Earth Hour: Turn On the Lights, Celebrate Electricity

Bjorn Lomborg joined The Economist's podcast The Economist asks to discuss the question: "Poverty, health, education or climate change: where should governments spend their money?" Within each of these areas, some solutions are better than others: shouldn't we do the smart ones first?

This year, the world will spend $US162 billion ($230bn) subsidising renewable energy, propping up inefficient industries and supporting middle-class homeowners to erect solar panels, according to the International Energy Agency. In addition, the Paris Agreement on climate change will cost the world from $US1 trillion to $US2 trillion a year by 2030. Astonishingly, neither of these hugely expensive policies will have any measurable impact on temperatures by the end of the century.

The world has spent two decades developing policies to combat global warming -- and we have little to show for it.

By Bjørn Lomborg in Foreign Policy
 
Whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney finds himself working from the Oval Office over the next four years, he will face the problem of tackling global warming without breaking the bank.  He will have to realize that ignoring the problem will not make it go away -- but will also have to accept that the policies of the past 20 years have not worked.