Last week we talked about the existential threat posed to Europe by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Today I'd like to talk to you about the existential threat posed by Europe and the rest of Western governments to the survival of a substantial portion of humanity itself. I refer to the government regulatory reaction to the perceived threat of climate change. First let's all agree that the climate does change over time. Time measured in eons, hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. The Permian Basin in West Texas, where I lived for a time, was once a seabed. The decaying marine life that once thrived there became the oil and gas that now makes civilization as we know it possible. Minnesota, where I grew up on fertile farmland, was once covered by a glacier. West Texas is semi-arid mesquite growing range land overlying a rich deposit of petrochemicals where once it was a sea. Minnesota is now rich farmland where once it was a frigid glacier. Those changes constitute climate change.
The climate change that Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, John Kerry and many others worry about, that if radical action is not taken right now to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels has been demonstrated as questionable multiple times. In 2006, Al Gore predicted that the polar glaciers would disappear by 2013. Eleven years later and they are still there.Greta Thunberg tweeted in 2018, "A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years." Tweet deleted. Inaccurate fear-mongering problem solved.
But those preaching a gospel of climate change fear still control governments in Europe and the United States. California is banning the sale of new gasoline powered cars starting eleven years from now. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to mandate a 90% reduction in carbon dioxide emission by 2040. Farmers in the Netherlands are protesting a requirement to cut nitrogen emissions. French farmers are protesting pesticide restrictions. The list goes on. Lest we forget, farmers produce the food that keeps us alive. Restricting the supply of food through regulation will unquestionably have a negative effect on our way of life. The more restrictive and rigid, the more catastrophic the results.
It's one thing to favor reductions in smog and water pollution. But calling carbon dioxide a pollutant is misguided. Carbon dioxide is food for plants. There is a correlation between global temperature increases and the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air. But the first rule in stats is: Correlation is not causation. There is even evidence that global warming, caused by solar cycles, volcanos, ocean currents and changing cloud cover causes an increase in carbon dioxide in the air. The drive to electrify transportation ignores the laws of the conservation of energy. When gasoline or diesel are burned to power an internal combustion engine, some of the energy is lost due to friction from the moving parts of the engine. When coal or natural gas are burned to create electricity, some energy is lost for the same reason. More energy is lost in the distribution process. And still more energy is lost to friction in the electric car. And if you think that solar and wind generation of electricity solve the problem, you're ignoring the costs and pollution in the dirty process of mining cobalt, lithium, rare earths and other inputs for generating and storing clean energy.
The best way to provide the energy to keep civilization humming is to limit regulation to ensure that producers of energy eliminate or pay for any negative externalities they create. Then let the free market do its magic. And carbon dioxide is not a negative externality. It's plant food. This is Richard Fields with this week's Report From the Fields. See you again next week.