Bjorn Lomborg calls for a new approach to meeting global development goals

Ever notice how, in the last decade or so, we quietly stopped just having storms and started having “extreme weather events”? It feels like no temperature drop or seasonal downpour is too small for the media to slap a scary name on it and issue minute-by-minute warnings. Well, now some news outlets and campaigners are trying to do the exact same thing for climate change itself.

Energy prices are soaring, and it’s likely a sign of things to come. The rise can be blamed on a variety of things, including the demand rebound after the lockdowns ended, a drop in renewable electricity output from a lack of wind in Europe during most of 2021, and increasingly costly climate policies. But while the pandemic will end and the wind will blow again, climate policies to achieve “net zero” emissions will keep hiking prices.

Patt Morrison for May 5, 2011

Has Bjorn Lomborg—the poster child of environmental skeptics—changed his climate?

Bjorn Lomborg, Danish environmental academic, infuriated scientists around the world when he published The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001. The book claimed that overpopulation, destruction of resources, and global warming are not imminent problems. It would be a waste of time, Lomborg wrote, and even detrimental, if countries focused on environmental problems like global warming instead of on bigger problems such as worldwide poverty and disease. (...)