Kerry’s Bogus Green-Economy Pitch

John Kerry finally got one right last week when he said shifting to a green economy would trigger a huge “economic transformation.” Only problem: The “transformation” will make the world worse, not better.

“A bigger economic transformation” is “right there at our disposal — bigger than the Industrial Revolution,” puffed the architect of the failed Iran nuje deal, now President Biden’s climate envoy. “Millions of jobs” are just waiting to be created, he claimed, with “a massive amount of money” to be made “because there are 4.5 to 5 billion energy users in the world today.”

Yep, switching the world’s economy to renewable energy (solar, wind, etc.) will require an astronomical number of workers. And many companies might reap profits.

What Kerry doesn’t say is that a vast number of jobs would be destroyed. Assets, too: factories, power plants, gas-powered cars . . . whole buildings would have to be trashed.

Most important: Renewable power is (for now, at least) far more expensive to produce (and entails huge energy-storage costs, as wind and sunlight aren’t always available), so the economy as a whole would take an enormous hit, as economist Bjorn Lomborg often points out.

“If climate policies really were making us richer, everyone would scramble to shed fossil fuels and pile on the renewables,” notes Lomborg. Instead, climate warriors depend on “arm-twisting” and deceptive salesmanship to get countries to make even small promises to move in their direction.

In fact, the shift would cost trillions every year, Lomborg warns. On the other hand, “if we do nothing, the total impact of climate in the 2070s will be equivalent to reducing incomes by 0.2-2 percent. Given that by then, each person is expected to be 363 percent as rich as today, climate change means we will ‘only’ be 356 percent as rich.”

Privileged private-jet flying green dilettante Kerry has nothing to fear from this new world order he envisions. The rest of us should be terrified.