I'm John Batchel with Professor John Cochran of Stanford University at the Hoover Institution.

He keeps the grumpy economist blog I recommend on Substac.

We now go to Christine Lagarde, the central banker for the European Central Bank,

making remarks recently, identifying the floods in Spain, the storms in North America, and the drought in the Amazon,

as evidence of we must keep going with climate change financing,

both to help the smaller and weaker nations,

and also to mitigate the future of despair.

The number given in this essay is $11.7 trillion by 2035.

I don't know, John, that sounds high.

Is Christine Lagarde sincere that, in addition to reviving our economies

that are still fragile from the

pandemic and the Ukraine war and the threat in the Middle East and the Chinese confrontation,

that we have 11.7 trillion left over to do something about climate change, despite the fact that

we'll never see the results? Yeah yeah she wrote this op-ed which

kind of got me grumpy that's why they call me the grumpy economist saying that floods and

and uh droughts due to climate change uh are an existential threat to our very economic existence

requiring as you said 10 percent of GDP GDP to be invested in green projects.

Now, remember that climate change at its worst estimates is going to cost 5% of GDP in 100 years.

So 10% of GDP now to save 5% of GDP in 100 years.

It doesn't sound like a great tradeoff.

And by the way, I thought solar panels were supposed

to be cheap. What happened to 10% of GDP? But let's distinguish two questions. One, is this the

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