Climate-Change Colonialism Keeps Poor Countries Impoverished

Intelligence Squared US debate series: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Major reductions in carbon emissions are not worth the money Moderator: John Donvan Speaking for the motion: Bjorn Lomborg, Philip Stott and Peter Huber Speaking against the motion: L. Hunter Lovins, Oliver Tickell and Adam Werbach THIS EVENT WILL BE RECORDED FOR BBC WORLD NEWS. Panelists for the motion Bjorn Lomborg is the author of the bestsellers Cool It and The Skeptical Environmentalist.

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.

It is time to stop our green worship of the electric car. It costs us a fortune, cuts little CO2 and surprisingly kills almost twice the number of people compared with regular gasoline cars.