Ready for higher prices — for everything? Because this will be the result if a new academic study’s authors have their way. The researchers, out of Dartmouth College, claim that the world’s largest companies have caused $28 trillion in “climate damage.” They make no bones about their money-grabbing agenda, either. “[W]e argue that the scientific case for climate liability is closed,” they write in their study summary. So now, “science [is] no longer an obstacle to the justiciability of climate liability claims,” they conclude.
Translation: The “science is settled.”
(My, where have we heard that before?)
This is no small matter. While the Trump administration won’t be acting on this “science,” it’s there at the ready should a future, left-wing administration desire a pretext for the proctology-exam version of another private-sector fleecing.
Note here, too, that companies don’t pay taxes or fines, people do, and our whole civilization runs on energy. Thus would such government theft mean higher prices for everyday Americans — across the board.
All That Beautiful Money — Just Waiting!
Reporting on the story, The Associated Press writes that the climate study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is
part of an effort to make it easier for people and governments to hold companies financially accountable, like the tobacco giants have been.
A Dartmouth College research team came up with the estimated pollution caused by 111 companies, with more than half of the total dollar figure coming from 10 fossil fuel providers: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil Co., Pemex, Coal India and the British Coal Corporation.
For comparison, $28 trillion is a shade less than the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States last year.
… The researchers figured that every 1% of greenhouse gas put into the atmosphere since 1990 has caused $502 billion in damage from heat alone, which doesn’t include the costs incurred by other extreme weather such as hurricanes, droughts and floods.
To provide more detail, CBS News informs that the researchers
used 1,000 different computer simulations to translate those emissions into changes for Earth’s global average surface temperature by comparing it to a world without that company’s emissions.
Using this approach, they determined that pollution from Chevron, for example, has raised the Earth’s temperature by .045 degrees Fahrenheit.
Of course, someone could use 1,000 different computer simulations to show that the Dartmouth researchers are blowing hot air. And I used 1,000 different computer simulations and found that the world would be a better place without college academicians.
Who’s Responsible, Again?
For the record, so I don’t get fact-checked by Poynter, that last line was a joke. Not funny at all, however, is the unique onus being put on oil companies. After all, each one of us happily uses energy in various forms continually. So accepting the climate-change narrative for argument’s sake, aren’t we all complicit in a sense?
Moreover, what of government? It has said to energy companies, essentially, “We’re going to allow you to sell this product.”
“And now we’re going to sue you for selling the product.”
Huh?
Climate alarmists will contend that energy companies knew the “climate damage” their products allegedly cause, but lied about it. Assuming this is true, however, is it plausible that government didn’t know? And where does the buck stop?
Under statists’ philosophy, it should be with the government, which they consider the end-all and be-all.
The Big Picture
Now, The New American has refuted the anthropogenic climate-change narrative repeatedly, such as here, here, here, here, and here. Even upon accepting the Dartmouth thesis and the $28 trillion figure, however, there’s a problem. As an MSN commenter put it regarding the AP article:
Now do a study on the value of good these companies have done. Vastly improved standard of living, life extending medications, increased food production, heating and cooling, etc. I’m not sure there is anything in modern society not dependent on fossil fuels and related chemistry. I, for one, do not want to go back to 12th century living conditions.
As late economics Professor Walter E. Williams has pointed out, you can make anything look heavenly or hellacious by focusing on only its pros or cons. This is precisely what the Dartmouth researchers did, too — to push an agenda.
What’s more, to paraphrase economist Dr. Thomas Sowell, in life there usually aren’t solutions, only trade-offs. So what’s the side the Dartmouth greentopians don’t present?
Just consider information Grok AI provides from the sources here, here, here, here, and here. It writes:
The correlation between energy use and GDP is well-documented; studies often cite a near-linear relationship, where a 1% increase in energy consumption correlates with a 0.5-1% increase in GDP.
… Fossil fuels have likely contributed around $63.8 trillion to $67.4 trillion to global economic growth since 1900….
In other words, even if we accept Dartmouth’s damages estimate, it’s dwarfed by the benefits fossil fuels deliver.
Conclusion
It should be added that higher temperatures are generally beneficial and that Dartmouth’s study reflects activism, not science. But the bottom line is that, historically, man’s economic norm was grinding poverty — until modern energy production made today’s prosperity possible. In fact, most of us would be dead, or would’ve never existed in the first place, without oil and gas.
Energy is life. Heck, without it, there wouldn’t even be that much for the government to tax — or steal.
Or, is that a redundancy?
