The fight against climate change needs better weapons

Innovation, not an energy diet, is the key to stopping global warming

Greta Thunberg.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images, SIN03, MicrovOne/iStock)

Every global climate summit to date has featured lots of tough talk but little action. The United Nations confab in New York that is wrapping up is no different. Nor will anything change in the future unless climate change warriors stop insisting that the world go on an energy diet — and start offering cheaper and cleaner energy options that don't require a lifestyle where transcontinental travel means a boat like the one that the 16-year-old Greta Thunberg took from Sweden to deliver her rebuke to world's leaders.

Human-caused global warming is real, but activists have to get real. They think that they can spur action by simply exaggerating the urgency of climate change. Thunberg insisted that if drastic action to cut emissions isn't taken now, basically the planet as we know it will cease to exist. Likewise, Green New Dealers like Rep. Alexander Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have been saying that the planet has an "expiration date."

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.