Without a doubt, it is a major challenge to accurately model and predict the course of climate change. Climate systems are highly chaotic, which makes it difficult to figure out the effect of any particular natural or human event on future climate changes. We should, therefore, proceed with caution before making bold claims that the main, or even sole, driver of climate change is the human-generated increase in the carbon dioxide level, which now is approaching 415 parts per million.

But today’s activists are in crisis mode. The 16-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg’s recent calls for action sparked thousands of students to skip classes last month in order to fight a global climate “emergency.” These students are long on indignation, but short on solutions. They are content to implore today’s business, political, and social elites to come up with a solution before it is all too late—after all, these activists claim, in ten years we could all be dead.

The youth movement and its adult supporters assume that the fate of the world hangs in the balance unless some prompt and decisive action is taken. The proposed cures for addressing the climate crisis, such as the uncompromising demand that there be no more new fossil fuel projects, are highly intrusive. If implemented, even in part,  they will necessarily affect how ordinary people eat, work, travel, and vacation­—and even how they bear children. The common desire “to set a pathway for 100 percent renewable power” will force excessive reliance on alternative energy forms, such as wind and solar, that are too unreliable to offer a dependable energy source on land, and useless for such activities as air transportation.