Treasury Secretary Scott babbled nonsense to the Institute of International Finance on global warming saying it's impossible to know how to deal with climate change because the planet is going through cycles, is mostly water and it's impossible to deconstruct a way forward or predict its effects on the planet. Apparently science doesn't exist.
Bessent never once denied global warming is happening, but his other words said it out loud and his response was to do nothing.
He's lucky the interviewer had no actual scientific knowledge on the issue or Bessent would have looked foolish.
The IIF interview largely said that yes, climate is changing, but the World Bank and the IMF should focus on economic issues to try to make the world better instead of dealing with climate change.
In essences, Bessent's main message was to tell the world and its major institutions to ignore climate change and focus on economic growth.
What, me worry?
BESSENT: And look, I think projecting anything that, if you look, economists have trouble projecting 3, 6, 12 months, whether it's my economist at Treasury, whether it's the IMF or World Bank economist, and try to project something so far into the future.
If you think about a y-axis and an x-axis, what we're really thinking about is the z-axis in terms of the trajectory.
And why does the trajectory matter?
Yes, the climate does change. As we all know, the natural habitat for the Earth is actually water.
Ice was probably a, I mean, it's a very long cycle, but ice was an unusual cycle.
And we are going through cycles. And I believe that it is very difficult to deconstruct the reasons around why anything changes. But I think we better step back.
What do we know?
We know it's changing. And how do you increase resiliency?
HOST: Yeah, exactly.
And resilience really comes from more prosperity. And at the end of the day, of course, yes, climate change is a real problem.
But if you're poor, if you have all these other problems that you struggle with, and you're vulnerable to disease, and corruption, and bad education, and so on, these are the things that we can really help people with first.
Huh? Who knew being prosperous was the climate change cure? Are the billionaires out there are onto something?
Stick your head in the sand and keep making money?
The host admitted there is climate change but offered up an idiotic notion of making the poor happier and bring more prosperity to the world. These are the "thinkers" in our think tanks?
