Thinking Smartly About Climate Change

Commentary
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on April 24, 2023, in Irving, Texas.
In a recent survey of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries—i.e., all the rich countries in the world—about 60 percent of respondents said they believe that global warming will likely or very likely lead to the end of mankind. This is the result of the fact that a lot of the conversation around global warming is vastly exaggerated.
Let me add at the outset that I am a social scientist focused on the economics of this issue, not a scientist. There is scientific dispute over the extent to which global warming is manmade. I will not weigh in on that controversy, except to concede that global warming is real, to some large extent manmade, and a serious problem….