Todd Zywicki, a bankruptcy professor at George Mason Law and blogger at the libertarian “The Volokh Conspiracy,” recently informed the world that while he has “no special knowledge” of whether global warming is occurring, if it is occurring he wonders why people aren't "buying up all the land 300 yards or so from the current beach, or wherever they expect the sea level to rise to in the future?” Todd goes on to ask: “Shouldn't Al Gore be cornering the market on coastal land twenty feet above today's sea level?”
Well Todd, we don’t have access to Gore’s investment portfolio, but rest assured the free market is responding to the near-unanimous scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity. As several VC commenters observed, for example, the insurance industry has increased premiums, refused to insure areas at risk from global warming catastrophes, and adopted policies that encourage reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Lord Peter Levene, board chair of Lloyd’s of London, says that global warming, not terrorism, is the insurance industry’s biggest worry, despite the fact that his company was the largest single insurer of the World Trade Center.
Other VC commenters noted the difficulty of identifying the precise parcels of land that will be directly affected by global warming, which led some commenters to speculate that Todd’s post might be the worst post in the history of the blog.
Why pick on Todd here at Warming Law? At the risk of ruining your day, dear readers, we feel compelled to note that Todd has lectured our federal judges on the economics of climate change at libertarian judicial seminars hosted by the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (for the agenda, go here and scroll down). One can just imagine the rigorous, balanced, and thought-provoking economic analysis he presents to our federal judiciary.
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