A Reply to “Is Net Zero Mostly Wrong?”
I recently read the Substack post, “Is Net Zero Mostly Wrong?” by Pragmatic Canadian, and I have to admit: it’s a compelling, well-argued piece. The author’s tone is measured and thoughtful, not the rant of a crank but the reflection of someone grappling with big questions. I found myself nodding along at several points. The critique of media sensationalism around climate, the skepticism of government policy missteps, and the call for “healthy skepticism” all struck a chord with me. The piece is persuasive in many ways — it challenges the status quo and forces readers to question whether our approach to climate change might be fraught with mistakes or overconfidence.
Yet, as convinced as I was by certain arguments, I ultimately walked away with a different perspective. In this response, I want to acknowledge the valid points made in the original article while diving deeper into areas where I respectfully disagree or see things differently. My goal isn’t to “win” an argument but to organize my own thoughts and potentially, but not necessarily, engage in a more nuanced conversation. Specifically, I think it’s crucial to separate the various threads of the climate debate — scientific findings, media narratives, public policy, and uncertainty — rather than lump them together. When we mix these up, we risk getting more confused about what’s true and what to do about it. So, I will start from that frame. And, to get this out of the way, at the end of the day I do still put more weight on the consensus reflected in the IPPC Sixth Assessment Report than in the handful of credible peer reviewed studies that contradict the consensus findings. Despite legitimate criticisms, upon reflection, I still see it as the most comprehensive synthesis of current climate research.
Separating Media Narratives from Climate Science
One of the strongest impressions I got from the “…Mostly Wrong” piece was frustration with how climate issues are portrayed in the media. On this point, I wholeheartedly agree. Sensational headlines, sweeping doomsday pronouncements (“the world will end in 12 years!”), and the tendency to tie every weather event to climate change can indeed mislead and fatigue the public. It’s fair to call out bad narratives and demand more responsible reporting. However, we have to be careful not to turn a critique of media and messaging into a straw-man of climate science itself. The science of climate change can be true even if the storytelling around it is sometimes flawed or hyperbolic.
Let’s disentangle a few distinct issues that often get conflated in climate discussions:
Media Sensationalism: Yes, the way news outlets or social media frame climate information can be problematic. Exaggeration or constant alarm can erode trust. But this is a commentary on communication strategies, not on the underlying physics of greenhouse gases.
Scientific Uncertainty: There are areas of genuine uncertainty in climate science (how clouds amplify warming, the exact timing of feedback loops, etc.). But uncertainty cuts both ways — it means outcomes could be less severe or more severe than expected. Acknowledging uncertainty isn’t the same as saying “we have no idea” or “the science is bogus.” It just means climate science, like all science, has ranges and confidence intervals.
Public Policy Missteps: We can admit that some climate policies have been clumsy or ineffective (missed targets, policy U-turns, one-size-fits-all solutions that don’t account for economic trade-offs). Criticizing a specific policy (say, a poorly designed carbon tax or a failed green subsidy program) doesn’t invalidate climate science; it just means we need better policy design, not that the entire effort is “wrong.”
By breaking apart these critiques, we can address each on its own terms before stitching them back together. The original article rightly challenges what it calls “extreme climate information” we consume daily. I share the concern about information quality — misinformation, disinformation, and just plain noise in the climate conversation. But I caution against letting frustration with the noise turn into dismissal of the signal (the core scientific findings). In other words, don’t throw out the baby (scientific consensus on climate) with the bathwater (media hype and political spin).
Climate Extremes: Cold, Snow, and Climate Models
Another point raised was the observation of climate extremes that seem counter-intuitive to a warming world. For example, the piece alluded to record cold temperatures or heavy snowfalls — events that make people quip, “So much for global warming, huh?” It’s an understandable question: if the planet is warming, how can we still get extreme cold winters or unprecedented snow?
The answer is that weather is not the same as climate, and extreme cold events can indeed occur even in a warming world. In fact, climate models and historical data both affirm that while average temperatures are rising, variability and extremes still happen. Think of it this way: as the climate shifts, we’re loading the dice in favour of more record hot days and fewer record cold days overall – but that doesn’t mean the dice can’t still land on cold every now and then. NASA puts it succinctly: “Global warming does not mean that it will never snow or freeze. It means that it will happen less often.” In any given year, you can have a brutal blizzard or a polar vortex outbreak; these events are weather. The long-term trend, however, is fewer cold extremes and far more frequent hot extremes as the decades go on.
It’s also worth noting that some counter-intuitive cold spells may actually be linked to the changing climate. There’s ongoing scientific discussion about how a warming Arctic might destabilize the jet stream, potentially delivering bursts of polar air southward. While scientists debate the extent of this connection, the key point is: seeing snow in Texas or a deep freeze in New York doesn’t disprove global warming. As one NASA science article rhetorically asked: “Do local bouts of cold weather mean global warming is over? The answer is no.” In short, climate change means overall warming (with all its consequences), but it doesn’t erase natural variability or eliminate winter.
Declining Climate-Related Deaths: Progress, Not Proof Against Warming
Perhaps the most striking “data point” used to cast doubt on climate alarm is the decline in climate-related deaths over the last century. The author notes (correctly) that deaths from things like storms, floods, droughts, and other natural disasters have plummeted dramatically compared to 50 or 100 years ago. This is absolutely true, and it’s something to celebrate. In the 1920s, for example, climate-related disasters (think of droughts and floods causing famines) killed on the order of half a million people per year on average. Fast forward to the 2010s, and that number was down to well under 20,000 per year . That’s over a 95% reduction – an astonishing improvement in human safety.
Decadal average global deaths from natural disasters over the 20th and 21st centuries. Even as global population grew, the average yearly death toll from natural disasters (droughts, floods, storms, etc.) fell dramatically thanks to better infrastructure, early warning systems, disaster response, and improved overall resilience. A century ago, a single drought or cyclone could kill hundreds of thousands in a region; today, improved forecasting and emergency planning mean we evacuate people and respond much more effectively, avoiding the worst loss of life. This positive trend in disaster mortality is a testament to human progress and ingenuity.
So, does this mean climate change is “not a big deal” since fewer people are dying from climate-related causes? Not so fast. It means we’ve gotten better at protecting ourselves – not that nature has gotten kinder. As one analysis put it, “deaths haven’t declined so steeply because disasters are becoming less frequent or intense. This data also doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening or isn’t worsening weather events. The main reason that fewer people are dying is that we’ve gotten better at protecting ourselves and each other.” In other words, improved resilience (wealth, technology, governance) is masking some of the impact of a worsening climate.
Think of it like this: imagine a disease that, due to a new drug, now kills far fewer people than it did a century ago. That’s great news! But if the incidence of that disease is actually increasing at the same time, we wouldn’t say “oh, the disease is nothing to worry about.” We’d say “thank goodness we have better medicine, because otherwise the outcomes would be much worse.” Similarly, our ability to adapt (so far) has mitigated some climate impacts. But with climate risks projected to increase (more extreme heat, stronger rainfall events, etc.), there’s no guarantee that this decline in deaths will continue forever, especially without sustained adaptation efforts. The decline in climate-related deaths is an argument for continued investment in resilience, not an argument that climate change poses no risk.
The Hard Truth About Changing Human Behaviour
The original article wisely advocates skepticism and flexibility in policy – essentially, not being dogmatic. I fully agree that we need to be nimble and evidence-based in our policies. If something isn’t working, we should be ready to change course. However, one of the deeper challenges we face is that changing the behaviour of billions of humans (and the operations of millions of businesses) is inherently difficult. We are asking society to transition away from fossil fuels that have powered development for centuries – that’s no small feat! People don’t generally alter their lifestyles or businesses their profit models just because scientists issue warnings. This inertia is why, sometimes, policymakers reach for blunt instruments to drive change.
Carbon pricing (a tax on carbon emissions or a cap-and-trade system) is a good example of a “blunt instrument” that often gets criticized. Yes, a carbon tax is an imperfect tool – it raises energy prices and can be politically unpopular. In a perfect world, perhaps everyone would voluntarily switch to clean energy, or every industry would innovatively cut emissions on their own. But in reality, we often need broad, simple measures to nudge the entire economy in a new direction. A carbon price basically says: “We know it’s hard to micromanage each source of emissions, so let’s put an economy-wide price on carbon and let market forces figure out the details.” It’s not elegant, but many economists will tell you it’s effective. In fact, carbon pricing is frequently cited as the most cost-effective lever to reduce emissions. It provides a financial incentive for everyone — from the individual driver to the giant corporation — to find ways to cut back on carbon, because now there’s a cost associated with emitting. Is it a blunt tool? Sure. But sometimes a blunt tool is the best we have to tackle a widespread problem quickly.
The author is right that we should remain skeptical and open-minded — we should question whether a given policy is working or if it has unfair side effects. For instance, a carbon tax can disproportionately burden the poor if the revenue isn’t recycled back to citizens (a carbon rebate can address that by returning the money to households). These are legitimate debates. My point is that difficulty is not an excuse for inaction. Yes, it’s hard to change human behaviour en masse. Yes, any solution will be imperfect. But we shouldn’t throw up our hands and say “because it’s hard, let’s not bother.” Instead, we should try, learn, and refine. We might start with a blunt instrument, then later fine-tune it or complement it with more targeted policies (like efficiency standards, innovation subsidies, etc.).
Climate Action as Risk Management
One framework I find helpful – and which might actually bridge some of the gap between skeptics and activists – is to think of climate change as a common risk management problem. In risk management, we rarely have 100% certainty. Instead, we assess probabilities and potential impacts, then decide how to act to minimize regret or damage. Climate change is no different. We don’t know exactly how hot it will be in 2100, or precisely how fast the ice sheets will melt. But we have a range of plausible scenarios from very mild to very severe. Good risk management says: don’t ignore a risk just because it isn’t certain. You buy insurance for your house even though you’re not sure it will burn down; you invest in a retirement fund even though you don’t know how long you’ll live. We take precautions under uncertainty all the time.
So, what are the risks? Mainstream climate science (synthesized in reports like the IPCC) tells us there’s a high probability that continuing on a high-emission path will lead to significant warming (e.g. 3°C, 4°C or more by 2100), which in turn would likely have very damaging effects (from coastal flooding to agricultural disruption to more extreme weather events). There’s also a small but non-zero probability of truly catastrophic outcomes (like parts of the climate system tipping into a state we haven’t anticipated — say a collapse of major ice sheets or a reversal of ocean currents). On the flip side, there’s a probability that we manage to limit warming to, say, 1.5-2°C, in which case impacts would still be there but more manageable. And yes, there’s even a slim chance that climate sensitivity (how much the planet warms per unit CO₂) is on the lower end and warming stabilizes in a comparatively benign range. We can’t know for sure where on this spectrum we’ll land.
Risk management asks: given this range of outcomes, what level of risk are we willing to tolerate? Even if you’re somewhat skeptical of worst-case scenarios, are you comfortable betting the future on the best-case assumptions? Personally, I’d rather take out an “insurance policy” by cutting emissions now, than gamble that all the scientists are wrong. The cost of being wrong on the low-risk side (i.e. over-preparing) is maybe some wasted money or effort — not ideal, but not existential. The cost of being wrong on the high-risk side (under-preparing for climate change that turns out to be severe) could be catastrophic damage to economies and ecosystems, suffering for millions of people, and irreversible losses. From a risk perspective, it’s rational to take action to prevent the worst, even as we hope for the best.
I appreciated that the author calls for keeping an open mind and not being locked into one narrative. Embracing uncertainty is actually part of the scientific ethos. Where I think we differ is in how we respond to that uncertainty. For me, uncertainty with the potential consequences we’re facing, is not a reason to wait and see; it’s a reason to act prudently. We can and should continue to study, debate, refine projections — but we should also ask, “What’s the prudent thing to do given what we know right now?” To me, the answer is to reduce the risk (cut emissions, improve resilience) in a way that is flexible to new information (adjust policies if we discover we overestimated or underestimated something).
Net Zero: Complexity, Trade-offs, and the Path Forward
The title of the original piece, “Is Net Zero Mostly Wrong?”, suggests that our target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 (a goal many countries and companies have embraced) might be misguided. I understand the skepticism here. We have indeed made grand commitments and often fallen short. As the author points out, many interim targets have been missed and progress has been uneven. The scale of the task is staggering: transforming our energy, transportation, industrial and agricultural systems globally in the span of a few decades. One can reasonably ask: Are we setting ourselves up for failure? Are the costs too high, the timelines too ambitious? And importantly, who bears those costs?
There’s no sugarcoating it: achieving net zero will be really hard. It will require massive investment, technological innovation, and societal buy-in at a level that is unprecedented. There will be trade-offs. If done poorly, climate policy could harm the poor — for instance, if energy prices spike or if industries shut down without providing new opportunities for workers. These are valid concerns that deserve attention. Any serious climate advocate should be thinking about how to mitigate these side-effects (for example, using carbon tax revenues to compensate households, or investing in job training and economic diversification in impacted regions).
But again, acknowledging the difficulty and complexity doesn’t mean we should abandon the effort. Instead, it should inspire better policy design and honest conversations about transition strategies. For instance, if we know that aggressive climate action could hurt low-income people through higher fuel bills, then design policies to offset that (such as direct rebates or improved energy efficiency support for those households). If we worry about developing countries needing cheap energy now, then wealthier nations should assist in financing clean alternatives — after all, climate change doesn’t care about borders, and helping poorer nations leapfrog to clean tech benefits everyone in the long run.
The article mentions a jaw-dropping figure: $100 trillion as the cost of net zero. This number is often cited to argue that “net zero is too expensive, unrealistic,” etc. But let’s unpack that. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), reaching net zero globally by mid-century might indeed require on the order of $4 trillion per year of investment for about 30 years . That does total around $120 trillion. However, this is not $100 trillion thrown into a black hole. It’s money spent on infrastructure, energy systems, and new technologies that will last decades and generate value (in the form of electricity, transportation, and services). In many cases it’s essentially reallocating spending from fossil infrastructure to clean infrastructure. For context, the world’s annual GDP is around $100 trillion . So we’re talking on the order of a few percent of global GDP each year invested in the transition. That’s huge, but it’s not impossible – we routinely invest in infrastructure, R&D, and new industries on similar scales when the need arises (consider how much was mobilized globally in response to the COVID pandemic, for example).
Is $100+ trillion a lot of money? Absolutely. We should scrutinize how those investments are made, ensure we get bang for the buck, and yes, prioritize so that we don’t divert resources from other pressing issues like poverty, health, and education. But let’s also ask: what is the cost of not pursuing net zero? If we continue on a high-carbon path, the damages from climate change (stronger storms, droughts, crop failures, sea-level rise inundating cities, mass migrations, etc.) could themselves cost tens of trillions of dollars over time – not to mention human lives and ecosystems. So either way, we are looking at huge numbers – it’s a matter of paying upfront to transition, versus paying later through damage and adaptation costs. Some economists argue that every dollar invested in decarbonization now saves multiple dollars in avoided damage later (though of course estimates vary). The $100 trillion figure, scary as it sounds, needs context: it’s spread over decades, involves private and public sector money globally, and much of it is investment that yields returns (clean energy can generate electricity just as fossil fuels do, often more efficiently in the long run).
The trade-offs are real: we have to ensure energy remains affordable and reliable during the transition. We have to manage the decline of certain industries and the rise of others. We have to be honest that some technologies aren’t ready yet (like full decarbonization of steel or aviation, though progress is being made). Net zero is not an on/off switch; it’s a pathway that we have to navigate carefully. But nothing I’ve seen convinces me that “mostly wrong” is the right verdict. Rather, it’s “mostly hard.” Hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it; it means we should roll up our sleeves and figure out how to do it in a way that is effective and just. We might very well adjust targets as reality dictates — maybe some countries hit net zero in 2045, others 2060, etc., and maybe we overshoot a bit and then draw down CO₂ later. The future isn’t set in stone. What matters is the direction and the commitment to keep pushing emissions down, improving technology, and not leaving the vulnerable behind in the process.
Questionable Consensus: The “World Climate Declaration”
In Is Net Zero Mostly Wrong?, the author references a declaration signed by hundreds of “scientists and professionals” that asserts “There is no climate emergency.” This is known as the World Climate Declaration, associated with an organization called CLINTEL. On the surface, it sounds impressive — over a thousand experts banding together to contradict mainstream climate warnings. I appreciate why the original piece brought this up: it’s important to recognize that not everyone in the scientific community agrees on the severity of climate change or the best solutions. Healthy skepticism includes listening to minority viewpoints too.
However, it’s also important to scrutinize what this declaration is and isn’t. The World Climate Declaration is not a peer-reviewed scientific study; it’s essentially an open letter or petition. And while it a good number of signatories, many of those individuals are not climate scientists (or even scientists at all). When journalists dug into the list, they found names of economists, engineers, former educators, even a “financial advice specialist” – people who may be smart and accomplished in their fields, but not experts in climate research. In fact, very few of the signatories have credentials in climate science specifically. Science isn’t a contest, but it does matter whether someone has conducted research in the field they’re opining on.
More crucially, the content of the declaration recycles a lot of arguments that have been examined and rebutted in the scientific literature. For instance, it suggests that current warming is just part of a natural cycle coming out of the “Little Ice Age” of the 1600-1800s, and that climate models are unreliable. The evidence, however, shows that the warming of the past century far exceeds what natural cycles alone can explain. Peer-reviewed studies have directly looked at climate model performance and found that models have been pretty darn good at projecting overall warming — they’re not perfect, but they haven’t wildly overpredicted warming as some claim. The declaration also emphasizes CO₂ as “plant food,” implying more CO₂ is purely beneficial for crops. Yes, CO₂ helps plants grow, but that’s only one factor. Excess heat, shifting rain patterns, and extreme weather (all results of climate change) actually undermine crop yields in many cases, not to mention the fact that elevated CO₂ can reduce the nutrient content of some crops. These nuances are glossed over in the letter.
Perhaps the biggest issue is that the World Climate Declaration cherry-picks data and ideas that suit a particular conclusion (“no emergency”) while ignoring the vast amount of evidence to the contrary. Climate Feedback, a non-partisan network of scientists, reviewed the declaration and noted it was “engaging in cherry-picking – selectively reporting only the results that match a desired outcome while excluding other pieces of relevant scientific evidence.” In other words, it’s not a balanced assessment of climate science; it’s an advocacy piece with a predetermined stance. That doesn’t automatically make it false, but it does mean we should be skeptical and endeavour to weigh it appropriately against the mountain of peer-reviewed research that points to significant climate risks.
I don’t bring this up to do an ad hominem attack on the signatories or to say “consensus = truth.” Science isn’t decided by a show of hands. But context matters: if 97 out of 100 experts in a field disagree with a claim, a non-expert might want to understand why before choosing to believe the 3 who dissent. The existence of a declaration like this shows there is a range of views, but it’s telling that these views haven’t passed muster in the rigorous crucible of peer review and robust scientific debate. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists, through conferences, publications, and assessments, conclude that climate change is real, driven by us, and a serious problem. Until the dissenters provide equally robust evidence and explanations that can account for observed reality (and they haven’t so far), I remain convinced that, while there’s room for debate on how we tackle it, the fact that we have a climate crisis is well-substantiated.
The $100 Trillion Question
Let’s circle back to that eye-popping figure: $100 trillion. The original article invokes this number (and I’ve seen it, and larger numbers, used elsewhere) to suggest that fighting climate change is prohibitively costly. As discussed earlier, this number likely comes from estimates of global investment needed for a net-zero transition. I want to push back on the framing of this figure for a couple of reasons.
First, it can help to break it down: that’s roughly $3-4 trillion per year over 30 years. On a global scale, it’s a big investment, but not an absurd percentage of world GDP (on the order of 3-4% of GDP annually). We regularly invest comparable fractions of GDP in infrastructure when we deem it important. It’s also worth noting that this is an investment, not pure cost. There is a return. It means building wind turbines, solar farms, new transmission lines, electric vehicles, energy-efficient buildings, R&D for new tech, and so on, instead of prospecting for new oil or coal. These things have economic value – they provide energy and services. And they can also save money in the long run: wind and solar, for example, increasingly produce electricity cheaper than fossil fuels do (once built, they have no fuel cost). So some portion of that $100T would likely be offset by fuel savings and economic benefits.
Second, we have to ask “$100 trillion compared to what?” If that’s the price of action, what is the price of inaction? Some studies try to quantify the damage of unmitigated climate change and often come up with numbers that are also in the tens of trillions of dollars (through lost GDP, property damage, adaptation costs, etc.). One could argue endlessly about these estimates, but my point is, there’s no free option where we spend $0. We either pay to transform our economy, or we pay in climate damage and adaptation. Likely we’ll do some of both (we already are paying for more frequent disasters and adaptation measures like sea walls). Framing it as “$100T for climate” without mentioning the cost of climate change itself is one-sided.
Third, what does that $100T actually buy us? If it avoids, say, the worst scenarios of climate change, it might save huge amounts of human suffering and preserve ecosystems and ways of life that we value. How do we put a dollar figure on the coral reefs saved from destruction, or the coastal cities spared from drowning, or the avoided extinction of species, or fewer people displaced by drought? Some things are beyond monetary value. We invest in preserving them because we care about the kind of planet we live on and leave to our kids.
Finally, it’s crucial to understand that this $100 trillion (or whatever it ends up being) is not purely (or even mostly) government spending. It’s largely private capital — investments by companies expecting to earn returns by building the new energy economy. Governments will play a role (funding R&D, providing incentives, perhaps subsidizing some early infrastructure or helping in poorer regions), but the heavy lifting will be businesses responding to policies and market signals. In that sense, calling it “$100T cost” is like calling all the money spent on the tech industry since 1990 a “cost” — it’s not a loss, it’s building something. That said, directing $100T in investment is a massive coordination challenge. It won’t happen automatically; it will require good policies (like carbon pricing or clean energy standards, regulations on emissions, etc.) to drive private investment, and a lot of international cooperation.
In summary, the $100 trillion figure, while attention-grabbing, doesn’t convince me that net zero is a fool’s errand. It convinces me it’s a grand challenge — one that we need to meet with eyes open, clever solutions to reduce costs, and constant vigilance to spend wisely. But the prize (a stable climate, cleaner air, modernized infrastructure, and avoidance of catastrophic risk) seems well worth the price.
Settled Science, Unsettled Details: Managing Uncertainty without Denial
The phrase “the science is settled” often gets thrown around, sometimes unhelpfully. In reality, some parts of climate science are extremely well-established, while other parts are still being studied and debated. I think the author fears that we are acting with unwarranted certitude, and that a dose of humility would do the climate movement good. I strongly agree with that sentiment! We should absolutely be humble about what we don’t know. We should be honest that climate models, while impressive, aren’t crystal balls – they have ranges of outcomes. We should acknowledge when climate advocates or the media overstate certainty (as they do – a lot).
But here’s the thing: the core insights of climate science are as settled as any scientific finding can be. We know that CO₂ and other greenhouse gases trap heat (this is basic physics, demonstrated in the lab and observed in planetary atmospheres). We know that humanity has increased CO₂ in the atmosphere by about 50% since the pre-industrial era through burning fossil fuels and deforestation (this is measured precisely). We know the planet has warmed ~1.1°C in that time, and that this rate of warming is unprecedented in at least 2,000 years (likely much longer). We know, from studying past climate changes and using models, that this warming is overwhelmingly due to those extra greenhouse gases, not natural factors like the sun or volcanoes. These are not speculative; they are supported by multiple independent lines of evidence, from thermometers to ice cores to satellite data.
What’s less settled? Exactly how fast will it warm from here under various scenarios. Exactly how will regional weather patterns shift. Exactly how high the sea will rise by 2100 or 2200. How clouds will respond, how ice dynamics will play out – there are error bars on these projections. And yes, policy questions are wide open: which technologies to use, how to balance economic growth with emissions cuts, how to incentivize innovation – those are debates with no single “scientific” answer because they involve values and trade-offs.
So, rather than saying “the science is settled” as a blanket statement, I’d phrase it this way: The big picture (that we have a serious human-caused climate problem) is clear and supported by decades of solid research. Within that picture, there are plenty of uncertainties and details to hash out. But we don’t have to know everything to act. We can move forward with robust knowledge of the basics, while adapting our strategies as we learn more about the details.
In the end, I think both I and the author of “Is Net Zero Mostly Wrong?” value intellectual honesty. We both want to base decisions on reality, not rhetoric. Where we differ is perhaps our level of concern and our interpretation of the evidence. I find the case for taking significant climate action to be convincing — not because I naively trust every claim in the media (I don’t), but because I’ve seen the scientific evidence, and I’ve considered the risk of doing nothing. I also recognize that humans are fallible and efforts like “net zero” will be messy, but to me that’s an argument for rolling up our sleeves, not for giving up.
Managing uncertainty, as I’ve said, is the responsible path. That means acknowledging what we don’t know but also acting on what we do know. It means being willing to adjust course but not losing sight of the destination. It means separating out the valid critiques (bad communication, poor policy design, etc.) from invalid ones (claiming that a snowstorm refutes global warming, or that a petition of non-experts overrides scientific consensus).
Ultimately, skepticism is healthy — until it shades into denial or defeatism. I remain optimistic that we can address climate change if we take its risks seriously and are honest about the challenges. Persuasive articles like the one I’ve responded to here are useful if they prod us to question our assumptions and improve our approaches. For me, after surveying the arguments, the data, and the trade-offs, I come down on the side that says: Yes, we should pursue net zero, even if it’s hard. Yes, we should trust the scientific process, even as we keep asking hard questions. The stakes are too high to do otherwise. The science may not give us all the answers, but it has given us a clear warning. The rest is up to us — and I’d rather face this challenge head on, with nuance and determination, than assume it’s “mostly wrong” and risk being mostly sorry later on.
References:
NASA Climate Kids – “Global warming does not mean that it will never snow or freeze. It means that it will happen less often.”
Breakthrough Institute / IPCC AR6 – Observations show cold extremes are becoming less frequent globally as the climate warms .
NASA Earth Science – Local cold spells do not negate global warming .
Our World in Data – The dramatic decline in global disaster deaths is due to improved resilience, not a reduction in extreme events .
Reuters Fact Check – In the 1920s, climate-related disasters killed ~480,000 people per year on average, versus under 20,000 per year in the 2010s .
Science Feedback – The World Climate Declaration is not backed by new research; few signatories are climate experts, and it cherry-picks claims (e.g., misrepresenting climate models and CO₂ effects) .
IEA via Stanford SIEPR – Reaching net zero might require ~$4 trillion per year globally (≈$100–120 trillion by 2050) in investment , on the order of a few percent of world GDP.
World Economic Forum – Putting $100T in context: that sum is comparable to one year of global GDP, spread over three decades ; it represents capital expenditures for a wholesale energy transition.
Stanford SIEPR – Policy experts emphasize carbon pricing and incentives as key tools for an efficient transition (aligning market behaviour with climate goals) .
IPCC AR6 – Fundamental climate science: modern warming is unprecedented in rate and driven by human emissions, not just natural recovery from the Little Ice Age .