The Rich World’s Climate Hypocrisy

2013-03-26 We've been tackling global warming badly for 20 years. And for a very simple reason: because we essentially try to tell people, "Could you please stop with all that fossil-fuel stuff?" The problem, of course, is fossil fuels are what power pretty much everything we like about civilization. We're not burning fossil fuels to annoy Al Gore. We're burning them because it makes us rich. Trying to tell people not to do that is a hard sell. (...) 

By Nicholas Newman, Oxford Prospect.  Increasingly, we are hearing the term that something must be done to solve the world’s almost never-ending ending crises. The media is full of pressing appeals that every problem is urgent and must be tackled immediately, with often little regard to the economic and social costs involved. Unfortunately, for policy makers, the real world of geopolitics and budgetary issues forces politicians to prioritise decisions. Often such policy decisions will be both tough to make and politically unpopular with the public at large.

Campaigners have warned that net zero pledges made at COP26 are "doomed to fail" without regulation. But environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg tells Julia Hartley Brewer: "Young people are terrified but It's important to tell them there is less chance of them dying. This is not the end of the world." He also warns that world leaders at COP26 are trying to "force" net zero targets that will be "incredibly costly and politically impossible."