End of Kyoto would mean nothing for the climate Dec 24, 2011 Shonali Ghosal Q: You are known to be critical of the Kyoto Protocol. Does the Durban agreement offer more hope than Kyoto? A: There’s virtually nothing but empty promises. The Kyoto Protocol will be a symbolic act to continue. As for the Green Climate Fund, they have provided the structure but there’s no money, which has always been the problem. The real meat of the Durban deal, the idea of getting a binding agreement in 2020, is basically just delaying tactics. They said that in 2007 with the Bali roadmap that they...

Wall Street Journal OPINION DECEMBER 12, 2011 Global Warming and Adaptability Any carbon deal to replace Kyoto would have a negligible impact on climate in coming decades. By BJORN LOMBORG The Durban pit-stop in the endless array of climate summits has just ended, and predictably it reaffirmed the United Nations' strong belief that the most important response to global warming is to secure a strong deal to cut carbon emissions. What is almost universally ignored, however, is that if we want to help real people overcome real problems we need to focus first on adaptation. The Durban...

2011-Dec-10 Is global warming just a load of hot air? Climate change is clearly a burning issue, but who to believe? We spoke to three experts with differing views on the subject in an effort to determine what’s really going on. Words: Jim Wake According to Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist on the faculty at Texas Tech University, taking action to prevent a catastrophe as the Earth warms up is long overdue. If you talk to Benny Peiser, director of the London-based Global Policy Warming Institute, he’ll tell you we don’t know nearly enough about what is going on to embark...

The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers Foreign Policy presents a unique portrait of 2011's global marketplace of ideas and the thinkers who make them. DECEMBER 2011 Bjorn Lomborg For looking more right than ever on the politics of climate change. Director, Copenhagen Consensus, Denmark With international action on limiting climate change seemingly stalled, it must be hard for Bjorn Lomborg to resist an "I told you so." The Danish environmental researcher has been a longtime dissenter from the conventional wisdom calling for international agreements to limit carbon emissions. Lomborg...

For a considerable time, it has been claimed that we must fix climate change immediately or all will be lost. As long ago as 1989, the director of the United Nations environment programme stated: "We shall win - or lose - the climate struggle in the first years of the 1990s. The issue is as urgent as that." ...

The lesson from the federal government's failed backing of Solyndra is not that the United States should abandon energy innovation. It is that the government should not try to pick industry winners in the race to replace fossil fuels with an alternative. Solyndra is the now-bankrupt solar-panel manufacturer that received a $535 million federal loan guarantee in 2009 to build a factory based on the proposition that solar power should be captured through solar cylinders rather than the more established technology of silicon wafers. Solyndra lost the gamble on its technology — and...

Bjorn Lomborg From: The Australian November 17, 2011 12:00AM GLOBAL warming is real, man-made and important, but the present response has not worked for 20 years, won't work now and won't solve it in the future. This is especially true for Australia, which has introduced a carbon tax that will not work, while stifling debate on an alternative solution. Let me elaborate. Simple physics tells us that, all else being equal, carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels will raise temperatures. Simple economics tells us temperature rises will eventually be negative for the world as a...

2011-11-14 Seeming Green Bjorn Lomborg COPENHAGEN – When Denmark’s new government ministers presented themselves to Queen Margrethe II last month, the incoming development minister established his green credentials by rolling up to the palace in a tiny, three-wheeled, electric-powered vehicle. The photo opportunity made a powerful statement about the minister’s commitment to the environment – but probably not the one he intended. (...)

September 29, 2011 Rethinking HIV from an Economic Viewpoint Joe DeCapua Some of the world’s top economists have gotten together to take a new look at the HIV/AIDS epidemic and see whether money can be better spent. It’s called the RethinkHIV project and includes three Nobel Laureates. The Copenhagen Consensus Center and the Rush Foundation sponsored the panel of experts, which presented its findings Wednesday in Washington to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. “It’s essentially a project to try to say, let’s spend money on HIV in the...

Making HIV/AIDS Investments Count Bjørn Lomborg 2011-10-14 NEW YORK – It is dangerous to believe that the end of AIDS is in sight. Around 30 million people around the world live with HIV, and another 30 million are likely to become infected in the next decade if current trends persist. Funding from developed governments is dropping – a trend that must be reversed. But we also need to acknowledge that billions of dollars have been spent on well-meaning attempts to save lives, with an alarming lack of high-quality evaluation of how these investments have performed. (...)