Blowing hot air: Governmental carbon-cutting promises are inadequate

Announced with much fanfare 11 months ago, the Paris Climate Treaty finally came into force earlier this month – just in time for the election of Donald Trump to potentially render the whole thing moot.

But there’s a bigger problem for climate campaigners than Trump. It’s that the Paris Treaty will in any case have very little effect on temperature change.

It promises to keep temperature rises below 2C. But there is no way any of the Paris promises will get anywhere close to achieving this.

How do we best spend our scarce resources to do good in the world?

In his talk to Reason Foundation, Lomborg takes you though how to prioritize the solutions to some of the world's greatest problems.

Copenhagen Consensus Center President Bjørn Lomborg says global warming will have “mostly negative impacts”, but people need to have a “sense of proportion”.

“When temperatures rise, you’re going to see more heat, and hence more heatwaves and hence more heat deaths,” he told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

“But what you don’t hear is that when temperatures rise, you also see less cold, less cold waves, and hence fewer cold deaths.”