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Climate change is only expected to harm world GDP by about 4% by 2100 (the worst estimates put it at 20%), and the range of likely temperature increases has narrowed recently, for the better. A lot of people talk as though humanity is going to go extinct. Young people are even choosing not to have kids because of it.
In my work and personal life lately, I have seen an absolute take over environmentalist ideology. It produces huge amount of bureaucratic waste and endless non-sensical decisions. There are endless complex government rebates and regulations designed to fight climate change. I meet so many people whose work is somehow related to some kind of government program to fight climate change. I haven't tried to quantify it. But I find it hard to believe it isn't going to greatly exceed 4% of GDP in the next 77 years.
It seems to be taking on some features of religion, where people want to endure painful sacrifices to show their allegiance to a social cause. Just in the last few years, ridiculous and pointless inconveniences have been imposed and more are coming.
We have banned plastic straws and replaced them with soggy paper ones.
We have banned plastic grocery bags and replaced them with paper bags that rip and dig into your skin.
We have have banned clear garbage bags to make sure people are recycling and composting even though this has been shown for some time to be wasteful.
In my city there explicitly deliberate attempts to increase congestion and reduce parking to discourage people from driving.
They want to ban gas engines by 2030.
There's even talk of banning oil fired furnaces.
All of this in a country which will likely benefit from climate change. A carbon tax (which we have already) would probably be beneficial, but instead, we get a hodge podge of minimally helpful and maximally inconvenient regulations.
Some of these may seem like minor inconveniences, but they are a sign that people are focused on showy sacrifice and not actual progress. This attitude pervades the entire movement and means it is probably going to be net harmful by its very nature.
There is no economic or rational thinking driving this. Every decision seems to begin and end with whether or not it helps the environment. There is no talk of trade-offs or how to most efficiently help the environment.
The government is using climate change as an excuse to meddle in every aspect of our lives for the worse. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve has lately been making up nonsense about accounting for climate risks in its regulation of the financial sector.
This is all very dangerous because something which has a far bigger effect on our future prosperity than climate change is very small changes to the rate of economic growth. A 4% decrease in GDP by 2100 is equivalent to a 0.05 percentage point reduction in economic growth.
But environmentalism has become something opposed to progress itself. It views our future as one where everyone's quality of life is worse. The enormous convenience of plastic and personal vehicles will be gone.
Do you mind if I link this from the Heat Pump culture war post? It's everything I was trying to say but better.
I have so many graphs of absurdities like Germany's "sustainable energy revolution" fueled by burning wood chips and brown coal, and all I can do is gesture in helpless rage at how evil I find it all.
Go ahead.
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