The Left wants to use the threat of climate change as a license to remake the entire economy and government along its preferred lines — energy policy, yes, but also everything from transportation to architecture, and from labor law to foreign relations and trade. The argument for replacing natural-gas electricity with wind and solar is that reducing our use of fossil fuels could, if the practice were widespread enough, help to mitigate the effects of climate change already underway.

But there is another way to look at the question. If the predictions are correct and we are set to experience more extreme weather events, including unusually powerful winter storms, then it may be more advisable to invest in adaptation than in the much more uncertain project of severely limiting greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide, a global effort that would require the willing and honest cooperation of countries such as India and China, which are unlikely to comply. //

Of course, we could add a great deal of electricity capacity at a very low carbon cost, if we were so inclined: That means more nuclear power — which, unlike wind and solar, provides a reliable baseline of generation. The new flexible reactors being developed by Bill Gates’ TerraPower could be a game-changer — and the challenges to nuclear power are more a matter of finance and regulation than of science and engineering. Making it easier to bring nuclear power online is something that can be fixed by policy.

Climate change is not, in spite of the insistence of some of my conservative friends, a hoax. But conceding the reality of it is not the same as conceding the Left’s far-reaching schemes, up to and including the so-called Green New Deal. Instead, we should be looking at making intelligent, economical decisions that maximize the use of the desirable resources we already have at our command, balancing environmental concerns with other pressing questions, such as being able to keep Americans’ houses heated and their lights on when a little snow falls in San Antonio.