Climate Change Hasn’t Set the World on Fire

The recent eruption of the Hunga volcano about 30 kilometers southeast of Tonga's Fonuafo'ou island raised the eyebrows of climate scientists around the globe. The volcano sent hundreds of thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which can have a cooling effect on Earth.

The new United Nations report is being talked about as though it portends the end of the world: To avoid catastrophe, we must instantly transform the entire economy no matter the costs.

This is unjustified. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its latest major global analysis, estimated that the total impact of unmitigated climate change from extreme weather, changes in agriculture, rising sea levels and so on would be equivalent to reducing the average person’s income by between 0.2 and 2 percent in the 2070s.

A new United Nations report has revealed the disturbing news that the number of global disasters has quintupled since 1970 and will increase by another 40 percent in coming decades. They find that more people are affected by disasters than ever before, and the UN Deputy Secretary-General warns humanity is “on a spiral of self-destruction.”