This is an opinion column.

Alabama’s climate change skeptic-in-chief – UAH’s John Christy – was just appointed to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board, a top body for advising the agency on policy.

It’s a big win for those who favor a do-nothing approach to the changing planet.

It’s a huge triumph to those who hold humankind guiltless and powerless to affect the climate.

It’s a big political victory for those who believe all humanity need do in the face of global scientific consensus and pressure to reduce greenhouse gases is to do what it has always done. Just say eff it and drive on.

It’s a smashing success for those who believe our best hope comes with our heads in the sands, listening to the 3 percent of climate scientists who say man is not to blame, instead of the 97 percent, as NASA points out, who agree that “Climate-warming trends of the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.”

Yep. Most Alabamians will call it a big ol’ win, because worrying about preserving life on the ball costs money and keeps the super-rich from getting super richer.

But alas. It looks like doing nothing also comes with a financial cost. Climate change will, according to a new report by the Brookings Institute, wreak the most havoc on the Southeastern states by the end of the century, and heap the most economic distress on states that, you know, don’t buy into that whole climate change thing.

Alabama, according to Brookings, will suffer the fifth highest economic loss, behind only Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. Birmingham is projected to suffer the 15th-worst climate-related loss. Only the top 100 metros were included.

The irony of it all is that, if these guys are right, the changing climate will actually boost agricultural yields in the Northeast and Northwest, and hurt the South in various ways. So the South will fall again, and the North rise like sea levels.

Or as Brookings puts it:

“While increases in agricultural yields will significantly benefit the nation’s Northwest, climate-caused deaths will hurt the Southwest as coastal storms and sea-level issues batter the Southeast, Florida, and the Gulf Coast. These patterns suggest that many red-voting states in the “brown barricade” are likely disproportionately exposed to climate change’s negative impacts.”

I know what you’re saying. I can hear you. You’re saying these pointy heads at Brookings are just more of those lefty conspirators who passed through Berkeley on their way to meet George Soros for a passionfruit daiquiri on his private yacht.

And Brookings is said to have a left-of-center to center leaning. The website Mediabiasfactcheck.com labels it “left center bias.” But it also rates its factual reporting “Very High.” If you’re going to write off the Brookings Institute there is just no reason to read on.

But the findings are just … karmic.

Alabama and much of the South is the red-hot center of the resistance to action on climate change, and the molten core of the consequence in the U.S.

Or as the report puts it: “Drill down on the political geography of climate damage and it becomes clear that in much of the country Republicans are voting for people who are opposed to climate policy, even as they are most exposed to climate impacts.”

The worst thing that ever happened in the climate change debate is when the fate of the planet was politicized in the first place, when the vast majority of scientists were sullied and dismissed by politicians who sold their souls for sound bites, who needed someone like Christy to follow.

It is a big win for those who would do nothing. I hope their children’s children remember.

.John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a columnist for Reckon by AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.