Romm Critique of COP21 Impact Deeply Flawed

The Biden Administration wants to spend the equivalent of $1,500 per American per year on climate policies such as electric cars. At the same time, more than half of US citizens are unwilling to pay even $24 per year.

Bjorn Lomborg argues in an interview with Fox News that this is unsustainable. Instead, we need a cheaper and more effective climate approach, focusing on ramping up green R&D. If we can innovate the price of green energy below fossil fuels, countries such as India and China could also afford to lower their emissions.

Even climate activists increasingly recognize that the lofty rhetoric of the global agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, concluded in Paris just over a year ago, will not be matched by its promises’ actual impact on temperatures. This should make us think about smart, alternative solutions. But one such alternative, geoengineering, is a solution that many people refuse to entertain.

Over the past decade, the global elite’s obsession with climate change has taken away from the many other major problems facing the planet — shown most dramatically by the invasion of Ukraine. Western European leaders should have spent the past decade diversifying energy sources and expanding shale gas, instead of shutting down nuclear plants and becoming scarily reliant on Russia. But the looming war is far from the only thing they have managed to ignore.