Why climate change alarmism failed

Forty seems high. Indeed, I’m skeptical that very many Americans spend much, if any, of their day “greatly” distressed about mild deviations in the climate. Sure, alarmism has calcified into a partisan position for many Democrats, and many young people have been convinced the future is bleak. They grow out of it. When asked specifically about their experiences with hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, droughts, heat waves, cold snaps, and winter storms, a considerable majority of people said they have witnessed no change one way or the other. 

Why are climate activists losing? Sooner or later, fearmongering becomes noise. Reality crashes against predictions. Public schools, institutions of higher learning, governments, international organizations, the whole culture, and scientific institutions have spent billions and untold hours trying to normalize the idea that modernity and capitalistic gluttony have driven temperatures to dangerous extremes. When I was growing up, it was cooling. Now, it’s warming. And with each surge of alarmism, the message depreciates. 

Still, every time the public fails to react with the appropriate shock to the newest ominous prediction, the climate activists ratchet up the panic. Global warming causes mental illness, diabetes, migraines, asthma, and dementia. It turns us into addicts and human traffickers. I challenge you to find a political problem, human foible, or disaster that hasn’t been blamed on warming.

Anyone pushing back against this narrative has long been demonized. Over the past few years, journalists have circumvented the debate and taken up using the phrases “climate emergency” or “climate crisis” instead of “climate change.” Even the most tepid critics are branded “climate science deniers” or “climate deniers.” During the 2020 primaries, CNN held a seven-hour “climate crisis” town hall, which left very little to discuss.

The problem is that not one of the dire predictions about the impending global catastrophe has come to fruition. People tend to notice these things. We now have a long list of failed forecasts going back 20 to 30 years. In most ways, in fact, the world is better off since then. 

People must intuitively understand that there is nothing extraordinary going on. CNN pollsters also found that the number of people who “worried greatly” about becoming a victim of a natural disaster had dropped from 38% in 2006 to 32% today, which makes sense. Overall, deaths due to natural disasters have plummeted by over 70% during my lifetime, despite the surge of the population in areas where they are more likely. Weather accounts for somewhere around 0.01% in the United States every year. 

Enten says the lack of concern “kind of boggles the mind a little bit, granted everything that we see on our television screens and computer screens, the hurricanes, the tornadoes, the flooding.” Simply because we see more natural disasters on television or see Democrats running to the nearest camera to blame Republicans for the fallout doesn’t mean devastating weather events are more frequent. It’s this confirmation bias that skews polls and coverage to begin with. 

There is no convincing evidence that Texas or the U.S. is experiencing more flooding now than in the recent past, much less in the distant past. The worst floods in American history were caused by the 1900 Galveston hurricane, which resulted in an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 deaths. The Johnstown flood of 1889 in Pennsylvania killed over 2,000. The recent tragic Texas flood doesn’t even rank in the top thousand on record, not to speak of thousands that aren’t. None of this should diminish the sympathy we have for the loss of life. Obviously, more of us than ever live in areas that are prone to hurricanes or tornadoes, so preemption and vigilance are good.

Incidentally, six F5 tornadoes touched down in 2011, and only one since. There were 17 F4 tornadoes that year, and fewer than 10 every year since. There were 10 major hurricanes from 1941 to 1951. The subsequent decades saw no more than seven. From 2011 to 2020, there were four, even after Al Gore warned that the “Category 6” hurricane was coming.

We have experienced some horrifying wildfires of late. Due to adaptation, we are, despite public perception, seeing fewer than ever. Acclimatizing to the realities of climate change is far cheaper, beneficial, and realistic than the state-compelled dismantling of modernity, which is the preferred policy of most climate activists. 

Then again, a rational person understands that even if all policy prescriptions environmentalists have proposed over the past 40 years were fully implemented, it would not have stopped a single flood, hurricane, or tornado. Though we’d be a lot poorer. That’s for sure. 

Which brings us to another reason climate activists are losing. When your solutions are entirely unfeasible, people simply tune out. No one is giving up the comforts of the 21st century, their home, their future, their children’s future. 

We’ve spent most of human existence attempting to mitigate the destructive power of the climate. Think of the bright minds lost to the cause of climate change who could have been taking up the science of adaptation as we plunge countless billions into creating inefficient, expensive, needless technology. We should be spending a lot less on solar panels and more on early warning science and detection systems.

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But there is a massive political and fiscal incentive to perpetuate alarmism. It has become virtually impossible to extricate ourselves from the “green” movement, no matter how wasteful and impractical the solutions. For now, we’re wealthy enough to satiate our consciences with electric cars, windmills, and choo-choo train projects that, at best, nip at the margin of the alleged problem. 

The truth is, we do not act as if we believe the end is near. Because we do not. And if they’ve failed to convince most of us that climate change threatens human existence by now, what chance do they have to move forward?