Mr. “Settled Science” Gore and Senator “Bartender” Ocasio-Cortez demand that we commit the world economy to the fight against anthropogenic climate change. They swear – at an annoyingly high decibel level – that “for real this time” we’re at the threshold of a greenhouse gas crisis, which will cause runaway planetary heating.
Despite Gore’s claims, climate science is far from “settled.” But even if he’s 100 percent correct, I’m not worried about the climate, because Congress is going to destroy civilization as we know it, long before bovine flatulence causes the oceans to rise.
The famed Michael Mann “hockey stick” is the evidence that climate warriors invariably cite as proof that greenhouse gases are killing our planet. His chart shows a slightly downward temperature trend for over a thousand years, followed by a sudden upward bend at around the dawn of the industrial revolution (hence the term “hockey stick” describing the shape of the curve). The theory is that greenhouse gases generated by industrialization are trapping the Earth’s heat, and causing the planet’s surface temperature to rise. It has already gone up a staggering half a degree in the last 100 years! Scientists even predict that the Earth’s temperature could go up another 4 degrees by the end of the century (see this graph by the Center for Scientific Education). The horror! Greenland may even become green again!
However, I’d like to suggest that Swedish school girls stop losing sleep over the climate change boogeyman under their beds, because there’s another “hockey stick” that’s going to beat us to death, long before our coastal cities sink beneath the rising seas.
For the first 200 years of our nation’s existence, our national debt remained relatively modest. But Congress began accelerating their borrowing in the 1980s. Once they got addicted to spending other people’s money, the national debt took a sharp upward bend at the beginning of the 21st century, creating the classic “hockey stick” curve shown below.
At its current rate of growth, our national debt will reach a staggering 100 trillion dollars by the midpoint of this century. And that’s assuming the curve doesn’t take another upward turn to pay for a war, stimulus package, pandemic, or bailout (looking at you California). Considering how hard it was for Congress to rescind a paltry $9.4B this year, there’s no reason to expect our paid public servants to recover from their tax/spend/borrow addiction anytime soon. If anything, that projection is optimistic, and it has real world consequences.
Our spendaholics in Washington are quick to wave off our concerns, with sunny proclamations that our growing economy can support the debt. But is that true? In 2024 our GDP grew by 2.8 percent and our debt grew by 6.6 percent. Is that sustainable?
As the adage goes, “It takes money to make money.” Yet the current interest on our debt is over $1T dollars per year and growing. That’s money taken out of the economy each year, for Congress to make its minimum credit card payment. It’s also money which is no longer being used to make more money (grow the economy). I suggest that we need to account for the fact that the interest on our debt is a drag on the economy. Let’s project the long-range GDP by subtracting our federal interest each year, and then growing the remainder at a fixed rate, using these assumptions:
- An optimistic 6 percent GDP growth rate (which is more than twice as high as the country averaged during the last century).
- The federal government continues to borrow only $2T annually, and resists the temptation to “plus it up” for the next national emergency.
- The interest rate remains at a comfortable 3 percent, with no future increases to fight inflation (such as the 21.5 percent interest rate the Fed imposed in 1980).
- Inflation, tax increases, and increasing government regulation have no effect on future productivity increases.
As the graph below illustrates, the United States will continue to build wealth for another 15-20 years. Happy days are here again! But the party will be followed by the hangover. Sometime around mid-century the interest on the federal debt will exceed the annual growth of the economy, and the GDP will begin its final nosedive. Eventually, maybe 4 to 5 decades from now, the game ends – the US government is no longer able to pay the interest on the debt it has acquired. It has run out of other people’s money to spend.
Given the assumptions noted above, this chart is probably a “best case” scenario.
My granddaughter was born in 2010. If our debt continues to grow at its current rate, she will reach retirement age in an America where:
- Loans are in default,
- The dollar is worthless,
- All savings has been wiped out,
- Trade is done by barter,
- The infrastructure is failing,
- Employment opportunities are scarce,
- There is no such thing as retirement,
- Tax revenue is nonexistent, and
- Social order is gone.
Think that scenario can’t happen in America? Look at Venezuela. It was one of the wealthiest countries in the world, until its government’s appetite consumed its entire economy.
We need to rethink how we do crisis management, because we’re currently treating the patient’s cholesterol (1/2-degree temperature rise) while we ignore an arterial bleed ($2T per year hemorrhage).
America will not be able to respond to any crisis late in this century if we don’t survive the next 4 decades. The climate alarmists want us to spend trillions of dollars fighting global warming, but they also demand that we continue funding transexual operas in Columbia. The truth is that we can’t afford either. It’s time we exercised some common-sense triage. Our federal government does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. Without changing how we think about government – what we expect it to do, and what we’re willing to pay for it – we won’t be able to address any emergency in the future – climate or otherwise.
Author Bio: John Green is a retired engineer and political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He spent his career designing complex defense systems, developing high performance organizations, and doing corporate strategic planning. He is a contributor to American Thinker, The American Spectator, and the American Free News Network. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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