Hacker News Books

> What I don't understand is why people who argue against climate change stand to gain.

One of the larger problems is that to many people climate change has become a political issue instead of a physical phenomenon. Climate change is used as a lever to achieve political goals just like racial relations, gender confusion, migration questions and many other unrelated things. This has made it a political act to either affirm and reinforce anthropogenic climate change or relativise or deny it. Just like with the other mentioned issues this politicisation makes it much harder to come to rational conclusions and act upon them. The tactic of using one thing to try to force through other things - "climate refugees" (migration), "green new deal" (welfare state), "the great reset" (globalism) - only adds fuel to the metaphorical fire, making it even harder to act rationally.

Another big problem is that climate-related eschatology has a rich history of failed predictions which makes it rather easy to claim that the currently fashionable scenario will probably end up by the wayside just like all the previous failed predictions did. Add to that the exaggerated emotionally laden calls for action because "the world will go under/be uninhabitable in X years" (where X tends to be in the near, not far future) and the stage is set for the defence of any stance on the issue, from "everyone is going to die from climate change" to "the world will thrive like never before".

Christopher Hitchens mused about "how religion poisons everything" in his book "God is not great: how religion poisons everything" [1]. Were he still alive he could write a similar book on politics: "How Politics Poisons Everything". It would be a good read and it would not change the situation one whit, alas.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43369.God_Is_Not_Great