Young People Want a Better Future: Let's Educate Them About How
A bunch of kids around the world played hooky Friday—many with their teachers’ encouragement—to protest governments’ alleged lack of action on climate change. They claim to represent an entire generation that believes the planet will change irrevocably in their lifetime, creating a massive economic crisis and potentially the end of the world as they know it. Every generation has its own cause, and youthful idealism is a marvelous thing. Yet the fact that this is even happening demonstrates a remarkable failure to teach young people basic critical thinking and history. If people were educated on the law of unintended consequences, the role free markets have played in solving similar problems in the past and the importance of reading an entire scientific study rather than relying on simplistic presentations of selected headline findings, then our society could have a much more fruitful conversation about this issue.
Science—including climate science—is wonderful and complex. Most studies have dozens of pages and models investigating a range of outcomes. The margin of error is often huge. Results are often inconclusive. Even the past is near impossible to model due to unreliable temperature data. A typical study will try to project the likely long-term consequence of various emissions levels. Yet because media is a for-profit business (that isn’t a complaint!), reporters don’t have much incentive to present the entire range of possible outcomes. That would probably result in dull headlines that don’t get many clicks. So reporters frequently latch onto the worst-case scenario findings, ignoring that they are simply one of many possible outcomes and not necessarily the most likely. This summer, The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins highlighted a typical example, tied to reporters’ handling of the US National Climate Assessment. Most dwelled on one estimate of the economic cost of climate change: $500 billion annually by 2090. But:
Not a single news report mentioned that this outcome was associated with an extreme worst-case temperature increase of more than 11 degrees Fahrenheit. Not one mentioned that the assessment relied on an emissions scenario, known as RCP 8.5, so extreme that it implies much bigger problems for future humanity than just a warmer climate.
Instead, just about every U.S. news story satisfied itself with shrill adjectives suggesting the report promised a climate doom that it didn’t.
It might interest you to know that, of the two-dozen-plus climate models consulted by scientific bodies, only one model, that of the Institute of Numerical Mathematics in Moscow, accurately simulates past climate changes. It also forecasts the least warming, about 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit, under realistic emissions assumptions.
Looking under the hood takes time. It requires critical thinking and a willingness to accept data that might not fit your preconceived notions. Growing up, teachers drilled the scientific method into us: Observe, analyze, test, deduce. If your hypothesis isn’t correct, embrace it and revel in your new discoveries! A classical scientific education is what students deserve today, not encouragement to accept one headline finding at face value without digging deeper.
There is a reason the modern Green movement—as embodied by Extinction Rebellion—has become a cause of the progressive left: They are able to use it as a cover for pushing socialism and communism. Not in the misconstrued giant welfare state interpretations of socialism, but in the government taking over vast swaths of the private economy sense. Abolition of all fossil fuels, rejection of agricultural technology and mass food production, rejection of technological solutions like carbon capture and nuclear power, banning corporations (particularly Energy companies) from the climate debate and promoting “non-market, community-led climate solutions.” Ironically, the climate strikers often use the slogan “unite behind the science” while rejecting actual scientific research and development. This is more like “unite behind the communism.” It is like an extreme version of the mass socialist re-engineering underlying some US lawmakers’ and presidential candidates’ climate proposals.
The manifesto brings to mind that time a leader of a vast, great nation decided de-industrialization and community-based subsistence farming were the key to national perfection. He also enlisted teenagers as cultural soldiers. His name was Mao Zedong. He was Chairman of the Communist Party of China. This campaign, which he ironically called the Great Leap Forward, led to famine that researchers estimate killed between 23 and 55 million people. It was neither great nor a leap forward. It was a tragedy.
It also ignores some very tough questions. It calls for a complete ban on fracking, which fails to recognize the role fracking has played in reducing harmful emissions during this decade. By making natural gas abundant and cheap, it drove a market-led shift from coal-fired to natural gas power plants. All greenhouse gas emissions—carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide—fell as natural gas gained prominence. Obviously, the long-term goal for all is further reductions and a safer, healthier planet. But why abandon a solution that has improved matters in the interim, buying time for technology to continue advancing?
Wind and solar seem to be the be-all, end-all for Climate Strikers. This obsession demonstrates surface-level thinking. It focuses on the immediate benefit: Neither wind turbines nor solar panels have smokestacks. However, there are plenty of less-visible costs. As Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Mark P. Mills pointed out in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic. Solar power requires even more cement, steel and glass—not to mention other metals.” Mandating 100% wind and solar power would require a massive worldwide mining operation—and all of the associated pollution. The batteries required to store this power would also consume massive amounts of natural resources. Plus, nothing lasts forever. What do you do with those 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic when the turbine reaches the end of its life? Solar panels are also difficult to recycle. One study estimates: “Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.” Obviously, solar panels have the benefit of not carrying the risk of meltdown and catastrophic loss of life. But ignoring their inherent tradeoffs solves nothing in the long term.
The Extinction Rebellion movement also speaks passionately about “Climate Apartheid,” claiming the effects of climate change are dooming people in the southern hemisphere to permanent poverty. This is perhaps the most dangerous of all. One, it gives kleptocratic dictatorships in parts of Africa a free pass, enabling them to continue the bad behavior that has robbed their people of opportunity and prosperity. Two, it promotes billions of dollars’ worth of climate aid for these countries, which—while well-intended—will only prop up those dictatorships. Three, by rejecting agricultural technology, it robs people in these communities of the same opportunities for economic development that the West and Far East enjoyed. Is that not the actual apartheid risk? Throughout history, the free market has lifted billions more people out of poverty than any government program or charitable initiative ever could. Africa’s free market is in its infancy. Should it not be allowed to grow organically and bring people the same prosperity that we enjoy? Calls for the abolition of jet travel and other modern luxuries seem similarly hostile to developing nations.
This also calls to mind the tragedy of Silent Spring. Its author, Rachel Carson, is an environmental hero in the developed world for her efforts to ban the pesticide DDT in the mid-20th century. Research showed DDT was endangering bird populations by making eggshells so thin, they’d break when the parents sat on them in the nests. Governments worldwide signed on to the ban. But in addition to using DDT as agricultural pesticides, developing nations were also using it to control the mosquito population to prevent the spread of malaria. Because Carson’s book suggested a link between DDT and leukemia (which subsequent studies debunked), governments banned DDT for all uses. Mosquito populations skyrocketed in the developing world, as did malaria cases, and millions of people died in the decades following the ban. The situation did not turn around until the World Health Organization reinstated DDT in its battle against malaria in 2006.
People wrongly cast capitalism as the villain behind all that is wrong with the Earth today, associating it with greed and exploitation. Yet along with free markets, capitalism’s mission has always been to allocate scarce resources and solve problems. It is capitalism the freed women from housework and enabled them, if they chose, to join the workforce. It is capitalism that drove the shale revolution and the associated reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It is capitalism that is spurring companies to pursue all the technological solutions that Extinction Rebellion rejects. It is capitalism (namely, the automobile) that saved New York and London from being buried in horse dung. It is capitalism (namely, industrial farming and international trade) that helped reduce food scarcity. It is capitalism that is trying to solve the food storage and distribution problems that contribute to malnutrition in India. It is capitalism that is pursuing ways to make fresh water more plentiful, including desalination and waste water treatment.
It seems pretty doubtful that all the young people striking last Friday are really advocating for communism, de-industrialization and a permanent developing-world underclass deprived of opportunities. They are out there because they want a better future. It is past time for proper education on what will—and won’t—bring that better future for all.
