https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tragedy-climate-column-don-pittis-1.6135872
https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2020/Schwartzclimatechange.html
We are being deafened by calls to change our ways, even at the cost of trillions of dollars and at the risk of gravely endangering our freedoms. The global warming programme is being sold with snake oil marketing techniques: after showing TV images of droughts, hurricanes, floods, and polar bears adrift at sea, the climate lobby claims that humanity is on the verge of extinction and that something dramatic should be done. It is video game science—we only need to press the United Nations key, send in the blue helmets, and save mankind from the wicked deniers.
The following questions should be asked before we rush to impose solutions that may jeopardise our commercial and democratic way of life: 1) How prevalent are human actions in causing climate changes? 2) How reliably can the future course of the Earth’s climate be predicted? And 3), how large are the opportunity costs of the measures proposed by the interventionists?
https://ccs.sciences.ncsu.edu/climate-change-and-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/
Yet there is a critical way in which TTOTC does not apply to climate change, at least not the usual metaphors of a village green or a fishery. Consider, first, the village green. If I choose not to pasture another cow on the green, the grass will be a little better, and this will encourage others to pasture more cows. Similarly, in a fishery, if I keep my boat in port, others will have a slightly better catch, and they will keep there boats at sea longer to avail themselves of it. In both cases, my restraint in choosing not to overexploit a resource has no beneficial effect, since others quickly snap up whatever resource I leave “on the table.”
But this is not what happens in global warming. In no way do my efforts to reduce emissions of heat trapping gases encourage or incentivize others to emit more. Simply put, when I reduce my emissions, the atmospheric burden of heat trapping is reduced, however slightly, leading to reduced (again, if slightly) climate change, resulting in reduced damage to the planet and reduced human misery. In short, any reduction I make in my emissions is an unalloyed good.
This is a hugely optimistic understanding, It tells us that efforts to reduce emissions on any level – personal, campus, community, state – are intrinsically beneficial and worthwhile, and we should go forward with them, whether or not there is effective climate leadership at the national and global levels. An example is what is happening right now in my State of North Carolina, where, under the aegis of Governor Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 80.we are in the midst of the bottoms-up, stakeholder (who, on Earth, is not a stakeholder in the climate?) driven development of a clean energy plan for North Carolina. As a participant in this process, I am encouraged by the commitment of participants, from many sectors, including the energy sector, to set North Carolina on the path to greatly reduced emissions of heat trapping gases.