There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs

In his book "Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy" first published in 2000, Thomas Sowell makes the following observation: "There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs."  Sowell explains that every decision involves compromises, and that recognizing and understanding these trade-offs is crucial for effective economic thinking and policy-making. 

A recent article by Jonathan Miltimore of American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) discusses how economic reality has recently impacted environmental political policy.  The article can be found at this link:

AIER-Green-Policy-in-Retreat

Highlights from this article:

A quote from a farmer at a protest in Pamplona, Spain: "They're drowning us with all these regulations.  They need to ease up on all the directives and bureaucracy.”

First, it’s becoming apparent — especially in Europe where energy is more scarce and expensive — that people are souring on Green policies.

...voters don’t actually like being told what car they must drive and how to cook their food and heat their homes. 

Green parties and environmentalists have had success largely by getting people to focus on the desired effect of their policies (saving people from climate change) and to ignore the costs of their policies.

Politicians seem to grasp that their policies come with trade-offs, which is why their bans and climate targets tend to be 10, 15, or 30 years into the future. This allows them to bask in the glow of their climate altruism without dealing with the economic consequences of their policies.

This is one of the most salient differences between economics and politics. Economics is all about understanding the reality of trade-offs, but politics is primarily about ignoring or concealing these realities.

The economic impacts of environmental political policy is discussed by Roger Pielke Jr. in the following article:

The iron law of climate policy

Highlights from this article:

Climate policy, they say, requires sacrifice, as economic growth and environmental progress are necessarily incompatible with one another. This perspective has even been built into the scenarios of the IPCC. However, experience shows quite clearly that when environmental and economic objectives are placed into opposition with one another in public or political forums, the economic goals win out. I call this the iron law of climate policy. Opinion polls show that the public is indeed willing to pay some amount for attaining environmental goals, just as it is with respect to other societal goals. However, the public has its limits as to how much it is willing to pay.

In her novel "Atlas Shrugged" Ayn Rand makes the following statement: “We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.”  Environmental political policies are experiencing the consequences of evading economic reality.