Climate-Change Colonialism Keeps Poor Countries Impoverished

Saying out loud what many people already think about electric cars, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s climate spokeswoman, Allegra Stratton, has received a lot of green flak. She says she’s not yet willing to trade in her old diesel car for a sparkling new electric, because it is inconvenient for her driving needs. In her honesty, Ms Stratton has highlighted the elitist illusion of much green thinking.

Global warming is a significant, long-term problem. Unfortunately, we’re tackling it with very costly, and very ineffective, feel-good solutions.

Lomborg writes in The Australian that we should instead focus on cost-effective CO2 reductions like shale gas in the short term and green R&D in the long run.

Climate change is clearly an important global issue, but we are tackling it very badly and our overwhelming focus on reducing carbon emissions also distracts us from many of the world's most pressing problems. What makes it so hard to cut emissions is that CO2 is a byproduct of prosperous economies, and replacing cheap fossil fuels with today's mostly expensive and unreliable green alternatives remains incredibly expensive. An analysis for the government of New Zealand recently showed that achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 would cost the nation 16% of GDP.