Climate change in either direction, cooling or warming, in any region on Earth, to any degree, whether gradual or sudden, creates tremendous profit opportunities. The only possible way to deal with climate change effectively is through free markets. Climate change is ready-made for entrepreneurs. Governments cannot possibly accomplish the invention and new productive possibilities that free markets excel at. Governments can only retard free market accomplishments.
Programs like the Green New Deal are poor because they are coercive, arbitrary, restrictive, unimaginative, costly, insensitive to people and their values, inefficient and ineffective. They are very poor because they supplant the only possible rational solutions that can and will be devised by free markets if given the chance. They are wrong because they cannot possibly envision what entrepreneurs who are seeking profits can and will come up with in order to satisfy consumer wants regarding climate.
Only free markets can provide the many prices and exchanges that have to go into coping with climate changes in ways that make economic sense. Governments can’t and won’t do sensible things because they aren’t oriented toward profits, and profits are oriented toward satisfying consumer demands. If people want climate moderation, only free market entrepreneurs can devise ways to supply them this good at affordable prices. In the past, it is not government that devised clothing, heating systems and cooling systems. It is not government that chose locations suitable for living and for making capital investments. It is not government that developed energy sources. Government didn’t invent fire.
In the matter of climate change of any size or scope, there is absolutely no need for government action. There is no need whatsoever for government subsidies. There is no need at all for government bureaus to be guessing about the numerous dimensions of climate change: Where on Earth it occurs, how much of it occurs, how transient or permanent it is, how it affects inhabitants, how it affects economies and how it affects the prices of everything including real estate. There is no need for government restrictions and brute force. Any substitution of government action for that of truly free markets will impede the world’s populations from handling climate change in any sort of economically rational ways.
The current directions of governments and the intergovernmental panels and arrangements are hopelessly ill-suited for the gigantic profit opportunities that arise from any significant climate changes.
No one and no government can lay down a plan for dealing with climate change, nor should they. If climate changes and as it changes, people are going to adapt. This is what they’ve done in the past, before there were scientists and governments running around proclaiming what’s going to happen and making their ill-suited plans to prevent the climate from changing.
Virtually all of us have to make decisions that reflect what we think the climate is going to be like in the future. Should we buy a vacation home situated on a beach? If New York City is going to have greater flooding, what will insurance rates be? What should office properties be selling for? Where might people move? If Nebraska has extreme heat or cold, what should farm properties be selling at to reflect this? Where is there going to be work, and in what kinds of industries? Will higher altitude properties rise in price? Will Siberia become prime property?
Climate change is very unlikely to be predictable. It won’t be uniform. It will affect many regions. These features are what give rise to entrepreneurial opportunities. Attempts by government to impose a static vision that locks in existing values and locations are going to thwart what has to happen, which is that values change when climate changes.
Ordinary decisions have entrepreneurial components that government decisions ignore. Meanwhile entrepreneurs will be examining all sorts of data on prices and much else that bear on future prices; and they will be thinking about and devising solutions that will sell. This may involve unheard of innovations such as domes over newly-developed areas, reflecting rays, inexpensive individual electricity generators, etc. One can imagine consortia of firms that sign people on to advanced climate control technology if the subscribers agree to certain kinds of restrictions.
8:07 pm on March 27, 2019
