Fareed Zakaria GPS : Lomborg on environmentalism

From their ivory towers, nearly 240 academics have declared that economic growth is bad for Europe and the planet. In two months, they and global supporters of the “no-growth economy” have held conferences in Mexico City, Malmö, and Brussels. Their efforts herald a return to an earlier, thoroughly debunked form of alarmist environmentalism that is detached from reality and disdainful of billions of the world’s people. The campaigners claim we must stop economic growth because the planet is crossing environmental boundaries, and inequality between humans is increasing.

The global economy must be transformed immediately to avoid catastrophic climate damage, a new United Nations report declares. Climate economist William Nordhaus has been made a Nobel laureate. The events are being reported as two parts of the same story, but they reveal the contradictions inherent in climate policy—and why economics matters more than ever. Limiting temperatures to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels, as the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urges, is economically and practically impossible—as Mr. Nordhaus’s work shows. The IPCC report...