Policies Pushing Electric Vehicles Show Why Few People Want One

In the wake of Harvey, Irma and Maria, there is intense pressure to use hurricanes to galvanize support toward carbon emissions cuts.

This is unfortunate. The pundits have convinced more than half of Americans of something that is factually wrong.

Hurricane Harvey had no sooner struck in August of this year than the pundits jumped in:

A Politico commentator wrote, “We knew this would happen, decades ago.” Joe Romm at ThinkProgress warned ominously, “Harvey is exactly the kind of off-the-charts hurricane we can expect to see more often because of climate change.”

When you go shopping – whether at the corner store, or at the ritzy Galeries Lafayette or Printemps here in Paris – you expect to know what you’re spending and what you’re getting.

Strangely, when it comes to global climate treaties, our politicians like to commit to hugely expensive policies without even acknowledging that they come with a price tag.

Despite intense climate worries, electorates have been unwilling to spend the trillions needed to cut emissions dramatically. That is why climate campaigners have increasingly pursued a new strategy: forcing climate policy through courts. Across the world, the UN now counts at least 1,550 such climate cases in 38 countries and more than a thousand just in the U.S., often filed by young people invoking a fear for their future. Unfortunately, such cases undermine democracy, harm the poor and sidetrack us from smarter ways to fix the climate.