I agree completely that the science is difficult at best. Like the evidence for smoking and lung cancer. That, hard to believe, was very difficult to prove given the knowledge of science at the time and the epidemiology of simply living on a planet exposed to numerous toxins as well as genetics, etc. Lots of deniers there for a long time. Still lots of deniers there. That said, there were plenty of people who reasoned at the time that lung cancer or not, it was a nasty habit, people became addicted, coughed a lot, and lots of people seemed to die young.
To me, it has nothing to do with an agenda. I guess I'm a "free thinker" here. My thinking goes like this:
Lots of people on the planet.
Limited resources.
Carbon based lifestyle (oil addiction e.g) is unsustainable and probably dangerous, let alone wasteful.
Politically its horrible being dependent on despots like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc. for our oil addiction.
Steps to decrease pollution and waste are simply smart policy. Whether it turns out, after years of extremely difficult science that the world's climate was affected by man or not is moot. In the meantime, let's hope, we can look back and tell our heirs that we did our best to provide green energy, good air and clean water.
mm
I note that you couldn't help but slip in the denier slur, oblique though it may be. Right now, the science is pretty clear that there's no sound evidence that there's even a problem, let alone one caused by CO2. Certainly, the warming that stopped in 1998 isn't unique, as has been demonstrated in lots of peer reviewed research. The link between CO2 and warming is less than tenuous.
So, the analogy is poor. CO2 might be more analogous to, well, CO2 rather than cigarettes. In enough concentration, CO2 will kill you, but the evidence does not support that in normal context it's going to do you harm. The same with current and reasonably projected atmospheric levels (with a caveat that we should watch and study this further, just in case).
None of this means that we shouldn't encourage increased efficiencies with regard to fossil fuels. We absolutely should. We should be transitioning to nuclear right now. We should all be evaluating our fuel and energy usage.
What we should NOT do is squander even a fraction of a percent of ongoing growth based upon the evidence that we have now. The cost of this compounded loss of growth over the coming decades will be an inability to address REAL LIFE AND DEATH ISSUES. The economics are pretty clear. Take the craziest projections from the IPCC. Using aggressive and draconian controls on CO2, you wouldn't have much effect, save reducing folks abilities to remediate against the effects of climate change. More people--the worlds poorest---would likely die due to this reduced global wealth and the inability to devote resources to offsetting a warmer world with higher sea levels. I mean, it's not like we haven't done this before. See the Netherlands or Boston, for that matter. It's just a matter of money--so long as we HAVE it.
And, get this, what if we're dead wrong? What if, AS SOME LEGITIMATE SCIENTISTS FEAR, we're not in for global warming but another little ice age.
If we don't have the resources for that, many, MANY more will die. Less growth means more deaths in almost all reasonable scenarios. That's the price tag. And cutting down CO2 doesn't justify more loss of human life.
Meanwhile, there are people dying NOW from simple things that perhaps another 1% of economic growth would make go away. Things like lack of fresh water. Malaria. Infection. etc. etc.