The price mechanism is laboring heroically to balance supply and demand and resolve passing energy disruptions caused by the stop-start Covid economy. There are many things politicians do that don’t help, such as blocking pipeline infrastructure or trying to freeze pump prices and electricity rates for end-users. But don’t worry, all will be well because Saudi Arabia, Russia and U.S. wildcatters still like money.

In Glasgow, where world leaders will gather soon for a climate conference, they might use the moment to ask some...

Workers lay pipe for Enbridge's Line 3 oil pipeline in Superior, Wis., Nov. 12, 2020.

Photo: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Zuma Press

The price mechanism is laboring heroically to balance supply and demand and resolve passing energy disruptions caused by the stop-start Covid economy. There are many things politicians do that don’t help, such as blocking pipeline infrastructure or trying to freeze pump prices and electricity rates for end-users. But don’t worry, all will be well because Saudi Arabia, Russia and U.S. wildcatters still like money.

In Glasgow, where world leaders will gather soon for a climate conference, they might use the moment to ask some big-boy questions. Was it ever plausible that human beings might dramatically reduce their use of fossil fuels? Doesn’t it seem especially unlikely in a month when leaders have been throwing their climate promises to the wind in pursuit of lower energy prices for their consumers and voters?

Look at any graph of emissions. When the LBJ White House issued a report warning about global warming in 1965, total emission were 11.28 billion tons. In 1979, when the National Research Council issued its landmark Charney Report, emissions were 19.48 billion tons. When the U.N. issued the first assessment report of its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990, emissions were 22.7 billion tons. With the sixth report this year, emissions are 36 billion tons.

If humanity were going to do anything about the accumulation of atmospheric CO2, it would have done so by now, by taxing carbon. For reasons manifest in the present crisis, the alternative of piling up subsidies and mandates to encourage “green” energy doesn’t actually have any pronounced effect on the incentive to use fossil fuels. Economists by now have developed a large literature testifying to a “rebound effect.” If a Tesla driver uses less, lithium miners use more. If a customer is required by regulation to spring for a more efficient car, she will likely drive more miles.

Make any climate-policy assumption you want: It is mathematically certain now that adaptation, not emissions control, will constitute the lion’s share of the human response.

Carbon emitted into the atmosphere may have a half-life of 150 years. The full equilibrium effect of a given change in the absolute level of atmospheric CO2 takes a century or more to unfold. It’s not just the median voter, under these circumstances, who has more to gain from burning fossil fuels than from restricting their use to slow climate change. It is every single person. And this is not myopia. By the most reasonable assumptions, it will be cheaper for the person 100 years from now to cope with a warmer climate than it would be for a person today to prevent that warming.

Climate advocates were once loath to use words like adaptation and mitigation because it smacked of surrender, though they lately unfurled the white flag. But there are good reasons too for these words to go unsaid—because they are redundant, because all creatures adapt to their environment. Not only are commands from on high unnecessary: they are likely to misjudge and misconstrue what constitutes adaptation.

Let me give you a heavy-handed example. When Teddy Roosevelt settled on Long Island’s Oyster Bay he built on a hilltop whereas his neighbors today build practically on the beach. Yet, in every way his modern neighbors are better informed about risk than he was. Most important, their decisions implicitly internalize the fact that their chance of dying from severe weather is 99% lower than in TR’s time. When a storm comes, they and their families will be safely out of harm’s way thanks to satellite-based weather forecasting. Then, it’s just a financial question: Do they want to pay the insurance cost of their beachfront amenities?

At the other extreme, Bangladesh is waved as a bloody shirt in the climate wars because tens of millions live in low-lying lands subject to seasonal flooding and tropical cyclones. All of us would wish to spend less resources defending against the weather. But using a combination of traditional and modern means, not only have Bangladesh’s people coped with the hazards of their location; since 1990, they’ve increased their population by 60% and their per capita income sixfold, among the best performances in the world.

What would really help is better information about the future climate risks we face—storm frequency and severity, sea-level rise, etc.—so we can all make better decisions. Alas, much of the climate community is still geared to producing worst-case scenarios to win voter acquiescence in boondoggles. The insurance industry at least has a stake in realistic estimates.

Let’s understand: Nobody builds any kind of structure without considering the predictable risks it will be exposed to. These millions and millions of discrete decisions cannot be stopped—and happily so, because they represent the only real answer humanity will likely offer to a changing climate at least until the major countries get serious about geoengineering, which will open a new can of worms.

Bad policy choices contribute to the energy supply crunch. Photo: Associated Press The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition