too often.
And read his book about panic.
What is the name of your book on panic?
It's False Alarm, How Climate Change Costs Trillions and Fails to Fix the Plan.
False Alarm.
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