Climate Change Hasn’t Set the World on Fire

Air quality has improved dramatically in rich countries over the past century. Yet air pollution is still a huge problem, especially in the developing world. It kills about 7 million people each year, accounting for one out of every eight deaths globally. But the most deadly air pollution comes from inside people's houses, because 2.8 billion people still use firewood, dung and coal for cooking and keeping warm, breathing polluted air inside their homes every day.

The Texas rolling black-outs have become a Rorschach test where everyone sees what they’d like to see. Wind skeptics point out that wind turbines are frozen, renewable energy campaigners point out that gas, coal and nuclear power plants also cut out.  But the much more fundamental point is: Not having enough power when you need it can be deadly. This is relevant for the attempt by the Biden administration to get rid of fossil fuels in the electricity sector by 2035. It will create a lot of problems, especially if it is focused on intermittent renewables.

Are electric cars greener than conventional gasoline cars? If so, how much greener? What about the CO2 emissions produced during electric cars' production? And where does the electricity that powers electric cars come from? Environmental economist Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, examines how environmentally friendly electric cars really are.