Thirty Years of the ‘Now or Never’ Climate Cry

The 2,913 pages of the United Nations’ “Climate Change 2022” report make clear only that nothing is clear. Written in the incomprehensible language of climate science, there are only two things that are easily understood: the word taxes, which appears 270 times, and the word costs, which appears 1,585 times.

The entire report, full of technicalities, cross-references, and incomprehensible tables, generates more headaches than alarm. This is not for public consumption, quite obviously. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change keeps the taxes and the costs confined to the report — but it reserves the artillery of apocalyptic words for the press release. The headline reads, “The evidence is clear: the time for action is now.” (The “evidence” is the 2,913 pages that no one will read.)