Global Warming: Does Rich Lowry Realize He Lives on an Island?
I heard Rich Lowry once say he also lives in Manhattan. Now I realize my new home is an island but does my neighbor realize the same thing:
The cost-benefit analysis of battling global warming is never going to make sense for Americans. The places that would be hurt by global warming tend to be warm, wet, and low-lying. Think Bangladesh. For the U.S., warming isn’t much of a threat. So, stringent measures against global warming are really a massive foreign-aid program, but an intangible and speculative one. If the predicted warming materializes, and if it has the drastic effects warned about (e.g., big rises in sea levels), people living in faraway countries a century or more from now may be adversely affected — in short, a theoretical benefit to people as yet unborn.
To suggest that Bangladesh will be the only place that suffers from global warming is beyond idiocy. Now if Mr. Lowry thinks that losing the island of Manhattan will not be much of a loss, might I suggest he avoid saying that to his other neighbors.