Harris Stops Talking About Climate Change

Marine cloud whitening, and other ideas. We have precious little to show for nearly 20 years of efforts to prevent global warming. Promises in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to cut carbon emissions went unfulfilled. Stronger pledges in Kyoto five years later failed to keep emissions in check. The only possible lesson is that agreements to reduce carbon emissions are costly, politically arduous and ultimately ineffective. But this is a lesson many are hell-bent on ignoring, as politicians plan to gather again—this time in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December—to negotiate a new carbon-emissions treaty.

Watching the news, you get the sense that climate change is making the planet unlivable. We are bombarded with images of floods, droughts, storms and wildfires.

2014-03-17 Germany is a showcase for how-not-to in green energy. It is pumping hundreds of billions of euros into subsidies for ineffective and unreliable solar panels and wind turbines that leave poor people struggling to pay their electricity bills and do almost nothing for the climate.