Climate Change Reaches Peak "Blah" - Granite Grok

Climate Change Reaches Peak “Blah”

There are five phases to public policy panics, says political scientist Anthony Downs: With the introduction of Social Justice and Identity Politics into the Climate Change debate, we have reached the movement’s dying gasps.

The dying gasps of the Climate Change hoax and the descent into Social Justice have turned off the PublicDavid Gothard, WSJ
The dying gasps of the Climate Change hoax and the descent into Social Justice have turned off the Public: David Gothard, WSJ

Approximating the stages laid out by Anthony Downs:

  • Experts and Activists call attention to a problem (think James Hansen and AlGore)
  • Government and Media decide we “Must do Something” (Congress, The UN, Charlatans)
  • The public learns that the costs are huge and will barely dent the “problem” (Kyoto Protocol)
  • The public loses interest, and the constant alarmism from the activists becomes just noise
  • “An issue that has been replaced at the center of public concern moves into a prolonged limbo—a twilight realm of lesser attention or spasmodic recurrences of interest.” (Downs)

Read Steve Hayward’s article at the WSJ (subscription) or….
check out these pull quotes:

A good indicator of why climate change as an issue is over can be found early in the text of the Paris Agreement. The “nonbinding” pact declares that climate action must include concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” as well as “the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice.’

The descent of climate change into the abyss of social-justice identity politics represents the last gasp of a cause that has lost its vitality. Climate alarm is like a car alarm—a blaring noise people are tuning out.

Judged by deeds rather than words, most national governments are backing away from forced-marched decarbonization….. President Trump’s ostentatious withdrawal from the Paris Agreement merely ratified a trend long becoming evident.

All that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers. [RGGI, Anyone?]

bjorn-lomborg-wsjPace Eddie, who argues that CO2 is a real problem, but even Great Danes think there are better things to do for the world at much lower cost – I refer, of course, to Bjørn Lomborg, whose book Cool It laid out the ridiculous costs and minuscule benefits of the Kyoto Protocol, and showed how the world could to much more for the poor and “disenfranchised” with far less money!

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