Meil on vaja palju tugevamat fookust rohelise energia uuringutele. Kui maailm suudaks uuendada rohelist energiat nii, et see muutuks fossiilkütustest odavamaks, lahendaks me globaalse soojenemise, kirjutab mõttekoja Copenhagen Consensus president ja Stanfordi Ülikooli Hooveri instituudi külalisteadlane Björn Lomborg.

Lomborg also discussed the cost of carbon neutrality on the Fox News Channel.

Lomborg discussed the necessity of designing policies that work for the world's poor in order to seriously tackle global warming with Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot on the Journal Editorial Report.

Today, 120 world leaders and 30,000 delegates will start arriving in Glasgow for the Cop26 climate change conference. Watching from afar will be Bjorn Lomborg, the former Greenpeace activist who, in his acclaimed 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist, concluded that the costly measures being dreamed up by politicians, scientists and businessmen have proved next to useless. Here, he explains why little has changed.

Add wildfires to the long list of natural disasters that are overhyped in climate coverage. It scares adults and kids alike, as when Rep. Katie Porter’s (D., Calif.) 9-year-old daughter worries: “The Earth is on fire and we’re all going to die soon.” This simply isn’t true.

In their bids to showcase climate leadership ahead of the approaching United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26), world leaders are once again talking of ambitious carbon reduction targets. U.S. President Joe Biden, for example, has set the goal of creating “a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.” Most rich countries’ governments have formulated similar ambitions.

It’s easy to construct climate disasters. You just find a current, disconcerting trend and project it into the future, while ignoring everything humanity could do to adapt. For instance, one widely reported study found that heat waves could kill thousands more Americans by the end of the century if global warming continues apace—but only if you assume people won’t use more air conditioning. Yes, the climate is likely to change, but so is human behavior in response.

Politicians across the world routinely promise unprecedented reductions of carbon emissions but make little mention of the cost, often covering with vivid projections of green jobs. Yet the economic damage these policies would do is much greater than what most voters would tolerate, while the climate benefits are smaller than many would imagine.

Copenhagen Consensus President Bjorn Lomborg argues that significant technological advancement will be the solution for climate change.

The World Health Organization estimates that climate change will cause an additional 250,000 deaths each year in the two decades following 2030, mostly among the world’s poor. The WHO compared the real world with an imaginary one in which there’s no climate change, calculating the difference in deaths from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, dengue fever, flooding and heat.