Vol. 42, No. 03
03/01/2026
The Economics (and Politics) of Climate Change
AT A GLANCE
• “Global warming” and “climate change” have been deceptively conflated.
• Advocates of radical climate-change policies minimize or ignore the “social cost of carbon.”
• The oft-touted 1.5°C target ceiling is nonsensical and would require draconian measures to implement.
• None of the climate projections are actually catastrophic, and economic models forecast much more prosperity than calamity in 2100.
The January 2026 issue of this magazine featured extensive coverage of the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — “COP30” for short. To supplement the excellent analyses, allow me in the present article to share some highlights from my own experience regarding the economics of climate change. As senior economist for the Institute for Energy Research from 2007 to 2020, I saw firsthand how the climate debate morphed over time.
Specifically, during my time working in this arena I saw the widening chasm between what the peer-reviewed articles established and what the climate activists claimed on behalf of the “settled science.” As I’ll document with examples in this article, although the average fan of “saving the environment” might mean well, the organized activists and intellectuals often have an anti-capitalist agenda, which is conveniently served by the hysteria over climate change.
I am quite familiar with the numerous problems with the more alarmist claims regarding climate change. It was frankly absurd to read scientists with a straight face discussing how to tweak the average global temperature in the year 2100 when I could read that there was still fierce professional disagreement over the modeling of clouds. Moreover, inasmuch as carbon is the basis of life, it always struck me as interesting that there was a large overlap between organizations and activists that thought the planet had too many people, and who also wanted punitive government action against carbon in its various forms.
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The full article includes detailed analysis of Massie's legislative strategy, exclusive quotes from the interview, and insider information about upcoming votes.
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