(National Review)
As France learned recently, short-sighted policies are not the answer to climate change.
NBC’s Katy Tur, responding to an article in the New Yorker about climate, looked into the camera and asked “How pointless is my life? And how pointless are the decisions that I make on a day-to-day basis when we are not focused on climate change every day, when it’s not leading every one of our newscasts?”
It’s a safe bet that not only will climate change not lead all newscasts, it will not even lead Katy Tur’s very often. And the reason is not any of those often proffered for failure to act in the ways activists prefer. It won’t be that she is a climate change denier. It won’t be that she was bought off by the fossil-fuel industry. And it won’t be that she doesn’t care. It will not lead because her program is a business, and if she begins her newscast every day with the same story, people will tire of it pretty quickly, and soon she’ll be out of a job.
Still, I don’t doubt Tur’s sincerity. Both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have reported an increase in what is being dubbed “climate anxiety.” Fear of catastrophe is apparently widespread. Kids return from school fearful that they won’t live to adulthood. The National Resources Defense Council offers tips on “banishing the Climate Change Blues.” Al Gore may have many fine traits, but his effort to sow panic about climate with An Inconvenient Truth (2006) was a tremendous disservice to reasonable policymaking and to the very cause he was promoting. Read more