The High Cost of Climate Alarmism

From Gore's failed predictions to Gates' pivot, the real threat is 'policy panic.'

For decades, the narrative of imminent, apocalyptic climate change has been used to justify a massive expansion of state control. But a funny thing happened on the way to doomsday: the predictions failed to materialize, and now, even one of the movement’s chief proponents, Bill Gates, is signaling a dramatic pivot.

The cost of this alarmism is debilitating, as it was used to demand severe government mandates and trillions in taxpayer spending. This effort escalated with Al Gore’s 2006 ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ The film’s ‘scientific’ predictions were used to popularize the call for a massive expansion of state control.

The alarmism was so potent that a 2007 UK High Court case ruled the film contained nine ‘significant errors’ and was presented in a ‘context of alarmism.’ For example, the film suggested polar bears were ‘drowning in significant numbers,’ a claim based on a single study of four bears found after an extreme storm. It presented a 20-foot sea-level rise as an imminent threat, a scenario the court noted would likely take millennia, not decades.

Meanwhile, strong government policies like the “Green New Deal” disproportionately harm the poorest among us, all based on a ticking time bomb that never materialized. The doomsday focus of “near-term emissions” is a distraction... The greatest threat... is not the climate “tipping point” rhetoric but the policy panic of climate alarmism.