Drop the Climate and Focus on Your Day Job, Please

The Fed wants to be an expert on climate change when it barely understands inflation

Letters to The WSJ.

"David Barker’s op-ed “The Fed’s Climate Studies Are Full of Hot Air” (April 10) prompts me to recall Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s admission about “transitory inflation.” Last summer, Mr. Powell said in surprising self-criticism: “We now understand better how little we understand about inflation.”

Clearly, with this important discovery, the time and intellectual resources of the Fed’s 400 economists would be much better spent improving the understanding of the complex inflation phenomenon rather than writing superficial studies on climate change. The Fed has no underlying comparative advantage in climate studies. By trying to appear politically correct, it only further erodes its credibility.

Istvan Dobozi

Sarasota, Fla.

Mr. Dobozi was a lead economist at the World Bank.

The Fed-driven fantasies linking climate change to low economic growth are outdone by activist health researchers who believe climate-change action is more important than delivering quality care to medical and psychiatric patients. My own work has shown how researcher-activists use the same statistical sleights of hand as Federal Reserve economists to demand root-and-branch reform of healthcare to reduce the carbon outputs involved.

It is deeply troubling that it is necessary to say this, but healthcare systems must focus on caring for patients. Imposing unrealistic climate goals on hospitals and medical practitioners will harm patients without improving the climate, however much they make advocates feel like righteous crusaders.

Andrew Amos, M.D.

Thuringowa Central, Australia"