Andrew Dessler in Denial? “Green” Energy is an Economic, Consumer Loser (and eco-sinful too)

Just kill the economists. And damn the consumers who do not like EVs and unreliable energies. In fact, damn the world for not seeing what I do: a climate crisis where we will all be living underground because of an inhabitable surface!

This is the latest from climate scientist/activist Andrew Dessler, who is angry and more than a little desperate (the public is just not buying his brand of climate alarmism), who interviews an obscure economist to try to make the case that climate mitigation policy is cost-effective.

“The New Climate Denial: Climate Economics” (substack) is peculiar on a number of grounds. First, Dessler is not an economist and is very fuzzy on basic economic concepts such as opportunity cost and discounting. He attacks neoclassical economics for false assumptions, not realizing that another school of economics (Austrian “market process”) beat him to the punch with even more strictures against climate policy.

And it is strange that Dessler (an outlier in his own department) wants to claim “mainstream” in climate science yet rejects “mainstream” in climate economics. Peculiar.

Dessler’s latest from The Climate Brink (tagline: “The Choice is Ours: Climate Disaster or a Sustainable Future”) is titled The New Climate Denial: Climate Economics.” He begins:

I always thought that the increasingly undeniable physical impacts of climate change would eventually lead climate deniers to accept the science. Of course, I was wrong. They’ll never do that because their objection was never actually the science — instead it is about the politics.

Rather than accept the science, deniers have adapted by coming up with an entire new set of objections. From Heatmap:

The climate denial movement has entered a new phase, suggests new research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The study analyzed transcripts of more than 12,000 climate-related YouTube videos posted since 2018 and found evidence that “old denial” narratives (Global warming isn’t real! Humans have nothing to do with it!) are becoming less common as the effects of climate change become undeniable.

In particular, economic arguments against action on climate change have become prominent. It is focused on economic models that predict that a few degrees of climate change will have a minimal impact on our economy, suggesting that climate change is not something we should worry our prettly little heads about.

He then interviews an obscure economist, Noah Kaufman, who claims that how economics can help us solve the climate problem. Watch the interview here:

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