When Should We Mitigate Climate Change?

The cartoon here reminds me of my interview with the spokesperson for libertarian think tank The Cato Institute.  As anyone could have guessed, Cato has arguments against climate change mitigation that could stretch from here to Halifax.

One of them, perhaps the most asinine of them all, goes like this:  Almost all of the damage created by climate change will come several decades hence, therefore most of the work we do to mitigate it should also be done at that point.

I said, “This sounds analogous to an oncologist who says, ‘You have a tumor on your lung, but some of these grow slowly.  In a few years, you should start to think about quitting smoking your two packs a day.'”