What if there were “natural” global warmingMike Rappaport

Russ Roberts asks a question that is similar to the one that I used to ask my students when I taught Environmental Law.  Roberts asks:

Suppose we discovered that the earth was cooling rather than warmingdue to a natural cycle. Would you encourage people to drive more anduse more carbon-based energy as a way of warming the earth?  I suspect that some people’s ideal policy towards the earth’s climateis that it should be whatever it would be if people didn’t exist.  Obviously, not all people who worry about global warming feel this way. That’s the point of the quiz.

I used to ask my students: Suppose that global warming was natural and therefore not caused by humans.  Would you still want to prevent it from occurring?