Doing Far More Damage Than Good
– By Howard Sierer –
Does it make sense to pursue a lofty goal while doing a lot of damage in the process? It depends, of course, on the extent of the good compared to the damage.
The environmental left’s “lofty goal” is to limit the worldwide temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C by 2100 by eliminating manmade greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. This goal is described as “net zero,” a catchy and easily understood phrase that has been picked up and endlessly repeated by the media and leftist politicians worldwide.
However, net zero supporters grossly exaggerate net zero’s benefits while ignoring the real and quantifiable economic damage their proposed policies would inflict on people worldwide. Two recent papers demonstrate that net zero costs $17 for every $3 of benefit, severely limiting gains in worldwide health, nutrition, education, and public welfare.
To sell their expensive and lifestyle-changing policies to a skeptical public, climate alarmists tout benefits that are either nonexistent or grossly exaggerated. Contrary to media hype, hurricanes, tornados, droughts, and floods have not increased in frequency or intensity; heat waves and forest fires in the U.S. are much less common than in decades past; global crop yields are increasing. Increases in heat-related deaths are far exceeded by reductions in cold-related deaths. In a previous column, I showed how the media ignores government-supplied data on all these phenomena, instead claiming that every natural disaster is due to climate change.
Bottom Line: The damage the world experiences each year from climate-related disasters is shrinking, both expressed as a fraction of GDP and as lives lost.
Nonetheless, climate alarmists and the media have managed to convince 67 percent of the public – most of whom only read headlines – that the federal government should be doing more to mitigate climate change. Yet 57% of Americans would be unwilling to pay even $10 per month to address climate change.
Climate activists need not worry: our political leaders are spending taxpayer dollars far in excess of $10 per taxpayer per month already. And to even come close to net zero, the even-greater sums needed are stunning and would produce far more economic damage than the public will be willing to tolerate. And all with little demonstrable benefit.
The economic costs of net zero were exposed in the September 2023 issue of Climate Change Economics. In particular, that issue contained two ground-breaking economic analyses of net zero’s cost.
“Costs and Benefits of the Paris Climate Targets” surveys 39 papers with 61 published estimates of total climate change damage in economic terms. If temperatures are held to a rise of no more than 1.5 degrees C, the annual global domestic product would be 3.1% higher than it would be with higher temperatures.
What’s not to like about that? Based on the latest cost estimates of emission reductions from the United Nations climate panel, the article’s author finds that fully delivering on the 1.5-degree Paris promise will cost 4.5% of global GDP each year by midcentury and 5.5% each year by 2100. The upshot: net zero costs will be much higher than the likely benefits for every year throughout this century and into the next.
These cost estimates assume governments choose the most cost-effective greenhouse gas reductions instead of piecemeal measures like electric vehicle subsidies that are easier for the public to swallow. Studies show that the policies actually being enacted to curb carbon emissions will cost more than twice the theoretical expense.
In a second article covered in Climate Change Economics, five MIT economists wrote a peer-reviewed paper titled “Net Zero Emissions of Greenhouse Gases by 2050: Achievable and at What Cost?” Using MIT models, the authors are even more pessimistic about net zero’s cost-effectiveness. They estimate that implementing Paris policies would cost 8% to 18% of annual GDP by 2050 and 11% to 13% annually by 2100.
All climate economic models show that moderate policies make sense: initial carbon cuts are cheap and scale back the most damaging temperature rise. But going all the way to net zero makes no economic sense. Averaged across the century, delivering the Paris climate promises would create benefits worth $4.5 trillion (in 2023 dollars) annually. That’s dramatically smaller than the $27 trillion annual cost that implementing Paris promises would incur. In other words, each dollar spent will avoid less than 17 cents of supposed climate damage. Even if these analyses are off by a factor of two or even three, net zero is a huge waste of worldwide resources.
If for no other reason than oil and natural gas are limited resources that will run out someday, developing workable alternative energy sources is a worthy goal. Since the sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t always blow, developing cost-effective battery storage is not just desirable but mandatory. But until massive battery storage is available – and there is no proven, cost-effective technology, only unproven ideas – net zero is a fantasy.
Government should be spending our tax dollars on basic research, not on what is mostly a political movement, not a scientific one. A Copenhagen Consensus study shows that government investment in green R&D would be 66 times as effective as Paris policies while costing between 1% and 10% as much.
Can the political momentum be redirected to where it will do the most good? Once the public begins to feel the net zero financial bite, maybe there’s a chance.
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