Stop saying economic growth will rescue us from climate change

There are no magic solutions to this problem

The calm before the storm at the New York Stock Exchange.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)

Since climate change has become a top-tier issue, there has been a cohort of Americans arguing that action to address the problem is unnecessary. There are the straight-up science deniers, who posit climate change as some sort of hoax, others who admit warming but deny that humans are responsible, and others who admit human-caused global warming but argue that whatever climate policy is under discussion is bad.

Today, the most intellectually respectable version of this school of thought — which for unfathomable reasons is now given wide circulation by two separate columnists at The New York Times — is the idea that we can buy our way out of any problems caused by climate change. Climate policy won't be necessary, by this view, because we're getting richer faster than damages are getting more expensive. As Americans in Houston recover from the worst rainstorm in American history, and Americans in Puerto Rico endure a brutal pummeling from the most powerful hurricane ever measured in the Atlantic basin, it's worth putting this idiotic notion to bed.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.