JULY 3, 2019
New York's climate change solution: Harm regular people for no noticeable benefit
By
Gregory Wrightstone
Last week, the New York City Council approved a
resolution declaring a climate emergency that it hopes will mobilize efforts to forestall the devastation of purported global warming from greenhouse gas emissions. While entirely symbolic and not even needing presidential hopeful Mayor Bill de Blasio's signature, the council said its action could make America's largest city a global leader "by organizing a transition to renewable energy and climate emergency mobilization effort."
In support of the call for an emergency declaration, the document cited increasing wildfires, droughts, extreme weather, and possible extinction of up to one million species over the next several decades. To prevent such harm, the resolution draws much from the Green New Deal and the Paris Climate Accord, including net zero greenhouse gas emissions, a 100% renewable energy goal, and "climate justice" (whatever that is). The document ends with a call for an "immediate emergency mobilization to restore a safe climate."
If these terrible catastrophes were occurring and we could prevent them, then serious measures would certainly be necessary. However, widely accepted data — from sources other than extremists such as the World Wildlife Fund — reveal inconvenient facts quite dissimilar to the claims of the council.
Contrary to its statements, extreme
weather-related deaths have been in long-term and significant decline, falling by 98% over the last 80-plus years. Heat-related deaths are outnumbered by those due to cold by as
much as 20:1, meaning that warming would save lives. The
United States Drought Monitorshows that the area in drought in this country is at its historic low since data collection began nearly twenty years ago. The allegation of an extinction of one million species would require 25,000 to 30,000 extinctions per year, yet, according to the
IUCN Red List, the extinctions numbers have been in significant decline since the early 1900s and have
averaged only two per yearsince 1970.
The overarching goal of the resolution is to lower the Earth's temperature by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide. In order to achieve the proposed reductions, energy costs would necessarily be increased significantly, either through a cap-and-trade system or a direct tax on emissions. Either of these methods would raise costs across the board for all citizens and companies. If the citizens of New York City, or, for that matter, the citizens across the Empire State were to be subjected to the economically crippling increases in costs associated with the energy transformation proposed, should we not know just how much of an effect a reduction in emissions would have on temperature?