Climate Crisis
Environmentalists claim that we are facing a ‘climate crisis’ or ‘climate emergency’, which is leading to a catastrophic breakdown of society. In this category, we consider the claims about climate impacts’ effects on society.
Climate crisis
Agriculture and Food
The argument for radical climate policies is often based on the claim that climate change is having an impact on the world’s capacity to support industrial agriculture. According to Extinction Rebellion founders Roger Hallam and Gail Bradbrook, billions of people are going to starve, and survivors will have to resort to cannibalism. Both claim that their fears… Read More »Agriculture and Food
Conflict
Similar to their claims about poverty, many climate policy advocates argue that conflict is driven by climate change. But again, the data pertaining to this hypothesis does not show it to have a solid basis in reality. Data shows that the world entered a much more peaceful phase at the end of the 1980s – when the… Read More »Conflict
Infectious Diseases
It has long been assumed that higher temperatures cause a rise in the incidence of infectious disease. For example, some arguments claim that global warming will increase the range of mosquitos that carry viruses and parasites (e.g. malaria), and cause food to foul, leading to diarrheal diseases. But across the world, even in the poorest… Read More »Infectious Diseases
Environmental migration
In 2005, the United Nations claimed that by 2010 there would be 50 million ‘climate refugees’. This claim has been a mainstay of the argument for global climate change policy, and is based on the belief that climate change will compound the ‘effects of poverty and war’. However, by the mid 2010s, this estimate of people’s… Read More »Environmental migration
Poverty
Green campaigners have argued climate change is already making people poorer and will increase rates of poverty. They argue similarly that solving the problem of climate change will in itself tackle the problems of poverty and inequality. But the data shows that extreme poverty was well on the way to being solved, and that climate… Read More »Poverty
Property Damage
Claims that storms damage property and civil infrastructure, largely driven by dramatic news coverage of extreme weather events, have created the misunderstanding that these events are becoming more frequent, more damaging, and will be one of the main mechanisms of the ‘climate crisis’ that ultimately makes the world hostile to humanity. But the evidence for… Read More »Property Damage