As my colleagues get ready for next week’s John Locke Foundation Global Warming Tour, I just read National Review‘s latest cover story (dead-tree edition) on the topic.
Author Jim Manzi makes a number of interesting points. Among them is his assessment of the best way to address climate change rationally:
In the face of massive uncertainty on multiple fronts, the best strategy is almost always to hedge your bets and keep your options open. Wealth and technology are raw materials for options. The loss of economic and technological development that would be required to eliminate literally all theorized climate-change risk would cripple our ability to deal with virtually every other foreseeable and unforeseeable risk, not to mention our ability to lead productive and interesting lives in the meantime. The Precautionary Principle is a bottomless well of anxieties, but our resources are finite. It’s possible to buy so much flood insurance that you can’t afford fire insurance.
No one could accuse Manzi of denying the possibility of global warming. He’s just unwilling to buy the over-the-top hysteria:
Global warming is a manageable risk, not an existential crisis, and we should get on with the job of managing it.
Sunday update: Here’s a link to a PDF of the NR article.
