The Obama Administration is sticking to its talking points claiming climate change affects us more than terrorism. It might be valuable to compare and contrast the real life affects Americans endure from both of these threats.


First, let’s take a look at climate change’s effects in the United States: Hurricane power, when measured by satellites, is near its lowest ever ebb. There’s no change in the frequency of severe tornados. The relationship between heavy snow and temperature is negative along the East Coast. Carbon dioxide and longer growing seasons are significantly increasing the world’s food supply, and there’s no relationship between global temperature and U.S. drought.


Compare this with the effects of terrorism: On September 11, 2001, terrorists took down the World Trade Center and nearly an entire side of the Pentagon, extinguishing 2,996 lives. As a result, every American’s privacy is assaulted by the government on a daily basis—and let’s not talk about what they’ve done to air travel, or worse, Iraq. We’ve managed to remain in a perpetual state of war, unleashing a wave of federal spending our great grandchildren will be repaying.


Perhaps next time President Obama skips the TSA lines to fly around the world on Air Force One (on the taxpayer dime, emitting the carbon of which he’s so scared) he should look down at Arlington National Cemetery at the tombstones left from the reaction to terrorism–it’s an excellent reminder of the real cost of government action.


(Read more about actual threat of terrorism in “Terrorizing Ourselves,” by Benjamin Friedman, Jim Harper and Christopher Prebel, and “Responsible Counterterrorism Policy,” by John Mueller and Mark Stewart.)