OPINION:
Within a month, climate activists got their fondest wish. Greenhouse gas emissions dropped to levels similar those called for in the Paris Climate Accords. Skies in the world’s great industrial cities are clearer than they have probably been in over a century and wild animals cavort in urban streets devoid of vehicular traffic.
Greta Thunberg must be frolicking in her little Birkenstocks. Just as quickly, however, the direst predictions of those who have been concerned about the economic and social costs of overreacting to climate change have also become reality. Breadlines wind for blocks around food pantries and unemployment rates not seen since the great depression plague almost all the world’s industrialized nations. It may be a temporarily greener world, but it is a dystopian shade of green.
This crisis has given both sides of the climate change debate things to ponder. We can certainly now see what a cleaner world looks like, but we are also experiencing its costs. It would take a pretty fanatic climate change activist not to have empathy for the millions rendered unemployed and destitute by the COVID-19 pandemic. This mirrors the impact of shutting down the many industries that would be needed for a rigid enforcement of the Paris Accords.
The pandemic’s impact is particularly severe on the most economically vulnerable of the world’s population. African-Americans have been particularly hard hit as have people in the developing world who were living paycheck-to-paycheck at best before COVID-19 hit. Many of them are in smokestack industries, the energy sector or in transportation. These jobs are the ones that will be most impacted by the Paris Accords. Conversely, those of us who have long believed that sacrificing economic growth for a greener planet is a bad idea have had the opportunity to glimpse the possibilities open if we can further clean up the environment. Prosperity and ecology are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Developments in the past few weeks have shown promise that science can end the worst of the crisis with more extensive testing, new vaccines and medicines which can mitigate the worst of the human toll. If science can act quickly to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak, we should ask ourselves if it can find ways to clean up the environment without destroying the long-term economic health of the planet. Many of us think that a combination of aggressive carbon-scrubbing technologies and a massive tree-planting campaign could do better to offset greenhouse gasses than the dismantling of coal and oil industries. We believe that — if science could enable these industries to exist — it can also help to mitigate the worst effects.
Climate activists — particularly those on the far left of the political spectrum — disagree. In doing so, they often make two contradictory arguments. The first is that scrubbing technologies are too expensive. Having now spent trillions to ease the economic impact of COVID-19 on the American people, the billions spent on scrubbing would seem like chump change. There is nothing like a worldwide crisis to put things in context.
The second activist argument calls for shutting down energy industries to punish the evil corporations which have polluted the planet in the first place. What we would then do with the millions of workers permanently displaced by this corporate flogging remains murky at best. The general answer is that green jobs will replace the smokestack employment eliminated. I’ve yet to see an economist who can make those numbers balance.
Most academic experts seem to agree that the economies of the nation and the world will bounce back quickly as the COVID-19 threat recedes. However, that will not be the case if the Paris Accords are fully implemented. This economic disaster hit us quickly, and it was deliberately self-inflicted in order to save lives. Aside from some Polar Bears, the accords will not save lives; but they will certainly ruin many.
In addition, the Paris Accords are irreversible. If a major super-volcanic event occurs that appears to be temporarily cooling the planet, scrubbing technologies can be turned off. Once a major energy industry is gone, chances are it will be gone for good at a time when winters become temporarily longer, and coal and heating oil are again in demand.
Like professional sports and corner bars, the climate change debate has gone into temporary hiatus, but they all will be back once the pandemic abates. The activist will extol the good that the pandemic did to the climate, and we skeptics will mourn the cost.
• Gary Anderson lectures on Alternative Analysis at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
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