Get the facts straight
Read the interview on Fox News
Published by Project Syndicate
The latest alarming news about climate change is that huge swaths of densely inhabited land will be underwater by 2050, with their cities “erased.” These reports – which appeared in The New York Times and many other media outlets – are based on a good research paper by scientists at Climate Central, but they get the story wrong.
This is part of a damaging pattern. Climate change is a man-made problem that we need to tackle, but many of the news stories about its purported effects are scaring us without justification and misleading us about how to act.
Biodiversity - the species we share our planet with - is under pressure. Post-2015 Consensus research finds that a global target to prevent the loss of coral reefs will gives at least $24 of environmental benefits per dollar spent. Likewise, reducing the current loss of forests by half would likely do about $10 of good for each dollar spent. However, increasing protected areas, because it is very costly but only somewhat helpful, is likely to do less than $1 of good per dollar spent.
Published by Wall Street Journal
In Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley asks how rich countries can best help poor ones and identifies five goals with great bang for the buck based on the output from Post-2015 Consensus so far.