Don’t blame climate change for extreme weather

During a recent visit with the Dallas Morning News' editorial board, Bjorn Lomborg urged policymakers to spend money on countering climate change more effectively. Rather than spending on feel-good green projects or urging people to make personal sacrifices such as giving up meat, leaders should approach climate solutions unemotionally and invest in the ideas that will do the most good for the most people.

2013-09-18 The precautionary principle used to work. It was set out at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and stated that complete scientific evidence was not necessarily required in support of action on the most serious environmental threats. Unfortunately, since then, this well-intentioned principle has become a destructive tool, used to support bad policies. 

Over the past 25 years, nearly 1.2 billion people around the world have been lifted out of poverty, while both malnutrition and the risk of death from air pollution have decreased. Taken together, these achievements are nothing short of a miracle. But two global trends now threaten to slow the momentum in reducing poverty.