Hmmm....his argument doesn't stack up. If increased spending on preventative measures leads to a wasteful cost and economic depression, surely the same depression would come about whether or not those measures had any effect? Logically, if we choose to take any action, it will lead to an economic crisis.
Of course, with carefully managed measures (not just taxing the crap out of MEDC [More Economically Developed Country] residents and sanctioning the industrial LEDC [Less etc.]) the economy will not suffer as much as he suggests-that's a worse-case scenario that
we can control, somewhat.
The worst-case scenario if we don't take action is what is in the lower-right box. However, if we don't take any action, we can't control the outcome, and so it's out of our hands. As such, it's much better to be wrong and be able to attempt to rectify the mistakes than be equally wrong and faced with uncontrollable consequences.
This whole idea is very much based on Pascal's Wager, only it's not quite as flawed. Obviously, the safe bet would be to take action. Which leads me to the next point; another option is that Climate change is real (which few can deny), but any measures we bring in will either be too late or too ineffective to do anything. In which case, we lose and go to box lower-right, but the possibility of that option being the right one is so small that not spending on correctional/preventative measures and instead preparing for the worst-case scenario is not wise.
He makes a fairly good argument, but it is flawed. He arrives at the right conclusion, minus the extraneous fluff, which is reassuring. I still find it quite strange that so many people believe climate change is a myth, or at least that it's not controlled by humanity. The polemic arguments against human-caused climate change are very flawed, and I enjoy correcting people about them, because they don't have a leg to stand on.
