The Poor Need Cheap Fossil Fuels

The potential impact of the coronavirus pandemic is enormous. But draconian policies to tackle the virus also have colossal costs. Ignoring the trade-offs could land us with one of the worst possible outcomes.

A landmark study by London’s Imperial College on death impacts from different policies helped change the minds of US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson towards implementation of lockdown policies. It showed that without any such policies, COVID-19 would kill a half-million people in Britain and 2.2 million people in the US.

Bjorn Lomborg gave a presentation on climate change at a conference in Colorado. He explained that climate change won’t be as costly or devastating as we often hear in the media, and how detrimental the cost of current green policies is in comparison. To sustainably tackle climate change, we need a new approach.

CBC news, Thursday, August 14, 2008 If Bill Gates, say, offered you $10 billion to solve the big problems of the world, what would you spend it on? Counterterrorism? Global warming? World hunger? What about on the three great plagues of the modern era: HIV, malaria, TB? Where do you think you would get the most bang for your buck? These are exactly the questions a think-tank called the Copenhagen Consensus has been asking, on three occasions now, over the past four years, with the support of such influential publications as The Economist magazine and, this year, the Wall Street Journal.