Only sex can match the power of fear to boost sales through increased demand.

However, in the public policy world, fear has the singular potential to enhance the popularity and impact of things like environmental policy. Nevertheless, just because a policy is addressing something scary, does not mean that the fearful thing is relevant, valid, alleviable or stoppable by public policy.

To use an extreme example, if big wasp-like, insect life is found on Mars, and earthlings hear scary stories about these territorial, voracious and ferocious creatures—based on data from a Martian lander sent from earth—mankind will take notice. If these Martian wasps decide to attack us—being threatening, even slightly intelligent, creatures, angered by “our” lander’s reconnaissance intrusion of “their” planet—humanity could be in trouble. Consider that if this news is coupled with the knowledge that Martian wasps can live for centuries, without much atmosphere, and can even travel through space by means of their advanced wing and flatus propellant systems, then fear on earth will spread fast.

Nevertheless, this fact does not mean that the fear is relevant, valid, alleviable or stoppable by public policy—especially on Mars. Although the threat is merely potential, yet was not manmade, some bright earthling might still be able to find a way to sell the need for public policies that prevent a Martian wasp invasion of earth—even though mankind cannot stop the invasion, has no ability to strike first on Mars, and has no hope of changing the inevitable outcome. All earthlings can do is monitor Martian wasp movements and formations, perhaps predicting future bellicose action, but remain effectively helpless to do anything about it. Still, what is abundantly clear is that fear mongering can provide economic benefits to its promoters.

Let us consider a real current event with similar characteristics.

Gainsayers and fearmongers in many bureaucratic organizations today have become the harbingers of doom due to alleged manmade climate change. Thus, they have been pushing for implementation of the provisions of the December 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change—which took effect on 4 November 2016—by means of the World Bank Group’s Climate Change Action Plan of April 2016 (called “the hottest year on record”), which aims to help developing countries accelerate efforts to “tackle climate change and deliver on their national climate plans” (World Bank 2016). Similarly, the OECD’s climate change agenda focuses on moving countries to “a low-carbon and climate resilient pathway” (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2016), and the European Union continues to promote “international efforts to tackle climate change...through robust policy-making at home” to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” (European Climate Change Programme 2014).

Not to be outdone, the WTO couples disciplined trade liberalization with environmentalist objectives, encouraging “price-based measures such as taxes and tariffs, market-based mechanisms as well as a variety of other measures including subsidies” (World Trade Organization 2016). The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations pushes fear in their strategy, asserting that, “Climate variability and change poses multiple challenges: it reduces food productivity and production and adds a layer of pressure to already fragile food production systems. Drought, floods and hurricanes, ocean acidification and increasing sea levels, put people’s lives at risk” (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2015). Plus, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is eager to help its sister organization by pushing the Paris Agreement forward (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 2016).

Yet, perhaps the most scurrilous pessimists among the bunch are groups like the World Wide Fund for Nature (a.k.a. the World Wildlife Fund), which boldly proclaims,

Climate change poses a fundamental threat to everything we love. Melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and new and more frequent weather extremes will leave no continent untouched. Impacts are already being felt by many communities and ecosystems worldwide. Water supplies are shrinking, crop yields are dropping, forests are burning, and our oceans are becoming more acidic. This has huge implications for our livelihoods and human security… To have a chance of preventing dangerous global warming, the vast majority of fossil fuels—the biggest driver of climate change—have to be left in the ground (World Wide Fund for Nature 2016).

Importantly, CO₂ is massively produced by oceans, forest fires and erupting volcanoes of the world—not by having too many McDonald’s-bound cows passing gas in bald Brazilian rain forests or the relatively paltry emissions emitted by factories, big vehicles and aerosol spray cans. For instance, OECD member Chile alone averages three volcanic eruptions every five years and with them releases far more CO₂ into the atmosphere than billions of human beings and their productive activities generate in a century. Volcanoes also are active in Sicily, Iceland, Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Oceana, Papua New Guinea, Japan, Russia, Hawaii, Alaska, throughout Central America and many other places in the world (Volcano Discovery 2016), adding to the “greenhouse gas” (CO₂) emissions.

Furthermore, economists consider that ideas like manmade climate change and manmade global warming beg the question, “Who benefits?” After all, even if the world’s climate is changing, that fact does not mean that the resulting fear-filled future situation is relevant, valid, alleviable or stoppable by public policy. Mankind might not be responsible for the changing climate. It could be simply natural forces acting on their own, much like bellicose Martian wasps.

Scientific studies raise important doubts about manmade climate change concerns.

For instance, average world temperatures have fallen every year since the Kyoto protocol was issued in 1997 (Rose 2012), leading fear-mongering scientists to change their rubric and stationery from global warming to “climate change,” just like so many of their fear-mongering predecessors switched from being harbingers of global cooling in the 1970s—featuring a new Ice Age with icebergs in San Francisco Bay—to global warming advocates in the late 1980s (Simon 1996). It is simply good business to spread fear and make people think that with public policy they can find a way out by saying, “Scotty, beam me up.”

Needless to say, many natural scientists, economists, political scientists and other scholars remain unconvinced that manmade “climate change” is any more worrisome than Martian wasp stings. It is simply a clever yet fallacious ruse used to manipulate the masses and thereby earn lots of money and bank even more power (Lomborg 2001; Simon 1996; Bailey 2002; Bast, Hill & Rue 1994).

Moreover, why is a changing climate necessarily bad?

For instance, warmer Winter temperatures in Europe and Asia will certainly mean that fewer will die from the cold—saving many thousands of lives (Lomborg 2007: 38-39). In that sense, global warming must not be a problem. Likewise, worries about some glaciers receding—along with the ice sheet in Antarctica—or the ice in Greenland melting and affecting sea levels, seem to have been unfounded: based on errant calculations and gross overstatements.

A recent NASA report indicates that ninety percent of the world’s glaciers are growing, leading some fearmongers to preach the horrors of a new Ice Age that will devastate the planet (Ice Age Now 2015). Seven years ago, others concluded from then current data that there had been an overall decrease in glacial mass, although even then Himalayan, Alaskan, Canadian, New Zealand, and Greenland glaciers were also growing (Skeptical Science 2009). According to National Geographic, the Pio XI glacier in southern Chile and the Perito Moreno glacier in southern Argentina were both growing, too (Roach 2009). Thus, even at that time there were exceptions, and they now appear to be becoming the rule. Overall, if one thing seems clear, it is the lack of scientific consensus on the effects of global warming or climate change.

On the other hand, the aforementioned governmental organizations and radical environmentalist groups do benefit from promoting climate change.

Randolph Bourne famously noted that, “war is the health of the state” (Bourne 1919), since it not only distracts people from domestic economic and social policy issues, it also renders a general feeling of fearful crisis and thus creates a greater need for the state to defend them. Likewise, environmental policy, and the fear of impending doom—apart from copious doses of corrective public policy—generates a boon for the state, its politicians, its bureaucrats and the “rent seekers” (Simmons 2012; Tullock 1993; Buchanan 1980) that sell intriguing but useless or unnecessary products—all similar to tinfoil hats and Martian wasp swatters.

These rent seekers and fearmongers profit heartily from ancillary sales of goods and services, including conferences and accommodations, consultancies for automakers and other industries, speaking fees, running carbon credit exchanges, selling smokestack scrubbers and UV survival kits—to comply with policies or avoid regulatory penalties—or to gain greater trade opportunities as a developing country.

With manmade climate change, many governments or public agencies can profit by increasing their budgets, staff, power or votes. Some of the major beneficiaries of the present ruse include the World Trade Organization, the European Union, the OECD, the World Bank, the United Nations cohort and radical environmentalist groups like the World Wide Fund for Nature—all of which have jumped on the fearmonger bandwagon.

The sheer number of “big” organizational adherents to the climate change doctrine, grants much credibility in the minds of the common man. However, those organizations could be mistaken scientifically, while still acting correctly and rationally economically—even if their motive for promoting the idea could be a bit more sinister. Economists do not pass judgment on values and choices, but they do observe that rational, efficiency-minded and utility-maximizing groups may well sell fear, in order to garner power and purpose in the minds of their constituencies.

In the final analysis, developing countries have little more to do with “climate change” than they do with a possible Martian wasp invasion. They reluctantly comply with wasteful and unnecessarily harmful manmade climate change proscriptions only because they want to increase their economic prowess in the world. Yet, their main enemy remains the governmental and radical environmentalist organizations that foist costly myths upon them and the rest of beleaguered mankind.

Appendix: Common Questions from Students

Q. Are not only certain natural scientists qualified to talk about climate change, and not other academics?

A. Actually, academics cross disciplinary lines quite often, especially when the subject matter lends itself to interdisciplinary study. For instance, behavioral economics (which I have been reading a lot about lately) has a literature contributed by economists, neuroscientists, psychologists and sociologists, among other scientists.
Social scientists like economists and public policy researchers are not natural scientists. However, they (we) are still scientists in that they (we) follow the scientific method and use of deductive logic and other advanced mathematical and analytical tools in our value-free research. Thus, both groups are scientists, but of a different variety. Try to find any scientist that would dispute this claim..

Q. What possible interdisciplinary nexus exists between climate change and public policy or economics?

A. When it comes to manmade climate change, the subject matter touches both economics and public policy. That is where the overlap comes in and. therefore, the cross-disciplinary commentary in the literature. You will find that Lomborg (political science), Simon and Hill (economics) are joined by the natural scientists in the Bailey edited volume to concur with a common theme: climate change may be happening but manmade climate change is absurd. Moreover, well-trained academics in all fields are capable of reading, assimilating and critiquing arguments by those in other fields. For instance, a rocket scientist is probably not an economics or a public policy expert, but he is smart and able to learn new things, even those outside of his engineering fields. Rather than limit him, (or any Ph.D.) our training helps us be able to grasp other fields of study.

Q. Is not your information biased and only coming from rightwing sources?

A. Notice that the paper’s bibliography lists many leftists and manmade climate change proponents directly. In my research for this paper, I read what other people had to say and understood positions that I ultimately came to disagree with. I cited them and then criticized the overall idea with facts and theory. Notice, too, that the facts such as various glaciers growing came from leftist or “liberal” sources like National Geographic and the other sources listed in the paper. For instance, it is the Left that is saying that, "surprisingly,” some glaciers are growing. I can personally vouch for the growth of the Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina (which I have been to several times) and repeat what was told me by Chilean tour guides (more than once), that the huge Pio XI glacier in southern Chile is growing like crazy. Thus, National Geographic and other sources are not wrong, to their chagrin, perhaps.

Q. Why do scholars like you cite people who disagree with your main point?

A. One thing academics learn in presenting arguments even with people they ultimately do not agree with is to look for parts of the research from the “other side” and quote it or cite it. That way, it is much harder for the “other side” to refute the conclusion of intellectual opponents without also undermining their own case. Logic and argumentation can be quite powerful. I do that very thing also with Julian Simon’s pro-abortion stance. I agree with Simon on manmade global warming being a myth but I disagree with him on his view of abortion. Accordingly, I use his “ultimate resource” argument to argue why in fact economists must be against abortion of any kind (other than fallopian tube pregnancies). My research was published in 2003 in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, "Abortion Policy and the Market."
The NASA data came from a leftist website promoting fear of a near-future Ice Age. They, too, accept the idea of manmade climate change but reach a different conclusion than their comrades. If one side from that group is willing to call the findings of their “own team” a hoax, then I will not argue the point. As an academic, I am simply reporting and building on what those scientists have claimed.
People from that camp do not like to deal with the stark reality of the effects of volcanic activity. Nevertheless, they have a hard time disputing the facts with respect to CO2 emissions from volacnos (or the oceans, for that matter). Getting data on volcanoes for hundreds of years--such that can lead to meaningful conclusions about their current impact--is extremely difficult. People in the 16th through 19th centuries had neither the interest nor measurement capabilities that researchers have now. Yet, there is simply no arguing with the fact that Chilean volcanoes today produce more in five years than billions of people do in a century. Nevertheless, even if we can pin the blame on volcanos (or oceans) for "greenhouse gas" emission, I am quite sure that volcanoes (or oceans) are not going to obey public policy designed to change their behavior. And forcibly changing the relatively miniscule amount that mankind produces will have little impact.

Q. Why does it seem like "most people" think that CO2 levels and global warming are problems?

A. Problems and crises are good for generating revenue opportunities. Very few in-the-know people are truly altruistic, publicly-spirited and interested in "saving the world." They are taking advantage of profitable opportunities. In terms of CO2, you should read Lomborg’s book, Cool It, listed inthe bibliography. I did. He indeed says that there could be large negative effects from global warming, but argues persuasively that the positive effects would still clearly outweigh them. However, global warming, if it is just a natural phenomenon, is something we have to live with and adapt to.

Q. What does climate change have to do with public policy?

A. Public policy can provide the "teeth" in social rules that "educate" and force people to behave differently and thus change production outcomes. To the extent that manmade global warming exists, it becomes a public policy question since, by force, mankind's "bad" behavior can be curtailed. In that sense, public policy is the most important aspect of the climate change conversation.

Q. What about all the "obvious" facts that show the effects of global warming, like melting ice fields?

A. Here is where the rub comes in. You can see why so many--if not the majority--of scientists or academics from related fields, do not buy into the notion that mankind can alter the course of nature in terms of climate and temperature. Even if if there is less polar ice now, so what? There may be nothing we can do about it. And maybe we should not even care. We have to adapt to any natural consequences (although so far there does not seem to be any serious problem--even with so much less ice in 2016 than in 2008, as left-leaning news services report). Maybe in twenty years it will all come back. Who knows? The idea that a melt-off is “bad” is dubious, but the notion that mankind caused it is even more doubtful. However, the supposition that public policy (Kyoto, Paris, etc.) can actually influence and fix it is almost laughable--especially if you know anything about public choice theory, just for starters. Note the value of injecting interdisciplinary thought into the discussion.

Q. Why do people still talk about global warming when the data indicate that world temperatures have dropped over the last two decades?

A. Scientists across the political spectrum concur that world temperatures have dropped since Kyoto in 1997. That is why the main block of doomsayers dumped the “global warming” terminology in favor of "climate change” in recent years. The data do not show the earth is warming in the 21st Century. Even if it were, again, so what? That fact does not mean that a warmer earth is a bad thing, than mankind caused it, or that public policy could or should stop it. Attempts by public policy to “stop” it for the last three decades have not been very successful, have they? Otherwise we would not be having this conversation, I suppose. If one really believes that global warming or manmade climate change exists in the first place--and that it is a problem--they have to honestly ask themselves why they believe that public policy can be effective in changing the situation. The record of the past thirty years has hardly been encouraging for them, right?

Q. Why can you not see that the oil and gas industry has benefitted from "too much" leeway for CO2-producing companies that benefit at society's expense?

A. I do not deny that both sides may benefit from spreading news about climate change, whether based on unfounded fear or otherwise. Are you surprised? Again, this fact of economics is irrelevant in terms of whether public policy can improve the quality of life. Gasoline or greenhouse gas survival kits--and whatever else can be made from either promoting or debunking “junk” science--are a natural consequence of human action, where people try to “remove uneasiness” and make a buck. People take advantage of opportunities when presented. So, any point showing the evil profits of the oil and gas industry is a non-sequitur.

Until next time,
John Cobin

Escape America Now

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